Thanks for the interest Lucio; the cobbles are a set from Tamiya - I don’t know if they’re still in production:
TAMIYA 87165 Diorama Sheet
I’m currently working on figures, which always slow me down; hopefully more progress by the end of the week.
2 Likes
I love the way this develops and the way the cement is crudely applied between the blocks! I just wonder if the wall is not too low? In Berlin is was between 3,40m and 4,20m if my sources are correct…
1 Like
Thanks Erwin. When it was first erected following the wiring-off of East Berlin on 13 August 61, it seemed to vary, as did the actual materials used. I wasn’t able to find anything exactly like the blocks they used, as shown in this pic for instance, but I think you’ll agree that the height is about right:
3 Likes
Yeah, it seems ok. Maybe they heightened the wall at a later moment, and this was a provisional wall?
1 Like
I think that was very much the case; they simply had to get a move on in the ensuing weeks and months. Only later it seems, did it evolve into the fortress-like barrier we all know.
5 Likes
That seems very plausible… Then I have said nothing 
Still love your dio…
2 Likes
It is coming along great. I really like the whole concept. I recently watched Bridge of Spies, which is set around the same time as when the wall went up.
2 Likes
Thanks Gino; it’s taking a bit more time than it should (though still rocketing along by my usual standards), and I’m currently bogged a bit with the NVA figures, but I’ll get there!
1961 was a pretty fraught time in the scheme of things in the Cold War (which is partly why I wanted to depict what I have).
The Wall went up in August - or at least the construction began after the initial sealing off; two months later there was the famous standoff between US and Soviet tanks at Checkpoint Charlie, then also in October the Soviets detonated the Tsar Bomba - I mean how much Cold War stress does one want?
3 Likes
Yup, crazy time. I built an M48A1 for a planned Berlin Crisis dio a few years ago. Unfortunately, the dio never materialized. I still have the tank, so maybe eventually…
5 Likes
I remember that one; very nice too.
The trouble with dios is, well to me, they take so much time. After all, all I’m trying to do really is to display the Brit use of the Munga; I thought it might be quite a simple project but it isn’t.
In a way, I should have just displayed it on a small base as I described some time above, and left the history lesson alone(!)
3 Likes
You should really go for it. This was a very important part of history for post war era…
2 Likes
I for one am looking forward to more progress on your dio. I really like the concept. It was a giant symbolic point of the Cold War.
I lived in Lahr, W. Germany from 81-85 (as a brat) and never had a chance to visit “the wall”, I do however have a piece from it!
1 Like
Hah! Coincidentally, that’s quite something: I had to visit Berlin for a briefing when I became a Sergeant in 1980 and was posted to the Intelligence & Security branch of HQ BAOR. Part of the brief was a “Wire and Wall” tour by the RMP. At one juncture, they identified the original wall (decaying concrete and barbed wire); they very kindly chipped a piece off together with a small length of barbed wire and gave it me as a souvenir.
I’m sure I’ve got it somewhere, just not quite sure where.
3 Likes
Sorry Steve, forgive my manners - I forgot to acknowledge your interest in the project. Thanks!
2 Likes
I spent 5 years in Germany during the 1980s. Nver got to see Berlin or the wall. Not authorized.
Left Germany 6 months before the wall came down, watched it on TV.
Ken
3 Likes
Ha, no worries mate.
Your piece of the wall would be a very significant and interesting piece of history. While I was in Syria an Austrian EOD tech friend fabricated a cross made from artillery and mine shrapnel from the Golan Heights. My piece of history.
Behind the cross is sand from Afghanistan.
6 Likes
Since we’re now doing Berlin Wall Stories: in late 1989, my parents decided that our next summer holiday would be to East Germany, before everything there became westernized. So in July 1990, the family camper van drove to (West) Berlin, where we ended up on a formerly dead-end street alongside a camp site that was up against the Wall — but was overflowing due to the influx of tourists with the same idea. The street used to be a dead end against the wall, but that had been opened up so everybody could wander freely into the former kill zone fascist-repelling no-man’s land, which we did, of course. Great fun bicycling down the patrol road, looking at the toppled guard towers, checking out the very sturdy fence, and so on. However, the East German border guards were adamant that nobody could set up their tent, caravan or camper van on their side of the wall, and came by several times per day to check.
My father chiseled a decent chunk of concrete out of the wall there, and it’s still in the living room I have a bunch of NVA rank insignia and some assorted other small stuff that we found in a big hole somebody had dug in the ground in the no-man’s land. For over thirty years I’ve occasionally wondered what the tiny raindrop-camouflaged pouch was for, or the thing that I assume is a weapon tool of some kind.
5 Likes
Well, overall I was very lucky I guess; mind you, at times one had to make one’s own luck.
The visit to Berlin was quite something. First, I travelled up by the Berlin Military train, a Brit luxury means of transport with silver service and a menu to die for. Crossing the Border just blew me away: here were the enemy - close up and personal, East German Border Troops checking the train underside with dogs. The first (and only) Soviet soldiers I’d ever seen, checking the papers of all on board, as the British conducting officer I/C Train and Warrant Officer marched out to meet them in a formal ceremony, ignoring the East Germans as only the Sovs were to be recognised.
The marshalling yards at Magdeburg - chock full of kit, T-62s, BMPs, 2S1s, endless soft-skinned stuff, and just masses of it. Here was the sheer threat of it all - the Soviet Army en masse and bloody intimidating it all was.
Presumably the Intelligence Corps young female Corporal aboard the train made the most of it with a video camera concealed in a handbag, as she smoked in the corridor.
Then the 2-day briefings, from the G Int boys at Brigade HQ, in the magnificent Nazi Olympic stadium, a BRIXMIS brief then a rather strange brief which to this day I don’t think I was meant to have, from MI6 (I think) all about agent - running in East Germany.
An evening’s entertainment with my opposite number, the Brigade G Int Chief Clerk, where we ended up in some astonishing bar where naked ladies descended from the roof in a sort of trapeze, destined for a bath on a small stage whereupon members of the audience were invited to join them. The alcohol-fuelled stagger out into the cold air, adjacent to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, as I desperately tried to find the service accommodation hostel known as Edinburgh House at around 2 in the morning.
The following day, trying not to throw up amidst a monster hangover, in the Gazelle which had been laid on for me to give me a brief of what was where; I recall flying near the Brandenburg Gate as the Sovs decided to send up 2 x Hinds just so we got the message.
I mean, happy freakin’ days!!
7 Likes