20mm French War Memorial

There is hardly a village in France without a memorial to the fallen of the First World War and while scanning through pictures of the Normandy campaign looking for inspiration for building projects it soon became clear this should be something to add to my terrain collection.

I've had a resin 20mm French war memorial from Sgts Mess for a few years and up until now I had simply painted it and used it as the odd piece of scatter terrain. Somehow it never quite looked right, a little sad and lonely just placed on its own.

With the Sarissa terrace houses complete and a France 1940 Chain of Command campaign on the horizon I thought I would use it to make more of a feature and something to decorate a town or village square.

I made a simple base from MDF and bevelled the edges with my Dremel using the sanding tool. I then made a plinth for the statue from a piece of cork floor tile.

A quick search online gave me further inspiration and so using some thinner cork tile I made a path leading to the statue. I then surrounded it all with some thin strips of balsa which will represent a small retaining wall.

The interior of the retaining wall would feature scattered stones and so I filled the area with some medium sized gravel. I also wanted the plinth of the statue to be enclosed in a small chained off area and so I attached some pieces of balsa, cut to size. These would represent the decorative stone posts from which the chain would hang.

I had some very fine chain that was perfectly scaled for the job. A bit fiddly to attach but worth it for the finished effect.

The posts themselves lacked character and some simple beads from a craft shop would do the trick. I glued these with PVA to the top of each post. They just needs a dab of filler to fill the holes, if I could have found small round balls they would have been even easier.

The chain links were then attached by drilling small holes and gluing with super glue.

Overall I was happy with this and it now looked like a much more fitting piece to sit in the centre of the village.

The next task was to prime the base before painting.

I wanted the stone work of the statue to match the colours and tones of the village houses so that they would all blend together. The base coat was painted using a Dulux sample pot of acrylic emulsion and then dry-brushed in lighter shades.

From the various images I had seen it appears it was common to surround the memorials with plants and small shrubs and so I replicated these using some clumping foliage. With that the piece was finished and now becomes a more substantial feature for a village or urban board and a more fitting memorial to those from the village who had made the ultimate sacrifice.