The Battle of Arnhem MOC

 The battle of Arnhem was part of the operation Market Garden. Planned by Montgomery it should have made the war shorter. The plan was to take the bridges over the main Dutch rivers still in German hands and step on Germany. First Eindhoven, then Nimega and finally Arnhem. The plan was a failure and after days of fighting and a final evacuation Arnhem proved to be a bridge too far. 

Front view

In the operations at Arnhem and the town next to it called Oosterbeek there were mainly British paratroopers from the 1st Airborne Division even there were other soldiers from other nationalities. 

My main inspiration for this MOC was an incident happened in the streets of Arnhem when the paratroopers landed in the outskirts and approached to the city. Nobody at the German side knew exactly how many they were and where were they. General Kussin was the officer at the head of the defense of Arnhem and in order to know more about what was going on and the seriousness of the situation he drove to the headquarters of the SS-Sturmbahnführer Sepp Krafft who led a 450 men battalion in Oosterbeek. When Kussin arrived Krafft informed Kussin and he left back to Arnhem again using the same road. Shortly after they started their way back to the city they were ambushed by soldiers from the 3rd Parachute Battalion of the 1st Airborne Division in the junction between Utrechtseweg and Wolfhezerweg.  All four occupants of the Citroën car died (five depending on the source). After reading this I got inspired to build a British ambush in a street. My MOC doesn't represent a real incident (not intentionally at least) but there were shootings regularly in this street (or road) which connected Arnhem with Oosterbeek. My MOC represents the moment when British paratroopers got out of their hidden spots and are shooting the Germans who come down the street. They shoot the infantry and one of them is kneeling in the middle of the road aiming a captured Panzerfaust against the advancing Panther.

Original plan was to create a square shape MOC but once I already started with the bases I made to see the sizes of the build I then decided to add more space and make it bigger. 

Always when I plan a build I'm inspired for I read about the real events (and watched again A Bridge too far for this build) and I look for dioramas and artworks about it if I'm not sure yet about what to build exactly. Sometimes I look at other MOCs done by community members. This diorama was an inspiration for this build.

MOC is 70cm x 45cm long. Around 80 studs long. It took 5 weeks to be build. I don't know about the number of parts used but I bet it must be more than 15.000. 16 minifigs appear in this MOC and 3 vehicles. I want to mention as always when I use it that the Kübelwagen is from Bricktingsmon (Instagram). Overall I'm very happy with it. Only thing I don't like is the doors of the houses. Buildings are decent but there's plenty of room for improvement. Park section could have looked better if was wider. Maybe if the MOC had a square shape could have been done but I don't think I would be able to do that since I used most of my bricks to raise the build and a tree or some of them would have improved the build but ruined many pictures which is something to think of when you do a MOC and you share it online.

Building process:

I started in mid October with it so it took about 5 weeks to be finished. I used the technic I started using last year with the terrain that continues on the sides to raise the build. It takes a lot of time and uses more parts but I think it's worth it because I love how it looks. Here you can see how it is done:

October 15

October 21

October 31

November 6

November 11

Some behind the scenes I made for this post: 

Except the tan building with the Coke advert the rest are empty inside.

Here you can see that the yellow and red bricks measure exactly the same as the space between the walls. I took the picture to remember it. This new knowledge could be useful in future builds.

My favourite minifig and picture of this project

This time I made an interior inside one of the houses. I wanted the kitchen a room and a bathroom but I had to skip the kitchen because of space. I loved doing it and I'm so happy with the final result. 

And finally all the pictures here:

Here is the YouTube video of this build. I recommend you watch it at least the first 30 seconds. Thanks if you have arrived here and I really hope you liked this build!