During 1942 the fate of the African Theatre of War was decided when Rommel was stopped in El Alamein at the doors of the very important Suez canal. After a first battle which finished with a stalemate there was a second one where the Allied troops were able to defeat the Italo-German forces and push them many hundred kilometers back into Lybia to never step in Egypt again.
Due the circumstances of the war in this front and because the front itself was too wide the Germans built fortificated static positions like the one represented here and sorrounded them with mines and barbedwire in what is called "Devil's garden". An estimated 3 million mines were laid before the battle according to Wikipedia site.
In this new MOC (My Own Creation) I show you today I did my best to represent an example of the German defenses around El Alamein.
 |
| Main picture of the MOC |
Inspiration for this build (and information for this post!) is taken from these pages from a book called "Afrika Korps. Rommel's warriors" from the collection "World War 2 Elite Troops" from the publishing company Tikal (Susaeta Ediciones).
 |
| Reference picture for the build |
As you may have noticed my build isn't as big and either has barbedwire or any similar stuff around it but that's because a lack of parts to do it bigger.
These positions consisted of 16 to 24 men with a 37 or 50mm PaK anti tank gun and a mortar sometimes. In the scene I represented in my build the soldiers are putting their new PaK 38 in it's position.
 |
| This PaK 50 design of mine is from 2013-2014 but I think it still looks decent nowadays |
In the flanks there were machine guns. To represent this I put a MG 42 laying on the ground in one flank as you can see below.
Behind the soldier above you can see the space for the mortar. Shown below too.
And that's all the information I can give you. The book says these positions where very useful to stop the Allied units. I had fun building this. I find it kinda different to what I usually build. The tan color is one of my favourite and this almost all tan build looks amazing to the eye I would say. At least for mines. The North African front (and whole African fronts to be honest) are amazing to study and learn about. I find it a super interesting topic. War there was something else. It may not have been as tough as the Eastern front but this war of movements in an almost plain desert of thousands of kilometers had crazy things not seen in any other place like the Long Range Desert Group depots/bases behind enemy lines or the (obviously) very high temperatures they faced during the days and cold in the nights. I really hope you enjoyed reading this and the whole MOC itself. In a future post I may upload my DAK army showing you the minifigs more in detail and giving more information in case anyone wants to build them. Here are the rest of the pictures and the YouTube video.
 |
| AliExpress DAK minifigs offer an amazing base to start with |
 |
| Long life to my old PaK 50 design! |
 |
| Many hours and patience put into these hand-painted gear |
 |
| Probably my favourite minifig of the MOC. Dark Brown Kar 98k is something else :-) |
