Tuesday 5 May 2015

VE Day at the Royal Gunpowder Mills

On Monday my family and I took a short drive to Waltham Abbey and the Royal Gunpowder Mills for their VE Day Celebrations. This is a relatively small re-enactment and living history event but the site is very interesting and there was a lot going on to keep the family busy.

Airsoft air-gun range for the kids (and even I had a go)

George Crosses awarded to employees at the gunpowder mills for staying at their posts when nearby huts exploded.

German Heavy Machine Gun

Parade of Vehicles

American Trucks

An assortment of bomb disposal equipment 

A British PIAT anti tank launcher

Explosives, grenades and sticky bombs!

German field maps

Bedford Truck 
German Pak Anti Tank gun

Spitfire display

Start of the re-enactement battle

British Para's attack

Jeep mounted Para's ride into battle

American & British Airborne Troops working side by side

Job done the Para's leave the field to the Americans

Germans counter-attack, bringing in some HMG's

Having captured the Americans the Germans prepare to defend their ground

Fallschirmjäger

Here come the Para's again!

Supported by the Essex Regiment

Go get em boys!

Now this just isn't Cricket...

By the British sweep the field and win the battle at the end of the day.

A pretty good display and I managed to bag a good position for the main battle, away from the crowds and with a good view of the whole site. The weather stayed good all day which always helps these sort of events and made up for Saturday and Sunday which were a bit on the cold side. Oh and I even managed to pick up some low priced modelling tools from a guy selling scale models so I call that a result. 

7 comments:

  1. Great pics Lee, wonder if Smiffy was there???

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    1. Yeh, I saw him and had a chat. He was in the battle as well but I didn't get any good photo's of him.

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  2. Lovely post, nice photos. Interesting mix of German Uniforms - Fallschirmjäger, Gebirgsjäger and Heer, and a guy in a Luftwaffe Feldgendarmie uniform. Great reference material for modellers and gamers!

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  3. Nice mix of uniforms and vehicles. I liked the bit about the George Medals. That couldn't have been a fun place to work at during the Blitz but as they used to say, essential work.

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    1. Very brave men indeed. They were working on Nitroglycerine which was at a critical and volatile stage when an explosion in a nearby area caused a chain reaction of explosions and fires across the site. Despite the fact that their building was damaged in the blast and debris was falling all around these guys remained at their posts until the Nitro could be stabilised.

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  4. Very interesting. Great pics. cheers

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  5. The Fallschirmjäger is me.

    Great pics mate!!

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