Perry Miniatures WW2 Indian Division

Many of the troops serving in the Western Desert on the allied side in WW2 were commonwealth troops, including South Africans, New Zealanders, Australians, Gurkhas and Indians.  I fancied converting some Perry Desert Rats to Indian Division troops, but didn't want to wait while the dedicated metal replacement heads were delivered, so I went ahead and employed green stuff;

The completed unit, possibly much more ethnically-mixed than any real section would be, but I like the variety.

The first two models I converted were a Lewis gun team.  The Lewis should really have its cooling tube off, but I prefer the look of it on.  The Lewis itself uses a rifle butt, plastic rod, and a carved piece of thick sprue as a magazine.  I placed the gun on a section of ruined wall, to allow me to use kneeling position bodies.

The lefthand chap was very lightly converted, just  greenstuff military moustache and sub-continental skin tone really.  The chap on the right has a turban from greenstuff, modelled onto a spare LRDG / SAS bearded head.  I chose a variety of skin tones for the Indian troops, some paler some darker.

Similar combination to the previous pairing.  If you look at a wide range of Indian skintones, you will find great variety in shade and tone, with deeper colours and redder tones, pale olives, and more chocolate shades.  With this in mind, I used 3 different colours and two different shadings.  Of course, individual sections may well not have showed this much variation in reality.

I prefer the Perry Sikh heads to my turbaned varieties, but as I say I didn't want to wait for delivery.  I love the big military moustaches though.