WWI GERMAN UNIFORMS

The field gray of trench warfare

The German army gave up its colorful peacetime uniforms before 1914 and moved to a single greenish tone known as field gray. During the war its shade shifted several times with the availability of dyes and with the maker of the cloth, so soldiers of one company could have noticeably different tunics. The six shades in this set are put together around exactly this tone.

Three steps of one tone

The core is a trio of greens: a very dark one for the deepest folds and for the seams under the shoulder straps, a medium gray-green as the area of the tunic, and a faded green for the high points of the cloth on the shoulders, elbows and knees. This spacing lets you model volume without the uniform looking black or, on the other hand, chalky.

Leather, canvas and accessories

Saddle Brown covers belts, cartridge pouches, bags and high boots, that is, the part of the equipment that takes up the most room on a First World War figure after the tunic itself. Sahara Yellow serves for the canvas and mustard-cast items that appeared in the later years, and a dark gray closes the palette for metal parts, helmet straps and shadows.

For which figures

The set suits infantry of the Western and the Eastern Front, machine-gun teams and the crews of the first tanks, and it is usable in all the common figure scales. When building a trench scene it is worth mixing several intermediate steps from the middle tone and the brown. The tunics of one platoon will then differ very slightly, exactly as period photographs show, and a row of figures will stop looking as if it had been cast from one mold.