Recent content by Medvedya

A grinding metallic screech as the rusted up door finally opens under the pressure from the crowbar, and a cloud of dust fills the air. Bloody Hell! This place still going? It was still the Naughties when I was active here. Well... it's not memory lane that has brought me back - there's a...

Hmm, some bad things to say in Russian... "Poshul na khuy (ili pizda)" "Moodak" "Svoloch" "Pizdyets"

I heard a story where some workmen went down into the sewers and they were attacked by the rats, who were as much starving as the rest of the city. Two of the workmen got out just in time, but the third was caught by the rat swarm.... Possibly one of the nastiest ways to go in my reckoning.

Of course Leningrad was under siege. The Finnish Army was in the Karelian Isthmus in the North, and Petrozavodsk in the North East, Lake Ladoga was due East, the Baltic was to the West, and the Germans had occupied all of the southern coast of Ladoga, including the towns of Schlisselburg and...

And all the helmets, gas masks, bullets, rifles, mortars - it's all still there. I know someone who once went out camping on the Neva Bridgehead as a kid with a friend of his. First thing they did was set up a campfire right? Well, they forgot to dig a fire pit first, and unknowingly had...

Here is the Defence of Leningrad Medal - http://www.anythinganywhere.com/commerce/military/ussr-def-len-t1-2.jpg It was awarded to all soldiers, sailors and civilians involved in the defence of the city, and who fought in the terrible battles in the countryside just outside. Nevsky...

But the citizens of the city never gave up hope for a moment - I once met some veterans and I asked them; "Did you think you were going to make it when the trams started working again?" and their answer was; "Oh - we always believed we going to make it." A very, very, special type of people...

The thing that always makes me think about Blockada is when I recognise the places in photographs. The fifth photograph down on the first page is on Nevsky Prospekt - I walk around there - go to a cafe with friends, browse the books in Dom Kneegi, catch the Metro to Primorskaya - all nice...

Oh, at least that stuff shows up like a whore in church - what some fakers can do these days is add small drops of nitric acid to buttons so that they rust up and a little bit of rust stain bleeds into the fabric. My friends fake mutze checked out in everyway - right peak, fabric...

Well get this - I've heard that they're now even starting to fake GDR uniforms from the sixties! With my area of collecting - certantly with any Imperial Russian stuff - forget it, they're all fakes. Russian Civil War uniforms and insignia? All fakes. Soviet GPW uniforms? Hmm, (rocks hand...

Adler - Have you been finding that the amount of fake Third Reich stuff has gone off the scale recently? I say this because a friend of mine bought a Panzergrenadier mutze and a 44 feldbluse recently, and although they both looked kosher enough when he showed them to me, the mutze turned out...

Depends on what you're after really - I know of a gig (Waltham Abbey) I'm thinking of doing in early May, where part of the plan is to set up a WWII mobile film unit of the All Slavic Anti-Fascist Committee - nary so much as a pointy stick, pair of tights, or codpiece to be seen for that one...

Hmm, the heaviest losses the VVS suffered were during the start of Barbarossa. Granted the I-16's and I-153's of the pre-war Red Air Force weren't a match for the Luftwaffe, but it became a very different story when the Yak series and Lavochkins begain to take to the skies a few years later.

Close, but not quite as scary or anatomical as that!

Okay - the stuff from this dealer is widely regarded by Chocolate Soldiers as as good as it gets. (He supplied the German uniforms for Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers) However - it ain't cheap. The cap Shopping Cart A flieger bluse Shopping Cart The trousers Shopping Cart