Getting Things Wrong

I try very hard - when working out what I'm going to do with new models in my tabletop forces - to optimise their usefulness and to really clarify how best I ought to model them.

But sometuimes, sometimes, despite all of my best efforts, I just get it wrong. 

Take this case of my M3 White Scout Car. The model was a gift, for which I was extremely grateful, but I was torn with regard to which Bolt Action army to use it for. I'm not a competitive player, so the fill-it-with-flamethrower-toting-veteran-engineers-and-zoom-into-the-enemy thing certainly wasn't my style, so instead I figured I could use it for my lovely Buffalo Soldiers - my 92nd Infantry Division - in Italy. 

So far so good, but was there anything else I could use it for? What about all the antennae and the communications array I could model sticking out the top of the canvas tilt? 'I know,' I thought: 'This could be perfect for my RAF Forward Air Observer, whom I've painted and based to (nominally) be fielded alongside my RAF Regiment also in Italy. What could possibly go wrong?!' I've done this before too - the excellent Rubicon kits have enabled me in the past to model and paint my US 105mm Sherman also to be used as a British Firefly, with the deliberate placement of both stowage and mud spatters serving wonderfully to bland and camouflage the differing shades of green and tactical markings. 

What could go wrong?

This. This is what went wrong:    

It looks okay - I know. 

The trouble is that for all my thinking about it, I went and over-thought it. What I should have had was the Allied star on the bonnet (the 'hood', I suppose I ought really to say) so that there was one clearly still on its top surface even when it didn't have the tilt. It should have been 

With tilt = RAF; 

Without tilt = US 92nd.

This would have the twin benefit of (a) the tilt having all of the radio antennae, and (b) the Buffalo Soldiers being able to emplace additional MMGs on the rails to cover their flanks. The tilt would then have had an RAF roundel on the top of it - by my reckoning some of these would still have been in legacy use in Italy.

However, in my eagerness, I went and applied the large star to the top of the tilt, rendering it really weird to then add a roundel...to which end, it's now on the tilt's rear. Sigh.

...and of course, because it would look weird to have a star on both tilt and bonnet, it is now devoid of air insignia when travelling open. 

Double-sigh.

So where does this leave me? 

I have ended up with a vehicle which rather than being doubly-useful is in fact rendered generically vague. This is annoying. 

So it goes. 

BUT!

But.

I have been a Big Brave Sodier and decided not to let this bother me. I've never yet fielded the White car, I'm honestly never likely to field it very often, and (and here's the best bit): 

EVEN IF ANYONE ELSE EVER NOTICES, I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO IS EVER LIKELY TO CARE. 

A salutary lesson to many of us, perhaps?

- Chris

PS: Yes, I know that the insignia are just those for US usage: in the end, I decided to cut my losses and just count it as either borrowed or, uh, commandeered when in RAF use. 

Sigh.