Film makers portray all German soldiers as wearing all-grey throughout the war. In fact the various types of German soldier wore different colours, and later war Germans wore very little grey. The basic colour of the classic German infantry uniform was feldgrau or "field grey", which was actually a shade of green. The tunic of the uniform was this colour. Here you see a soldier with a feldgrau tunic. His trousers are "stone grey" and you can see that they contrast with his tunic.

The paint I have used is Citadel "ghoul grey", but you will probably have to mix your own. There is no need to be very precise since the many factories producing German uniforms produced quite a few different shades, which then faded in the sun, or got wet and muddy. It is a pale green, with a hint of grey.

The figure is from the very-good "Panzergrenadiers" box by Revell . He has had a chunk of plastic carved away between his rifle and his body, which was there to help him get out of the mould. Actually, the box should more accurately be called "Early War German Infantry", because nothing in it is specific to Panzergrenadiers.

Here we see two men of a forward observation team. One is using a range finder. Later in the war (1943 onwards) these would typically be painted a sandy colour.

Their tunics are quite green. This is a shade often seen in photographs on the period. Photographs are very unreliable as guides for colour, because many of them were not true colour photographs at all, but coloured-in black and white shots, and even the colour shots distort the colours a lot. If you ever watch "Dad's Army" notice how the colour of the men's uniforms changes in the indoor and outdoor scenes. Indoor scenes were shot with video cameras under artificial lights in a studio, and the uniforms look definitely green. Outdoors, under sunlight and shot with a film camera, the uniforms are definitely brown. In truth, the uniforms were probably somewhere between these two colours. Nevertheless, many sources agree that German tunics were often this shade of green. Some photographs appear to show the tunic as grey as the trousers, but this was certainly not the norm. German troops were issued with secondary "fatigue" uniforms for use work duties. Early in the war these were a cream colour, but later they became "reed green", and these lighter-weight uniforms were often worn in summer instead of the feldgrau woolen tunic.

Here you see a rear view of some early war infantry. Each man carries a metal cylindrical gas mask holder. If you can be bothered, you could dry-brush the edges with silver to represent the paint's having been chipped away exposing bare metal. The canister is dark green.

Each man also carries a cloth "bread bag". The official early war colour of this is beige. I have used a very pale beige for contrast. Later in the war, these were any kind of military colour: grey, brown, green.

You need to know which bits to paint as dark metal and which as wood on the rifle. This is a crude drawing I have done which I hope makes it clear enough. Drawing with a mouse is rather tricky. This shows a Kar.98k - the standard German rifle. I'll add that the picture on the cover of the Revell "Panzergrenadiers" box is an accurate painting guide.

The men on the left wear great coats in the same colours as the tunic underneath. The buttons the men use are a dull metal colour. Their cloth caps are the same colour as the tunics, and have a "national cockade" on the front. This was a circular metal badge with black rim, and white ring within it, and a central red dot. Given that it was so tiny, I'd recommend that you represent it with either a black or white dot.

The NCO in the centre has white braiding around his collar, to distinguish him from the other men.

The officer on the right has a brown despatch case hanging from his belt, as well as a black leather holster. These were both leather and could be black or brown. As ever, I choose contrasting colours. Note his high slim riding boots.

A sustained-fire machinegun (SFMG) team. You can clearly see the men's water-bottles, which were covered in hazelnut-brown felt, and topped with a black-painted aluminium cup, and held on with a black vertical leather strap.

Also clear on the man on the left is a marking denoting how long he has been a soldier. This marking (triangle with dot, and lower edges white) means six years of service. Without the dot is lance-corporal (Gefreiter) of six months. After 2 years he would get a second stripe to his marking. There were a few variants of these which changed over time. One was a small black circle with dot in the centre, which indicated an Obersoldat of six months service. I am not sure of the way in which the rank of the soldier and the length of service combined. Some of these markings were awarded for length of service and seemingly little else, while others required promotion. The dots are actually little pips, and the stripes are actually braid, but at this scale no one can tell. Yet again, a visitor to this site has pointed out an error - these triangular patches were apparently worn on the left sleeve only, and not as you can sometimes see here, on both sleeves. The same man has ochre-brown magazine pouches for his SMG.

I really should photograph my figures soon after finishing. This figure has been in a fair few games of Crossfire and has gone shiny through handling. I'd be interested to know if anyone knows of a good gentle way to remove grease without spoiling the bases.

I went to town on this guy, giving him hairy forearms and a five-o'clock shadow. On his helmet you can see a bread bag strap (beige). Such a band might also be a rubber band made from a bicycle inner tube. It was for attaching foliage to the helmet.

I painted this guy as a Panzergrenadier, back in the days when I though that the branch colour for them was pink. The frog of his entrenching tool is the regulation black leather, and his binoculars are black, although often they were slate grey, and later in the war were often "tropicalised" to sand colour.

The above figure is a good example of the effect of putting paint in with the varnish. The dark shading you see in all the recesses was achieved with very little effort. I mixed black enamel paint in with the main coat of varnish, and this sank into the recesses and the thickness of the varnish held it there. I use black for Germans because it looks good against the colour of their uniform, because it makes them look a bit more evil, and because they have so much black on them already (boots etc.) and the effect is not great when the paint mixed in with the varnish is lighter than the paint on the figure.

50mm mortar teams. The weapons are gun-metal coloured, and the bombs are red. I doubt that all German mortar bombs were red, but I have a photograph clearly showing men using bright-red bombs in a larger calibre of mortar, so I think it is reasonable to paint these red. Mortar bombs were often painted bright distinguishing colours so that crews would not confuse smoke rounds with high explosive or illumination rounds.

You can also see the black "frogs" (holders) on the entrenching tools. The bayonet was also kept here, and on its side there was a little white eagle, manifesting here as a tiny white dot. These little touches of white are small, but they leap out at you and bring the detailing on the figures to life.

The figures on the far left are by SHQ. All the 50mm mortars are scratch built. The middle crew are a converted Esci radio operator and Revelllight machine gunner's assistant. The nearst team is made out of a converted Esci standing mortar crewman, and an Esci prone rifleman.

This is the officer figure from the Revell German Engineers/ Pioneers box. I have left his tunic the same light grey as the moulded plastic. Officers very often had their own uniforms tailor made, and often preferred lightish grey. They wore grey suede gloves. Their belts and holsters were often privately bought and often attractive shades of brown leather. On his second button-hole down, he wear a diagonal ribbon of a medal. This was the standard place to wear the Iron Cross Second Class, a quite common medal for bravery. the ribbon was actually striped black-white-red-white-black, but a red stripe suffices at this scale. Other medals that are easy to paint were the numerous campaign and wound medals that were circular or oval and worn on the left breast pocket. Just put a couple of metallic-coloured blobs there if you are feeling decorative.

His trousers are the cavalry-type with wide baggy bits on the thigh. The inside of the thigh is lined with grey leather, here represented by darker grey paint. How many of these trousers ever rode on a horse I cannot tell you, but I imagine that most didn't. Very senior officers had stripes down the sides of their cavalry trousers, and branch-colour piping down the front vertical seam of their tunics and on their turned-back cuffs. Such finery was rarely seen at the front.

His hat has a black peak, dark-green facing cloth band, branch-colour piping round the rim (and should be around the dark-green band, but I didn't even try), and an eagle against a dark cloth background. They also typically had a national cockade with aluminium oak wreath around it beneath the eagle, and an aluminium braid chin strap. Personally, I thought I had done well to paint the eagle on the backing cloth. The figure doesn't really have a band to paint, and I cannot paint what isn't there. On the right you see another of my basic but I hope clear drawings showing you where the paint goes on a German officer's "saddle hat". The branch colour piping here is red (artillery, perhaps).

Artillery officers with scissors scope. This device was a range-finder and superior binocular. The officer on the left has privately-bought riding boots and belt, and a tailored light grey uniform. His hat clearly shows the green band, but still lacks the cockade and chinstrap. My excuse is that it was very difficult to paint the front of his head next to the scissors scope. This also accounts for his lack of collar Litzen.

You can clearly see his Wehrmacht eagle, and the scarlet piping on his shoulder-boards.

His assistant wears a cloth cap, with a chevron of branch colour piping over his cockade. His blonde hair is not painted with yellow paint, but rather with sand-coloured paint, which looks an awful lot more realistic.

Figures by SHQ

Here, an excellent NCO figure from the Revell Afrika Korps box, painted up as late war soldier. I have painted his long desert boots as jack-boots.

In the later half of the war, the Germans changed their camouflage uniforms up to four times a year. They had white winter uniforms, and different patterns of browns and greens for the rest of the year. Commonest was "splinter pattern" - beige, green and brown. At this scale you cannot represent more detail than the three main colours. Paint the garment one of the three and then blotch on the other two, making sure that these overlap each other. Some patterns were captured cloth, such as Italian pattern which had straw yellow, strong green and chestnut brown blotches on it. Other patterns were favoured by the SS so perhaps should be avoided ("pea-spot" was one).

Very often, as here, a man would have some but not all of his cloth helmet cover, tunic, and trousers, in camouflage pattern. The colour of this man's tunic I have seen in many period photographs. It is a fairly dark bluish grey. He wears a red scarf, which will be his own, not military issue. Goggles were used on all fronts, not just in the desert.

His shoulder straps are green. These might be captured or perhaps issued by a late-war factory making uniforms any way it can. Leather is expensive, and sometimes green webbing was issued instead.

Three late war German soldiers, all from the Revell Afrika Korps box. Revell also does a late war German infantry set, which it just calls "German Infantry" to distinguish it from the "Panzergrenadiers" who are really just early war infantry.

The correct look for late war Germans is rag-tag and all different. The middle man has helmet cover, tunic, and trousers all of one cloth. The man on the left has an Afrika Korps cap (veterans of that campaign were proud to be such and often kept their caps), and the man on the right wearing spectacles also has a cloth cap of non-regulation sort (perhaps a mountain trooper's hat with the badges changed), but with Wehrmacht eagle above cockade and piping chevron.

All three men wear ankle boots. The army stopped ordering jackboots as standard half-way through the war, and the cheaper ankle boot became common. It could be brown or black.