Association of Model Engineers

Articles

Tribute to a Former Enemy Combatant - Now a Firm Friend

by Alex Vella

I first met Carl Gruen in November 1997 at the LIHMCS annual model show in Long Island N.Y. Carl was on his trade stand selling flat figures or Zinnfiguren. He was introduced to me by Kevin Dunne and as soon as we got talking Carl told me that he had a Malta connection.

In 1942 he had been wounded in action while serving as an Obergefreiter with the 21^st Panzer Division of the Afrika Korps. Carl was soon afterwards put on a ship to Italy for further hospital treatment of his wounds. On the way there his ship was attacked and sunk by aircraft operating from Malta!

Carl’s war was not yet however over. After surviving this ordeal he continued serving as a wireless operator/machine gunner on tanks and ended the war in Czechoslovakia aboard a King Tiger. After a period of captivity in Russia the camp commandant “asked” him and some others to escape.

Carl eventually made his way back to Germany. Immediate post-war Germany however seemed to hold few prospects for Carl and in due course he emigrated to the USA. He finally settled down in New York working as an electrical engineer. There he subsequently met and married his Swiss wife.

Carl, Kevin and I had a good laugh over this Malta connection and we became quite friendly with each other during the show. Later I was to meet Carl again twice, both times in 1999.

The first time was in August of that year at the Kulmbach show in Germany where Carl was stocking up on Zinnfiguren for his business . After this, in November of the same year, we again met, this time at the Long Island show. Here Carl showed Kevin and me a photograph of himself in panzer uniform. An idea immediately sprang into my mind. We made a deal that in exchange for a copy of this photograph I would make him a 1/35 model of his tank in N.Africa while Kevin would make the figures for the crew.

The Photograph eventually reached me and we started e-mailing each other for details of his tank. This Carl described as a “long barreled Panzer III”. We then had to determine exactly just which sub-variant this was. After e-mailing him scans of scale drawings of the various possibilities we were able to determine that it was a Panzer III ausf L. The colour scheme was the reddish variety of the desert sand colour used by the Afrika Korps. This is the same colour as the sand we get blown over from N. Africa a number of times a year here in Malta! The turret numeral was a single 8 in black outlined in white.

Carl further informed me that a jerry-can bracket was mounted at the rear of the top hull and that various other items were stored in front of this. The final detail he provided was that they had a “jury mounted” anti-aircraft machine gun fixed to the cupola. This last item was a bit of a headache as this arrangement was hard to find in my photographic references but one eventually did turn up which solved the problem.

I converted a Revell Panzer III to the L variant and the photos below give a good idea of the work involved in completing Carl’s Panzer.

The Model was handed over to Kevin Dunne in October 1991 during the Saint Vincent figures show in the north-western Italian Alps. Kevin eventually completed the Crew and the photos below show the complete model which was a tribute of affection and respect to a good friend and former Enemy combatant.