redarmylivinghistory

Hi this is mainly aimed at the poles amongst us.

just checking if i would be able to wear my rogatyvka with my normal m.43 and plucked chicken to do LWP just something i fancied for the beer tent

Cheers andy

I think that's OK. Supply to the Lublin Poles was so patchy that I imagine you would see most possible combinations of Soviet and Polish kit in the LWP.
You tend to see more boots and puttees in photos of the LWP, though.

Yeh thats what i thought just been going over old posts on different forums. its not really something for during the day just something different for the beer tent

No criticism implied In fact, by god, I might do the same myself...

I have seen pics of LWP troops wearing totally Red Army kit, even down to the pilotka, but just worn with the 'plucked chicken' eagle - so I can't see any problems wearing it with a 43 Gym!

I think we may have chatted about this at the choo choo's?post vodka tho so....
Would probably be best to use a spare 43 for this.Remove soviet buttons(or hammer the design from them) and replace with any period buttons. Then make/find a pair of wool shoulder straps (cut mine from £3. greek bd blouse) which should be sewn in place unlike the standard 43 pogoni. Jobs a good un Soviet pogoni would not be worn under any circumstances though as this is specifically RKKA where as the basic shirt and breaches are just the basic bds for the east.
A good view of the "modified" lwp 43 gymn' can be found in the otherwise dodgy ospray Polish forces 39-45, the troops in the train wagon show an interesting mix of uniform and kit.
kai.
speaking of which, i think ive solved the powder blue uniform mystry.......a copy of a just post war,iejune45 "Polish Soldier" magazine shows colour tinted pics of lwp where the uniforms have a blue haze to them....so does the grass and trees but maybe ospray got confuzzzed

Thanks for clarifying those points Kai - I had already been told that the tunics from Armia Militaria too would look better with woolen shoulder straps, and it is something that I need to do at sometime.

As for the blue LWP uniforms, that is a most likely explanation! Osprey and its writers are sometimes not the most accurate of people when it comes to detail! Ask me to tell you sometime about the guy who I know who wrote his version of Roman history for Osprey, and now it is accepted as fact...

Dont remove the straps from the armia tunics!!!!! I know a few have them now,just cover the exposed side of the existing straps with kahki wool,from close ups of an origional this would appear to be accurate.
kai.

Already decided that was the best way to go - saves me trying to refit new woolen straps into the shoulder seams! (MY seamstress skills are rather lacking in really major work on military garments!)

As well as that, next time I am in Warsaw, I want to try to get to the military supplies shop that Maria took me to, and see if I can get some modern Polish buttons - they are the same design as the pre-1939 ones on the Armia tunics, but, as they are made of resin, they should be easier to remove the crowns from the eagles, and then just repaint them to represent LWP ones (the ones I saw and bought a couple of last time were Polish air force buttons are were blue...) Also means not ruining the nice Armia metal replcas which are always good for spares!