Gnuston Heights - part 1 - All along the watchtower

An Israeli watchtower goads the Syrians by flying a big flag.

Looking west (right) with the AT ditch in the foreground.

Like many fine games, this one started rather by accident.  In late May a certain individual – let’s just call him 'Ian' – emailed me a photo of a couple of Israeli aircraft he had just completed.  Following a process neither of us can remember, a few days later we had booked  the lawn at Knuston Hall and ‘marketed’ the game to potential players

This was by some margin the biggest yet Little Cold Wars game.  We’d previously had six players and a total of three brigades back in 2015.  The er, 'plan' was to fight through the first day of the Syrian assault on Golan.

This year on 31^st July nine of us gathered the lawn – a better scale model of the Golan Heights you’d struggle to find! 

The toys were the usual ‘wrong but somehow right’ mix of 1/32 figures, 1/48ish AFVs and 1/72 aircraft, mostly provided by Ian and I, though Bertrand and Russell also contributed.

Photos by me unless otherwise captioned.

 Syrian strike aircraft (MiG-17 and MiG-19) overfly the border.  The latter is in the process of falling off it's flight stand while making it look like a skillful aerobatic manoeuvre

 Israeli Mirage III fighters scramble to intercept

 The key town of Kuneitra, seen from the north

 All along the watchtower.  Part of the Israeli 'Purple Line' with two tank platoons in attendance.

And there was plenty to watch.  Syrian armour masses for the attack (this and the next two photos by Ian Drury)

 Wave after....

 ...wave of Syrian aircraft flew over the border to attack the Israeli positions...

...but some of their pilots looked overly hirstute (photo by Ian Drury)

 Even FROG missile were fired - to no effect!

While some of the Syrian AFVs  - like this SU-100 had clearly been in the area for some time, others had apparently been shipped straight from Soviet units.