Illustration by Radio 21Tip By Malia WollanBritish soldiers and matériel. My favored
maker of these fi gures was the English
company Airfi x, whose soldiers came 40
or more to a box: men shooting, kneeling
(and shooting), lying down (and shooting)
and, yes, dying (as a result of all that shoot-
ing). I painted them, applied decals and
generally ran a disciplined outfi t. Some of
the happiest moments of my childhood
were spent in escapist solitude beneath a
plum tree in our backyard setting up and
admiring my little works of art. There were
war games you could play, similar to Dun-
geons & Dragons in requiring complicated
numerical tables and many-sided dice, and
while I claimed to be a war-gamer because
that sounded less juvenile, in truth I just
liked playing with army men.
Until age 14, that is, when hormon-
al urgency instigated by the sudden,
acute awareness of entire other genders
forced a panicked, Napoleon-retreat-
ing-from-Moscow abandoning of my
men. I left them behind, my brave troops,
to disappear into my parents’ attic and
then, after a move, to vanish completely.
‘‘The child is father of the man,’’ as
Wordsworth wrote. I took that to mean
that someday, once I was fi nished with this
tedious business of being an adult, I would
get back to playing with toy soldiers. As the
pandemic reduced our lives to the indoors,
I decided I would make the most of it by
returning to my hobby that had once been,
for me, a miniature world. What better
escape from the horrors of real life than
tiny soldiers in imaginary battle?
The fi eld had expanded since I was a
teenager, and military miniatures — as
we grown-ups call army men — are an
industry that in nonpandemic seasons
fi lls convention centers. The quality and
quantity of the soldiers and their equip-
ment had increased to a point that would
have made my 13-year-old self weep with
joy. From Chinese factories or domestic
3-D printers, detailed soldiers and weap-
onry are now widely and cheaply avail-
able via the internet.
‘‘Just once to have such power in my
hands,’’ says a German general in the 1977
movie ‘‘A Bridge Too Far,’’ as he watches
hundreds of American and British planes
fl ying overhead. Now as I saw the thou-
sands of options for tanks, half-tracks,
artillery, soldiers, every piece of kit and
gear, I realized I could have what the gen-
eral could not, thanks to eBay.
I ordered, assembled and painted a
Panzer grenadier company, dozens of
Panzer Is, IIs and IIIs, Pzk 38(t)s, Sd.Kfz
251 half-tracks and... you get the idea. I
initially set up my dioramas in the garage,
laying out a piece of green felt approxi-
mately 3 feet by 3 feet — a stopgap until
the proper 7-by-5-foot battle mat I had
ordered from Killing Fields, a Maryland
company, could be manufactured and
shipped. I used my daughters’ paints and
brushes as I squinted, detailing my little
army. The whole experience was familiar
and comforting: getting the shadow in the
folds of the uniform fabric, the mud on
the tank treads, the gunmetal gray of the
ammunition belts. I had stopped time.
Even better, I had gone back in time.
Soon, however, my younger daughter
began bringing her friends to gawk ather father’s hobby. While a few off ered a
polite, mumbled, indiff erent ‘‘that’s cool,’’
I could see what they actually thought.
The toughest soldier will wither before
the dismissive scoff of a teenage girl.
My army retreated to my offi ce, a rent-
ed room above a local bar, where I have
set up a large, intricate diorama, which if
anyone asks, is a tactical war-game simu-
lation of the Battle of Stonne, a May 1940
encounter in which the French, briefl y,
got the better of the Germans.
At some point, another TV job will
come along, and I will have to box up
this army as well. Their sprawl fi lls my
offi ce and would make an unsightly, and
embarrassing, Zoom background. But I’ll
be putting everything safely in storage.
You never know when I’ll be forced to
deploy my army men again.How to Collect Stamps
‘‘You need a theme,’’ says Warachal E.
Faison, board president of the Ebony Soci-
ety of Philatelic Events and Refl ections, a
group dedicated to the collection of stamps
relating to the African diaspora. It’s fi ne
to start acquiring whatever stamps strike
your fancy, but to be a serious philatelist
requires a more focused approach and the
research required to understand stamps
in a historical context. Faison’s themes
include Black history, women and health
care and science (she works as a senior
medical director at Pfi zer). Among her col-
lection’s highlights: an illustrated Swedish
stamp of Toni Morrison, released after
her 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, and a
sheet of 10-cent stamps featuring Booker
T. Washington, the fi rst African-Americanperson put on a U.S. stamp, in 1940. Fais-
on’s older brother, Walter, who serves on
the board with her, collects Martin Luther
King Jr. stamps from around the world.
‘‘Find the stamp shows in your area,’’
Faison says. If you’re looking for some-
thing very specifi c, like, say, a 1936 Susan
B. Anthony stamp, contact the show’s
exhibitors in advance to see if they have
it. Find a mentor, someone who can help
you navigate shows and clubs and get
basic equipment. ‘‘Some people put their
stamps in cigar boxes or shoe boxes,’’ says
Faison, who recommends using stamp
albums for better preservation. Minimize
how much you touch stamps, because the
oil in your skin can cause deterioration.
Use tweezers or tongs instead. At shows,
protect your stamps in a cardboard enve-
lope and stay away from amateurs. ‘‘You’ll
see people walking around drinking
soda,’’ Faison says. ‘‘That’s a quick way of
knowing that person is not a philatelist.’’
When the Ebony Society of Philatelic
Events and Refl ections hosts a booth at a
show, Faison likes to bring along duplicate
stamps from her collection so she can give
them away to young people. ‘‘When you
go to stamp shows, you see a lot of older
Caucasian men,’’ she says. She wants to
help inspire a new, more diverse gener-
ation of collectors who care deeply about
mail, the U.S. Postal Service and the little
images on stamps that tell stories about
history. ‘‘I don’t want philatelists to be a
dying breed,’’ Faison says.What better
escape from
the horrors of
real life than
tiny soldiers
in imaginary
battle?Karl Taro Greenfeld
is a novelist, television
writer and the author
of, among other books,
‘‘China Syndrome:
Th e True Story of the
21st Century’s First
Great Epidemic.’’