Andres Flores, 14, has a passion for World War II history and an eye for detail. Andres built a scale model of a 1944 French village battle ground as his 4-H project that is on display at the Island Grove Weld County Fair main exhibition building.
SARA LOVEN/gtphoto@greeleytribune.com


Greeley teen spends year building WWII diorama


Buildings in the tiny French village are not much more than crumbled stone in the aftermath of the bombs and the tanks.

You can almost hear the bullets flying through the French countryside. Soldiers crouch low between the old church, the cafe, the fragmented houses.

This is World War II as a 14-year-old sees it.

Andres Flores’ grandfather fought in that war, 65 years ago, but he was gone before Andres could ask him about it. So the Greeley boy has learned about it himself, studying, reading, watching “Band of Brothers” and the History Channel.

And the diorama he built in the family garage pays tribute to his grampa and the soldiers who fought in that war.

It took a year for Andres to build it: 1,600 shingles, made from broken popsicle sticks; dozens of miniature trees formed with wire, covered with clay, textured and panted. The village, made of Styrofoam and plaster and chicken wire and paper mache, looks as authentic as a miniature village could be. It shows the American soldiers chasing the Nazis through the village, shows the tanks and the Jeeps and bombed-out buildings.

Andres is the son of Ruben and Carrie Flores of Greeley. Dad is in the human relations department of JBS Swift Beef, and mom home-schools all three of their children. Carrie said home-schooling makes their family closer and gives time for projects like the WWII village.

“I wanted to do something with the miniature soldiers I’d collected,” Andres said, “so I built one building, then there was another, and another.”

And suddenly — well, after a year — there is a village.

Mom (the teacher): “It wasn’t a crafts project. He had to use math to properly size the buildings, trees and other parts of the village to fit the height of the soldiers from his collects.”

Andres said he has more than 100 soldiers, and 62 are in the village.

Andres wants to be a pilot someday, would like to go to the Air Force Academy. He doesn’t play video games, but he reads and does his mom-assigned homework and builds things. His room at home is filled with model airplanes, and when he ran out of the models to build, he started on the village a year ago.

“I haven’t been able to use the garage for a year,” said mom, who also confessed that her home business, making creative signs, fills the other half of the garage.
He entered the village in the recent Weld County Fair and won a blue ribbon. But now, he’s not sure what to do with the table-size diorama. He would be willing to give it to a veterans’ association, Andres said, if they would have room for it.
His grampa would be proud.


Greeley teen spends year building WWII diorama | GreeleyTribune.com

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

Well done! A real passion. It's great when youngsters get involved like this.

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Great family and kid... it irks me the lil guy is far more artistic then i could ever be LOL

JCF3,

Could you you fix the link to the enlargement? When I click it nothing happens...
Thanks!

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“The first lesson is that you can't lose a war if you have command of the air, and you can't win a war if you haven't.” - General Jimmy Doolittle

At least there are a few youth who still give us hope. Cheers to him.

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Sorry I didn't mean to include that in the post. You will have to go to the original article to enlarge the pic.

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

Yup, no PC bones about it

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Za Rodinu wrote:

Thats for sure. It was a 4-H project !

I don't know what a public school would have done. Expelled him for bringing so many guns to school??? Or failing to negotiate with other nations???

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“The first lesson is that you can't lose a war if you have command of the air, and you can't win a war if you haven't.” - General Jimmy Doolittle

Always nice to see kids getting into the hobby. I tell you what, if my kids want to build models when theyre that kids age or older? And it keeps them from slacking off and falling in with the wrong crowd? The price of DML kits be damned! I'll shell out as much $$ as I can to keep them interested.

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Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow"
~Elie Wiesel~

Please translate to a furriner what 4-H is, bitte!

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4-H - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

Definitely should be a member of this Forum!

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Maybe, with the paper's help, we could invite him to join.

Steve W.

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The Glider Pilot Regiment 1942 - 1945
The Last Drop:Operation Varsity 24-25 March 1945
The Assault Glider Trust

Looks like a great scheme, I'd feel better there than when I did all that marching up and down in my own Youth Movement.

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"I wanted to do something with the miniature soldiers I'd collected … so I built one building, then there was another, and another."


AP

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

When I was at what you'd call high school in the USA we had a modelling club. It was run by my history teacher, one term as we were studying World War One we decided to make a WWI diorama, it ended up about 6' x 4', had two full trench systems complete with barbed wire, shell holes etc, it was done in 1/72nd, we even found some packaging material that was just right to make the sheets of corrugated tin used to shore up trench sides and roof dugouts. I wish I had some picture of it as it was fantastic.

Lippy,

Why not write to the school (or to the teacher) and ask if they have photos that you can get copies from?

Mats

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Mats R

Ah, that's a great read. Thanks for posting this. Truly a work of great passion for that kid. Hope he sticks with the hobby...like most adults on here would agree...wish I had the time to do something like that now! Bravo.