After painting the few details that needed it, I started searching through my big box of leftover
decals for suitable ones for the star on the engine cover, the chassis number on the nose and the arm of service marking.
I found a star of the right size on an old sheet from the Academy M10 tank destroyer — the ancient kit that was a
Tamiya copy, not their more recent effort. I made a believable chassis number from a WD census number on the decal sheet of the
Revell 1:72 Cromwell, of which I cut off the last two digits and the lut the 1 that was in that part, in front of the T to make 1T1878:
I don’t know if this was the chassis number of the real bulldozer, because it can’t be read in the film, but D7A chassis numbers all began with 1T and another dozer at Westkapelle was 1T1128, so I think this is at least plausible — if completely pulled out of thin air.
As you can see, though, the star silvered really badly. I ended up scraping it off with a blunt sculpting tool and scrubbing the remains off with a brush:
This went fairly well because the decal was very thin and fragile, but not a great job to be doing. That done, though, I applied my second (and only remaining) choice:
This one is from the Italeri Dodge WC-62 1.5-ton truck, which I hadn’t used first time round because I feel the ring is a little thin.
For the arm of service marking, which will be 344 with a diagonal white line, I’ve found some numbers I can use in WD numbers on the
Tamiya 1:35 Cromwell’s decal sheet, but I’ll need to paint the blue background and the line myself. I began by masking the area and painting it white, to make it easier for the blue to cover well later: