Here Come the Heer : Recruiting a German Battalion

Yet again progress has been slow, with Real Life getting in the way of hobby time, but at least a few steps have been advanced:  I have an organised and almost-completed battalion of German infantry for my 'D-Day Dodgers'  WW2 Italian Campaign project. They have been recruited to fill an Order of Battle based on those specified in Rapid Fire and Rapid Fire Reloaded rules, and they currently look something  like this: 

 

Most of the figures are painted and based, but the transport is only primed and needs proper painting, so I will be getting busy with the sand/green/brown paints, probably over the upcoming holiday weekend.  We have, looking from front to back :

- Battalion HQ with Panzerschrek team and Steyr Heavy Car

- 1st, 2nd and 3rd Rifle Companies

- 4th ( Heavy ) company with 2 x MMG, 1 x 81mm mortar  with Steyr Heavy Car and Opel Blitz truck

-  A/T Company with  PAK40 75mm A/T Gun and Opel Blitz truck

- Infantry Gun Company with  iFH18 105mm Infantry Gun and Opel Blitz truck 

As you can probably see, most of the figures are my good old vintage Airfix WW2 German Infantry (1960s designs!). The heavier weapons are crewed by mainly Britannia Miniatures/Grubby Tanks, and a scattering of later Airfix and others. The Opel Blitz trucks (actually one is built as a Mercedes variant)  come from Plastic Soldier Company,  and the Steyr cars from Rapid Fire's own 'Ready to Roll Vehicles' range.  The infantry gun is  Zvezda ( bought before February 2022 - I'm not buying any more from Russian makers, I'm afraid ), and  the PAK 40 is by Revell.   These will be strong opposition for my West Suffolks ( see my previous post ), especially with the 105mm infantry gun and that 'Heavy Company' with the MMGs - the British battalion doesn't have an equivalent. So the British may require some support from 'Brigade' when it comes to a fight. 

With the potential British and Indian units in the same project I have been having fun coming up with 'fictional but plausible'  units names like the 'West Suffolks' - but the Germans give me a bigger challenge.  I would like to come up with a  fictional regiment name for these Germans, but I admit I am at a bit of a loss as to how to work something out - initial on-line searches give several pages showing lists of German WW2 Divisions ( of which there were well over 300! ) , but I haven't so far found a list of Regiments (of which there must have been many more!) - and am unsure of the naming/numbering convention used, though it looks like a simple regiment number was common. I suspect they will become 1st Battalion,  n+1th Grenadier Regiment,  and if anyone has advice on finding this sort of information, I'd be interested!          

A couple of the vintage Airfix figures brought back very nostaglic memories: as ever, 'Button-counters' should look away now ( You may cringe at  my rather basic painting style, but I'm happy it suits the nature of the figures - not much point trying 3-level highlights on these chaps,  and I couldn't do much better anyway!).   

The Panzerschreck** team strongly evokes what else but the 'Action at Twin Farms' game in Charles Grant's wonderful little book  Battle: Practical Wargaming, which is where 'My Wargaming Habit' (to quote the excellent blog by Richard!)  began, all of 50 years ago. My first wargaming book, and it's still with me:

My rather battered copy - c.1974

hmmm... Panzerschreck, surely?

 It really did all start here - this book may represent the best £1.50  I ever spent, in hobby terms at least!   Come to think of it. I was casting around for a scenario idea for my first Rapid Fire Reloaded game..

Now that is sadly about all the news I have to impart, but at least the holiday weekend may allow a little more hobby time,  and then next week I am lucky enough to be invited to another of Jon Freitag's remote games  - more Italian Wars action is in prospect.  I won't be a spoiler to what Jon will no doubt write about pretty soon, suffice it to say this looks quite an intriguing prospect. I hope to be able to say more next time; until then keep well, everyone.

 

** Update: it's been interesting that the close-up picture has made a lot of veteran gamers realise that the guy apparently holding a Panzerschreck missile is probably in truth carrying a Panzerfaust.   I hadn't really thought about it, to be honest - and interestingly I wonder if the source of the original confusion is the above picture from Charles Grant's book - note that he labels them a Panzerfaust team, even though the weapon being aimed is clearly meant to be a Panzerschreck.  I am keeping them as they are - they've been together for 50 years, after all! 

Prussian Blue - 40 Years On

 A sort of historic day, albeit very personal, today. I'll explain.  Well over 40 years ago, the childhood me discovered wargaming, and subsequently spent all my 'holiday money' one summer on a copy of Charles Grant's 'The War Game', from a little bookshop in Looe, Cornwall.  Thoroughly enthused by the world of the VFS and Duchy of Lorraine, I dreamed of my own imagi-nations, while also becoming aware that 'proper'  wargaming figures were available, beyond the Airfix plastics in the local toy shops.  Further pocket-money was duly saved up, and a mail order placed with Miniature Figurines in far-off Southampton - for a whole 'Grant-size regiment' of about 50 figures. These would have cost about £5 to £6, and may have represented most of the 'defence budget' at the time. Hence an  obvious flaw in my childhood strategy is apparent - how did I imagine I would ever get a whole army? 

Anyway, it was a Prussian Line Musketeer regiment, and in my enthusiasm for fictional nations, and having no idea how to paint such figures,  I haphazardly slapped on some mid-blue ( rather Bavarian-looking, but I think it was 'Prussian Dragoon Blue' ) Humbrol enamel paint. Done! They were able to take the field, the only metal figures among a rainbow collective of mixed Airfix Napoleonics and  AWI, all painted in equally slapdash and equally non-historical colours.   Of course they were terrible paint-jobs, but the games were fun, and at least the advent of WRG 1685-1845 rules eventually allowed smaller and more economical units! And then my enthusiams moved on, and the imagi-nations ( and really, wargaming as a whole ) were forgotten, and the lone 'Grant regiment' sat in a box, in my parents' loft, equally forgotten and neglected. 

 

1970s paint job ( MC12, Prussian Dragoon Blue? )

These  unloved figures probably spent over 30 years in more than one loft - at least my folks were kind enough not to throw them out when moving house - until finally, and by chance largely thanks to another 'imagi-nations'  enthusiast, Henry Hyde and his 'Battlegames' magazine, my interest was revived. The opportunity duly appeared to buy some of the late Eric Knowles' Seven Years War figures, and  that led to the blog you are reading now.  And of course, now I have the chance to use my long-neglected Prussians. So, a year or so ago they went into a bath of 'Clean Spirit', and away went the Humbrol enamel.

back to bare metal - more or less

 

Finally, I'm very pleased to say that  yesterday afternoon  I sat in my partner's sunny garden, with 16 of these under-employed veterans, and finally bestowed on them their rightful reward - smart new coats of ( acrylic ) Prussian Blue.

Early days yet, but it's a step 'vorwarts!'

Now I'm the first to admit my painting skills have not necessarily improved in the intervening decades (and my eyesight, certainly not!) , but I think I have a bit more patience, better information and better equipment.  I will certainly be taking more care, and  I hope for a decent enough result, which will allow them to finally take their place on the battlefield once again, as the Prussian 9th Line Infantry ('Jung Kleist' ), and try conclusions with the dastardly Austrians. It feels somehow very 'right' to do this, and there's a strong sense of connection with my younger self across the decades,  and of course an awareness of the passing of time - where did those decades go?  If the little metal men have feelings, I hope I am making amends for all those lost years, and I hope to give them back their pride. Let's hope they fight like good Prussians!   I hope to show these again once they are finished - meanwhile, keep well, and safe, everyone.

 

 

 

All directions, and none..

After 'Salute' I was quite inspired and motivated,  but 'time and space, dear boy...'  Not a lot of time has been available for hobby activities, but with a true wargamer's butterfly mind I have tried to do several different things at once.  Most practical was at least getting the paintbrushes out :

1760 meets 1943 on the painting table..

On the bottletops we have 16 Prussian  Seven Years War line infantry who will represent the 9th 'Jung Kleist' regiment, when they finally get their  Prussian Blue coats.  Then some  additional artillery of various types for the 'D-Day Dodgers' - German Wespe and 20mm AA gun, British  M7 Priest and  40mm Bofors AA. That Priest was more of a Devil when it came to building - far too many parts and I couldn't get it to fit together!  The Germans also get the mandatory Puma armoured car, much more common on wargames tables than in reality, it seems - but they do look so good...

The plan, in a wave of Salute-based optimism, was to have a 'hobby hour' most days and paint 'little and often',  That hasn't quite taken, I'll admit, but tomorrow is another day.. 

something of a literary warm bath

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the late Charles Grant's 'Wargame Tactics' , which I caught up with at SELWG - a mere 42 years since publication ( sadly it seems he very sadly  passed away just before it was published, so very much his last work ).  His style is complete comfort reading for me, and this is really just a series of reports of games, with a little light military history  ( I hadn't thought about Cataphracts and the Kontos in many a long year ).  The stated aim was to show that usng correct historical tactics should result in better wargames -  and, hopefully,  more victories.   I'm not sure that prinicple was rigorously  followed, but the eight lovely battle reports and introductory chapters on the relevant periods were just a pleasure to read.  No less than three battles were set in the 'Ancients' period, and doubtless would have been played under a version of the  WRG  rules which dominated the period at the time. I was struck by how important morale, and the trademark 'reaction test' was for them - quite often the rout of one unit suffering in combat would have quite a large 'ripple' effect on friendly nearby  units, and that seems quite astute. The rules are regarded today as rather too complicated, with all that  counting of individual casualties and massive lists of plus/minus factors, but I wonder if we are missing something if we overlook that emphasis on morale?   After all, 'the moral is to the physical as ten is to one' - as a prominent wargamer ( 1:1 scale ) once said..   My favourite battle report, however, was the Seven Years War game - which Charles grant named 'The Battle of  Langensalza'.   One aspect of Grant's games that I like is the use of map movement to facilitate the initial setup of the battle, giving the chance of some concealment and surprise in the deployments - and that feature was quite important for this game.  By pure chance, the 'real' Langensalza is the subject of a series of blog posts on  'Not Just Old School Wargaming'  blog  - which are rather spectacular! 

As you may have noted, my reading has now moved on to Stuart Asquith's 'Wargaming 18th Century Battles'  which I picked up at Salute, and I am enjoying - more about that in a later post, perhaps.

'From Our Own Correspondent'

 

More reading matter which I am rather pleased with is the three issues of 'The Foreign Correspondent' , the newsletter of the Continental Wars Society,  which I am now pleased to be a member of. The magazine is a rather lovely production, with a great 'period-appropriate' style and illustrations, and of course interesting articles too. Twenty pages four times per year, for a subscription of £8 - great value, too! Many thanks to Ralph Weaver for his prompt and friendly service too - I can't resist quoting from his email to me, after I said that my interest in the period sprang from reading G.M. Trevelyan's ‘Garibaldi and the Thousand’ many years ago, and  more recently, Neil Thomas’ ‘Wargaming 19^th Century Europe’ . Ralph replied  "We cannot claim Trevelyan as a member, but Neil Thomas certainly is" .

Finally, and just to confuse matters even more, I have ordered a copy of the 'Twilight of the Divine Right'  wargames rules for ECW/30YW period from The Pike and Shot Society, of which I am also a member. I've been meaning to get them for ages, and the final nudge was provided by chatting with the P&SS chaps at Salute where they put on their fine Poltava game.  I await delivery and will be very interested to read, and eventually play, the rules.  

So, we have covered the Seven Years War,  World War 2,  19th Century, and Pike and Shot periods - which of those to spend time on next?  And there's the rub - finding the time. Well, given 'the current situaton'  and word of the week 'Omicron' , it's not looking like I'll be going out to many parties in the near future, and there may be plenty of time at home this winter... 

Thanks for your patience if you have read this far; admittedly this post has been something of a wool-gathering exercise, but it has at least got the writing mojo working after a slightly longer than planned pause. Next on the agenda, I hope, is a visit to Gillingham in Kent this Saturday for the 'Broadside' show - I'll take my camera,  notebook and pencil, and hope to report back after the event. Meanwhile keep well, and safe, everyone.