FoW: Slovak Infantry - HMG Platoons

So here we are again... after a not so short intermission(!) and it seems that this time I need to ease myself back into my writing because it turns out (and who could have guessed this!??!?!?!) that when you buy a house that's 130 years old you should actually expect that the majority of previous renovation work on the property should have been done by absolute f****** cowboys!!!

... straight from the Wild Wild West! etc etc!

Turns out that when you take all of the plaster and scratch coats off of walls and strip them back to the brick it should be expected that one should find entire bricks in a wall missing and instead EXPANDING foam should be found in its place.... creating a God almighty hole linking the rainstorms outside and the nice Victorian walls inside... go figure!

So... anyway... after removing radiators, capping copper pipework, cutting the electricity and removing all plug points in three rooms, and stripping all three rooms of bricks, skirting boards and window sills... one MAY actually be able to find the time to attempt writing a blog post! (but only one a month mind you!)

... and here we are.

So I decided that with my rather limited provision of time that I would write a couple that can be wound up quite quickly with a minimum of effort (mainly due to a lack of available information).

I decided that in this one we would take a look at the company and battalion support platoons. The heavy machine guns and the mortars that accompanied the Slovak armed forces in their rather understated rampage across Eastern Europe.

Now, the sad fact is that there is very VERY little extant evidence that can point us in the direction of what kind of organisation the Slovaks had for their HMG's at the start of the war, made even more tenebrous by the frequent reorganisations that the Slovak field formations were subjected to. 

The first record of HMG's that I can find in relation to the Slovak army is a table in Axworthy's 'Axis Slovakia' where he gives a return of the numbers of HMG's in the Slovaks 1st, 2nd and 3rd Field Divisions, amounting to be between 108 and 133 each along with another 48 in the Rapid Group. These numbers were based on the returns of the Slovak field army at the conclusion of the Polish campaign of 1939.

There are organisational suggestions that can be extrapolated from these numbers however if we are smart enough to carry forwards what we know about the Czechoslovakian pre-war army.

The pre-war Czech armed forces were ternary in nature. Three platoons in a company and three companies in a battalion. Within each company was a supporting HMG platoon and at battalion level was another HMG company which the battalion commander could allocate as he saw fit.

So IF a Czech infantry regiment was ternary, then it had three battalions, and on the assumption that a company would have three platoons it could therefore be assumed that each battalion would have a total of 6 platoons. Three in the HMG company and one each attached to the three infantry companies. This total then could be multiplied by three to arrive at the total number of HMG platoons in an ideal infantry regiment structure. 18 then!

If we assume an average of 120 HMG's in each of the regiments and divide this by the platoons we arrive at a figure of 6.66 or to be sensible and adhere to our ternary assumptions; six! Three HMG sections of two weapons and crew each... which, ironically is a theory supported by the following photograph.

What about all of the left over HMG's then? Well every regiment has bits and pieces that various proactive members will attempt to hoard.

This distribution of HMG's was static until the reorganisations in preparation for the invasion of the Soviet Union and the formation of the Rapid Group. At this time the Mounted Reconnaissance Battalion (JPO-2) had a mounted HMG platoon of only four HMG's and the Mounted Infantry Battalion (II/6) had a provision of 12 HMG's to be allocated between the three infantry companies and the HMG company. My guess here, as it is an HMG company that is listed, would be that there is no organic provision of HMG's within the infantry companies and instead the battalion has all of its HMG's grouped in the HMG company with four HMG's in each of three platoons. These would either be one weapon per section for four HMG sections per platoon OR two HMG sections per platoon with two weapons each.

When the Mobile Group became the Mobile Brigade on 8 July 1941 the Motorised Reconnaissance Group now had a slightly expanded provision of  nine HMG's whilst the Motorised Infantry Battalion (II/6) remained the same. It was at this strength that the Mobile Brigade went into the battle for Lipovec.

On 23 July 1941 Ferdinand Catlos made the decision to amalgamate all Slovak troops on the Eastern Front into a Mobile Division and a Security Division.

The Mobile Division had two infantry regiments in its organisation. Infantry Regiment 20 had 24 HMG's whilst Infantry Regiment 21 had a provision of 25. Artillery Regiment 11 had a provision of 28 for battery defence and the Reconnaissance Group again had a provision of only six. The newly attached Mountain Battery 11 meanwhile, had a provision of two HMG's for the defence of its single 7.5cm vz.15 battery.

The battery defence HMG's notwithstanding, the assumption could be made that each motorised infantry regiment would be comprised of two strengthened battalions (if you compare manpower figures between the Mobile Groups infantry battalion with the strength of each regiment) with each battalion carrying an HMG company. This would equate to 12 HMG's in each battalion meaning no organic provision within the infantry companies again although would bring us close to the numbers of HMG's listed in the returns.

On 22 August the Division was morphed one more time into its final form and continuing in its subordinate role to the German VI Army under von Rundstedt. The Mobile Division headquarters still had no allocation of HMG's whilst Infantry Regiments 20 and 21 retained the same numbers of HMG's and presumably the same organisation. Both Artillery Regiment 11 and the Reconnaissance Group also retained the same numbers of HMG's for their various applications with the mountain gun battery also retaining its two weapons.

Now here is the strange thing; despite a number of very clear returns indicating how many HMG's were present the asset totals tables do not match up at all. Despite the addition of all assets for the Mobile Division on 22 August 1941 adding up to 85 HMG's available, the subsequent 'total complement' list given by Kliment and Nakladal gives the Mobile Divisions total HMG provision on 22 August 1941 as only 57 HMG's. I wouldn't even know where to begin to understand how to resolve these discrepancies.

At the time of the Soviet offensive across the Crimea in January 1943, which is the last period of interest in the Slovak military for me, Kliment and Nakladal list the Division has having a total complement of 166 HMG's across all formations. At the end of January the Mobile Division attempted to extricate itself precipitously from the Soviet noose and by March had only 25 HMG's left, with all others having been either lost of left behind the retreat.

As previously mentioned on 23 July 1941 Catlos reorganised all Slovak forces with the 2nd Infantry Division being renamed the 'Security Division' Axworthy gives an interesting little table showing the fluctuating numbers of HMG's that this formation had available to it right up until the end of July 1943. Axworthy states that the slow moving 2nd Infantry Division had, given by 10 July 1941 returns, a total of 72 HMG's across all of its constituent formations.

The Security Division came into operational reality on 1 September 1941 at which time Kliment and Nakladal list it as having a total complement of 69 Schwarzlose vz.24 HMG's. Axworthy (for once!) concurs with this figure up until the end of July 1942.

Axworthy goes on to give the Security Divisions returns as 81 HMG's on 9 October 1942 and back down to 68 again by 10 July 1943 when the Slovkian armed forces involvement on the Axis front line was wound down.

The Slovaks in the Second World War utilised two types of heavy machine guns.

The first was the venerable former Austro-Hungarian Scwarzlose vz.24. This is the one that is seen in almost all photographs of Czechoslovakian and Slovakian HMG's. They were old, heavy, had a water cooled jacket (adding to the weight substantially). The weapon itself weighed in at 24.5 kg whilst the tripod added a further 19.7 kg.

It used cloth ammunition belts but only had a rate of fire of 520 r.p.m which, to bring it into perspective is almost half that of the German MG-42 (Hitlers Buzzsaw) and just a little less than the British Bren Gun.

At the time of the start of hostilities the Slovak army had a total of 2,200 in its inventory.

The other HMG that the Slovaks had available to them was the Zbojovka Brno ZB-53 vz.37. This was developed just before the dismemberment of the Czechoslovakian state and had been successfully exported as well becoming the British armoured vehicle BESA HMG.

Far superior to the older Schwarzlose this weapon, also tripod mounted only had a weight of 19kg and utilised metal ammunition belts with a rate of fire of either 550 or 750 r.p.m which depending upon the selection was comparable to the German MG-34.

The Slovaks, unfortunately only had a total of 389 in their inventory at the start of the Second World War BUT we can assume that good use was made of them, most likely by the Mobile forces.

...and so it is time to move into the modelling part of the blog post so I can explain how I went about putting this platoon together.

Before we go any further I should point out that every single miniature in this company was a Battlefront 15mm Romanian until I nipped off their heads and replaced them with Peter Pig heads to turn them into Slovaks. Either the ones with the Slovak Helmets that Martin sculpted for me or else the ones with the Soviet Pilotka Caps which fulfil a good proxy for the Slovak field caps.

I should also point out that the trucks and the field car will be dealt with in another post and that due to the convenience I opted to use the Romanian vz.37 HMG's for all of my teams. For those of you out there who are desperate for some vz.24's then I would direct you towards Peter Pigs WW1 Austrian range which have superb vz.24's sculpts. For me though, after a project of this size... the convenience was quite attractive to me!

So, where painting all of the infantry is concerned its a relatively simple affair. They are done the way that I do them to look good from about 5ft away. Scrutinise them from up close and all of the flaws in the painting will probably slap you in the face but from arms length away they look splendid!.

The first step is to prime the miniatures, and as with most of my other historical stuff, I prime with a black etch primer. You can buy these from any hardware store but the 'etch' in the primer ensures an exceptionally strong substrate to the acrylic layers that will go over the top, the etch actually referring to a dilute acidic content that eats microscopically into the surface of the model creating an uneven surface for the paint to clutch to whilst providing a nice and smooth top layer as the paint levels out and dries.

The lions share of the work done on WW2 miniatures is the main uniform and where the Slovaks are concerned after a somewhat lengthy research period I decided to ditch the (re)coloured photos from the past and go with the uniform colours that all of the re-enactors in Czechoslovakia are using at the moment. In my experience all of these re-enactment guys are anal about accuracy so I would trust their opinions a lot more than raggedy old photos with amateur enthusiast recolour treatments.

My base coat was done with Vallejo's 887 Brown Violet for the deepest layers of the uniform. The first highlight, which presents the largest overall surface area that will be seen at the end was done with MIG's 113 Khaki Green No3 (Brit 1939-1942) with the final highlights along all of the raised edges being completed with MIG's 058 Light Green Khaki. This covers all of the cloth uniform and the puttees.

The helmet has a single coat of 50/50 mix of Vallejo's 897 Bronze Green and Vallejo's 887 Brown Violet with the blue helmet band having a basecoat of Vallejo's 925 Intense Blue, highlighted with a 50/50 mix of Vallejo's 925 Intense Blue and Vallejo's 943 Blue Grey. The little Slovak crosses are all hand painted with thinned down Vallejo's 820 Offwhite.

Everything else is all gravy after painting the uniform.

All of the Canvas bags and straps have a basecoat of Vallejo's 921 English Uniform applied with block highlights of AK Interactives 3072 M-44 Uniform Green Ochre Khaki whilst the leather belts and ammo pouches are basecoated in Vallejo's 045 Charred Brown and highlighted with Vallejo's 983 Flat Earth.

The boots are any matt black whilst the Gas Mask Tins are basecoated with Vallejo's 980 Black Green and highlighted with Lifecolor's UA224 Olive Drab Faded Type 2.

The rifle bodies are basecoated with Vallejo's 826 German Camo Medium Brown with the highlighted grain lines painted with Vallejo's 981 Orange Brown. All metal work is painted black firstly and highlighted with Molten Metals Steel. The rifle straps are basecoated with Vallejo's 880 Khaki Grey and highlighted with a 50/50 mix of Vallejo's 880 Khaki Grey and Vallejo's 819 Iraqi Sand.

Where the skin is concerned you can paint it how you please but personally I use one of AK Interactive's paint sets for 'Flesh and Skin Colours' and I've never looked back!

All of the bases are actually really simple. I buy all of my bases from Tony at East Riding Miniatures. Hes a bit of a legend and REALLY helpful. They are all laser cut MDF which allows for easy scoring of the base surface.

I then glue the miniatures to the scored surface and apply a thin layer of tile grout over the top. Once this is dry I glue a layer of one of my sand mixes over the top. Generally speaking I create my own mixes for base coverings as I REALLY don't like a lot of the crap you buy from the shops. Its generally speaking far too gaudy in colour or uniform in texture for my tastes.

I like the generally fine sand BUT I like to have lots of the little stones in there so I can create some colour contrasts with the dirt on the bases.

Once dry the whole base is given a basecoat of Vallejo's 826 German Camo Medium Brown and given a heavy drybrush of Vallejo's 814 Green Ochre.

All of the little stones on the bases are then given a basecoat of Vallejo's 995 German Grey and roughly highlighted (to create a jagged uneven texture) with any lighter grey of your choice but personally I go with Vallejo's 992 Neutral Grey.

The sides of the bases are now painted Matt Black. I never used to bother with this BUT I've really gotten into the clean precise look this lends to the bases. I love it now.

Now we come to the final stages of the bases which is the covering. The static flock that I use is my own mix. I go for something that approximates the dead and dry grass you find on the Steppes with perhaps a little more green in it than usual. This allows an overall base aesthetic that can be used the length of Europe in my opinion.

To provide the final textural boost to the bases though I use a variety of clumps. I had a LOT of problems finding ones that I felt were suitable but after a couple of years I came across a company called Tajima Miniatures whose self adhesive tufts are without a doubt the best I have ever found. I use their stuff by the bucket load now, in great variety. 

These all add to the final colour and texture of the bases of this army.

...and there we have it. Once more we reach the end of another post about guys in uniforms with guns... and BAYONETS!!!!