Austrian Napoleonic - German Light Infantry and Hussars

"Something old something new" The new is the unit of German Light Infantry created from the HaT Austrian Landwehr. The old is my long serving Airfix Hussars that were painted as Austrian and now rebased.

Austrian Pioneers for the Seven Years War

It's a bit unclear which unit I have represented as Project SYW says they are the Pioneer Korps, the text in my Osprey book says they are Pioneers, but the illustration says they are Sappeurs. I'm going to call them Pioneers.

The figures are Revell SYW Austrian artillery with head swaps from the HaT Austrian Chevaulegers.

The similarity between the Austrian casquet and the British Belgic Shako are quite striking.

Extra Austrian Kuirassiers

Observant readers may have noticed that I would have eight Kuirassier figures left over. These were modified with the bicorne heads from the Chevaulegers to provide an earlier version of the uniform suitable for the French Revolution period. I also swapped the horses for some old spare Italeri Carabinier horses as there were a few badly moulded horses in the sets.

Boosting my Austrian Napoleonic cavalry

Over the years I acquired an extra packet each of the HaT Austrian Kuirassiers and Chevaulegers. So earlier this year I decided that I would replace all my Airfix conversions with the newer HaT figures, so I bought another packet of each. This gave me two more units of Kuirassiers, one of Dragoons, and two Chevaulegers (one with green and the other with white coats).

This combined with my much earlier painting of Hat figures gave me a total of four Kuirassier (at the front), three Dragoons (rear right) and three Chevauleger (rear left). I also had to rebase the older figures to match.

Kuirassiers followe by dragoons, typically I spotted I had forgotten to flutter the flags on the new units before taking the pictures.

Kuiraasiers followed by Chevaulegers

First boats for Cruel Seas

So I've managed to finish all the small boats I have accumulated for Cruel Seas, certainly enough for a range of scenarios.

British MTBs

German S-boats

US PT boats, these are in grey for the European theatre of operations, rather than the Pacific green.

Three brothers went to War

The eldest William Thomas, enlisted in 1907 and served with the Wiltshires in India before returning to fight with the BEF in 1914. He was invalided out with Frostbite and epilepsy in December that year. He subsequently died in 1921 due to diseases picked up in India. He left a widow and three children.

His brother George joined the Wiltshire Yeomanry in 1915 and fought in France through 1916/17 He was killed on the Somme on 23 March 1917. He is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial

The final brother Sidney enlisted in the Warwickshires in 1916 but wasn't transferred to France until April 1918. He suffered a severe gunshot wound in his left arm in July and was returned to hospital in England. He was discharged as unfit for service in October. He was my grandfather.

Just a few more DAK

All my WW2 units are organised for Rapid Fire, but I also play Battlegroup, so I find I am always raiding figures from other units to make up platoons, so these very nice Esci hard plastic figures are just the job to provide spares. Many thanks to Peter B (via Dougie) for the donation.

There are almost enough for a full platoon on their own

There are also a few Matchbox hard plastic DAK from the Panzer II kits included.

Cactus patches

Although I have some of the Pegasus cactii I was tempted by these cactii that I found on ebay as they were a good match for Agave and other similar cactii.

I had to paint them to remove the bright plastic effect and I've added a figure for scale

Link to ebay sellers

On the workbench - November 2020

Well it's another month in lockdown and luckily I'm well stocked up, so my main drive is to finish as much as possible of my year plan by the end of the month. But first here's my progress on the galleys

I'll be working on 

• Finishing the galleys (as seen above the crews are already finished) 
• Some hard plastic figures from Esci to fill a fe gaps in my DAK
• Some cactus patches 
• Napoleonic Austrian cavalry
•  Crusader Turkopoles and dismounted knights/heavy infantry
• SYW Austrian pioneers/miners 
• Cruel Seas - German S-boats, British MTBs and US PT boats