6mm Battalion Support Elements

You may recall a previous post which showed off the 4 Company's which make up the Infantry elements of the 2nd Battalion Seaforth Highlanders which in turn form part of the larger 51st Highland Division which I am working on.

Well having finished most of my Partizan stuff I had time last night to paint up and base 4 of the stands which are part of 2nd Battalion's support elements.

As before I have tried to make the command stands as little diorama's and I'm pleased with the results. I painted the trucks just green and canvas this time as the camo pattern on my previous ones was not working for me, and wasn't really accurate anyway. Not pictured are the previous Company HQ stands which I have also repainted to match these.

This is the Battalion Commander stand, which comprises of 3 figures a truck and staff car.

AA Platoon, which in this period in an infantry Battalion was just the Bren Gun mounted on the air defence tripod. I modeled this to look like one team has already setup and the other two have just piled out of the back of the lorry and an officer is pointing them to their setup point.

Mortar Platoon, in time I might make some stores to put in the trailer from putty or something.

Signals Platoon - I just decided to go with a Tilly and trailer here. I think in reality these guys had a truck, but I went with the Tilly as I used to be in Signals in the RAF and we rocked around in land rovers with trailers so I went with this as the period equivalent! I overdid the reflection on the glass a bit so the front of the Tilly looks a bit like it has eyes, but its all good.

Still do do is the Carrier Platoon and Pioneer Platoon as well as the Admin Platoon. The Admin Platoon was basically the Battalion motor pool so I have just got a selection of trucks for this, same goes for the Carrier Platoon I have just based some Bren Gun Carriers.

The Pioneer Platoon is more difficult, in reality it had access to Motorbikes (one I believe) and I would like to model this, if anyone knows if any figure makers make a 6mm motorbike please leave a comment, otherwise I will bodge one from putty.

Once the remaining Platoons are painted (I only have the Pioneer Platoon to make) the 2nd Battalion Seaforth Highlanders will be complete!

The benefit of building my units in the way I am is that I can use the stands to represent Platoon's and Company's or squads depending on what size of 6mm game I wanted to play.

The eventual order of Battle for the Division will be as follows

1st (Highland) Infantry Division, 1939-1940

152nd Infantry Brigade

2nd Battalion, The Seaforth Highlanders (regular army)
4th Battalion, The Seaforth Highlanders
4th Battalion, The Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders

153rd Infantry Brigade

4th Battalion, The Black Watch
1st Battalion, The Gordon Highlanders (regular army)
5th Battalion, The Gordon Highlanders

154th Infantry Brigade

1st Battalion, The Black Watch (regular army)
7th Battalion, The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders
8th Battalion, The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders

Divisional Support Units
1st Lothians & Border Yeomanry
75th (Highland) Regiment, Royal Artillery
76th (Highland) Regiment, Royal Artillery
77th (Highland) Regiment, Royal Artillery
51st (West Highland) Anti-Tank Regiment, Royal Artillery
236th Field Company, Royal Engineers
237th Field Company, Royal Engineers
238th Field Company, Royal Engineers
1st Battalion, The Princess Louise's Kensington Regiment (The Middlesex Regiment) (Machine Gun)
7th Battalion, The Royal Northumberland Fusiliers(Machine Gun)
7th Battalion, The Royal Norfolk Regiment (Infantry Sappers)
6th Battalion, The Royal Scots Fusiliers (Infantry Sappers)

As you can see I have a hell of a lot to do before this project is anything like complete, but its meant as a seriously long term project as the Division's history in the early period has always interested me.