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Friday, December 12, 2008

Sick and Wounded Horses


Every military unit that has horses has to deal with horses that get wounded in battle. They have to be evacuated, treated, convalesce, be retrained and then sent back to the front. Just like the human soldiers. Yet there are no 1/72nd scale veterinary soldiers as far as I know. Often we can't find specialized figures and troops for our wargames, dioramas and collections. One way to circumvent this situation is to make our own.



These horse and accessories are from three different Imex sets. The Southwestern/ Alamo Accessories provide the barrel, and hitching rail. The "sleeping" horses are from the Civil War accessories as are the bags and the brown horse is from the Eastern Friendly Indians set. This provides the beginnings of my first WWII German Veterinary unit. If it is successful, I will expand my veterinary services to include my WWI Americans and ACW armies as they are both large enough to warrant their own veterinary services.
My plan is to include a few soldiers with shovels, some with pitchforks, maybe some brushing the horses, carrying buckets of water. I have found that horses were sometimes suspended in slings to keep the weight off their feet and I will probably scratch build some sort of device to do that. I also need to make up some doctor types who can be operating or bandaging the horses. They will also need a few wagons or trucks to haul the wounded animals.

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