Men on Horses

  This soldier and his horse are from the old Hasagawa Stuart light tank kit in 1/72nd scale.

  In WWII in France the US often grabbed a few horses and form small horse cavalry units. 

So naturally, I had to have such a unit. 

 So I took the lower from the Civil War soldier and added an upper from various hard plastic WWII US Army figures.

So far I have been making mostly shooting figures.

The reality is they would mostly have fought on foot and only used horses for transportation and scouting.

No, his barrel is not drooping, that's a BAR bipod near the end of the barrel and it looks like a broken barrel.

One guy so far with binoculars, that's reconnaissance and scouting activity.

Some of them grouped together.  In my wargame rules, men on horseback are faster than men on foot.

Machine Guns and Horse Cavalry

Every now and then I buy a model and it comes with a few styrene plastic troops.

Or I buy a collection and it has a few styrene troops in it.

Or I buy a set of styrene troops.

Then every few years all those miscellaneous troops and bits and bobs get collected for a little work.

I pull out the sheet styrene and make bases for them, sometimes I add an oil drum or other items to make unique troops.

This horse is from the Hasagawa 1/72nd scale Stuart tank kit.  I cut the lower half of the rider off and add the upper half of some other troops and I get some WWII US Army horse cavalry.  In Italy and France the US made a few ad hoc horse cavalry units.  Most just picked up a German horse for a few days, but others were actual units.  There were still lots of real cowboys in the Army in those days.

The soldier with his back to use is holding a pair of binoculars.  I add a carbine and an ammo can and now he is the third man in a three man machine gun team.  I my rules set a three man machine gun team can fire indirect fire, something machine guns can do with a little preparation.

I give my loaders a weapon, in my wargame rules crewmen get a pistol, but can use a secondary weapon if it's mounted on their person or on their base.  This way if the enemy destroys the MG these guys can still fight.