WWII Italians

 Here is the start of an Italian force to participate in WWII battles.  I am basing them to match the terrain I've prepared for Op Husky, the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily, but they should be flexible enough to allow me to deploy them to other theatres, such as the Italian participation in the invasion of France in 1940 or the Italian soldiers who were deployed to the Soviet Union.

These are from the Wargames Atlantic Italian Infantry plastic box.  As with other WGA products, the box includes an incredible variety of options for assembling the soldiers.  However, there are also some frustrating aspects with the selection of items.  On the positive side of things, each frame includes four different headwear options, including steel helmets, sun helmets (for North Africa or Ethiopia), Bustina field caps and Alpini 'capello alpino', as well as Bersagliari feathers that can be added to any of the other headgear.  Each sprue includes 7 of each head, providing loads of options to personalise figures, especially considering there are 6 figures per sprue.  As for weapons, there is a great selection of rifles (with and without bayonets), carbines, Beretta SMG, and Breda light machine gun, plus several of the uniquely Italian 'red devil' grenades..  The command sprue includes a tripod-mounted Breda M37 MMG.   The box also includes a great selection of axes and shovels, and 7 backpacks (for 6 figures).  On the other hand, there are only 5 haversacks (the soft sack that sits on the left hip), and only 3 bayonets (or possibly these are some other sort of knife - I am definitely NOT well versed in Italian kit).  

My initial plan was to simply paint these figures in Italian grey-green (grigio-verde), and dived into some research to come up with as close a match to that shade as possible. These are the troops in green-grey, including the officer on a square base to help make him stand out from the rank and file. 

As I was reading up on Italian uniforms, however, I found that many soldiers, especially the Coastal Divisions in Sicily, were never even issued this uniform, and instead were issued the light grey fatigue uniform.  I have had great difficulty finding out much about this uniform, but as best I can tell, it is of the same cut as the grey-green uniform, and of a pretty light shade of grey.  So I painted roughly half the troops in each colour.  If you have more info on either uniform I'd love to hear about how I can improve the presentation! The grenadier is throwing a red Italian hand grenade!

Here is the LMG gunner, plus a loader to support him.  I sort of made up the spare magazine in the loader's hand, as I understand that the magazine cannot be removed from the Breda M30, instead requiring a stripper clip of ammo to be fed into it for reloading.  The loader also has a spare barrel and parts kit over his shoulder.  Both gunner and loader are on larger bases to help distinguish them from the riflemen.

This is the tripod-mounted M37 Breda MMG.  It is also fed by stripper clips, which greatly reduced its rate of fire compared to belt-fed MMG used by other powers.  Loader is on a square base to keep him distinct from other riflemen.

Doug recently gave me another 25 shock or pin markers. I suspect that this is part of a subtle campaign on his part to shift me away from using livestock as pin markers!  He assembled these himself from spare rifles and a bunch of sun helmets.  Amusingly, the rifles are a mix of mid-20th century bolt action rifles, with some 19th century (or earlier) flintlock muskets!  The older weapons will only be noticed by someone who looks at the markers very closely.  Thanks for the gift, Doug!  (Doug also gave me an R35 Renault tank, painted up as part of the troop of Italian armour that attacked the American landing at Gela at the start of Op Husky - that tank will be a subject for a future blog post).