Battalion of the Auspicious Pig

After almost a year, my Chinese battalion is finally done! While I may add another rifle company and more supporting elements later on, I think it has the bare minimum of components to take the field.

I have given it the name ‘Battalion of the Auspicious Pig’ for several reasons: first, because it was conceived and (mostly) built in 2019, the Year of the Pig; second, it’s creator (me) was born during the Year of the Pig ; and third, its artillery and many of the heads necessary for converting the figures came from the venerable Peter Pig miniatures. All of these combined seemed rather auspicious.

 

The battalion

 As mentioned in a previous post, this battalion follows the TO&E of a central government 18^th/19^th year type infantry division, although mine is short by one company. It is composed of two rifle companies, each with 18 stands, a machine gun company with six MGs, and a mortar company with six tubes.

HQ

First company

Second company

The MG company is comprised of four water-cooled Type 24s (a Chinese copy of the German MG08 commercial model) and two ZB 37s, imported from Czechoslovakia.

Machine gun company

Type 24

Type 24

ZB37

ZB 37

The mortar company’s tubes are any one of the myriads of indigenously produced medium 81/82mm mortars, such as the Type 20. Given the Chinese army’s paucity of communication equipment, I have decided to forego with a spotter. Instead, the company commander will act as a spotter, or engage in direct fire.

Mortar company

Medium mortars

Medium mortar

In support of the battalion is a battery of four 75mm Hanyang L/29 field guns, a Chinese produced copy of the Krupp 1903 export gun, and obsolescent by the time of the Japanese invasion. Such guns would have been in artillery regiments subordinate to GHQ, and not part of an infantry division. Divisional artillery would, in theory, be comprised of pack/mountain howitzers, but was often only mortars.

Field gun battery

Hanyang L/29

Hanyang L/29

Another view

As with the mortar company, I’ve left out the spotter team, as well as the staff team, for the same reasons. Outdated, broken, or missing equipment, and inadequate training, often lead to guns being used in a direct-fire role.

As for the miniatures and models themselves, I won’t go over too much already covered in previous posts, other than one company is comprised of Battlefront’s Finnish soldiers, and the other their Romanians, with head swaps from Peter Pig. The MG company is mostly BF Finnish Maxims, with Sokolov mount converted into a tripod, and two Romanian ZB 37s. The mortar company is also composed of BF Finns. The CiC and 2iC are a mix of Finns and Italians, with some converting and custom bits added.

CiC debates tactics over tea.

 

2iC leads the way with the regimental standard.

The artillery comes from Peter Pig’s WWI range: the guns are the Belgian 1905, which I thought was a good approximation of the Krupp 1903 export model. In retrospect, I think I could have spiffed it up a bit with some more detail, and its barrel could probably stand to be a tad longer, but I wasn’t in the mood at the time, and I’m content with it. At a later date, I may add some spent shell casings and wooden crates. The crew are once again BF Romanians with Peter Pig heads.

Rear view of the gun

 

Yet another view

As I said in the beginning, I may add more to this list, such 15cm mortars, a mountain howitzer battery, and maybe another rifle company, but for now I am moving onto other projects.