Hello all, first post here. I decided to experiment with making great War Austrians out of my spare WA Great War Germans. The heads are WWII German field caps which were based on the Austrian caps. They're still very much a work in progress so I'd appreciate any suggestions. My understanding is that a period Austian platoon consisted of 30 men but I don't know the organisation below that. I have nine here because I had nine spare Germans.
It's good to see someone trying some things out with their spares.
You could have used some bolt action Handschar ss heads & made yourself some Bosnians, who where great fighters on the Italian front.
I bought some WW1 post 1915 Austrians from Brigade games & with the air mail cost from the US, they turned out to be really expensive.
28mm Austrians are pretty rare & shamefully underreprestented in the world of WW1 minis, which I can never understand as they started the whole shooting match off by invading Serbia...
Anyway, due to this, I toyed with the idea of buying some plastic Afrika Korps, trimming down the peaks on their feldmutze with some nail clippers then, Bob's your uncle, some 1914 Austrians!
I never did it as I want lanyards, oak leafs, rounded collars & some nice fetching moustaches... I live in hope that someday someone will produce them.
Great idea! Thanks for sharing these.
Information of the organization of Austro-Hungarian Squads, Platoons, or Companies was somewhat hard to come by.
But I found this:
While initially it looks inadequate it more or less provides what one needs to know. Squads should be about 10 men or less. Squad equipment for all powers in WW1 (at least in the first couple years of the war) is rifles, rifles, and more rifles. Three squads seems a safe bet for a platoon. This level of fidelity doesn't seem very satisfying, but one has to keep in mind:
1. Units are never at full strength even in peace time (even in the best funded military on earth). They just don't have all the personnel assigned to them that they are authorized, and of the personnel they do have a small percentage is on leave or injured at any given time. Units will rarely have all the equipment they are authorized. Equipment is broken. Equipment is turned into maintenance. Equipment was never received.
2. This only gets worse in war time. A unit may go into the line at near (but almost certainly not at) full strength, but will almost immediately start to attrite from battle field casualties and illness. Depending on the army and time Soldiers may still be coming out for leave. As squads reduce in strength they may be dissolved and their strength cross leveled to other squads to keep them somewhat combat effective.
So if our notional Austro-Hungarian Platoon has been in the line for any length of time it might have gone from 3 Squads of 9-10 men to 3 Squads of 6 men or maybe 2 Squads of 9 men. Something along those lines.
Sidenote: That is lean Platoon structure. There's no depth. No ability to put 3 squads forward and one in reserve. No wonder that army had problems.
Thanks guys. They're supposed to be quick and easy conversions aiming for being themeatic rather than accurate looking Austrians so they'll be a bit off but good enough at a distance. My Germans are built for 1917-18 so my Austrians will be painted to fit that. As far as I know they swapped to a feildgrau colour that leaned more towards grey than the German uniform. Also I believe there entrenching tools were sumilar to the German ones so I'll glue the ones on I have. I've got 20 field cap heads so as I expend the platoon I'll mix in a few helmets. One of them will be Svejk, complete with pipe. As I understand it the Company is 3x platoons of rifles and one 1x platoon of machineguns.
@Jon Birkinshaw
What is the manufacturer of the field cap heads?
They're West Wind G-SHS4 Germans in Forage Cap.
@Jon Birkinshaw
Thank You.
Also, I didn't know who Svejk was until now. Thanks. The more you know.
I was all like, "Wait, more translated than Kafka's Metamorphosis?" Turns out that was originally written in German.
