Bolt Action 1000 point US Army is finished!

I finally finished my US 1000 point army. Modeled on the 92nd with all African American soldiers and one white captain, which was, amazingly, the reality. Its has been fun to honor these heroes with a little troop of models!

Here's the my 30 cal MMG group. I decided to add all three on a 60 mm base and added some ruins and bricks.

Since the army has 10 10 man units, I decided to make one look like they are observing.....

and one is shooting and assaulting.

SC Mike

92nd Infantry Div update PLUS a tribute to Bill Mauldin

Before explaining the cartoon, here's an update on my budding US Bolt Action Army, based on the 92 Inf Div, made up of African American soldiers. It's a compact group and I have primed the same amount of soldiers, waiting to get painted, so when those are done, I should have a decent size army. 

In the image you can see the M5 3In Anti Tank gun that I finished up over the weekend. More about that model and it's history in my next post. I have played two games now with Bolt Action and I find it really fun to play. The game is easy to play which makes it actually more fun - my buddy John mentioned "it gives you more time to have fun with your friends". 

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John handed me a book last week, written by Bill Mauldin. It's a first edition of Up Front, published in 1945 and writting during Mauldin's time in the Italian Campaign in 1944-45.

 In the book, Mauldin (as a 23 year old) gives it to the reader straight, there are no wise reflections on war and peace, on life and death. Instead there are Mauldin's (sometimes explicit) thoughts on the things he went through, his feelings about day to day life of the common infantry soldier and his dislike for Germans. SInce he was still in the thick of it when he wrote it, there is no looking back yet and I find it makes for very interesting reading.

Mauldin's cartoons expose the war and all it's drudgery, non heroic moments and the lack of basically everything from food to good cloths. He was always annoyed with the promo type information that floated around in the states about the heroism and virtues of the American liberators - he knew things were not so clear in wartime.

Every page in the book has a cartoon of his famous creations Willy and Joe, the amiable dogfaces that walk through the war and share their wisdom. The cartoons are amazing and tell us a lot about how it really was during those years. 

Mauldin became very, very famous with this cartoon, printed the day after Kennedy was shot.

He died in 2003, the recipient of TWO pullitzer prizes. 

There are many editions of the book Up Front available on Ebay and I really recommend spending 20 bucks on a copy.

SC Mike

Quick Update: Bolt Action US captain plus a purchase!

I finished a Captain for my Anzio American BA army. The officers in the 92nd were white, so I painted him that way. He a armed with a BAR and a pistol. The figure is nice and comes from the metal command blister, but I did change his head to make him a bit more regal.

Today I also bought this:

On the press release Warlord actually added this image with African American soldiers preparing the gun, it looks like Northern Italy since the uniforms look early war to me. It will make a nice informative picture for my model, when it comes in

SC Mike

Playing with History: a start

I started Santa Cruz Warhammer in 2007. After 6 years of blogging about Warhammer Fantasy and 40K with my comrade SC John and having attracted over 1000 followers I was in need of something extra. I love Warhammer and 40K and am in the middle of building a Night Goblin Army. But....my inspiration is taking me on different roads...
I have always had a love for history and I have looked at historical miniatures for years with great interest. The Perry Twins' Miniatures, Dave Taylor's 19th century armies and many, many more talented modelers, they all inspired me for a long time. Whilst pondering all these things, I happen to run across an old picture of my wife's grandpa, who I never knew (he died 20 years ago). He served as a ski trooper in the 10th Mountain division in Northern Italy during WW2. Here's the shot:

You can see he was a staff sergeant and while I was exploring the image in Photoshop I noticed his chest pin, which is the Combat Infantry Badge.. Here's a better shot of what that looked like.

It has been said that the CIB is considered the highest honor for infantry, besides the Medal of Honor. For more info on this award, check out the link above. Very interesting stuff. One of my wife's uncles has Grandpa's WW2 belongings, including the awards, and hopefully I will be able to take a photo of it.

Anyway, I have always known from family lore that he was in combat and survived but never thought much more of it. His sons, one of them my father in law, certainly never talked about it. But after doing some research at the Online Denver Library (which is where the Tenth Mountain Archive is) I found out the unit that he served with: 86th regiment, company G, and then I got excited. I ordered books from the library about the Italian campaign, have read two books about the start of the 10th and THEN started having fantasies about combining all this information with my favorite hobby: modeling. Naturally I ended up with Bolt Action. I bought a box and started painting. Here are some guys I did, as you can tell, they are the African American troops from the 92nd, who also fought in the same Italian theatre as the 10th.

After finishing up some models, I made a plan: creating a new blog, an of-shoot from Santa Cruz Warhammer, working on WW2 models and finding out more about my wife's grandfather. Along the way there are plenty of great opportunities for stories, modeling, learning about history and the odd guest post. I certainly don't want to restrict the blog to just WW2 and will create a comprehensive blogroll with all the sites I find interesting. Hopefully you all will be along for the ride!

SC Mike