My Eastern Front/Great Patriotic War collection: Part 1: Russian armour, artillery, and transport

The first of the REALLY USEFUL BOXES that I opened contained the Russian armour, artillery, and transport bases that I renovated, varnished, and rebased during the COVID pandemic.

Its contents comprised:

5 x T-34/76 Tanks (1:87th-scale ROCO)

1 x T-70 Tank (1:76th-scale Skytex)

5 x FAI Armoured Cars (1:76th-scale [?] models given away with a magazine)

3 x 152mm M1903/30 Howitzers (1:76th-scale Skytrex)

2 x 122mm M1938 Howitzers (1:76th-scale Skytrex)

1 x 76.2mm Gun (1:76th-scale Skytrex)

4 x 76.2mm M1927 Guns (1:76th-scale Skytrex)

2 x 76.2mm Guns (1:76th-scale scratch built for various spare parts)

6 x 45mm M1937 Anti-tank Guns (1:76th-scale Skytrex)

1 x 37mm M1930 Anti-tank Guns (1:76th-scale Irregular Miniatures)

3 x Komintern-like Heavy Artillery Tractor (1:76th-scale scratch built using the chassis of ROCO PzKpfw IV Tanks and various Airfix spare parts)

2 x STZ-5-like Medium Artillery Tractor with cab (1:76th-scale scratch built using various Airfix spare parts, mainly from the M3 Half-track and AEC Matador truck)

3 x STZ-5-like Medium Artillery Tractor without cab (1:76th-scale scratch built using various Airfix spare parts, mainly from the M3 Half-track)

3 x T-20 Komsomoleyts Light Artillery Tractor (1:76th-scale Skytrex [2] and resin [1] models)

15 x ZiS-5-like Trucks in three different versions (1:76th-scale scratch built on the chassis of a Keil Kraft/Davric 1.5-ton Thorneycroft parcel van.)

Sorting the button box

Back in September 2022, I wrote a blog post with the same title as this post. In it I described how, during my early days in teaching, an experienced colleague introduced me to what they termed 'sorting the button box'.

This was a task or exercise that would be set for a pupil who was upset or in need of calming down or to occupy their mind when they were feeling stressed. It gave the pupil something to concentrate on whilst they had a chance to regain some sort of equilibrium ... and over the years I have found that it also works for me when I am feeling a bit depressed or tired and unable to concentrate on reading, writing, painting, or modelling.

Looking around my toy/wargame room I realised that I had two large REALLY USEFUL BOXES full of World War II Eastern Front/Great Patriotic War models and figures that I renovated, varnished, and rebased during the COVID pandemic. I had put them in the boxes and taken them to our storage unit early last year but had retrieved them in order to stage a short Barbarossa 'campaign in an evening' at my local game club, Dice on the Hill. The boxes need sorting out and the stuff in them properly catalogued ... an ideal 'sorting the button box' exercise.

I hope that by doing this, I will regain my wargaming (and possibly my model railway) mojo ... and if it doesn't work, I will at least have sorted the contents of the boxes!

‘I went to the doctor, and the doctor said …’

After I broke my leg last year, I developed axonal polyneuropathy. This was diagnosed after I underwent Complex EMG (Electromyography) and Nerve Conductivity tests at King’s College Hospital in June 2024. This was followed up with a consultation with a neurology Registrar at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich, in November 2024 and the promise of a follow-up … which never happened.

I waited until June this year … and then I contacted the hospital to find up when the follow-up was likely to take place. The reaction was a sort of ‘Oops! Sorry! We should have been in contact’. I was then given an appointment at midday on 14th August (i.e. last Thursday).

A couple of days beforehand, I received a text informing me that my appointment had been moved to 11.50am. Sue and I arrived at the outpatient clinic at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in plenty of time for the appointment, booked in, and sat in the waiting area … and waited … and waited … and waited.

We finally saw a different Registrar from the last time over ninety minutes after our allotted appointment time. He apologised for the delay (apparently he had been massively overbooked) and then did an extensive series of tests on my arms, legs, and feet to check on what I could and could not feel and how much movement I had.

In conclusion, he said that there had been some improvement (which was good news), that they still had no idea why I had developed axonal polyneuropathy (no great surprise as most people who develop it are alcoholics with untreated diabetes … and I am neither), and that there was no need for any follow-up (which was a bit of a surprise). Apparently, there is no treatment and my best course of action was to carry on with the exercise regime I had been following for the last year. He also told us that I could ask for a further referral if I felt my condition was worsening … but that if I did, there was a year-long waiting list!

So, I’m stuck with a medical condition that affects my mobility and for which there is no treatment. It might improve and is unlikely to get worse, especially if I continue to exercise. I might qualify for some additional physiotherapy… which might help. On the plus side, at least I have an answer. It might not be the answer we hoped for, but now I can draw a line under this ailment and get on with my life.

Prorsum et Sursum! (My college's motto, which translates into English as Onwards and upwards!)

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The title of this blog post has its origins in the half-remembered lyrics of a song that I heard as a child, SHORTNIN’ BREAD. It began life as an American folk song that probably had its origins as an African-American plantation song.

The original (and incorrectly remembered) lyrics included the lines:

Three little children, lying in bed
Two was sick and the other 'most dead
Send for the doctor and the doctor said
“feed them children on short'nin' bread"

According to Wikipedia, the song was collected in East Tennessee by E C Perrow in 1912. The traditional chorus of the song is:

Mammy's little baby loves short'nin', short'nin'
Mammy's little baby loves short'nin' bread (repeated)

Victory over Japan Day (V-J Day): Eighty years on

Today marks the eightieth anniversary of Victory over Japan Day (VJ-Day). On this day, it seems appropriate to remember the epitaph that is carved on the memorial of the 2nd British Division in the cemetery at Kohima:

When you go home, tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrow, we gave our today.

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John Maxwell Edmonds (21st January 1875 – 18th March 1958) was an English classicist, poet and dramatist and is credited with writing this epitaph in 1918. It was inspired by an epigram written by the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos to the fallen at the Battle of Thermopylae:

Tell them in Lacedaemon, passer-by
That here, obedient to their word, we lie.

I'll tell you a story ...

... about losing my wargaming and railway modelling mojo.

I think that periodically most wargamers and railway modellers lose their enthusiasm for their hobbies. Sometimes it lasts a few day, sometimes a few weeks ... and sometimes even longer. In my case, this lack of enthusiasm has been coming on for some time and for several reasons.

Firstly, since I broke my leg on 10th April last year, getting to my toy/wargame room – where I do most of my wargaming and railway modelling – has been difficult. After a spell in hospital, I was confined to bed until the end of last August and could not walk – even aided – until the middle of September. I finally made it up to my toy/wargame room in mid-October, once we had a stairlift installed. However, accessing the room still remains problematic, and carrying figures, terrain, etc., up or down from the room is very difficult. This means that my wargaming and railway modelling are pretty well restricted to a single room on the top floor of our house ... and that rooms gets very hot during the summer months.

Secondly, most of my wargaming figures and terrain are in a storage unit some miles away and not easily accessible. We did this in preparation for our planned house move last year ... the house move that never took place because I broke my leg! I do have my Belle Époque collection and some of my Eastern Front/Great Patriotic War collection in my toy/wargame room as well as a small selection of Hexon II hexes ... but I really need more of the latter to hand to be able to fight a wargame. That said, most of my model railway stuff is in my toy/wargame room and easily accessible.

Thirdly, I seem to feel mentally and physically tired almost all the time. There is a well-known joke about old people falling asleep almost as soon as they sit in an armchair, but I can confirm that like most jokes, it contains an element of truth! I regularly wake up in the morning feeling as if I haven't slept well and doze off for up to an hour most afternoons. This is not conducive to working on one's hobbies as the tiredness saps one's ability to concentrate and then one begins to make mistakes, which are – in turn – very demoralising.

Fourthly, my recent floating shelf model railway project has – to use an appropriate metaphor – hit the buffers. As I mentioned in a past blog post, I had problems with the paint I was using not sticking to the plastic that covered the MDF floating shelf. I did find a solution (peel off the Fablon-like plastic to expose the MDF) but after that I ran into another problem, this time with the layout's wiring. Now this is not something that I expected to happen as I am using KATO Unitrack, which is well-known for its ease of use and outstanding reliability. I finally traced the problem to one of the points, whose mechanism was jamming and replaced it ... only to find that almost all of my locomotives had stopped working! Even after servicing each of the locomotives (i.e. cleaning the contacts and oiling the bearings), the reliability of all but one of them remains marginal if not downright poor.

Now, experience has shown me that when things are going wrong, it makes no sense to continue pushing forward. Doing that merely reinforces failure ... and can lead to a feeling of greater ennui and even depression. I am – therefore – planning to stop working on any serious wargaming or model railway projects for the next few weeks. I hope that by taking a break, my enthusiasm and energy will return sometime soon. I will, however, continue to blog as often as I can.

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The title of this blog post comes from the opening line of the following poem.

I'll tell you a story
About Jack a Nory,
And now my story's begun;
I'll tell you another
Of Jack and his brother,
And now my story is done.

This short poem, which dates from the middle the eighteenth century, gave its name to JACKANORY, ...

... the famous BBC children's TV programme that was broadcast between 13th December 1965 and 24th March 1996. It featured an actor (often a famous one, including Tom Baker, Bernard Cribbins, Edward Fox, Sir Michael Horden, Sir Ian McKellen, Spike Milligan, Sir Tony Robinson, Sir Patrick Stewart, and Kenneth Williams) reading children's books or folk tales, usually whilst they were seated in an armchair.

Even more ideas generated by using the 'Dominion of the Spear and Bayonet' rules

Further to my earlier blog posts (here and here), I have been thinking about the tabletop battlefield I might use for my hybrid rules.

In the DOMINION rules, the tabletop looks like this:

In the FAST-PLAY 3 x 3 PORTABLE WARGAME the tabletop looks like this:

I have been looking at two possible hybrid tabletop layouts, both of which combine aspects of the above. The first is a slight reworking of the FP3x3PW …

… and the second adds a further rank of squares to create a tabletop that has a 3 x 4 grid plus reserve areas.

I hope to experiment with both tabletop layouts over the coming weeks in the hope that a preferred layout emerges.

Preparing to refight the Battles of Dybbøl and Als

The recent publication of Steve Parker's DOMINION OF OTTO VON BISMARK has provided me with an excuse to do some background research before I refight the Battles of Dybbøl and Als.

I have several books that deal with the Second Schleswig War, including:

• THE SECOND SCHLESWIG WAR 1864: PRELUDE, EVENTS AND CONSEQUENCES which was written by Inge Adriansen and Jens Ole Christensen and published by the Tøjhusmuseet (now the Danish War Museum) in 2013 (ISBN 978 8787 37527 6) ... and I bought my copy from the museum when I visited it in December 2014.

• 1864: THE FORGOTTEN WAR THAT SHAPED MODERN EUROPE was written by Tom Buk-Swienty, translated into English by Annette Buk-Swienty, and published in English by Profile Books in April 2015 (ISBN 978 1 781 25276 5). (It was originally published in Denmark in 2008 by Gyldendal, entitled 1864: SLAGTEBÆNK DYBBØL [which can be translated as ‘The Dybbøl Slaughterhouse’].)

The latter formed the basis of the Danish TV/film series 1864. This was produced to mark to 150th anniversary of the war between Denmark and Prussia which ended with Denmark losing control of the Duchies of Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg.

When I visited the Tøjhusmuseet in 20214, the museum was staging a special exhibition about the war, and I was able to take several photographs of the displays.

As one would expect, there are numerous paintings ...

The Danish trenches during the siege of Dybbøl. (by Jørgen Valentin Sonne)

The counter-attack of the Danish 8th Brigade during the Battle of Dybbøl. (by Vilhelm Rosenstand))

... and line illustrations that cover the war.

The Danish ironclad, Rolf Krake, which took part in the Battle of Als.

Prussian soldiers storming the Danish positions during the Battle of Dybbøl.

All very inspiring!

Mea culpa! … I got the name of the battle wrong!

Toby E, who is one of my regular blog readers, has pointed out that I got the name of the exemplar battle wrong in my recent review of THE DOMINION OF OTTO VON BISMARCK, ...

... I identified the battle as the Battle of the Alma … but it was actually the Battle of Balaclava!

The Battle of the Alma ...

... and the Battle of Balaclava. Not easy to confuse ... except in the case of this writer!

Oops! As Captain Bertorelli (of ‘ALLO ‘ALLO! fame) would have said, ‘What a mistake-a to make-a!'

Adventures in Dolmenwood

Last February I joined the Dice on the Hill group that meets at the nearby Shrewsbury House community centre. Since then I’ve played several different games, but for most of the time I’ve been taking part in a fantasy role-play game set in DOLMENWOOD.

This is a tabletop fantasy role-play published by Necrotic Gnome and designed by Gavin Norman, It is described as being 'a dark‑whimsical, fairy‑folk‑horror setting inspired by British Isles folklore and classic fairy tales like The King of Elfland’s Daughter and Stardust.'

My character is Father Crump. He is a wandering friar who has joined the group of adventurers who are travelling around Dolmenwood to minister to their moral needs (particularly the leader, a young and somewhat psychopathic knight known as Black Philip), to spread the word (and influence) of the Pluritine Church, and to fight the evil influence of the dreaded and ungodly Nag Lord.

Father Crump ... as envisaged by ChatGPT.

Thanks to my honesty, I’ve ended up being the group’s unofficial treasurer … and as a result of eating some mushrooms during one encounter, I was afflicted for some time with bulging eyes that acted like lanterns in the dark. I was eventually ‘cured’, thanks to the ministrations of more senior members of the church, but in exchanged I was tasked to seek out and protect lost shrines that the Nag Lord is seeking to control as part of his dastardly plans.

Unlike my fellow adventurers, I am not heavily armed or armoured. During our adventures I have acquired a war mace and three daggers, and these are my only weapons … although I have been known to use a small sledgehammer in close combat and recently hit an opponent over the head with a metal holy symbol whilst claiming to be blessing them with it.

Dominion of Otto von Bismarck has been published

He’s done it again! It is less than a month since the DOMINION OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE was published and now Steve Parker has published another 'Dominion of ...' set of rules, this time the DOMINION OF OTTO VON BISMARCK.

The rules have a similar structure and game mechanisms to those in the previous editions in this series but include some period-specific rules to make them suitable for solo wargamers who want to refight mid to late nineteenth century European battles.

As usual, the armies 'cost' 12 points and most units 'cost' 2 points each.

Units fall into one of the following categories:

• Line Infantry: Infantry that fight in a linear formation and rely on firepower to defeat their opponents.
• Column Infantry: Infantry that fight in assault columns and rely on numbers to overpower their opponents.
• Cavalry: Cavalry were used to scout ahead of their main force, to harass a defeated opponent, and to mount well-timed charges that was intended to break an opponent's resistance.
• Artillery: Includes all types artillery.

Units can be given attributes that reflect particular tactical advantages and/or unit quality. These are:

• Defence advantage (D): Troops in fortifications, behind a river, uphill of their opponents, or who are particularly difficult to defeat have a defensive advantage. This advantage adds 1 point to the 'cost' of a unit.
• Attack advantage (E): Elite or veteran units or units armed with superior weapons may have an attack advantage. This advantage adds 1 point to the 'cost' of a unit.
• Unreliable disadvantage (UR): Troops who are poorly trained, inexperienced, or understrength, may be regarded as unreliable. This disadvantage reduces the 'cost' of a unit by 1 point.

Examples of typical units include:

• Infantry reinforcements – unreliable Column Infantry (cost 1 point)
• French infantry armed with Chassepot rifles – Line Infantry (cost 2 points)
• Prussian infantry armed with needle guns fighting the above French – Column Infantry (cost 2 points)
• Prussian infantry armed with needle guns fighting the Austrians – elite Line Infantry (cost 3 points)
• Prussian massed artillery – elite Artillery (cost 3 points)

A typical pair of armies (in this case for the Battle of the Alma, which is the battle used in the rules as an exemplar) are:

• Russian:
• 2 x Cavalry (mainly Hussars) (2 points each = 4 points)
• 3 x Column Infantry (2 points each = 6 points)
• 1 x Artillery (2 points)
• Total – 12 points
• Allies (Turks and British):
• 2 x Cavalry (British Light and Heavy Brigades) (2 points each = 4 points)
• 3 x unreliable fortified Column Infantry (Turkish infantry in defences) (2 points each = 6 points)
• 1 x Line Infantry (93rd Highlanders) (2 points)
• Total = 12 points

The combat rules include specific sections that cover unreliable units, infantry vs. infantry, cavalry vs. cavalry, cavalry vs. infantry, fighting artillery, outflanking attacks, rallying, and terrain.

The rules also include army lists and dispositions for twenty-four battles:

• Crimean War:
• The Alma (1854)
• Balaclava (1854)
• Inkerman (1854)
• Eupatoria (1855)
• Chernaya River (1855)
• Sevastopol (1855)
• Second Italian War of Independence:
• Palestro (1859)
• Magenta (1859)
• Solferino (1859)
• Garibaldi’s Expedition of the Thousand:
• Calatafimi (1860)
• Volturno (1860)
• Second Schleswig War:
• Dybbøl (1864)
• Als (1864)
• Third Italian War of Independence:
• Custoza (1866)
• Austro-Prussian War:
• Langensalza (1866)
• Trautenau (1866)
• Königgrätz (Sadowa) (1866)
• Franco-Prussian War:
• Wissembourg (1870)
• Wörth (1870)
• Spicheren (1870)
• Mars-la-Tour (1870)
• Gravelotte (1870)
• Sedan (1870)
• Coulmiers (1870)

These rules will allow me to use my collection of Belle Époque figures and I hope to refight some of the battles featured on this list … particularly the Battles of Dybbøl and Als.

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The DOMINION OF OTTO VON BISMARCK rules were written by Steve Parker and published in 2025 by Orc Publishing. They can be bought in PDF format from Wargame Vault for $5.90/£4.40.