Baber on wargames: French additions for Tunisia

French Defenders of Faid Pass

I`ve been writing a new scenario after I found a good article on the defense of Faid Pass, Tunisia by the French at the end of January 1943.

The action basically pits French artillery against DAK armour, but most of my French `75s are the later type with pneumatic wheels and the battery involved was hippomobile (horse drawn), so I needed to build a new battery, this has taken about a week altogether:

1ere batterie du 67 RAA

Gun on move (I know should have 6 horses, but for space I went with only 4)

Horse team are EWM, gun and Limber are Hat

"A" gun

Gun, deployed limber & crew all Hat, the spent shells and ammo cash are EWM

"B" gun

Gun and most crew Hat, again ammo cash from EWM, the gun commander was an Italeri Italian (head-swapped)

The whole battery together

I also needed to field some French engineers, not except for a single flamethrower by FAA, no-one actually makes French engineers, so I had to scrounge up some figures and do minor conversions to suite:

Platoon 1ere Coy I/19 Genie

Supply cart

EWM MG cart (new wheels) piled high with various bits, one horse is Tumbling Dice, the other Imex

4 x Airfix WW1 French (two have arm swaps & I`ve added rifles)

2 x Hat gunners

Esci FFL with head swap and added pack, Airfix FFL with head swap

EWM gunner with added spade & rifle, Un-modified Blitz vehicle passenger

Mine detector guy (based on a photo) when the Yanks arrived in Tunisia they supplied the French with some urgently needed supplies - mine detectors, 37mm AT guns, radios.

A real Frankenstein creation - the legs were an Italeri Italian, the body/detector an Esci Yank, the head is EWM