East Front Italians for Troops, Weapons and Tactics

Now that "With Fire and Sword" is published, I have been looking for a new research project. I decided to go back to the Second World War and look at the early Italian actions on the Eastern Front.

I am looking at the actions from August to October 1941 that were fought by the Pasubio Division. I purchased awhile back two regimental histories from this division 79th & 80th Roma Regiments. Lots of good information - if you speak Italian. Which I do not. But that is ok. I am not easily discouraged. Armed with a handy dandy Italian/English dictionary much can be discovered.

The first action that I am looking at is the encounter at the village of Pokrovskoje. Just south of the larger town of Voznesensk, the village of Pokrovskoje was on the road paralleling the course of the Bug river. The advance down the road was hindered by bad weather and terrible mud roads.

The CSIR was to block the retreat of the Russian army by heading down the length of the Bug River from Voznesensk to the town of Nikolaiev. The bad weather stopped most of their movements except for a small force consisting of the 80th Roma Regiment, 1st Company of Bersaglieri Motorcyclists and two groups of artillery frm the division. Leaving Voznesensk on the 10th of August, Colonel Chiaramonti managed to move his group another 30 kilometers to Pokrovskoje.

The Bersaglieri were leading the advance and arrived at the village only to be ambushed by a delaying force of Russian soldiers. The Russians fired upon the Bersaglieri with machine guns and artillery. The Bersaglieri remained to gather intelligence and returned back to the main body of troops. III Batalion of the 80th Roma advanced against the Russians and began to drive back the infantry in the town. At this point, the Russians counterattacked with some tanks. Accurate artillery fire drove off the attacking tanks.

I am thinking in breaking this down into three small scenarios for each phase of the action.


Sources so Far:
http://www.italie1935-45.com/
http://www.ilduce.net/russia.htm
http://digilander.libero.it/lacorsainfinita/guerra2/41/russia.htm
http://digilander.libero.it/avantisavoiait/Campagna%20di%20Russia.htm
http://www.fronterussounirr.it/introduzione_storica.htm
http://www.unucimonza.org/bio_federico_rossi.htm
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~broszies/generalstab/arsenal/italian_army/tw_it_csir.html
http://www.bersaglieripaceco.net/medaglie/oro.php
http://fralo.blogspot.com/2010/04/trebisacce-21042010-leroe-alfredo-lutri.html
http://www.maxafiero.it/csir.htm
http://www.italie1935-45.com/RE/histoire/csir1.html

Update on With Fire and Sword

Rich has the final draft and has done some amazing work editing and formatting my scribbles. The maps look great and he has restrained my megalomaniac scenario for the Second Battle of Hanging Rock. My original scenario was huge with over 23 Big men for the Rebels/Patriots alone. Now he has rearranged it to five linked scenarios that cover the ebb and flow of the battle quite nicely without needing a lead mountain of militia miniatures - not that there is anything wrong with that....

A big thanks to AD over at miniawi.blogspot.com who spotted some errors in the original drafts and made some great suggestions to improve the accuracy of the overall work. Now to get back to some painting.

Back to the ACW again....

Well now that the AWI special is completed, I wanted to work on something else for a bit. Last night I finished my first 15 ACW miniatures. I bought some Old Glory bags of ACW skirmishing infantry a while back that have been collecting dust in the bag. I started on the Confederates first. I used the Army Painter Gray primer on them and painted them as they recommended on their web site. I am actually quite pleased with the results. I used their medium dip (brushed on) and will use the anti-shine spray tonight.

I will take some pictures of my AWI Brits and the new Confederates tonight.