Black's Division

A project I've been wanting to do for a while is a tribute to Josef Serinek the Romani hero.  A First World War soldier, a prisoner in a concentration camp and then a partisan commander (a useful primer for anyone interested can be found at romea.cz).  His partisan brigade was known commonly as Černý ('Black') a reference to Serinek's skin.  I wanted to make a 'what if' force to represent Serinek and his partisans taking the fight right to the Nazis - so took a few artistic wargaming liberties with the force list.

I got Pendraken minis from a variety of their ranges - including Partizans from the French range, various options from the International Brigade part of the Spanish Civil War range and a few Soviets left over from another project to reflect that Black's Division included escaped Soviet prisoners of war (admittedly in a rather on the nose way, but the variety doesn't hurt for a Partisan force I feel).

Anyway, on to the minis - first up Serinek himsel and a couple of his trusted men:

I've got a couple of units of partisans - from pretty much the same pool of miniatures so I've taken a pic of one such unit to give an idea:

So far so normal really - rifles, a few home-made anti-tank grenades and a couple of SMGs.  For the 'what if' I tooled them up a bit - a couple of support teams; MMG and Mortar:

And as those vile Nazis are rumoured to be flexing with an armoured car to opress the locals Serinek must have come up with a special plan and acquired an old, but still serviceable field gun - must have been hidden in an old barn covered with a tarp or something!:

Of course to lug the gun around and the like the Partisans needed some transport - thankfully the French and Spanish Civil War ranges from Pendraken had some good civilian vehicle options:

I'm inspired by the line from the romea.cz article "Josef reportedly never took prisoners and always remembered the atrocities and crimes committed against the defenseless prisoners of the Lety camp." - I hope my version of Black's Division is able to reflect that against the Nazis on the tabletop.