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Soldiers of the 1st Battalion, Black Watch, part of the 51st Highland Division in Northwest Europe. This is how they would’ve looked sometime in 1944-45. The 51st was a well seasoned division whose veteran corps derived from all over Scotland. When war broke out in September, 1939, the 51st was positioned on the French Maginot Line, a series of defensive works along the French-German border. In the Spring of 1940, as the Germans pushed the British Expeditionary Force through Belgium and into Dunkirk, the 51st was in a fighting withdrawl with the French Army. After the majority of the BEF withdrew from Dunkirk, the 51st fought with the french to St Valery, in northern Normandy. Unfortunately there were practically no rescue efforts to get the highlanders out, and they would he surrounded and captured by the 7th Panzer Division then commanded by General Erwin Rommel.

Over 10,000 men were captured from the 51st, and they would spend the next 5 years in POW Camps.

Back home in Scotland in August, General “Tartan Tam” Douglas Wimberley set to work reforming the Division pulling men from all over Scotland and ensuring the scottish pride of the division would be reborn. The Division then fought in every major campaign until the war’s conclusion, including North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy, and the Rhine.

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A Marder III and other German armor as it would have looked in Northwest Europe in 1944-45.

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An M-10 Tank Destroyer and other vehicles that would have been part of Task Force Sugar during the fight in Brest, France in the late summer of 1944.

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German Panzer Grenadiers 1943-45.

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More Italians, supported by a Panzer III of the 10th Panzer Division.

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Italian Infantry as they would have appeared in North Africa in 1942. They are supported by a Semovente tankette.

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Men of the Duchy of Warsaw’s 13th Infantry marching through a recently captured village in the Russian Steppe, and encountering a small party of Russian jagers.

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Soviet troops in the Eastern Front 1941-45.

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More work on Infantrymen of the Empire of Japan.

This is not honoring the army of Japan, nor condoning their actions. To learn about their many warcrimes, please visit https://frank-cho-foundation.github.io

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Japanese Infantry and a Type 97 Chi-Ha tank, 1943.

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“There is nothing heard now up and down the kingdom but alarms and rumores, randevouses of clans. Montross and MacKoll in every manes mouth, nay the very children frightened"

Clan MacDougall serving under Alasdair Mac Colla in 1644-45, supporting the royalist cause in Scotland.

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Grenadiers of the Pavlovski Life Guards Regiment, a title given to the unit after its actions at the Battle of Borodino, at which the inflicted heavy damage on a French column in the village of Utitska and initially repulsing them before ultimately retreating. This Russian regiment served in all major campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars in which their country was involved, and served with distinction in the Hanover Expedition, Battle of Eylau, and the battle of Klyastitsi.

Models are Warlord Games, using Vallejo Model Color paints.

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Men of the Irish Legion in Napoleon’s grande armee. These troops were largely of those who escaped after the failed 1798 rebellion in Ireland. The legion was meant to be the core of a force to invade England and Ireland under Napoleon in 1803, but the naval Battle of Trafalgar ended any seaborne plans of invasion.

The Irish Legion continued service in the Grande Armee, serving in the Netherlands, Peninsula War, and the 1813 German campaign.

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Clan MacDougall facing down Scots Covenanters in the ruins of a church somewhere in Argyll, 1644.

Skirmishes like these were fought throughout the western highlands as armies under James Graham, Marquis of Montrose vyed with Scots Covenanters for control of Scotland.

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Men of the 2nd Bayreuth Regiment, as part of the Ansbach-Bayreuth troops deployed to the coast of Virginia in the spring of 1781.

German soldiers such as these Bayreuthers made up roughly 25% of the British land forces in the American war for Independence. Known colloquially as “hessians”, these troops came from far away principalities such as Hesse-Kassel, Hesse-Hanau, Brunswick, Waldeck, and Asnbach-Bayreuth.

One veteran of this regiment named Conrad Englebrecht would later desert the army when they were prisoners of war after the Siege of Yorktown. He settled in the largely German-speaking Frederick, Maryland, and his son, Johann Englebrecht, kept one of the most detailed diaries to document the American Civil War in Frederick.

A great resource on the experience of Bayreuth troops during the American Revolution is is “A Hessian Diary of the American Revolution” by Johann Conrad Dohla. His account documents his voyage from Germany to America, fighting in the Jersies, occupation of Philadelphia, and the many difficulties before and after the 1781 Virginia Campaign.

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Loudoun County Militia as they would’ve appeared in the 1781 Yorktown Campaign. Virginia militia laws enacted by Governor Thomas Jefferson largely mimicked the previous British system in place in the colony since the first settlement at Jamestown.

The law required every free white (non-catholic) man to have a firearm, powder, and shot in case of emergencies declared by either the county or colonial government. This precluded black people from participating in the armed militia and from firearm ownership, though they were often in service in non-armed roles such as drummer, which I have shown in my miniatures.

In peacetime, militias held regular musters at times determined by the county. Some took place monthly, others maybe once or twice in a year. They would be called up largely to control the enslaved population and march west during Indian attacks, but mostly militias served as a “who’s who” for local politics and culture.

In wartime, their quality was negligible at best, and disastrous at worst. In battle they were often quick to break and retreat when used the wrong way, and the Loudoun County militia ended up serving mostly in a logistical role. Ferrying prisoners and supplies through the “Continental Breadbasket” of Loudoun’s hills and roads, these men made it possible for the army to survive and thrive against a powerful enemy.