Monday 29 June 2015

Canadian 1st Parachute Battalion

       In an effort to balance out the heavy Axis lean my current Bolt Action gaming group has developed, I had been planning an Allied army since just after I started playing regularly, but with tournament practise and a complete lack of funds, it was an idea that didn't gain much traction. This post isn't going to be about that Allied army project, that will come in the next couple of weeks, this is about a side project of it that I got a little bit carried away with.

       The Allied army I have gone for is the Canada and this left me with a few issues in terms of joining in some of the narrative themed games we have been discussing. While the Canadians were very much at the front of the Allied push and were every bit as important as the other big nations involved, they don't seem to be at the forefront of the public's imagination, so finding out what engagements they were involved in just seems a little bit more of a struggle than for the British or Americans.So when the guys in the gaming group mentioned they would like to do Operation Market Garden at some point in the future I was fairly sure I would be stuck on the German side as it was a British mission. Then my research came up  trumps. The Canadians did have a parachute army, the 1st Parachute Battalion, and they fought as part of the British 6th Airbourne Division, although my research doesn't seem to think they were in the part that did the Operation itself, that's close enough for me to blag it.
bolt action canadian paras parachute airbourne

       My current Canadian Parachute members. It's only 500 points at the moment and I don't plan on adding to it in the immediate future, but it is big enough and useful enough that I can get involved in any future game, or be able to add to it quickly enough to get involved at the very least. At some point; I need to work up the bravery to do the battalion and rank badges on the arms, but other than that I am fairly pleased with them.


The Canadian Paras raid a German radar station.



bolt action scnery german radar objective base

 As ever; anything factually wrong will be rectified as soon as I am aware.

Thanks for reading

6 comments:

  1. Looking good dude! Great research to turn up Canadian para's.

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    1. Thanks Bob. Learned a while ago, research before you get over excited and dive in.

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  2. Canadians will make a change from the norm. Especially paratroopers. No Rams for a start, I'd imagine?

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    1. Yeah, thanks Roy. No the para list has recce jeeps as their heaviest vehicles, although saying that, at the tournament I went to a few weeks back, 1st and 3rd were both using para lists. . . .

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  3. Cracking job Mike, I love that photograph of the Paras looking down the road towards the radar station - brilliant!

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    1. Thanks Michael. I got a little carried away playing we those figures.

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