Grasshoppers and Elephants

This is the first squad of the Rifle platoon.

i am following the platoon organisation from the Osprey book Vietnam Infantry Tactics by Gordon L Rottman. P16-p17

In this book it says the Rifle platoon on paper had 44 men made up of a command element of a platoon commander, platoon sergent and the Rto.

it then had 3 squads of ten dudes split into two teams made up of a grenade launcher and  rifle men.

the last group of men was the weapons platoon made up of 11 men with a squad leader two machine gunners with assistants and two antitank teams with loaders.

The book then goes on to say that in country this format very rarely existed due to squad members being wounded of on r&r the weapons team would sometimes be split up and used to give each squad a machine gun increasing its fire power or attatching them to the command squad.

It then says the anti tank units of recoiless rifles would in most cases be put into storage and the men would absorbed into the squads as riflemen.

Im going to base my platoon on the incountry formation with reduced squad size.

it will be made of a command unit with the platoon leader and a platoon sergent with the Rto.

two squads made up of two fire teams.

the point team will be 4 rifle men one will be armed with a grenade launcher and pistol

The gun team will be made up of the m60 gunner and loader supported by 4 rifle men.

which should be an understrength platoon of 23 men i may add another squad later on making it 33 men.

i am rebasing them on plastic counters that measure 20mm across as they are super cheap on ebay.

i used to use coins but did not clean them well enough so the paint and glue kept chipping off, i now have a pile of odd coloured 2p coins covered in glue and sand.

the tabs on the models are blended to the base with milliput then medium sand is stuck on with super glue.

I used a very course sand last time and it looked very out if scale with the smaller models.

they are now ready to be undercoated with games workshops grey seer paint.