Deutsche Afrika Korps

The Deutsches Afrikakorps, often abbreviated to DAK, was the German force deployed to fight against the Allies in North Africa in WWII from March 1941 until its surrender in May 1943.

I painted up a fairly sizable force for Iron Cross about a year ago, but have not yet had a chance to get them out onto the gaming table to play with, so whilst most people in South Wales are now in lockdown (the Vale of Glamorgan is the last bastion of sub-lockdown Covid numbers and hemmed in on all sides by the surrounding locked-down counties of Cardiff, RCT and Bridgend, plus most of the rest of South Wales!), I decided to "deploy" my forces onto the gaming table just because...

The force was constituted (and based) for Iron Cross and is made up of:

• 1 x HQ squad (with a command car)
• 7 x infantry squads (5 of which are mounted in trucks)
• 1 x mortar
• 2 x HMGs
• 1 x Pak36 AT gun
• 2 x Panzer IIs
• 5 x Panzer IIIs
• 2 x Panzer IVs
• 1 x Messerschmitt Bf109e (this is only for table decoration/terrain)

Ranks of infantry

Command car and fire support units

Some of the infantry

A close-up of the mounted command squad

Infantry units mounted in trucks

The seated troops are from Perry, so slightly smaller than the rest of the army, which is from Artizan, but the difference is not noticeable when they are in the back of the trucks.

Transport vehicles play an important role in Iron Cross, so I created miniatures that could be removed for when I wanted to dismount the troops. The seated models are glued to a coffee stirrer, so that they can easily be slotted into place, or taken out again and then replaced with Artizan models on the tabletop. The coffee stirrer was painted the same colour as the bench in the back of the truck.

In several of the scenarios in Iron Cross, you need an objective or two to fight over, which this Me109 fulfils nicely, along with some piles of equipment and crates. The desert battlefield doesn't often feature much in the way of suitable objectives, so I think this is a nice feature to add to the look of the game.

A couple of Panzer IIs in the foreground, with the Panzer IIIs behind.

Panzer III command tank.

These two Panzer IIIs have seen plenty of action in North Afrika!

Pak 36 and crew

Panzers advancing line abreast after knocking out a British Matilda on the outskirts of Tobruk

The Panzers pause as they crest a low ridgeline and scan the horizon for more Allied forces.

DAK infantry move forward to exploit the gap created by the Panzers.