Assault Guards and Civil Guards

This week, I took some photos of two of my Spanish Civil War security forces: Guardia de Asalto (Assault Guards) and Guardia Civil (Civil Guards). During the Spanish Civil War, Assault Guards and Civil Guards fought on both sides of the conflict. As the war went on, each side reorganized their security forces, sometimes updating the uniforms. I've painted my security forces in the pre-war uniforms which would have been worn in the first months of the war.

The first set of photos is of the Assault Guards. Before the war, this unit operated in urban areas, often repressing workers movements. It must have been strange for both the officers and the radical syndicalists to find themselves on the same side of the barricades in the summer of 1936.

These assault guards are from a variety of plastic sets. Some are from Barcelona Universal Models, but most are converted from WWI sets.

This MG teams was originally from the HAT Industrie Russian WWI heavy weapons set. Most of the riflemen around the MG crew are from BUM...

Such as this second MG, which were originally SCW soldiers before I gave them new heads.

I have a few Assault Guards on horseback, from BUM.

 I also made a group of seated Assault Guards out of WWI Russian artillery riders. They are seated on a removable platform, so they can be swapped out of the truck for various other factions, as the scenarios require.

The Assault Guard's command piece is from a plastic WWI set.

As are the most of artillery crew and the mortar team.

While most of the Assault Guards are converted pieces from WWI sets, it is not so easy to convert plastic sets into Civil Guards, due to their unique hats.

Civil Guards were the rural police of the Spanish government. Like the Asaltos, they found themselves on both sides of the war.

Almost all of my Civil Guards are from BUM sets, such as these riflemen by the pig pen. A lot of these are flimsy resin pieces, which often suffer broken gun barrels. 

These grenaders are of the same flimsy BUM resin. The SMG-carrying officers they are standing with, however, are nice metal pieces from Irregular Miniatures.

This group is of the same mix.

It was a happy coincidence that I arranged my security forces on either side of this farmers' pig pen.