Extra post: Little bit about Bulgarian stormtroopers - The Shturmovatzi.

A big thanks to writer and historian Thomas Wictor who provided me with the pictures of Bulgarian stormtroopers. Thomas is an expert when it comes to the German army during World War I and especially when it comes to stormtroopers. More about him and his research can be found in his book German Assault Troops of WorldWar I.

The picture shows the Bulgarian pioneer soldiers from the 1st Stormbatallion that was called Shturma Druzhina. The battalion was organized at the end of December 1916 and was trained by the German army. The Bulgarian stormtroopers was called shturmovatzi. They were equipped with steel helmets, hand grenades, grenade throwers, mortars, flamethrowers and Austro-Hungarian Mannlicher carbine M95.

The other picture is a painting which can be found at the Museum of Military History in Sofia. The troops shown on the painting are a storm unit from the 14^th Macedonian infantry regiment. Two main weapons systems are clearly shown – the hand grenade and the flamethrower. 

When the Swedish army study commission led by of Colonel Åkerman visited the Bulgarian stormbatallion in the beginning of 1918 in area of Dedeli they wrote following about the unit:

The battalion had a following structure:

1 School infantry company

3 Aspirant (School attendees) infantry companies

1 Machine gun company

1 Grenade thrower company (with 5 light grenade throwers)

1 Mortar company (with 4 mortars)

1 Flamethrower detachment (with 3 flamethrowers)

2 Mountain artillery batteries

The school company had the same assignments as the previously mentioned stormbatallion in Germany and therefore was functioning as a school for training of the aspirant companies.