Militia or military units made of artists/misfits/weirdoes/freaks/hipsters/etc?

Warsie

Banned
I think you can argue that Durruti's contingent in the Spanish Civil War was arguably a case of that, and there was also a unit in the US Army that was involved in deception and had a disproportionate amount of artists, theatrics people, writers and whatnot. And there were some WW2 French Resistance units, which were stated to be made of people who did not fit into their society. And there was Dirlewanger's unit, which was well...Dirlewanger look up his history and his units history :p

And there was a dutch unit with extremely lax discipline, and filthy thirteen in the US military again!

Now, where could you see hypothetical alternate histories with this? Say, an alternate history where asperger's syndrome is diagnosed earlier (AFAIK there was a late 1800s condition that Was Asperger's in a different context) and some lunatics liberation front takes earlier than OTL ('Socialist Patients Collective' and 'Lunatics Liberation Front' and 'Icarus Project' were 1970s-80s things, say a revolutionary psychologist sees this in the 1920s in the USSR and makes an alternate declaration of some 'mental' as a separate nation). Now, imagine there were more than the socialist patients collective fuckin shit up. Go crazy, pun intended!
 
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Talking of artists there is 21 (Artists Rifles) SAS. Don't know if that counts. :D
The British Army also used artists, magicians, illusionists etc in deception in both WW1 and 2.
 
Most Second World War 'bohemian' military units were craft specific, normally with personnel working in camouflage or entertainment for the troops etc, as JN1 alludes to. However there was one broad intelligence unit in the Autralian army during WWII that was set up solely to corral the freaks, even if meant they didn't have a genuine mission statement of any kind, which leads to this:
Wikipedia said:
the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs DORCA, the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs was a mysterious and difficult to categorise think tank and possibly intelligence organisation within the Australian Army in WWII.

Set up and headed by the charismatic Alf Conlon, the Directorate's alumni had a huge influence over Australia and the Pacific region post-WWII, especially through the Australian School of Pacific Administration (ASOPA).

DORCA has been described as mysterious, odd ball, bohemian. It is difficult if not impossible to categorise, having clearly involved at least in some sense in intelligence work. That it morphed into ASOPA after the war gives no real insight into its wartime activities.

The Directorate figures in Australian culture in two significant ways, the Ern Malley affair, and as fuel for conspiracy theories about US influence on Sir John Kerr in relation to 1975 Australian constitutional crisis. Further fuel for conspiracy theorists is that none of the records of the Directorate survive.

Sheesh, even I've read enough military history to know that DORCA was nothing but a make-work project for a bunch of physically substandard university graduates who'd somehow made it into uniform. They were low-security-clearance paperpushers working for a scam artist colonel who had delusions of bureaucratic empire building. That's all they were. But because several of their members later became prominent conservative intellectuals/controversialists they merit a Wiki page that casts them as a sinister cabal.



The artists rifles were a volunteer regiment up until the end of 1945. Formed by a painter and contained a lot of artists.

Surely the unit stopped recruiting exclusively from that socio-economic class after World War I?

The British army in World War Two was just too much of a levelling organisation to do that sort of thing, the old regimental system had already started to break down.
 
During WW2 it was used as an OTC, so it wouldn't have been exclusivley formed from artists.

Talking of the Artists's Rifles the London Regiment also included the Civil Service Rifles (Sir Humprey's Own? ;)) and the Post Office Rifles (sorry, Sir, our attack got lost in the post). Should also have included the HAC but they refused to become part of the regiment when it was formed.
 
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