Minor Jostling in the Painting Queue - More Foot Dragoons

The replacement drummer

An everyday yarn of the life of the retired wargamer. The minutiae of army organisation. I published a post recently explaining that I was pleasantly surprised to have obtained and painted a battalion of Les Higgins Napoleonic French Foot Dragoons, since I had never thought I wanted one, but was more than happy to have them.

At that time, I did some minor huffing about my disappointment with the drummer. Because no-one ever produced a suitably scaled drummer of foot dragoons in metal, I had recruited a plastic chap (no prejudice here), from Strelets set 0009 (I think). As far as I know, this is the only foot dragoon drummer in 1/72 scale in the entire galaxy. Though the Strelets set is a nice one, and contains some interesting and potentially useful figures, I regret to say that the dragoon drummer is, with all possible respect to our Russian friends, a gnome. Grotesque in face and physique, equipped with a helmet which has been sat upon and a drum which clearly is deflating; and why - why? - do Strelets arrange to have the sprue joint in the middle of the front of the helmet? Even David the Painter was not able to produce a thing of true beauty from such unpromising raw material.

Anyway, I have lived with my plastic drummer for a while, but the intention has been to replace him if I could come up with a suitable conversion. In fact the conversion was easy - a Kennington Old Guard drummer (Kennington Old Guard are particularly good, by the way) with a replacement head donated by a Garrison officer of foot dragoons. The really handy thing about the Garrison figure is that the horsehair mane is blowing interestingly in the wind, which means that it is not hanging down the back in the manner which makes other dragoon figures unsuitable for conversion. The converted figure has been half painted for a month or so, but this is a bit of a luxury project - replacing an otherwise serviceable figure for aesthetic reasons is never a high priority, and progress has been stalled for some weeks.

New development. Someone was selling a group of LH foot dragoons on eBay, and they looked quite nice, so - though of course I don't need them, and though I don't officially deal on eBay any more - I put in a half-hearted bid and was surprised to win them. When they arrived, I was even more surprised to see how well they are painted. With perfect grenades on the turnbacks and all that, they looked to me like the work of Clive Richards, one of my favourite traditional-style figure painters, but the seller confirmed that he had painted them himself, years ago when his eyesight was better (and I know what he means). So, with minimal retouching, I suddenly find that I have a second battaion for my Dragons Provisoirs (uniformed as the 19th and 23rd regiments), though of course I now had to get my replacement drummer finished in a hurry to complete the new battalion. The picture at the top of the post is a bit foreshortened by the close-up angle - I like to think that the new guy is - well, less gnome-like than he may look here.

So I now have both drummers in service. I had another look at the Strelets chap, and I still don't like him very much, so I've make a note to replace him sometime - and I know how to do it now. Life being what it is, I would bet that the Strelets drummer will be around for quite a while. Any takers?

Hooptedoodle #29 - Small Ads in Comics

This is all triggered by the fact that I came across this picture - I don't know whose picture it is, so if it is yours then thank you, it is a great picture. I have never seen one of these things, and haven't thought about them for well over 50 years, but this was one of a small number of weird toys I always fancied from the small ads on the back of my mate Brian's comics when I was a kid. I wasn't allowed comics like that - I just got the Eagle, and later I got the Rover and Adventure. Brian's comics were much darker, with heavy, violent stories about US Marines fighting in the Pacific and suchlike. But the Seebackroscope was definitely on a secret wanted list, as was a device which, apparently, enabled you to throw your voice and mystify all your friends. I would have loved to mystify my friends.

The only thing Brian and I ever bought through these ads was a small box of ex-US Army ration packs. Don't ask me why. Brian arranged for them to be delivered to his grannie's house, and we opened the box like thieves. I am delighted to recall that the packs contained no morphine capsules - nothing dangerous in that sense - but they did contain foil-wrapped chocolate and fudge bars. Brian liked the chocolate, which was too strong and bitter for me, and which also had an odd grey appearance which might have served as a warning if we had been receptive to such a thing. Brian, sadly, consumed a great deal of the grey chocolate, and was unable to venture further than a few feet from the toilet for the next day or two. For some reason, his mother blamed me for the whole escapade. Most unfair.

So, as you will see, this is nothing more than me idly dreaming about things from long ago which I didn't really understand at the time anyway. I am confident that there will be a whole specialist hobby built around the toys you could buy from these old comics, and there will be experts. You may actually have a degree in this very subject.

Did anyone ever have a Seebackroscope? Was it any good?

Product Mentions...

Very short post to express my appreciation of a couple of recent purchases, and to draw the attention of anyone (specifically UK residents) who does not know of them. No, neither of these has anything to do with dandelion removal - well, nothing obvious.

First off, a plug for a local Edinburgh business - Harburn Hobbies. Makers of fine model railway scenery, and definitely not cheap, but their cast-resin rivers are superb. I haven't actually used them on the battlefield yet, but I am impressed - they make my home-made rivers look wretched, not to mention insanitary. Only slight problem at present is that their bends are all about 75 degrees, and I'm trying to pluck up a plan and the necessary courage to alter them to a hex-friendly 60 degrees.

Secondly, I got some pre-cut bases from East Riding Miniatures (ERM), of Hull, who now do laser-cut 2mm MDF in any size you can think of. Excellent - they are quick, friendly, very helpful, and surprisingly cheap. My brand loyalty just shifted. Thanks, Tony.

Graf Leberknödel

As fine a figure of a man as ever sat a horse. Something of a celebrity joins my armies this morning. Here is the 22-year-old Hans-Joachim, Graf Leberknödel, general commanding the brigade of the Duchy of Stralsund-Rügen, my unofficial extension of the Confederation of the Rhine. His military experience is not vast - he served on the staff of Count Essen, the Swedish governor, during the Siege of Stralsund, where he was officially described as "very polite", and was subsequently made Colonel in Chief of the Franzburg Jaegers when the Stralsund-Rügen army was raised to provide the troops required by the new Duchy's membership of the Confederation. What he lacks in years is more than made up for by the fact that he is Duke Friedrich's son-in-law.

Here we see him posing for the official portrait, with his favourite horse, Millefiori, a gift from his mother and the doting taxpayers of Franzburg. It is rumoured that his military wardrobe cost slightly more than the Duchy's artillery train. All he needs now is for the remainder of his brigade to come back from the painter, and glory awaits. Or at least a proper parade.

Humble old S-range figure, scavenged during one of my final dalliances with eBay, and humbly painted in appropriate Old School style by moi. The brown border to the base identifies him as a brigade commander (division commanders have white, corps and army commanders have a border in the national colour) - it's a useful feature for spotting commanders on the battlefield, but the colour coding, and why I adopted this system, are lost in the depths of time. So I just keep it going - some military traditions, after all, are not to be questioned.

Speaking of questions, I had a very pleasant email from a gentleman in Poland, wanting to know a little more about the Duchy, and asking where I got the information - could I recommend any books? His English was excellent, flawless, but, though he had some doubts, he had not completely picked up on my hints that this particular piece of history is entirely a self-indulgence of my own, and - well - bullshit, really.

If you wish to read a little more of this little-known niche area of Napoleonic history, click on the Imagi-nation label on the right hand side of the screen - no, down a bit...

Hooptedoodle #28 - Bad Attitude

More nonsense - more staring out of the window. From time to time we get a bad-tempered blackbird in the garden. I guess it's seasonal, and, since it's been going on for a good many years, it can't be the same individual. It must be a blackbird thing.

We have one now. He takes it upon himself to chase and generally intimidate all other living objects in the garden. In case we thought it was our garden, he keeps us aware that it's actually his.

It's not even a productive strategy. I just watched him abandon a good-sized worm in mid tug, and - presumably because something had caught his eye 50 yards away - he flew, screeching, into the wood at the foot of the garden, ready for a scrap. While he was distracted, the thrush that he had previously chased helped itself to the worm.

You know, I think there's maybe a lesson in there somewhere, if I could only think of it.

Hooptedoodle #27 - the Zippo app

It must be me - I refuse to consider, even for an instant, that everyone else might be crazy. For some years I have been aware of moments during rock concerts when, for some reason, people are on their feet, waving lit cigarette lighters in the air. My instinct would be just to turn on the sprinklers, but apparently this bizarre ritual is supposed to bring an almost religious quality to the group experience.

I am forced to accept that this is just one of those bits of mass culture which not only passed me by while I wasn't paying attention, but which also make no sense now that I am. I mentioned the phenomenon to a teenage guitar student of mine this week, and he informed me that now you can download an app to your iPhone which displays a picture of a Zippo flame, so that people who attend rock concerts need not feel left out if they do not smoke. So that's all right then.

I am seldom speechless, but this brings me pretty close to that state. I can see that there are certain health & safety advantages, but the idea that someone should apply 21st Century technology to the solution of such a major problem is just mystifying. What are they going to do, then, so as not to exclude concert goers who are non-smokers and who, like me, refuse as a point of principle to own a bloody iPhone?

Personally, I would still turn on the sprinklers anyway.

The Portuguese Cavalry Project

This has been off and on for many years. A chance discovery, and the fact that I have more time to fiddle around these days, means it is probably back on again.

No-one makes Peninsular War Portuguese Cavalry in 20mm. If you are a 28mm or 15mm gamer then you are well provided for, but 20mm, nothing doing. I have approached this problem in a number of ways. For a while, I decided the easiest approach was to assume that by 1812 the Portuguese had been supplied with British Light Dragoon pattern (i.e. French style) bell-top shakos, and I should convert some kind of cavalry wearing single-breasted jackets accordingly. I even have some Scruby British Light Dragoons which I bought specially for the purpose, with the intention of grinding off the epaulettes and shako cords - enough for at least two regiments. Alas, they are among Scruby's most primitive offerings, and I cannot bring myself to invest effort or money into them. The sow's ear/silk purse department is simply not prepared to take this on, though I have warmed a bit to Scrubies of late.

So I fell back on the safe and well-tried option of doing nothing at all about it. Portuguese cavalry (with all due respect) was not usually effective in a battlefield role, so could be a lowish priority anyway, and - anyway - I have not always been entirely comfortable that I knew exactly how these guys were dressed. There was the strange sky-blue uniform on the cover of Otto Von Pivka's old Osprey book, which I believe is probably incorrect (though it appears to have influenced GMT's counter artwork for Commands & Colors: Napoleonics), and there was a wide range of interpretations of the appearance of the helmet. The headgear situation is confused by the fact that the Legion d'Alorna wore something very similar to the helmet of a French line lancer, with a high crest, while there are descriptions of cavalry units in the Portuguese army equipped with British equipment, including, apparently, Light Dragoon-style Tarleton helmets.

We are much better informed these days - the recent Chartrand books published by Osprey are a big improvement. Just to be difficult, for a moment, let's go back to 1810, and reproduce an illustration from William Bradford's very fine Sketches of the Country, Character and Costume of Portugal and Spain.

Bradford's book includes plates of relatively familiar Spanish and French subjects which demonstrate that he was a skilled observer, and recorded what he saw. The cavalryman has his side plume removed, and the wide front stripe of piping colour is unusual, but we get the idea - there is no cause to doubt its authenticity. While on the subject of ancient history, here is a photo I took in 1981, back in the pre-digital days when poor holiday snaps really were poor, at the little military museum in Morges, Switzerland. The exhibit was described as a Napoleonic Spanish coat, but the button inscription (P. JOAO VI PRINCIPE REGENTE) and the style of the jacket identify it as Portuguese, the facings (sky collars and cuffs, red lining) being those of the 11th cavalry. The wings are odd - maybe a later addition, or a trumpeter's ornament?

The recent stroke of good fortune was that I came across some 20mm Kennington (SHQ) Waterloo Dutch Cuirassiers, and I think they will make pretty good Portuguese horse. Dutch cuirassiers, luckily, did not actually bother with wearing cuirasses, which makes the single breasted jacket a good match for the Portuguese one - near enough for 20mm, anyway. Sadly, Kennington do not do matching command figures, but the troopers are available in a resting or a charging pose, and it should not be a life-threatening challenge to produce two officers and two trumpeters with dremel, razor saw and my box of spare parts. I believe the project is back on - I would not recommend that anyone holds their breath, but I have a good feeling that my hoped-for, two-regiment brigade will become a reality before long.

To finish on a complete irrelevance, I was very taken with another of Bradford's plates, which shows a Portuguese goatherd in an ingenious straw raincoat. How about thatched guerrillas, then?

I am still having problems with Blogger which mean it is a major hassle to sign on successfully, so I have been unable to comment on my usual blog haunts, and publishing is an uncertain process. I am making use of Firefox to get by, but am not happy with it as a general-purpose browser for a number of entirely personal reasons (that should get me some hate mail – there’s nothing like a perceived religious insult to get people worked up...)