The Adventures of General Reel (or Rile)

It takes me a while to build up to these things; for some time I’ve been aware of the Pen & Sword series of Napoleonic DVDs, but I was rather put off by some unenthusiastic customer reviews on Amazon. Eventually, I had a careful think about the matter (prompted by a reduction in price, I admit) – if we are sensible about such things, I am not looking for a piece of great art, and I have previously bought and enjoyed the Pegasus series of ECW films (notwithstanding their cheerful, home-movie quality and the guy in the dodgy fake whiskers playing Charles I), so I decided to order some up.

I bought all four of the Waterloo Collection volumes, plus the newer one about Salamanca. Thus far I have watched the first two of the Waterloo items, and I am very pleased with them – I found no trace of the sound problems which came in for such harsh criticism on Amazon from Napoleon Fan, of Hants, UK, and quickly got into the feel of the presentation. This is not the History Channel – thank God – we do not get constant reminders (in case we have forgotten in the previous 10 seconds) that “he is now in great danger – if a bullet hits him in the head he could be deaded” – and the pace and style are fine. I warmed to the affable chaps (all professional battlefield guides, apparently) who walked us around the various locations and described the action sensibly and in a manner calculated to enable us to get a good feel for how the battle developed. I felt, whilst watching, that a film presentation can have definite advantages over actually being there; that is not to say that I would not like to go there, but watching the film gives a valuable overview and covers more ground more quickly than a walking tour could, for example. All right – go there, but watch the films first.

All very positive then – provided you approach this in the right spirit, I would recommend these films wholeheartedly (this is based only on having watched the first two, of course) – they are intelligently done and very informative – well, I found them so. A few minor themes occurred to me on the way:

(1) the film makers have gone to a lot of trouble to correct the traditional British downplaying of the role played by the Dutch-Belgian and German troops in the Waterloo campaign, which is welcome.

(2) the many inserted clips of re-enactors add colour and a lot of authenticity, but most of the participants, strangely, seem unable to stand up straight, never mind march convincingly. A real sergeant would have given them all a right shouting-at. I’m sure the buttons and lace are correct, but it would be nice if they looked like soldiers, too, rather than like self-conscious office workers dressed up. That may have been a very elderly thing to say – I’ll think about that.

(3) the presenters’ grasp of French pronunciation is so universally, well, crap, that at first I almost thought it must be a joke. I have no wish to appear precious about this, but if I were making a film about a battle involving a lot of people and places with French names (to show on the telly, like), I think I would have taken a little more trouble to get the hang of this – especially if I claimed to make my living at battlefield tours, and thus, presumably, to travel in Belgium a lot. It is not even up to the WW1 soldiers’ “san-fairy-anne” standard – at least that was a phonetic approximation. No, this is a literal, schoolboy reading of French words, mispronounced with the most English of English accents, avoiding all traces of any (embarrassing?) foreign-sounding inflection. Did they coach them specially? Did they agree this strange assault on the French tongue, as a matter of policy, before they started? Interesting. Poor old General Reille is referred to by a number of versions of his name – none even slightly correct. In the general flow of things, General Drouet d’Erlon morphs into General Drouot, who I believe was a different bloke altogether. Not to worry – it grates a bit, but I got used to it.

Not put off by any of this, I look forward to watching Part 3 tonight. Very good on a dark evening, with a glass of something.

Reading further, I see that the same team have produced a further two titles on the Peninsular War, one being a history of the 95^th Rifles and one entitled The Keys to Spain, which I believe is a discussion of fortresses and sieges. I am intrigued to see that these are available only in the American NTSC format (that’s “Never the Same Color”, I am told) and are Region 1, so will not play on European TV equipment. Somewhere in my library of software I’m sure I have something which will convert video files into other formats, so I must look further in to this. Maybe they are available in a more UK-friendly format, and I just missed them.

Anyway, if you’re prepared to approach them in the right spirit, these DVDs would make a nice little stocking filler. God – is it that time already?

Background Artillery Project - Further Progress

Five more French limbers completed and in the boxes - 3 foot artillery and 2 horse. I've kept the size and detail of the photo down, and left the flash switched off, to avoid another roasting from my new chums at TMP.

For the train spotters, the horses and drivers are from Art Miniaturen and Scruby, the limbers from Hinchliffe 20mm, Minifigs S-Range and early Lamming, and the guns - the ones I can identify - are from NapoleoN, Hinchliffe 20 and Scruby.

This expansion necessitated a reorganisation of the artillery box files - I now have a new box labelled MULES & CARTS. Guess what's in that one?

Hooptedoodle #153 - The Bringer of Confusion

Though you might think the photo shows some more of my extended family, this is a representation of Nuhlimkilaka, the Bringer of Confusion - an ancient Navajo forest spirit. The photo dates from 1914, apparently.

On a day when I learned, to my alarm, that British general practitioners have been receiving incentive payments for diagnosing cases of dementia, it is no comfort to find that old Nuhlimkilaka has been busy around here again.

I managed to knock a couple of little boxes off the top shelf of my study cupboard, and one of them is the tin which contains my Commands & Colors: Napoleonics battle dice and (cardboard) Victory Banner counters. Naturally it burst open on the way down, so I had to heave the entire contents of the lower section of the cupboard out, to find all the bits. I did a quick count to make sure I'd found everything; I had all 10 of the battle dice, but I don't know how many VB counters there should be without checking the rulebook. I counted them and found there were 2 more French banners than there were British ones, so had a good search around the corners of the cupboard - no more found. Counted them again, to check - this time there were 2 more British than French. Hmmm. I was counting them a third time when I remembered that they are printed on both sides, one side British, one side French. 

I swear I heard faint laughter coming from the woods at the rear of the house.

Hooptedoodle #152 - Spooks & Villains

Casual post, carefully timed to be not-quite-seasonal, as behoves one who is not-quite-on-the-ball.

Hallowe'en is an odd one for me - I have a vague understanding that the traditional festival is the night when the souls of the departed get up for a bit of a boogie around the churchyard, but it's all become very confused with the American Trick or Treat thing, not to mention Guy Fawkes. The gift and greeting card and party-gear industries have climbed all over this, naturally, and left us with a strange, pseudo-gothic hotch-potch whose main theme seems to be extraction of money with menaces by kids dressed in ready-made outfits, the royalties for which will go straight into the coffers of a predictable, short list of American film and TV companies. Of course, the kids still enjoy it, however the tradition may have slipped, which is the most important point.

So that's all right then. In fact, things have moved on a bit here - I have been known to do the Uncle Scrooge bit, turning off the lights at the front of the house on Hallowe'en, in the hope that the local kids would pass by (believing I was out, or even dead), but the local kids have mostly grown up now, and would not choose to waste their time coming here anyway if they hadn't. The ancient Scottish tradition of "Guising" - when children dress up as dead people and ask for money (an activity which is now mostly carried out by the government, come to think of it) - has largely been subsumed by Trick or Treat and fund-raising for fireworks. A tradition of any sort may be better than no tradition at all, I suppose, but I am waiting suspiciously for an official, copyrighted, Christmas cartoon image of the Infant Jesus to emerge from the Disney empire quite soon.

On the wildlife front, the unusual summer has brought us unprecedented numbers and sizes of butterflies, an astonishing display of toadstools on the front lawn, and all sorts of wonders. One recent discovery has been the identity of the mystery chewer of our plum tree - here he is, trespassing...

Villains on a different scale altogether are still all around us. A couple of days ago my phone rang, and a gentleman introduced himself, representing a market research organisation who, it seems, have been hired by the Royal Bank of Scotland to get feedback from their customers. If I had 15 to 20 minutes, he said, he would be delighted to discuss the matter with me.

I try not to be impolite on such occasions, since the poor man is only doing his job, but it occurred to me that

(1) the market research organisation may be a wholly-owned subsidiary of RBS.

(2) I did not have 15 minutes to talk to him.

(3) anything genuine which I had to suggest to him about RBS and their operation would not fit with his list of questions or interesting themes - and since this reduces the whole exercise to the sort of self-promotion and lie engineering which we might expect, I became a little terse.

I told the fellow that I did not really have time to speak with him, but would he please take careful note that it is some years since I had any dealings with RBS, and I do not wish to be contacted by them again until I say so. In short, I said (without swearing - I must get some credit for that), I am not a customer, and this is because all my family's business was taken away from RBS and placed elsewhere, entirely because they demonstrated to us repeatedly that they were the most stupid, error-prone, unhelpful, self-obsessed organisation we have ever had dealings with. Are you writing this down?

"Well, sir," he replied, "you are, of course, entitled to your opinion."

And there the conversation ended, though I am sure they will be back. Just a flaming minute - I am entitled to my opinion? Is that not, in fact, exactly the pretence under which they were attempting to get me to play along with their customer feedback in the first place? Do I actually require RBS, or their hired help, to tell me that I have such an entitlement? Does their conceit have no limits?

Next year, dress your kids up as RBS officials on October 31st, and send them out to sell your neighbours loan repayment insurance, or house insurance, or savings accounts which yield very little apart from inconvenience and regular irritation. That should scare the bejesus out of them.

Background Artillery Project - Surprise Landmark

Yesterday I finished off another British artillery caisson, and was very surprised to find that I had one more caisson than I thought, so I have now reached the target of one limber plus one caisson per battery rather earlier than I expected. Here's the contents of the Anglo-Portuguese artillery boxes, as of this morning. The target organisation of my battlefield artillery is: each battery has 2 model guns, 1 limber (with gun attached permanently - no more dropping spare guns on the floor for me), 1 caisson; horse artillery limbers have 4 horses, all other vehicles have 2 horses - it cuts down on the space requirement (and the horse painting!) and you get used to the look of the thing.

Allied Box 1 - 6 British artillery batteries (3 horse, 3 foot), plus a Portuguese howitzer
battery on an odd-sized base (can't remember why), plus the recently-added British
howitzer battery, which is in here only because I ran out of room in Box 3

Box 2 - a limber and a caisson for each of the British batteries (note 4-horse teams
 for RHA limbers), plus a limber (with mules) for the Portuguese howitzers, plus the new
(weird) spare wheel wagon

Box 3 - mostly siege stuff - 3 heavy (18/24pdr) siege batteries, 2 of the iron M1800 10" howitzers,
2 of mortars, 1 rocket battery, plus a couple of those strange S-Range shot-carts

Siege equipment has no limber provision (sieges are chaotic enough without a car park), and all (most?) of the siege pieces have mud-brown bases, with slightly modified sizes and crew sizes.

This is indeed a small and fleeting landmark - the Allies are now a bit ahead in the Infrastructure Race - the French and their Confederation chums have some 8 or 9 half-painted limbers, so there's lots to do. Idle hands are, as we know, the Devil's wassname. However, this has been a quick squint inside some of my boxes; if I am spared, I'll show inside the French boxes when the time is right.

I realise that organised is not the same as good, but it helps a lot. Note to myself: ECW campaign notwithstanding, I really must do some more Peninsular sieges...

In passing, I was reading my Carl Franklin book on artillery last night, and started working out the column length of a RHA troop on the march, with all the guns, ammo carts, service equipment, supply vehicles and animals plus mounted gunners - I didn't finish the calculation, but the numbers were getting very big. If an RHA troop marched past your house, it would be passing by for quite a while.

Background Artillery Project - Spare Wheel Cart

Some more progress in the BAP - no works of art here, certainly, but a pleasing further little shift from the lead mountain into the "infrastructure" box-files.

First item is a little unusual - I'm not sure how such a thing could feature in a game, but it's interesting anyway; no, it's not an early support vehicle for the Tour de France, it is a Napoleonic British Artillery Spare Wheel Cart. Odd contraption comprises a standard gun carriage, adorned with spare wheels and towed behind a standard limber - enough bits and pieces to repair just about anything that might break in an artillery battery on campaign. A British example of the benefits of standardisation in the field. Vehicles here are Hinchliffe 20mm, and the draught team and driver are recognisably Lamming. If you are dubious about the authenticity of such a device, you'll find all the details in Carl Franklin's fine book on the subject.


I also finished off another ammo caisson for the French horse artillery - Lamming caisson with Hinton Hunt motive power this time.

All in the box-files and out of sight now - as I have observed before, sometimes this seems a peculiar end-state for a hobby collection, but no matter.

Background Artillery Project - 5.5" Howitzers

The guns aren't really as blue as the flash makes them appear

I seem to be back to painting my own troops again, so I've been picking away at a few odd things in the queue. Here's a battery of British 5.5" howitzers, ready for the Peninsular siege train. Guns are Hinchliffe 20mm, and the crew are Kennington, who are smart and fit for purpose, and a better match with their NapoleoN colleagues than I expected.

The mud-brown bases for siege units seem a bit drab, but it seemed a good idea once, and it's become a siege-train standard, as has the 4-gunners-per-gun-plus-an-officer-for-the-battery and the reduced-footprint 45mm x 90mm bases. Tradition is everything...

Next up for the Background Artillery Project (BAP) are a British spare wheel cart and yet another British caisson, both with Lamming horses and drivers. Don't hold your breath.