HELMET Soldiers

Hello and warm greetings from a dark, damp, and dank South of England. Not long till Christmas now, and I hope you have been good all year and get the presents you want, and therefore obviously deserve. I remember fondly the Christmases when boxes of Herald, Timpo and Crescent were waiting for me under the tree, there was always something about seeing them proud in their unchipped paint schemes that made them look, feel and dare I say it, smell, so special. Enough ramblings!

The first couple of photos today show the last of my Zulu War cavalry, two members of the Natal Native Horse and two mounted Boers. I was determined to include as many different contingents for the Imperial forces as possible, and will go back to them later and increase their numbers, well that's the plan anyway!. The mounted Boers are a Replicants Confederate with shotgun, pretty much unconverted, and a CTS Mexican cavalryman with a Replicants head and a couple of extra bits from greenstuff. I've used greenstuff to make the red scarves around their hats. The Natal Native Horse are an Italeri Confederate and a Cherilea remould with a BMC head, both on Hat horses. (If you re-read the last sentence only people like us would understand the strange collection of words that form it's contents.) The dismounted chaps are both from BMC Spanish American War figures with very little conversion. I know that the painted cord jackets and breeches are out of scale but I tried to "represent" the style of the cloth and not just produce a rather bland brown effect.

I guess the American War of Independence/ Revolution collection that I have accumulated is the second largest, I really like the British uniforms. As for infantry figures we are reasonably well served, with the Accurate sets for hat companies and the A Call to Arms grenadiers, however I must admit to being disappointed by their fairly recent issue of British light infantry. I do find the work of some of the American reenactment groups very useful and the recreated Royal Welch Fusiliers website is inspirational. We took these pictures about an hour ago and the green lake they are standing on is the roof of my car, still wet after a recent shower. I've included the colour party, and featured the regimental goat, from Irregular, and half the light company, that is 10 men plus a sergeant.

The conversions are pretty standard stuff for the colours and goat section, all are from A Call to Arms and Accurate. The ensigns are mounted on metal washers to counter balance the weight of the paper flags which once painted an glued are pretty heavy, for plastic figures at least. The light company platoon come from a number of sources and I admit are a bit of a pain to produce individually. I cut don jackets and add wings from greenstuff, but the real problem is the heads which are have a false from, turban, and crest all from putty, finally the white plume is more greenstuff built up around a pin driven into the left side of the poor man's head. However, the result when seen en mass is OK. At full strength the 2regiment should number 100 figures, so I've still got another 40 to paint for the 23rd, but I have one complete British regiment, the 10th - we all have to start somewhere.

That's enough for now. More later, feedback welcome.

Cheers and keep dry.

Eric