GUNS & WOUNDED RETREATING ACROSS MUNDABAD RAVINE...

Taking a break from my seemingly-endless micro-surgery on 28mm patients, I happened across a few pics from the epic game we played on July 27th -- the 130th Anniversary of the Battle of Maiwand -- showing the surviving guns racing back across Mundabad Ravine, along with some wounded, as well as Brigadier General Burrows, the Brigade Commander (the mounted officer with a white pugaree around his helmet and pair of binoculars in one hand). Somehow these didn't make it up onto this blog with all the rest, but I think they deserve to be seen. So here they are...

(CLICK on an image to blow it up to full-size)

CONVERSIONS IV

Early this past Summer I bought the COLONEL ANTHONY WILLIAM DURNFORD pack from Empress Miniatures' Zulu War range. This includes a mounted and dismounted version of the somewhat legendary Royal Engineers officer, who lost his left arm in battle with the amaHlubi at Bushman's River Pass in 1873 and later was the most senior British officer present at the debacle at Isandlwana, where he was killed in action fighting the Zulus, along with just about everyone else.

I bought the above pack for the express purpose of using the sword held in the right hand of the dismounted Durnford figure for my converted Lieutenant Colonel James Galbraith of the 66th, down on one knee, with his sword in one hand and the Regimental Colour in the other, as he appears on the sculpture raised to his memory a few years after the battle, by his siblings. Durnford's sword arm served this purpose well and hopefully some day in the not too distant future I'll post the pics of that rather tricky conversion, but for now I am going to concentrate on how I simply and easily converted the mounted Durnford into GENERAL SAMUEL BROWNE, one of the senior officers commanding the British invasion(s) of Afghanistan at the start of the war in 1878. Browne had lost his left arm during the Indian Mutiny.

The Durnford figure is dressed in a patrol jacket. At least one of the three contemporary illustrations I found of Browne during the Afghan war show him wearing a patrol jacket, which is no surprise since it was a common uniform item for senior British officers at the time. So all that was needed to turn Durnford into Browne was a head wearing a FOREIGN SERVICE HELMET, preferably a bearded one, since Browne appears to have worn a full beard at the time...

1879 General Samuel Browne Entering Fort Ali Musjid

Luckily for me, in their Zulu War Accessories Range, Empress provides a bearded spare head wearing a helmet. The best part about that is it's always better to combine body parts from the same manufacturer and the same sculptor if at all possible.

I removed Durnford's slouch-hat-wearing head (shown above) with an X-Acto knife and used Krazy-Glue to replace it with the bearded spare helmet-wearing head, after sanding down the regimental crest on the front of the helmet.

I'm happy with how he turned out and believe General Sam Browne (credited by some with having created the belt that still bears his name) to be ready for action at Ali Musjid -- or at least ready for painting!

CONVERSIONS III

Three Afghan mounted generals, converted from 2 Foundry Crimean War mounted British Generals from their "Lord Raglan & staff" pack, shown here:

(CLICK on images to visit Foundry site pages where these packs are for sale --

as usual with Foundry, prepare for sticker shock!)

And a Turkish mounted General from their "British and Allied Officers" pack, shown here:

First up is the Turk, turned into a Turcoman/Herati commander...

I also covered up the old style pistol holsters on his horse...

Here's a pic of all 3 finished Afghan Generals -- the Turcoman from above, one wearing an Afghan regular army fur (or felt) hat and one wearing a turban...

Green model putty was used to scratch-build the turban...

Below is the source for the open hand I used on the Afghan General with the fur hat. I didn't have exactly what I needed on hand (no pun intended!), so I visited my FLGS -- The Last Grenadier, of Burbank, CA -- and picked through some loose figures they had for sale in the odds-&-ends box and found this one, which I thought at first was a wounded French Napoleonic infantryman but then realized was perhaps a Mexican-American War Mexican. Either way, he met my requirements perfectly...

The fur hat Afghan General with arm bent up and new hand attached...

Source figure for above conversion. I felt compelled to mess with his right arm with the pointing finger, since that's the exact sculpt on the Foundry mtd. Afghan Sirdar/Commander figure in brass helmet, that I already have...

British Crimean general with his hat trimmed down and covered up with model putty to become a turban -- I think his Crimean-era full beard works well...

Below is the Turcoman/Herati General, converted by using putty to turn his fez into a Turcoman fur hat...

CONVERSIONS II

I'm back with more non-Maiwand-specific conversions, 2 more, both connected to the prior conversion of General "Bobs" Roberts.

During the Second Afghan War, Roberts, whose entire military career up to that point was spent in the Indian Army, took pride in employing 2 Sikh, 2 Gurkha and 2 Pathan ORDERLIES. Having provided myself with a decent "Bobs Bahadur," I decided to make myself a couple of his Indian Army orderlies as well.

To do this I used a pair of Wargames Foundry figures -- an Afghan regular artillery crewman standing with his hand outstretched to hold a ramrod and a British officer wearing a poshteen, standing with binoculars in one hand -- and HEADS from 2 other Wargames Foundry figures -- a Sikh mountain gunner and a Gurkha rifleman.

I also used a pair of AMMUNITION POUCHES cut from that and another Gurkha rifleman, a SHEATHED KUKRI cut from the same, a larger POUCH scrounged from somewhere, and a pair of BAYONETS, used as FROGS HOLDING BAYONETS.

Last but not least, I used a pair of relatively short MUSKETS from the Empress Miniatures Zulu War Accessories range to serve as SNIDER-ENFIELDS.

Below is a drawing of Roberts' pair of Gurkha orderlies from 5th Gurkha Rifles...

....and a somewhat well-known drawing of Roberts' two Sikh orderlies, who I had always read hailed from 3rd Sikhs of the Punjab Frontier Force, with BLACK facings and ORGANGE turban fringe...

...but curiously enough, in a COLOR version of the same illustration below, which I first came across on the web in the past day or two, they appear to possibly hail from 4th Punjab Infantry, whom I believe wore GREEN fringe on their turbans and facings on their uniforms...

So now I have do try to do some more research and find out if this is in fact the original coloring and whether I should have my own Sikh orderly painted up with his turban fringe as hailing from 3rd or 4th Sikhs!

If anyone out there in the blog-visiting world has an answer or even a more educated guess than mine, please do me a favor and leave a COMMENT letting me know -- thanks in advance!

Finally, here's a pic showing General Roberts in his tent, with his 2 Gurkha, 2 Sikh, and 2 Pathan orderlies standing watch outside...

CONVERSIONS

This first set of conversions shown here post-date the big Maiwand Day game. At some point in the future I hope to track down the pics I took preparing the Afghan regular army commanders on foot, Lieutenant Olivey and Colonel Galbraith of the 66th Regiment and the Jacob's Rifles and Bombay Grenadier standard-bearers and post them here as well.

Meanwhile, here are some pics of my more recent conversions...

First up is General Sir Frederick "Bobs" Roberts. Here's the color plate I used as reference --

I've always been a fan of poshteen overcoats, especially for special officer figures. But the only ones I know of commercially available in 25mm-28mm are the officer and NCO of The Guides (Infantry) from Wargames Foundry. However, there is another very useful figure for this purpose, also produced by Foundry, as part of their Franco-Prussian War Prussian Staff Group, pictured below --

(CLICK on this Foundry image to visit FPW Prussian Staff Group on their site. WARNING: prepare for sticker-shock!)

The Prussian officer wearing a fur-lined & fur-trimmed coat, as seen here --

The body needs little or no work done. If you were not going to use it in conjunction with the accompanying courier figure and camp table, you might want to remove and replace the hands as I did when I converted another of this same figure into a version of the Afghan leader Ayub Khan on foot.

Though the above picture from the Foundry site doesn't show the figures arranged this way, I believe the Officer in the fur-lined coat is meant to have his left hand resting atop the table edge. But since my plan for General Roberts was to use him in conjunction with the courier and the table, I left both of his hands as they were. So all I needed to do was remove the head and replace it with...

One of the 8 SPARE BRITISH HEADS Available from EMPRESS MINIATURES (CLICK on this text to visit their eminently useful ZULU WAR ACCESSORIES page).

After ample consideration I went with the 2nd helmeted head from left, since its somewhat commanding mustache with muttonchops seemed to me a better match than the full bushy beard on the far left.

So...

(1) REMOVE HEAD

The important thing here is to NOT just use a pair of clippers, which unless you have a very special pair of straight-cut master-clippers will result in an angled stump not amenable to a tight fix job for the replacement head! Just cut straight through with an X-Acto knife.

(2) TRIM/FILE REPLACEMENT HEAD TO FIT WELL ATOP BARE SHOULDERS

Do this with your X-Acto and/or file, sandpaper, etc., etc. Check the fit between shoulders and neck often and when you think you've got it right --

(3) ATTACH WITH KRAZY GLUE

Or any other favorite brand of Super Glue!

Next I worked on the Prussian cavalryman in busby delivering a dispatch. This courier figure is also pretty easy to make use of, since British officers sometimes wore braided PATROL JACKETS not too dissimilar from his uniform jacket. Again, all I needed to do was replace his headgear. First I cut off just his busby and replaced it with one of the Empress Miniatures loose foreign service helmets...

This worked all right but left me feeling like the the courier's head seemed a bit too stout and stubby. So I tried again, removing the entire head and replacing it with another, younger and more common-looking spare British helmeted head from Empress --

I really liked how this second courier head conversion worked out. Here you can also see the staff table. Originally this had a Prussian pickelhaube helmet set atop it. I could have simply removed the helmet completely and left that spot bare or replaced it with another Empress spare British foreign service helmet but as I'd done that once before I decided to try and convert it into a silver regimental mess bowl instead.

Finally, after studying the General Roberts figure for a while longer I decided to add a bit more fur trim to one side of his collar, where the molded-on fur it had been cut away a bit too much during the decapitation process! This I did with some green model putty...

I think he turned out pretty well. Of course, he and his courier should look even better when they're painted!