Mea culpa: 66th had BRASS CHAIN chinstraps

It's been a busy Spring here at the Maiwand Day household, on work and family fronts, and hobby activity and related blogging have suffered from the resulting lack of time on my part.  But sooner or later this too shall pass, and with the successful completion of last month's school fair -- (I've been in charge of the games for many years), and the near simultaneous end of AYSO soccer tournament season, and the school year at all 3 of my children's schools, as well as delivery of my latest project at work -- at least for a moment, I'm back!

Unfortunately, the first thing I have to do is take responsability for a mistake.  It may sound melodramatic but I'm totally sincere when I say it was a grievous error.  I misread both written and visual sources and got the mistaken impression that the 66th Regiment at Maiwand wore plain leather chinstraps on their foreign service helmets, rather than brass scale chin-chains.  I WAS WRONG.  To anyone who may have put my mistaken advice into action on their figures... I beg your pardon and ask that you accept my sincere apologies.

And now, in order to put something positive into this post, here's a pic displaying a piece of DRIFTWOOD I picked up in Cambria, on the way back from Big Sur, where my family and I went for a brief but very fun Spring Break vacation this past April.

Cambria is a picturesque small town on the central coast of California, made famous to American wargamers a bit older than myself, thanks to being the last home of Jack Scruby, one of the early pioneers of the miniature wargaming hobby here in the USA.  I believe his store was called "The Soldier Shop" and it remains in business in Cambria as "The Soldier Gallery," at a different, somewhat smaller location than the one Jack Scruby owned.

We visited the original Cambria store location about a decade ago, after it had suffered some damage from a storm flood, and then reopened.  At the time I believe it was still owned and operated by Jack Scruby's widow, and perhaps one of his children as well.

This past April my family and I visited the new, smaller, shop, under new ownership at the new location, now specializing in 54mm painted figures.  We bought an Emily Dickinson figure and Alamo backdrop for our friend Matthew Rigdon, a Texan who is a direct descendant of Dickinson, which I believe is his mother's maiden name.  We also bought a couple of gifts for an old friend of my son's who is interested in military history and whose birthday was approaching.  The wood cost nothing, but will add a lot of value to a woodchip hill some day in the future -- hopefully the not too distant future.