Project Quebec: 43rd 'Kennedy's' Regiment of Foot

In spite of earlier claims and in spite of myself, I clearly managed to crack out another regiment of infantry for Wolfe's army at the Plains of Abraham - the 43rd foot. Whilst looking through the details required of my last four regiments for the British, I stared wild-eyed at the requirements for this battalion and I think I can safely say they have the most complex lace patterns of my army.

At 28 figures, whilst not exactly a small unit they are nevertheless smaller than the units I have lately painted for this project but the complexity of their uniform has off-set this advantage somewhat. I am glad they are finished.

As you will observe, they have a fish-bone lace extension similar to Otway's 35th regiment up the forearms and at the back of the jacket but with several cross sections one of which falls below the coat turn-backs. On top of this, the profusion of white lace is shot through with dark blue stars (dark blue dots at this scale). Madness.

With facings of white this is another really different looking red-coat unit in the army which makes for a really colourful array to my eye. The lace is supposed to be piped red also but that's beyond me at this scale. These little blighters sent me stiff-necked and crossed eyed enough as it was. I did manage the red stripe on the cuffs.

I managed to scrounge through what I thought were left-overs in my SYW led box and to my surprise and delight I had sufficient figures to make this unit. They are a mixture of mainly Crusader Miniatures with a couple of big grenadiers (appropriate) from Blue Moon with a Cran Tara or two sergeant and officers.

I replaced a spontoon with a sword to furnish me with my battalion commander on the day - Major Robert Elliot. Another simple enough conversion changed a Redoubt Grenadier Ensign into a Sergeant. The drummer is a Redoubt figure also. I would have preferred the unit in a fighting pose but only had sufficient numbers in marching order.

The 43rd had a hard and active time of in in North America suffering casualties and two-way atrocities whilst undertaking duties at two forts in what was after all a grubby guerilla war prior to the Quebec campaign under Wolfe. This battalion was hard-bitten by the time they took the field.

Half way through painting I realised that the grenadier caps are often (not always) depicted with a pom-pom rather than the usual and cast tassel.

So, I cut, filed, drilled and inserted said pom-poms I made using copper fuse wire and Green-Stuff.

I've been unable to base these as I've run out of my cut MDF bases for this particular army. They won't get sorted out until I get back to Aussie.