60th Royal American

"When Wellesley landed in Portugal in 1808 5/60th was the first unit ashore at Montego Bay and at the start it was brigaded with the 95th to form a brigade of Riflemen. Wellesley`s standing orders laid down that these two units should always form the vanguard when the army moved. The rifle battalions fought in this formation at the opening battles of Obidos and Rolicabut shortly afterwards the Light Brigade was re-formed and Wellesley ordered the 60th in the 3rd Division to provide a company to cover each of the other brigades of his force. It was in this role that they fought the remaining battles of the Peninsula campaign, sixteen of whose names appear on the 60th list of battle honours."

From: Origins, History and Campaigns of the 60th Rifles

So, this is my first unit of Napoleonic troops*. The 60th Royal American Rifles. The uniform is based on contemporary illustrations reproduced in various books, and was painted as they would have appeared after a period of time on campaign; i.e. somewhat worn.

The Dark green is German Camouflage Green in the Vallejo range; the unit was issued deep blue overalls, but often resorted to the local brown cloth when wear and tear made items unusable. Note all the little details, which I'm quite pleased with, the regimental no on the knapsacks, the silver buttons, water canteens and so on. Fiddly, but worth it.

The models are the excellent Perry plastics, though with only two poses and ten figures I felt it necessary to produce a command element. The left over bits from my American Civil war troops came in very handy here, providing the parts for a bugler and a cavalry sabre for the Lieutenant; now who would that be reminiscent of? Lt. Blunt here would certainly not know!

One fiddly aspect of adding the weapons was the switching of the rifles to the other hand, a job that required some careful trimming and a neat glue job. Definitely one for syringe based glue applicators. In doing this though, I've noticed the hand on the bugle is absolutely gargantuan. Some sort of mutation, not up to perry standards, tut tut ;-)

So what is up next? Well I hope to be able to do some little skirmish games to build up the inertia towards bigger battles in the future. To that end I've divided the rest of two boxes of Perry British into three units; two will be regular British line infantry units of 24 models. The rest of the figures? Here's a preview of what some of them will look like:

*Actually, back in about 1986 I painted a Battalion of Portuguese infantry, as the start of a Peninsula war army; and also at that time the finish. My painting skills as a spoddy teenager, who should have been going out drinking cider and chasing girls instead, were not upto the task; and they ended up being rather charitably bought by someone on a bring and buy stall.