Marine Eagle-bearer

Thanks to Ken, who sent me details of the flag carried by the Guard Marines, I have been able to complete my eagle-bearer for the unit. I used a reproduction casting of FN/4 Colour bearer (charging) which is notably flimsy compared to vintage castings however as I’ve now run out of these he’s had to step in.

The whole time that I was tackling the flag I was wishing Wellington Man was doing the job for me as I knew I wouldn’t be able to produce anything like the two amazing flags he painted for me last year. However, I persevered and in the end I’m pretty pleased with the result which is the best hand painted flag I’ve done so far for this project (and yes Ken, I did paint tiny anchors in each corner of the flag!).

I was fortunate this week to receive from Roy a few more engineers including a lovely casting of FN/177 Guard using pickaxe. As with the chap with the spade the pickaxe needed a repair as half the axe head was missing. This was rectified with a lot of cursing and fiddling around with Magic-Sculp but I intend to find room to squeeze him into the ranks.

Finally as you can see, I also repainted the waistcoats on my officers red as I was finding the white jumped out too much. Looking at uniform prints on the web it would appear that both colours were in use for the marines but I thought the red blended in better with the rest of the unit.