"Gymnastics?" Topic

I hope you don't feel I'm being flippant but ever since I began to grow interested in the SYW, this picture has bemused me:

What is the officer leading doing? Training for the 100m Prussian Olympic sprint squad?

Perhaps about to do a cartwheel?

He just looks so incongruous in terms of the decorum you expect in C18th manoeuvre.

About to be skewered by his own bayonet charge…?
Sprinting away from the hand grenade his friend has casually dropped..?
"Last one to the pub buys the round!"

I always get a good laugh out of seeing soldiers with their foreheads bandaged. If they were hurt bad enough to require a trip to some non-existent medical station in the rear areas, then they wouldn't find their way back to the regiment in time to participate further in the battle. (and their NCO would cuff them across the backside for not wearing a hat.

DAF – Up to a couple of years ago, I couldn't have agreed more, especially with regard to a period where the lumps of metal whizzing about the battlefield were of a size and/or shape that would almost inevitably take a large chunk out of your skull (and most likely its contents, too) regardless of the angle or speed at which it struck you. Then I read a letter home from an officer of one of the Minden regiments, re-assuring his parents he had escaped the battle unscathed, except for a few bruises caused by body parts from a nearby file of men who had all been killed by a cannonball. I don't think one should underestimate the less fatal, but probably no less painful, damage potential of a piece of shattered bone. This could easily cause the kind of injury that a bandsman, or one of the regimental surgeon's "mates" could sort out with a neatly-folded handkerchief (which were much larger than today's "pocket" versions).

That said, "man with bandaged head" does seem to be an obligatory module in "toy soldier sculpting 101" as it is a staple of almost every range of figures – certainly in 28mm and larger – that has either a casualty figure, or more than one variant of the marching pose.

Ochoin – As an Aussie, I would have expected you to spot a left-arm spinner explaining how to bowl a "Chinaman".

[Is it just me, or is there something wrong with the overall number and the number of variants of the battalion's colours, and also the position of the "white" colour?]

No, it's not just you. The color position is pure Fantasy.

Fabrizio, Kronoskaf contributor and Duffy's keen reader.

Duffy rules!

Please note

The officer has neither of his feet on the ground. The artist clearly shows this by the shadow of the foot and leg. There's clearly about 6" between heel and turf. This position can only be achieved if the officer jumped up off the ground and threw back his left leg.

Of course, he could just be "running like a girl" in which case his men would have given an enormous amount of teasing.

Otto

All jumping aside, it would seem that the speed of movement depicted has indeed very little to do with 18th C. evolutions, and everything with the late 19th C. exercises the artist would have been able to observe…

Overall a very neat picture regardless of what the text books might say. I'd be proud to have this picture on my wall.

Anent "spot a left-arm spinner explaining how to bowl a "Chinaman". – has any one else been struck by the LOTR Uruk Hai Berzerkers? They are ALL batsmen… and with a damned sight better stance than many countries have produced for years….

It's the Duke of Plaza-Toro leading the retreat

He's no longer in contact with the ground because he's being carried into the fray suspended on the bayonets of those two privates directly behind him, who are determined that this is one time Colonel 'Fear not – I'm right behind you, mein kinder' Ruckwarts will lead from the front.