I have over time acquired a few of these. These are Memorial Armies that have a personal connection and which once belonged to others but came into my possession when the owners lost interest or had a tragedy, and usually died. I have four unit of Prussian Cuirassiers from a friend who got out of War games. But these are one-of-a-kind figures personally sculpted by him and he was a fanatic on detail and they are perfect Prussian Cuirassiers. Quite Striking and handsome.
But there is a whole army that I had inherited from another gamer which has been knocking around in my storage area for over forty years and I am finally re-conditioning and getting it back into action.
Brother Henry Otto might be known to one or two of you out there, I know Dan Beattie knew him well. He was an Irish Christian Brother who valiantly pioneered war games among the young students of several Catholic High Schools, and a social studies teacher to boot. He was a great guy, a marvelous sport, and an unselfish devotee of the game. He had acquired a very large collection over time of American Revolutionary War, and Colonial Wars of the 19th century. Almost all of these were 30mm S.A.E's. These he gamed with every week with the students of the institutions in which he taught and was unselfish and generous in all ways.
He was also a truly kind heart and a very funny guy. Brother Otto was a classic gamers and believed that realism should be foremost in the gamers mind until it interfered with the fun of the game, at which time it was tossed out the window. He was a great believer in the make-do principle of gaming, and back in the 1960's that's what you did. So you could be prepared to see S.A.E. Confederates showing up as either Boers or American Revolutionary Militiamen, and Swedish Guns from the Great Northern War as the artillerymen on both sides of the American Revolution, and as well, cavalry from here there, and everywhere.
It all worked, and it was all great fun, and we used Featherstone and though it the best thing since sliced bread. Occasionally people would give him figures, and along with the S.A.E's there were some command post and Scruby's stuck in here and there as irregularls, light infnatyr, or militia.
Unfortunately, tragedy struck one day and the closet in the classroom that the minis were stored in was broken into and large parts of his collection stolen. It was a great tragedy, and he lost heart in the whole thing. We never found out who did it, but it hurt him tremendously. I at the time was a Napoleonic Gamer and had lots of figures of my own, and Brother Otto gave me the remnants and dregs (which was still fairly considerable in number, and I "held" them for him against the time his spirit would heal and he would renew interest.
That never came. A succession of medical problems including a very bad back which just got worse, and other concerns soon overtook him and he died about a decade later. He dropped contact with all of us and repeated inquiries to get in touch with him went largely unanswered.
I kept Brother Otto's figures in boxes "against the day" and about a decade after his death I decided I should do something with them. So I hauled out the collection and examined the things that were left. It was sad. The thieves had left it truly a truncated collection.
Now SAE's were kind of primitive and lumpy way back when and were your apocraphyl "toy soldiers" of the generic age. They are kind of lumpy and bumpy and nothing like the magnificent Surens and Staddens I used for my Seven Years War Armies, but as I started to work with them I could see them slowly begin taking on that old martial air, and get a snappyness that one does not expect to see on them.
I used them to create a large part of the Infantry and artillery of my mythical country "The Grand Duchy of the Grand Duke of Gorgonzola" and no painting was required (indeed that's the point of it being Imaginary.). There were enough broken miniatures of standard bearers so new staffs of hard wire put into their hands and new flags put on and for the vast majority of them, they still wear the original paint that came from the factory.
Only a few fragments of regiments that the thieves left had to be repainted or touched up to make a "converged" regiment, and I am pleased to say that they now look as good as they did those long years ago in the 60's.
It does make me sad to remember the magnificent array they presented with the British Army to face them (most of the latter made off by the thieves.) Brother Otto was also a man of infinite good humor and I think he would have approved of the new cover story.
The last remaining figures are the odd-balls of miltia, a few light infantry, and yes-- the handful of Boerish-Confederates, and some Morgan Riflemen all of them Scruby's. I'm working on these now, forming them up into a light infantry unit. The guys with the small caps can be the elite companies, the guys in tricornes or round hats can't. But as I'm putting on the paint I noticed that according to the standards of today these figures are incredibly ugly. However, once you get a little paint on them, they start to look good.
The next rehab project will be his Colonial collection which will be a somewhat more difficult task as there are only a hundred or so of them left. I might just mount them in a display case, but somehow that does not seem right. Brother Otto loved to play with them, and somehow that is probably what I will use them for.
Wargames is not always a happy story and just fun and games, but people live on a bit in their armies and with their friends.
