"Perry British shoulder straps, metal no, plastic yes!" Topic

During the course of painting my 28mm AWI armies, I noticed something interesting about the Perry AWI range.

The red cloth shoulder strap that is seen quite often fastened over the cartridge pouch shoulder belt, which I assume must button and unbutton so that the cartridge pouch can be removed from the body when the soldier is off duty.

In numerous reenacting images, the shoulder strap is indeed shown buttoned with the cartridge shoulder belt passing through it (i.e. under it).

But I also found a fair number where the cartridge pouch belt is slung over it. This to me indicates what in my mind would have been a fairly common practice, saving a bit of time and practicality to not bother with passing the cartridge pouch belt under the strap.

Which led me to a curious thing in the Perry AWI range. The plastic box sets, both British and Continental, clearly have all the models sculpted with the cartridge pouch belt passing under a cloth shoulder strap.

HOWEVER – Their ENTIRE metal range, unless I missed one pack here or there, have the cartridge pouch shoulder belts over the shoulder strap. Like all of them. All 9 pages of products. There is most definitely no shoulder strap sculpted over the belt on any of the metal models in the packs that I bought. Not for any of the packs. Whether it be the 1768 Warrant packs, or the cut down campaign coats, or the 'roundabouts', none of them have the soldiers with the shoulder straps being utilized for the cartridge pouch shoulder belt.

So the Perry brothers must have intentionally done this to reflect that either many British coats did NOT have the shoulder strap, OR that the coats generally DID have the shoulder strap, but on campaign British soldiers largely ignored it and simply slung the cartridge pouch belt over the shoulder strap and didn't bother with it.

I wonder how much the regulations and stickler for detail would have affected this from command to command and regiment to regiment.

I would think that when on campaign, certain "regulations" were ignored.

Jim

I note that some of the reenactors in the photos don't even have shoulder straps; they seem to be the same ones who wear their hats square on their heads rather than turned to side to provide clearance for their muskets. Are they from different groups?

I would note that the AWI British Infantry from the North Star Muskets & Tomahawks range do not have shoulder straps, but their FIW British Infantry do have shoulder straps.