43rd Foot

The 43rd was originally raised in 1741 as Fowke's Regiment of Foot and received the designation as 43rd Foot in 1751.  The regiment was sent to America in 1757 and fought in the centre of Wolfe's line at Quebec.  After the capture of Montreal, the regiment participated in attacks on Spanish possessions in the Caribbean before returning to England in 1764.  The regiment returned to American in 1774.  It saw action at Concord and Bunker Hill and then Long Island and White Plains in 1776.  From August 1778 to October 1779 the regiment was garrisoned in Rhode Island.  It was part of the army that surrendered at Yorktown.   In 1803, and by then with the country name of Monmouthshire, the regiment became one of the first British units to be trained up as light infantry.  It participated in the Peninsular War but missed Waterloo as in 1814 it returned to America to fight in the War of 1812.  In 1881 the battalion joined with the 52nd Foot to form what became the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.  That regiment in turn became the Royal Green Jackets and in 2005 was amalgamated with other regiments to form one of the British Army's super-regiments, The Rifles.      

This post is a prelude to a much longer post featuring "reinforcement" figures that I have been painting this year.  I painted the 43rd in 2003 as one of my first British line regiments.  I began my AWI collection with the Bunker Hill orbat, in which this battalion features with a strength of 18 figures.  That's why these are Foundry "full dress" figures.  The 43rd is also in the Long Island scenario (16 figures) and Newport (24).  As I had originally painted the 18 figures required for Bunker Hill, I needed to add a further 6 for the Newport scenario, which was only published a couple of years ago.  So I painted those extra figures and realised I had never posted about this unit at all.  So before I post in depth about the "reinforcement" work I've being doing since March, here is the 43rd Foot.  My style of painting hasn't changed all that much in the intervening 13 years - the main difference is the way in which I do faces, which is now more subtle than it was in 2003-5, when I used a GW flesh wash that is more noticeable than the Winsor & Newton inks I use now.  My scarlet palette is a bit different - the earlier figures have GW "blood angles red" as their final highlight, a paint which doesn't exist anymore.  The flaps on the backpacks have a simple white circle with "43" in black writing.  If I'd started these from scratch, I'd probably have tried something a bit more creative.  Also, the ground work on the earlier figures is less fussy/busy (which you may well think is better).  The ERM bases I use have also changed over the years - they now have a black edge which I paint brown - they didn't use to, so the older figures are easier to spot due to their lighter base edges.

24 figures.  Painted 2003 and March 2016.  Flags by GMB.