Little Bighorn 1876 in 20mm (part 4) - The first three companies - A,B and C - of the 7th Cavalry (Italeri based)

 

The cavalry arrives in time to save the day! In fact not really as  the 7th cavalry, around 600+, had almost 50% casualties on the 26th june 1876 at Little Bighorn with five of its companies completely destroyed. 

I´ve been trying to portray the Custer´s 7th cavalry for ages but its not an easy task. When looking at PSR for the possibilities you become a bit disheartened as the available brands always shows these troopers with plenty of deficiencies: Strelets, has them accuratly portrayed but ugly modelled; Lucky Toys  even worse; Waterloo 1815 has nice figures but they are gigantic... 

With this panorama I resourced to what I had available in the stash, Atlantic/Nexus, Airfix and Revell/Italeri ACW with a few GIANT cowboys mixed in. For now I only have seven of the twelve companies necessary. Like this I can portray Custer´s Last Stand (five companies) or Benteen´s or Reno´s actions (three companies each) but not the entire regiment's actions for Little Bighorn. 

This first group of three companies is made almost intirely of bodies and horses from Italeri two boxes of ACW cavalry. The main job is to cut swords and scabbards (left at Fort Abraham Lincoln) and placing slouch hats instead of kepis (with little usage in that corner of North America). The 7th Cavalry was a well equipped unit but tended to relax in equipment and uniform as the campaigns progressed, with Custer itself as the main example. So in 25/26 June many troppers left aside their shell jackets and sack coats and were in grey and blue shirt order. For the regiment to look like a cohesive force I´m pretending them to be with shell jackets and/or blue shirts even if the shell jacket had little usage. The grey shirt was quite common but would break the unit´s colors and for that I only changed the color and type of hats, many of civilian origin.  In this picture the officer´s sword was cut off and he is now ordering its troopers forward. The slouch hats in this one are from ACW Italeri, Revell and Esci. 

Again the same but with an WW2 Australian bush hat for the officer and a Giant cowboy one to the cornet. 

Some troopers were also cut from the waist and turned to the front as too many Italeri figures are firing to the left side for easier cast. 

All troopers not firing their Spingfields trap-door carbines had a plastic one glued to the side of the horse. These were cut-down infantry rifles taken from whatever useless figures I could find. A good thing about Italeri is that many of them already had one modelled into the figure. 

Custer had the horses divided by colors among the companies which adds interest to this already famous unit. 

 

Still a bit to do ... 

Next: more Little Bighorn