Thoughts on Flags, ACW, Boer figures,Viking Swords and The War Game.

As you can see another post where I can't rein it in and go in depth into one topic. Perhaps I should spring for some ADD testing. My dad became convinced he has ADD, but he thought his doctor thought that he just wanted to be proscribed some kind of speed. But I digress.

Flags and or Banners

There are some great ones available on the internet, check out Ray's for example, but for some reason I have always balked because I'm not sure what size to make them. Well today I did something about it and printed out some flags from Warflag. In the printing section he gives some guides on how to print them out and scale them using various software, none of which I have of course. But what I came away with was we could take it that if 30mm is 1:60 and 25mm is 1:72 we can see that both figures give a size difference of 83%, or rather 1:72 is 83% the size of 1:60. (Hopefully this last sentence makes sense. I had a ten year old trying to get my attention the entire time I was try to write it.)

Original size and scaled with some measurement notes

Just wedged on to show scale, sorry for the anachronism.

 The space for wrapping around the banner pole is 3mm, which is fine for piano wire but I want to use tubing to slide over piano  wire so it needs to be more like 6 - 7mm. I think that will still work with the overall dimensions being 65mm across, both faces, and 24.5 mm high.

I was also bummed to see that the flags are gone from Dansk Figurspilsforening there were some good ones on there.

ACW

There's a new E-zine in town called ACW Gamer, I heard about it from Chris Stoesen here. I thought I'd give it a try. Looks good so far. I had already downloaded Pohick Church, now I have double incentive to get it ready and play it out using THW's Rifles and Rebels rule set. I'll be in touch Chris. I may also submit my two ancestors to the magazine. We'll see.

Boer figures

You ever have a set of figures you've been thinking about buying only to find that they are as rare as hens teeth now that you're ready to buy them? It was Sam in Cow-Boys Part 1 and Part 2 that showed how nice these figures work for the old west as well as colonial. But of course no one has them except this guy.

£5,000!? Not bloody likely!

Umm, you could have just said they were out of stock. FML.

Viking Swords

Watched the Nova special "Secrets of the Viking Sword" on Netflix the other day and it was pretty interesting. The PBS link is here if you want to buy it and I noticed that a few have put the whole thing up on youtube if you search for it. Aside from the guy who actually made one using what they thought were medieval techniques there were two things that interested me. First was that there were knock offs of these swords being produced and then there was an interesting demo by a swordsman who cut clean through a tatami mat, first with a samurai sword and then with an un-sharpened viking sword. Interesting. I did notice that he was cutting just the rolled up  mat, there was no dowel or bamboo in the center as there sometimes is. I wonder if that would have made a difference, I suspect so.

The War Game

I came across this game while looking at a site that carries Pegasus models and figures here in the US. You can see the game at Board Game Geek here. I think that someone said it was Axis & Allies on steroids. Has the distinction of being in the Guinness Book of World records as the largest board game ever.

Meet Francis Finnegan

Francis Finnegan was born February 28^th 1837 in Ballintemple, Co. Armagh, Ireland. He was the 9^th of 10 born to Peter Finnegan and Margaret Vallely.

My grandfather always told the story that Peter Finnegan died falling off his donkey, my grandfather liked to say ass, while coming home from the pub. Subsequently the family emigrated to North America. My Aunt always said that they arrived in Canada and then illegally entered the U.S. to settle in Hyde Park, Vermont.

Francis Finnegan c. 1860

He mustered in to Union service on June 20^th 1861 with the 2^nd Vermont Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Company D. This regiment was part of the 1^st Vermont Brigade (Old Brigade) and took part in most of the major battles of the Eastern theater as part of the Army of the Potomac,VI Corp, 2^nd Division, 2^nd Brigade.

The following is the list of battles from the regiment's wikipedia page

ENGAGEMENTS
Battle of First Bull Run	July 21, 1861
Battle of Warwick Creek	April 6, 1862
Battle at Lee's Mills	April 16, 1862
Battle of Garnett's & Golding's Farm	June 26, 1862
Battle of Savage's Station	June 29, 1862
Battle of White Oak Swamp	June 30, 1862
Battle of Crampton's Gap	September 14, 1862
Battle of Antietam	September 17, 1862
Battle of Fredericksburg	December 13, 1862
Battle of Marye's Heights	May 3, 1863
Battle of Salem Church	May 4, 1863
Battle of Fredericksburg	June 5, 1863
Battle of Gettysburg	July 3, 1863
Battle of Funkstown	July 10, 1863
Battle of Rappahannock Station	November 7, 1863
Battle of the Wilderness	May 5–10, 1864
Battle of Spotsylvania	May 10–18, 1864
Battle of Cold Harbor	June 1–12, 1864
Battle of Petersburg	June 18, 1864
Battle of Charlestown	August 21, 1864
Battle of Opequon (Gilbert's Ford)	September 13, 1864
Battle of Winchester (Opequon)	September 19, 1864
Battle of Fisher's Hill	September 21, 1864
Battle of Mount Jackson	September 24, 1864
Battle of Cedar Creek	October 19, 1864
Battle of Petersburg	March 25, 1865
Battle of Petersburg	April 2, 1865
Battle of Sailor's Creek	April 6, 1865

The website Civil War in the East gives a nice table showing the Regiments movements and involvement here and there are synopses of the regiment on Vermont in the Civil War here and Antietam on the Web here.

My grandfather always told two stories about his grandfather's experience in the Civil War. The first was about how he lost his toenails after retreating from the battle of Bull Run and the other was how he was wounded in the arm while reloading his musket at the battle of Gettysburg. In my research it became clear that he was not injured at Gettysburg as the regiment appeared to see very light action until then and was held in reserve with no casualties during that battle. In fact I could not find Francis Finnegan listed as a casualty in any of the online resources I found. So I began to question the whole story. After consultation with my 1^st cousin once removed I found out that the end results (ie lost toe nails and musket injury) were true, just the timing and battles were incorrect. He said it was the Wilderness campaign and the battle of Spotsylvania where these things occurred. Over the 4^th of July holiday I had some time on my hands during the 6 hour drive to San Diego, so I found and ordered a book on the 2nd Vermont Volunteer Infantry from Amazon. In it I found written confirmation that he had in fact been injured on May 12^th 1864 ( Zeller 271). This corresponds with the units involvement in the assault on the Bloody Angle.

So there you have it. This now gives me a template for fighting a campaign using various rules sets. I'm mostly thinking of using it as a way to link skirmishes using Rifles & Rebels from THW.

So no glory here. Just a guy who did his bit, humped his gear around the theater, and didn't get killed. The story of many a participant I think.

Francis Finnegan and Jane Smith wedding photo c. 1870

Finnegan Family August 6th 1917. Francis is the white beard on the right, my grandfather is the boy with the tie on the left.

Works cited:

Zeller, Paul G. The Second Vermont Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 1861 - 1865 Jefferson: McFarland & Co., 2002. Print.

Welcome to Captain Richard of Captain Richard's Miniature Civil War. He has an impressive collection of ACW memorabilia and a fantastic setup. The detail of his table is mind boggling.