Afghan Regular Cavalry

Our COVID-19 life in isolation is encouraging me to finish up some projects that have been on the back burner, including these cavalrymen.

These started out as Perry Miniatures ACW cavalry, and were given to me by Doug with the suggestion that I could convert them to British cavalry for the Second Anglo-Afghan War.  I ended up with a slightly different idea, and decided to make them into Afghan Regular Cavalry.

While the red coats and blue trousers makes them look somewhat British, the uniforms are based on Ian Heath's research, which is hosted on The Mad Guru's blog here.

The centre top figure is a cavalryman, wearing a British inspired uniform.  Heath quotes a British officer from 1878, Joshua Duke:

‘dressed in old British red cloth uniforms with white belts, more or less clay-piped, rather baggy blue cotton trousers, with long boots innocent of blacking. The only purely native article about them was their headdress, which, however, was also a copy of the present English helmet, but being made rather shapeless, of a soft grey felt, it was not becoming.’ 

I took the ACW cavalry, did head swaps with the Perry's 1880-era British infantry and used green stuff to extend the tunics.  I shaved the helmets and painted them a grey shade to match the 'shapeless, grey felt' description above.

So after far too long a wait on my painting table, here they are, ready to battle against British or Russian (or even Persian) invaders!