Napoleonic French Pontoonier/Engineers
I came across a small bag of rather roughly cut nude torsos whilst digging in my boxes. These were remnants of the re-attaching correct torso to the legs of a large group of Ancient Celtic warriors. Found in the club's B&B, the seller had obviously randomly glued bodies to legs not realizing until too late his mistakes and then gave up on the endeavour. Some damaged torsos from my cutting of the offending bodies was the result.
But now I took a second look and thought they could be used. The attached heads of some were removed, the torque neck chain scraped off as were any wrist bracelets, etc. The hands were utilized if possible, or removed and replaced with ones holding various construction implements and some with muskets from spare Zulus arms, among other sources.
The rather exaggerated wide-arm pose of these ex-Warlord ancients was kept but justifying the posing was challenging! Much far reach of the mallet or shovel. Waist high in water and not wanting your 'powder wet" the figures seem to be wishing to keep them dry, their cartridge boxes are bits of sprue frame and paper belts. I added some more belting to be held to one of the musket men as my wife thought he was holding a purse! I agreed sheepishly, so needed to do that alteration. But she does enjoy their manly physiques.
To make them ‘Napoleonic’ I added some of the many spare heads giving them mostly French forage caps. These now can be added to engineering units building a bridge across any contested river.
