Shortly before Operation Market Garden, the Guards Armoured Division reorganised to form four Regimental Groups, each of an armoured battalion and an infantry battalion from the same Guards Regiment. They were flexible in how they operated, but normally 5 Guards Brigade commanded the Grenadier Guards Group (1 Motor Battalion Grenadier Guards and 2 Armoured Battalion Grenadier Guards) plus the Irish Guards Group (2 Armoured Battalion Irish Guards and 3 Infantry Battalion Irish Guards). 32 Guards Brigade similarly commanded the Coldstream and Welsh Guards Groups.
The XXX Corps advance was initially led by the Irish Guards Group, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Joe Vandeleur, who was the Commanding Officer of 3 Irish Guards. I wanted to make a model of him in his scout car, looking a bit like Michael Caine who played him in “A Bridge too Far”.
In my last post I showed a picture of my first Paperboys tanks, modelled as No 1 Squadron 2 Irish Guards, who along with the Infantry of 3 Irish Guards were the leading element of XXX Corps during the initial Market Garden breakout. I have now completed the rest of 2 Irish Guards and here is No 2 Squadron.
At the beginning of lockdown, I watched the film a Bridge too Far a couple of times and that inspired me to want to build a World War II set-up, based on Operation Market Garden.
I decided to use the new Rapid Fire Reloaded rules, which I really liked. Rapid Fire has been around for over 20 years but the new simplified A5 booklet Rapid Fire Reloaded rules were published in 2020.
I have not posted anything for a few weeks because I have been working on my new project of writing a set of wargame rules suitable for the Jacobite Rebellion.
They are still a “work in progress” but when they are finished, and playtested, I intend making PDF copies available to purchase through this website. There will also be free downloads to supplement the rules.
By way of a taster, the Preface and Index is below.
There were a number of additional units and commanders at the Second Siege of Carlisle, which I have now modelled.
The first of these is the Liverpool Blues. My main source regarding them is “The Town of Liverpool in the ‘45” by R C Jarvis, which I found online. They were a Volunteer Regiment raised by the town of Liverpool, were raised much more quickly and were much more effective than the Lancashire Militia. As the Jacobite Rebellion gained momentum the town petitioned the Government to be allowed to raise a volunteer force. The Secretary of State wrote to the Deputy Mayor on 23rd September 1745 authorising the town to form troops and companies of inhabitants who were willing to take arms and to grants commissions to suitable persons to command them.
The town raised £1,000 by subscription to pay for this force and the Liverpool Blues was originally proposed to be formed of 1,000 men, however this was later reduced to 800 men organised as 8 companies. A regular officer, Col Graham of 43rd Foot was appointed to command them, assisted by Lt Col Gordon and Maj Bendish. The town appointed “some persons to be Officers in the Companies who had already behaved well in his Majesty’s Service, the others will be chosen out of young Gentlemen of the Town who have sometime payd old Sergeants to instruct them in the Military Exercise”.
The Liverpool Blues received their uniforms and weapons by 15th November and then marched into Cheshire to help to defend or demolish bridges in that county. On that same day the Jacobites took Carlisle. Several Militia Regiments refused to serve outside their counties but the Liverpool Blues had no such inhibitions. They later joined Oglethorpe’s Brigade at Clifton and marched with them to Carlisle.
This print of their uniform is a composite one, created by putting together elements of three prints to show the key features of their uniform.
Orders for the uniform of the Liverpool Blues were placed by 5 October. “These goods will be wanted in a fortnight or a very few days”, the order read. There were “52 Doz. of full-sized Men’s felt Halts … 50 doz. of them bound with white Galloon (lace) and white mettle Buttons … the other two Dozen let be of a better kind and come without being bound” (the latter presumable for the officers who would have silver lace added later). Three thousand yards of kersey were ordered for the coats; thirteen shoemakers in the town were directed to set about making 626 pairs of shoes and “50 Doz of strong White Stockings” were ordered from Wales.
It is clear from this uniform purchase that the final proposed strength of the Liverpool Blues was 600 men (plus officers) rather than the higher figures of 1,000 or 800 proposed earlier.
There is no mention of waistcoats or breeches, so presumably the volunteers would have worn their own as shown here.
I have been running this website for over six years. I have now decided to upgrade it to an ad-free version, so that readers do nor get annoying unrelated adverts inserted in my posts. It helped that WordPress were offering a 30% reduction in the first year’s subscription.
My next project is to model all of the troops which took part in the Second Siege of Carlisle, conducted by the Duke of Cumberland from 21st to 30th December 1745. I already had modelled all of the Jacobite defenders and now needed to complete Cumberland’s troops.
I have been a bit busy on other things recently, but for the last few weeks I have been in Spain so have returned to expanding my Paperboys Jacobite ’45 set up.
I had previously made all of the British Infantry for Prestonpans, as shown here, here and here. The original Paperboys figures are 28mm high and a stand of 4 infantry is 40mm wide. I wanted my stands to be the same width as my plastic 1:72 figures (23mm high) which have a frontage of 15mm per figure. I therefore reduced the Paperboys scale to 70% which gave 4 figures (20mm high) on a 30mm wide base. My plastic figures are on a 1:30 ratio but by modelling the Paperboys on a 1:15 ratio they cover exactly the same frontage as my plastic units.
As those following my posts will know, my wargame figures, in all eras, are 1:72 plastic (apart from nearly three hundred home cast 1:72 metal Zulus). However, I did have six 28mm metal figures which came as “freebies” with various Warlord Games Black Powder supplements. A few years ago I painted up one such figure, a 1745 Black Watch highlander, as a present for my grandson and that can be seen here.
I asked my daughter what my 13 Year old grandson would like for Christmas this year and was told “Amazon Vouchers”. That did not sound very exciting but we bought him those. I decided to give him something extra which he was not expecting, another 28mm figure.
This is the final part of my modelling Edinburgh as it was in 1745. My previous recent posts described modelling the town. This covers modelling the castle itself.
Edinburgh Castle in the mid-18th Century looked like this.
The ground around the castle was more open than it is now and the old city walls came right up to the castle. Many of the buildings on the southern and western sides of the castle had not yet been constructed.
Rod's Wargaming 