French Foreign Legion

I have this excellent and dated FFL book by Windrow and Chappell from which I drew the inspirations for these three figures.The mounted figures were sculpted freely, using Verlinden FFL heads with arms and legs from Airfix parts. The horses were Historex, which by that time I was getting the hang of, but I was still avoiding the dreaded Napoleonic uniforms.

 

 Sadly, this figure was varnished with Testor's matt varnish which has turned brown over the ages. This figure has been updated.

 This figure has had the banner broken off from the bugle.

These Historex kits are very daunting, comprising numerous small bits and parts and with minimal construction info. One has to be very familiar with Napoleonic uniforms upon which these very detailed kits were based upon, to do justice to these rather expensive kits. However, I had managed to buy a job lot of these kits at a Modelling Show for a bargain.

Chota Sahib French Foreign Legionaire

The standing FF Legionaire is a Chota Sahib kit. I was first aware of the modelling skills of Sid Horton through a few articles in old Airfix magazines and discovered later, that he had started his own model figure company known as Chota Sahib. These were immaculately produced and set very high standards in sculpting. Unfortunately, these figures are no longer in production.

I also tried to make a couple more FFL figures in a toy soldier style. Unfinished.

Surprisingly I never built up the Airfix FFL kit as I only had one kit then. Instead, I had made it up as a Belgian WWI figure. Unfortunately that figure doesn't exist anymore. I have since bought a few more Airfix FFL kits but that will be a later story.