Army History Recorded With Model Soldiers

Press, Volume C, Issue 29609, 4 September 1961, Page 3

Army History Recorded With Model Soldiers

"The Press" Special Service

NAPIER, Sept. 3. Through the medium of more than 400 model soldiers and a well-stocked library, Staff-Sergeant R. Hood, of the Army area office at Napier, has a record of many units’ dress, at a time when many of the older English regiments are losing their identities through wholesale amalgamation. Staff-Sergeant Hood became interested in model soldier collecting in 1939. However, not till after the war was he able to start his present collection. The nucleus of the 400-odd models was a set he acquired in Palestine. His collection grew, and so did a library of volumes on military history, uniforms, and, of course, collecting model soldiers. Each of Staff-Sergeant Hood’s models is unpainted when he gets it from overseas (none are made locally). The average roughcasting costs about £l, and usually consists of a body with separate head, arms,- and weapon. Some “operating” can be necessary heads changed round, and limbs bent, before the model, about 3in highcan be painted By consulting books, by inquiring through the British, Model Soldiers’ Association (of which he is one of nine New Zealand members) and.

by personally approaching veteran soldiers, Staff-Ser-geant Hood is usually able to gather enough data to get a full description of the desired uniform. Using artists’ oils, he painstakingly reproduces in miniature the elaborate and colourful uniforms of siich units as the Brigade of Guards, the Berkshire®, and other line regiments, and the Cameron Highlanders. Each uniform is identical with the prototype in all detail—the number of buttons on a tunic, the lace on a drummer’s uniform —the tiniest details on a drummer’s instrument all are there. Staff - Sergeant Hood’s models range from several knights in armour, thitough Norman and Civil War days, to the 1700’s, from there to about 1815-type soldiers. Two models depict, British Army uniform about the time of the Maori wars, and three are dressed in- New Zealand Mounted Rifles uniform. The most recent uniform represented is that of a 2nd N.Z. E.F. soldier in desert kit.

New Hospital.—A new hospital claimed to be the most modem in East Germany has been opened at Saalfeld, Thuringia. It has beds for nearly 600 patiehts .and a staff of 39 doctors—jSerlin.