New: Bolt Action Scottish Figure Heads!

Last week we brought you our turbaned Indian Figure Heads – this week it’s the turn of the wily Scots! Have a look at the new heads here.

This pack contains four heads with bonnets allowing you to turn your British Infantry into Scottish Infantry. These are compatible with all our metal Figure Head models so you can now have Scots Vickers Machine Guns or Scots 3″ Mortars, for example…

Our warehouse manager, Darek, has even used the spare legs from Piper Millin to create a Scotsmen in a kilt!

When the British army goes to war tradition takes pride of place in many areas and none more so than in uniform detail. When the Commandos were formed there was much speculation about badges, headgear and battledress let alone training and weaponry.

As an all volunteer force, ready for all manner of dangerous work, men were picked from the whole gamut of the British army. This invaribly led to many Scottish soldiers, often seen as hard cases, to try out the new Commandos.

The modern commandos wear their trademark green berets, and indeed it was the commonest form of headgear in WWII for special forces.The Scots in the Commandos preferred to wear the disitinctive, and has to be said, rather rakish Tam O’Shanter side cap, most often worn almost on the side of the head.

6 Commando all opted to wear this headress as did no 2 Commando, with feather hackles to match. The 11 Commando were indeed called the Scottish Commandos,adding a black hackle as a unit badge.

It would seem that, when initially formed, volunteers were encouraged to wear their old regimental sidecaps, so it might be possible to see a mix of berets, sidecaps and Tam O’Shanters in a troop, particularly in the early and mid war period.

The British army also fielded Scottish Divisions, of course, and they fought hard on many fronts during the Second World War.

One of the famous divisions was the 51st Highland Division (also unkindly referred to as the “Highway Decorators” due to their habit of adding the Divisions HD symbol to signs as they advanced).

Scottish units in the front line sensibly wore the steel helmet and hence were indistinguishable at a distance from their sassenach counterpart. During one particularly savage combat however the pumped up Scots were told to don their Tam o’shanters “So the Jerries can tell they are being killed by Scotsmen!” – savage stuff indeed!

Using these Figure Heads wearing Tam O’Shanters you can create Scottish Commandos to terrify the foe or indeed use them to model the splendid Warlord plastic Bristish Infantry into regular Scottish line infantry..Add a piper from the Commandos personality set and charge with bayonet to the skirl of the pipes!