East Point Cadets on parade.

A couple of posts ago I mention I had got a bargain deal off Ebay ,.: Lucky eBay find . (tonystoysoldiers.blogspot.com) and I was wondering if to re-paint them .Well we have been having some very wet days recently and I used one of these to start repairing , touching up paint on the figures, which morphed into adding cross straps buttons etc and finally another gloss coat of varnish.

Having got them done I then have had to wait for the rain to stop so I could do an outdoor photo shoot.To commemorate their joining the ranks the C in C of 'Red Army' has decided to inspect them 

He is very impressed with their turn out and congratulates them on their smart appearance . There is some mystery about the young woman accompanying him ? - it's definitely not his wife !

We are lucky that a contemporary print of this occasion exists and I'm told it appears in the American edition of Kipling's 'Dispatches from the Patio' although I have not seen this rare book I did a Google search and came up with the above photo , it's rather blurry but in the upper left it says Mathew Brady Jr , Fort Patagonia (?) , We know that Brady Jr did take a series of photographs of the Great Patio War , but of course sadly most have been lost to posterity .

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