This was the last figure I painted for the Anzac Diorama  – a piece of luck as it happens.  Good luck for me and terrible luck for McBeth who painted the original who got lost.  For the full story check this post on the official blog out. Johnston is an interesting character. He was a New Zealand born British Army officer seconded back to the New Zealand forces. He had some successes but his judgement at Chunuk Bair has been questioned – whether he was drunk or just out of his depth is open to conjecture in my opinion.  He commanded the New Zealand Infantry Brigade (later the 1st NZ (Inf) Brig) throughout the Gallipoli campaign.

He was killed by sniper fire on the Western Front on the 7th of August 1917 while visiting front line trenches of his 3rd New Zealand (Rifle) Brigade.  Three New Zealand Brigadier Generals were killed in action in WWI. Not so safe for the generals after all.

Remember that Alan Perry made that figure of Brig-Gen Johnston in about half an hour in poor light. He really looks “ill” and completely out of his depth.

I am really happy with how the maps on the table turned out. They are all actual period maps of the battlefield that I reduced and printed. I didn’t reduce them to the size shown, but to a larger size and cut out pieces of them otherwise any detail would have just disappeared into a few pixels.

For more information on Brig-Gen Johnston check this wikipedia entry.