More Weird War Two Good Guys: The Ghostly Laird o' Kinch

Major John (Black Jack) MacAllan, the Ninth Laird of Kinch, an estate in the Western Highlands, was one of the legendary characters of the Great War. A company commander in the Black Watch, he was famous for spending most of his time in the forward trenches, inspiring his men with a joke, a song, a Woodbine or a well-placed kick in the arse as required. Armed with his beloved Stephen Grant side by side best gun, MacAllan often led trench raids despite orders from battalion and brigade not to put himself at risk. He liked, as he said, to teach his junior officers, or "sprogs", by example and not by sitting in some blasted dugout giving orders.

In the winter of 1917, MacAllan was acting battalion commander and was expected to be promoted to brigade staff, but chose to go to the fighting trenches one night when reports of German tunnelling were coming in from the listening posts. Convinced that the Germans were close to exploding a mine, he ordered two companies back to safety, while he remained to lead a small countermine party. The mine detonated, some say after a brief hand to hand struggle under ground, and MacAllan was never seen again, but his premonition saved the Black Watch from annihilation and prevented a breakthrough in their sector. MacAllan was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, and left behind a widow and one young son, Graham, to carry on the name.

Major John MacAllan as he was last seen, the night of his death in 1917.

As mentioned previously here, young Graham grew up and followed his father's footsteps into the army and into the Black Watch. At St. Valery in 1940, he managed to lead his company through German lines to the last RN destroyer waiting to evacuate troops of the doomed Highland Division. Graham casually mentioned in debrief that his dad had shown him the way through the German lines. That might have finished his career as a psychological casualty, but fortunately Project Alice was looking for men and women with supernatural inclinations and aptitudes. Now, the troops of S Commando are used to their Mad Major who talks to spooks. On several raids they have seen their boss stop and converse with thin air, and then go on to lead them to the objective or to the evac point without a scratch. True to his principles, John MacAllan is still leading his young sprogs from the front, a ghostly but effective ra extset of eyes and ears for his son the Mad Major.

This figure is from the Great War Miniatures British personalities set, and was painted up as part of an entry for the Analogue Hobbies painting challenge, whose mastermind, Curt, suggested that I paint him in grayscale as a proper ghost. That would have been a terrific idea had I thought of it in time, though I'm not sure I can justice to Curt's technique. I rather like the idea that he would appear as being perfectly natural and lifelike to his son's Celtic second sight, and invisible to others (an idea borrowed from that classic comic, The Haunted Tank).

If I ever get this project off the ground, I expect any force where Maj. MacAllan is present will get one or two chances to play the "Ghost Dad" card, allowing it a free spot or some other bonus against the German force.

And The Winners Are

Milords and ladies, the results of the Mad Padre Wargames 50K/100 contest are in. We have our winners. But first, a review of our fabulous prizes.

There are three prizes that our winners can choose from, with Winner 1 having his choice of the three, and Winner 2 choosing from the two remaining, and Winner 3 getting the one left. Tres simple, n'est-ce pas? The first two are from Bob Murch's Pulp Figures range of two-fisted, hard charging, devil may care adventurer types. Apologies for these oversized photos, a bit of a cock-up on the ImageShack front, apparently.

We have Pith Helmet Guy. For some reason, he seems sinister to me. I'm guessing he's a Nazi agent or spy keeping tabs on the British some place where mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun.

Next up is a lady I've come to know and love as Safari Girl, cutting her way through the elephant grass with her trusty machete. If she could speak, I'll bet she'd sound just like Katharine Hepburn.

The third prize is this motorcycle dispatch rider from Great War Miniatures. I'm not an expert on Great War miniatures by any means, but he is sculpted wearing armbands and there is some evidence that dispatch riders were part of the Signal Corps, whose colours are white over blue. Those same colours fly today over the signals detachment building at the base where I work, so I think I'm good. Some poetic license with the motorcycle license plate, numbering, and roadsigns.

Everyone at Mad Padre Wargames worked hard to make this a fair and transparent process. In the absence of President Jimmy Carter and the United Nations, Stanley the Cat was drafted to oversee the process. Here he carefully examines the names of the contestants, carefully placed in the Mad Padre beret.

Madame Padre draws the the first winner, and it is ... Peter Douglas! Congratulations, Peter, you have your choice of the three prizes. Please email me at madpadre (at) gmail.com with your choice and address.

Madame Padre draws the second winner, and it is ... Wargaming News and Terrain! Congratulations sir! Please email me at madpadre @ gmail.com with your address and I'll let you know which two prizes you can choose from.

Madame Padre draws the third prize, and it is ... Chris Stoesen! Congratulations,Chris. I have your email address, I'll let you know what's left.

And finally, the fabulous bonus prize. As you may recall, I promised a bonus prize to the person whose literary undertaking had the greatest literary merit. Madame Padre accepted the role of judge, with the sole instruction that she choose the entry that most tickled her fancy. She took this role most seriously, and pondered the entries for almost half an hour. Madame Padre liked many, and her Honourable Mention award (sadly, no prize) goes to Mike Whittaker, whose sonnet was a very clever example of that genre. However, the one which made her laugh the most, and which earned her thumbs up, was ...

Dux Homunculorum, whose short but well crafted entry asked just why that padre in the blog masthead is leaning so close to that vamptastic temptress. A good question. Congratulations, Dux, that was a great entry. Your prize is this Great War Miniatures Tommy, gamely kicking a football towards the Hun lines. If you don't game the period, I hope he graces your desk or bookshelf, because he's a wonderful sculpt and I hope I did justice to him. I have your email address so will ping you for your snail mail address. I should add as a disclaimer that Madame Padre knew nothing of my winning a prize on Dux H's blog recently, so there was no fix, no quid pro quo here. Stanley the Cat made sure this was a clean contest.

So there you have it, gentles all, thanks for playing in this contest. For those of you who didn't play, I hope we'll see you in the 200K pageview / 200 follower contest, whenever that may be. Blessings to your die rolls!