The blue trousers on this Confederate sergeant are English Army Cloth. In July 1863, the first shipments of British military woolens — bolts of the dark blue cloth the British Army used for greatcoats and trousers — began arriving in Richmond through the Wilmington blockade-runners. The Confederate Quartermaster Department took the cloth, cut it into Confederate-pattern trousers, and issued it to regiments needing pants. The result was small numbers of Confederate soldiers wearing British-army blue from the waist down. Union pickets across the lines occasionally reported Confederate troops "in blue" — sometimes accurate observations of the English-cloth trousers, sometimes captured Federal trousers, sometimes both at once. The sergeant in this figure wears the English Army Cloth issue.

This W. Britain figure depicts a Confederate infantry sergeant on the march in a Richmond Depot–pattern gray shell jacket with the light blue sergeant's chevrons of the infantry branch, the butternut kepi, and the distinctive blue English Army Cloth trousers issued from July 1863 onward. He carries the M1842 Palmetto Arsenal smoothbore musket — the brass-furnitured Confederate-made copy of the U.S. Army's last smoothbore, still in service through the war's end. The knapsack with bedroll rides on his back, the cartridge box on his belt. The figure works as an NCO in any Confederate marching column or regimental front diorama. Pair this figure with Confederate Corporal Marching for an NCO pair; with Forward March Confederate Infantry for the column behind him; or with Confederate Infantry Company Officer as the officer he reports to.

Scale: 1/30 (60mm). Matte-painted metal. W. Britain model 31445. From the American Civil War range. Single foot figure, supplied painted and ready for display.