Flag for Trotsky's Red Guard?

[AzSteven]

I just got the rather nice Red Guard figures from Brigade Games and started working on them, and realized the command pack has a banner-carrier.  What would be an appropriate flag for Trotsky's Red Guard?  Or would they have simply had the same sort of slogan flags so many other Red units used?

[cuprum]

You are confusing two concepts.

Red Guard - a militia unit from factory workers or peasants. It is motivated, but not trained troops.

Trotsky was his personal train, it was called "Train Chairman of the Military Council of the Republic". In this train had a personal guard of Trotsky. People in her carefully chosen, for the most part it was the ideological Bolsheviks.

Guard Trotsky, according to legend, had a uniform in red leather. Also train had its own banner.
Trotsky couple of times sends to battle part of its Guard in critical situations at the front.











http://siberia-miniatures.ru/forum/showthread.php?fid=12&tid=129

Banner train:



The inscription on the banner: "(A gift) to Train Chairman of the Revolutionary Council of the Republic from patrons - longshoremen station MoscowII-Kursk".

[Patrice]

  Fascinating!!

[AzSteven]

Perfect!  I think I can convert that banner into line art pretty easily.  I figured Cuprum would have the needed information!

The figures are in fact Trotsky's personal train guard - the Brigade Games name for them is Trotsky's Red Guard.  There is even a pretty decent representation of Trotsky in the command set.  I am painting them a bit more like the picture of the re-enactor rather than as shown in that first illustration.  I am probably going to get a second set and do them in black or dark brown leather for a second Armored Train guard force.

I hate to imagine how miserable an all-leather uniform like that would be in the field.  Russian has some harsh winters certainly, but I have been in Moscow in the summer and it got pretty hot!  Summer in that uniform on a hot train?  Ouch!

[cuprum]

The crews of armored trains (red and white), including the landing party, often possessed a leather uniforms. Early as the First World War in the Imperial Army to most "technical" troops was put a leather uniforms. In addition, the leather uniforms was very large fashion in reds.
Yet interesting fact - reds very widely was used leather uniforms in Central Asia at a time when the red Turkestan was cut off from relations with Russia. Other material for the manufacture of uniforms just did not have ...

Of course in the skin was hot.
But the beauty demands victims

[Patrice]

"Part of the train was a huge garage holding several automobiles and a gasoline tank. This made it possible for us to travel away from the railway line for several hundred versts. A squad of picked sharpshooters and machine-gunners, amounting to from twenty to thirty men, occupied the trucks and light cars. A couple of hand machine-guns had also been placed in my car. A war of movement is full of surprises. On the steppes, we always ran the risk of running into some Cossack band. Automobiles with machine-guns insured one against this, at least when the steppe had not been transformed into a sea of mud."

"The train was continually being reorganized and improved upon, and extended in its functions. As early as 1918, it had already become a flying apparatus of administration. Its sections included a secretariat, a printing-press, a telegraph station, a radio station, an electric-power station, a library, a garage, and a bath."

"All the crew could handle arms. They all wore leather uniforms, which always make men look heavily imposing. On the left arm, just below the shoulder, each wore a large metal badge, carefully cast at the mint, which had acquired great popularity in the army."

Leon Trotsky: My Life, chap. 34 "The train".
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/ch34.htm

[cuprum]

Great! Thank you very much.
I collect quotes from the memoirs participants in the war by which one can make the reconstruction of the uniforms, which is really was used ...