LONDON, September 4 (Itar-Tass) – A huge model of the Battle of Borodino, which took place some 120 kilometers west of Moscow at the beginning of September 2012, will be put up for display here Tuesday to commemorate the 200th anniversary since the battle.
Enthusiast Gerry West spent four decades creating it.
The list of exhibits also includes the documents on the exchanges of letters between Russian diplomats at the time. The display will open at the London office of Russia’s federal agencies supervising rapport with fellow-countrymen abroad /Rossotrudnichestvo/.
Gerry West, a connoisseur of military history, managed to reproduce a scene from one of the biggest and bloodiest battles ever fought by Napoleon. He drew his data from specialized literature and materials.
West says in an article at his Internet site that work on the project began back at the start of the 1970’s and he finalized it just recently.
He gave a special stimulus to his work by making a trip to Russia and to the localities where the battle took place. West made the trip in May 2012, and it coincided by chance with a small reenactment of the events.
The landscape of the locality happened to be much flatter than he had imagined it.
West’s model represents the Battle of Borodino in the 1:72 scales. In spite of its small size, is has room for more than 21,000 figures, the average height of which totals about 24 mm.
The enthusiastic designed confesses that one of the biggest challenges he had was to show the harsh elements of battle in his model. He admits that he edited some of the excesses of Leo Tolstoy’s text.
The exhibition will be opened September 4 through to September 14, offering three from 10:00 hours through to 17:00 hours.