Yes folks ..... let the poor chap walk before you enter him in the Marathon!
NB.nagantsniper, I know exactly what you have been experiencing ..... seems almost all depictions of soldiers of the period show them from the front only ..... with the very few back views almost invariably done to show the pack and other equipment for Full Marching Order .... which obscures the details of the tunic/frock. It is definitely hard to find an unobstructed rear view!
Note my use of the term "frock" .... which is what you are after, I believe - more precisely, a "field frock", which was a simpler version of the full dress tunic intended for wear on active campaign - somewhat shorter, of looser and simpler cut, with less decoration and fewer buttons in the front (five rather than seven or more.) The field frock was the British equivalent of the American "sack coat", so you are not far wrong with that analogy!
The first two photos below are from
"The Wardrobe" - website of
The Rifles (Berkshire and Wiltshire) Museum. This used to be a really great online resource for a wide variety of uniform items and other kit. It still is pretty good, but unfortunately they have taken to putting up fewer and smaller images of each item, and the ones you can view are heavily watermarked - with the opportunity to buy unmarked examples, of course!
At any rate, these images show a field frock of the pattern in use through the 1870's and into the early 1880's. It is actually an officer's frock, but the cut and appearance of an Other Ranks frock would be essentially the same ..... although made out of somewhat coarser and less expensive material, and would not have the gold braid of course. The third image is another quartering back view (also of an officer's frock) from a different source - but at least it isn't cluttered up with watermarks. Actually, as officers' garments, these should give some idea just how basic and unadorned the field frock really was ....
Note that rather than having relatively high skirt vents, closer to the center and running up into curved tailoring seams - such as would be seen on a tunic - the frock is really quite sack coat-like in cut, with short skirt vents spaced quite wide. As you have undoubtedly seen in other images, Other Ranks frocks would have both the collar and a "cuff point" (rather than a full cuff with point) in the facing colour of the regiment, with basic white piping at the base of the collar, outlining the shoulder straps, and
sometimes down the front closure only (i.e.
not around the bottom of the skirt as seen on the officers' frocks above) .... and a piped outline of the cuff detail rising into a simple trefoil knot at its peak -
The buttons are missing from the "Wardrobe" officer's frock, and thus are not visible in the front view, but you can see that both of the Other Ranks frocks depicted above have only five buttons. The Regiment on the left had blue facings, the one on the right had red facings (thus no contrasting collar and cuffs, although there are white "tabs" at the front of the collar in that case, to set off the collar badges.
Hope this helps! (By the way, I believe you sent me a direct inquiry on this issue, and must apologize for failing to answer. I got called out of town unexpectedly for most of this past week, and forgot about it. Must be buried a ways back in my e-mail, as I can't even seem to locate it now .....
)
