Sending a Signal that it’s Fembruary

Uncharacteristically, I’d quite forgotten that it’s actually FEMbruary, that month celebrating with great respect all things to do with female miniatures, shunning the demeaning and downright dodgy.

Genius Fembruary originator, Alex at Leadballoony, has got a whole big heap of all sorts going on this year and so regrets that he won’t be running a review and round-up as in previous years, but that doesn’t mean no Fembruary – not at all. Alex suggests that maybe it’s time for Fembruary to just exist free of a formal organiser and encourages us figure painters to still go forth and “paint some fantastic female figures from your collections and tag them as Fembruary!” And so I shall.

“I see no ships”

In previous years I painted for Fembruary:

• Empress Catherine II (the Great) of Russia
• Two WWII female Russian snipers
• A group of WWII WRNS (Women’s Royal Naval Service)
• Empress Catherine I of Russia in a court scene.
• Five SOE (Special Operations Executive) agents of WWII

Once again, I have once again turned to Bad Squiddo’s fabulous range of believable female miniatures – always perfect for some Fembruary figures. I’m also returning to WWII with some sailor girls from the WRNS.

At the peak of it’s service during WWII there were 74,000 women in the WRNS (universally known as the Wrens) involved in over 200 different jobs. Their wide range of duties included driving/motorcycle despatch; admin/clerical work; radar plotters; wireless telegraphists; bomb making; weapons analysts; electrical work; harbour transport; catering; range assessing; flying transport planes and providing weather forecasts. Over 300 Wrens were killed in wartime service.

Two Ordnance Wrens in Liverpool reassemble a section of a pom-pom gun during the Second World War. From the collections of the Imperial War Museums., Public Domain.

The set shows five WRNS taking part in signalling duties.

The team of signallers include a Wren using a signalling lamp, another using semaphore flags, another interpreting signals with a telescope and two other ratings furiously scribbling down the messages.

My last group of marching Wrens painted back in 2019. I had discovered them as unidentified 54mm figures on eBay from a seller in Kent but later found that they were made in the late 70s or early 80s by MJ Mode, a manufacturer that – entirely coincidentally – I later discovered had its operations based in exactly the same suburb as I was then living in!

With half of February already gone, I need to get started as soon as possible. Thankfully some others have been more on the ball than I. I heartily recommend that for other Fembruary female figures you check the bloggers below.

From the talented brush of Wudugast comes forth:

• A lady Orc, another of his Mean Green Geezerettes
• A fabulously painted and magically magnificent Shamaness
• Branchwych – a woman of the woods with a seriously sharp-looking scythe.

Also, Rantings from under the Wargames Table blog brings us:

• Faith and Deceit: Agatha Fox the spy in rain mac and Sister Maria aka ‘the nun with a gun’ – so that’s how you solve a problem like Maria!
• Gnome on the Range: Two more Fembruary femmes with the delightfully named Blink Berenwicket the gnome and a fabulously diffident-looking female ranger.

That wizard of the diorama Imperial Rebel Orc and Alex himself at Leadballoony have indicated the possibility of some other Fembruary creations, so I’m watching out for those. And the ever entertaining and creative Mark at Man of Tin – is he Fembruarying this year, I wonder?