28mm – Suburban Militarism

FEMbruary Wrens

Posted on 23/02/202223/02/2022 by Marvin

My contribution to mark #FEMbruary 2022 is ready!

I’ve had fun painting these Naval ladies, featuring a great topic and nice sculpting as usual from Bad Squiddo. A Wren signaller like these in the Royal Navy during WWII would be expected to master the Aldis Lamp, the Semaphore and signal flags and, of course, Morse code. These five Wrens from the Second World War have been assigned the following signalling duties.

Message taking / transcription #1

I gave this lady a pair of leather gloves. I don’t know why. She looked like her fingers could get perishing cold taking down those messages received via Aldis Lamp or on semaphore flags.

The task of recording signalled messages was vital. The qualities required were:

“Neat handwriting, accurate spelling, good mnemonics and integrity. All were key attributes when it came to selection for The Communications Branch. Good handwriting meant messages were relaid accurately. Spelling went hand in hand with this. The ability to memorise lots of information was crucial and integrity was key due to the sensitive nature of the information communicated.”

Aldis Lamp operator

For the Aldis Lamp’s bright light, I added a large dollop of gloss varnish to create something of a glow. The Aldis Lamp was a means of communication using the flashing of a light beam to imitate Morse Code to the observer. The lamp’s design was named after Arthur Cyril Webb Aldis who patented a small hand-held version of the signal lamps previously used and which featured an improved shutter to better direct the beam to the recipient and away from the prying eyes of enemy U-boats.

Telegraphist and signalman sending out a signal on the Aldis lamp, 1940. © IWM A 1613

Signal lamps are still in use today even it seems, on rare occasions, the venerable old Aldis Lamp. Yachting Monthly reported back in 2017 of a National Coastwatch Institute (NCI) watchkeeper averting a possible yacht grounding off The Lizard in Cornwall by using an old Aldis Lamp kept at the station and signalling to the vessel to urgently alter its course.

Semaphore Flags

Another means of signalling which is still in use today. Hand-held flag semaphore was widely used in the 19th century and is still used at sea. The positions of the flags indicate letters of the alphabet or numbers. I’ve just learnt that the semaphore flag colour combination of yellow and red are only ever used at sea. So perhaps I need to rebase this girl as being on deck instead! Umm, perhaps she’s in training?

I think the letter she’s communicating is ‘W’. Perhaps Bad Squiddo can go on to produce three more WRNS figures with positions spelling out the ‘R’, ‘N’, and ‘S’ too? Just a suggestion.

Telescope

Of course, sending the message is one thing, receiving it another entirely. The use of a traditional Royal Navy telescope would assist, the Wren needing all of her observation and memory skills to accurately relay the messages.

Message taking / transcription 2

Finally, another message taker frantically writing down the information. The previously mentioned spelling and handwriting skills would be at a premium here. “Stink the Bismark?!!…”

And after all that, the message is (flashed in morse code) that my FEMbruary contribution is over for another year. Check out my previous post for some more “FEMbruary” submissions and also Azazel’s very neat female ranger and bard from Middle-Earth. FEMbruary’s original creator Alex at Leadballoony has found time in his busy schedule to offer a superb sorceress with attendants. He’s also raising funds and conquering mountains!

Sending a Signal that it’s Fembruary

Posted on 13/02/2022 by Marvin

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.

In previous years I painted for Fembruary:

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?

Adelaide Hall

Posted on 10/10/202110/10/2021 by Marvin

“If my husband can be a merchant navy officer, I’m going to be a soldier.” Adelaide Hall.

Seems most appropriate during Black History Month to post two figures I’ve painted of Adelaide Hall, successful singer and businesswoman. As one of the world’s first jazz singers, through her improvised wordless rhythm vocalising she pioneered scat singing and enjoyed a career that spanned eight decades.

Adelaide Hall was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1901. Her family tree included a lineage to the Shinnecock Indians of Long Island. From 1921, Hall quickly developed a very successful stage career in the US, making a strong reputation appearing in all-black performer shows of the time. As a sought-after and successful singer, Hall made enough money to move to affluent Westchester County in New York where she received some racial threats and hostility from some white residents but also had support from her many fans.

Unknown author – The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 6 September 1934, page 20, CC BY-SA 4.0.

In 1935, Hall moved with her husband to the more racially integrated Paris where they set up a jazz club and toured extensively. In 1938, she moved again to London where she would remain until her death in 1993. Her move continued her success and in 1941 she replaced Gracie Fields as Britain’s highest paid entertainer.

In London, she also opened clubs. A club that she owned in Britain was bombed by the Luftwaffe and she later reopened another on Regent Street. The arrangement worked well for, if work ever went quiet, she could always perform a show in own club. Her move to London just preceded the Second World War in which she would play her part in the war by entertaining troops as a member of ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association). It is this point in her career that Bad Squiddo’s figures represent.

“The first big wartime variety concert organised by ENSA was broadcast by the BBC to the Empire and local networks from RAF Hendon in north London on 17 October 1939. Among the entertainers appearing on the bill were Adelaide Hall, The Western Brothers and Mantovani. A Newsreel of this concert showing Adelaide Hall singing We’re Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line accompanied by Mantovani and His Orchestra exists.” Wikipedia

Unfortunately, ‘hanging washing out to dry’ was about the only thing the Siegfried Line was useful for as the Wehrmacht moved swiftly into France and Belgium in the Battle of France. The ENSA members operated as part of the armed forces.

As such Adelaide Hall was enlisted as an officer and entitled to a uniform, as she related in an interview to presenter Sue Lawley on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs in 1991;

SL: And you wore a uniform?

Adelaide Hall: Yes, and they made me a Lieutenant.

SL: Did that mean the boys had to salute you?

Adelaide Hall: Oh, yes! And I had my own jeep (laughs) and driver. My pianist was with me… [It was] a beautiful uniform, I loved it and I couldn’t stand the collar – very stiff for me, but you get used to anything, I suppose.

While painting, I got a feel for my subject and her music by listening to BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs broadcasts. She was recorded twice, once in December 1972 and again nearly 20 years later in January 1991. By the time of the last recording, Adelaide was in her 80s. A 6-minute extract only of her December 1972 broadcast remains:

Adelaide Hall was very well-respected in the industry and played with many top musicians and artists including Fats Waller, Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington. Since her death, Adelaide Hall and her accomplishments have not been forgotten such as being acknowledged in Vogue’s list of ‘7 Remarkable Black Women Who Shaped British History’ and the award of a Black Plaque at Abbey Road Studios where she once recorded with Duke Ellington.

“I had a lovely uniform made by Madame Adele of Grosvenor Street and it was smart. Oh, you should have seen me in it! With the Sam Browne (belt) and a lovely cap, and the greeny-beige shirt and tie.”
Adelaide Hall

“I went through Germany twice – and I must say that I enjoyed it. I was a bit on edge, but I persevered. I said, if my husband can be a merchant navy officer, I’m going to be a soldier.”
Adelaide Hall

The Finale of FEMbruary IV

Posted on 09/03/2021 by Marvin

As promised by Alex at Leadballoony blog, the roundup of entries for 2021s FEMbruary Challenge IV was posted on International Women’s Day, yesterday – https://leadballoony.com/2021/03/08/2021-fembruary-iv-round-up/ Bravo Alex! It’s been another successful year’s challenge.

There’s increasingly a great range of entries encompassing all kinds of painting styles, interests, genres and figure manufacturers, so why not pop over and take a look at the kind of female characters being painted in the hobby nowadays?

Oh, and my humble offering of five female SOE agents brought home the “Most Thought-Provoking Entry” category – my first success in the FEMbruary challenge! Click below to read more about these phenomenally brave agents from WWII:

(#Fembruary2021) SOE Sisters V: Virginia Hall

Posted on 22/02/202121/02/2021 by Marvin

“I would give anything to get my hands on that limping Canadian (sic) bitch.“

Reputedly Klaus Barbie, Lyon’s Gestapo chief.

Virginia Hall

Born: Baltimore, United States, 1906.
SOE Rank: Second Lieutenant.
AKA: ‘Artemis’, The Limping Lady’, ‘Marie of Lyon’, ‘Cuthbert’ (her leg’s pseudonym).
Died: Rockville, United States, 1982.

The most highly decorated female civilian during World War II, Virginia Hall was born in 1906 to a wealthy family in Baltimore. As so often with these female SOE agents, Hall was not in any way an average person. She wanted adventure, recognising herself as a “capricious and cantankerous” personality. She once went to school wearing a bracelet made of live snakes. She also enjoyed hunting, and it was while hunting birds that she accidentally shot herself in the foot. Her left leg was amputated below the knee after gangrene set in. Hall’s resilience and determination was forged in her painful recovery and in her learning to use a wooden leg.

Bad Squiddo have cleverly sculpted Virginia Hall adjusting her prosthetic limb.

Hall carries a STEN gun over her left shoulder.

Hall was living in Europe when war broke out and she drove ambulances for the French until the country was overrun. She then went on to become one of the first British SOE agents sent to France in 1941. It became apparent that she was a natural at the art of spying and subterfuge. Her caution was a great asset. She declined to attend a meeting of SOE agents in Marseille, sensing some danger. The French police raided the meeting and captured a dozen agents.

“Virginia Hall, to a certain extent, was invisible… she was able to play on the chauvinism of the Gestapo at the time. None of the Germans early in the war necessarily thought that a woman was capable of being a spy… “The Germans came to realize that they were after a limping lady,” said her biographer Sonia Purnell. Hall constantly changed her appearance. “She could be four different women in the space of an afternoon, with four different code names,” said Purnell. The man in hot pursuit was none other than the Gestapo’s infamous Klaus Barbie, known as “the Butcher of Lyon” for the thousands in France tortured and killed by his forces. Barbie ordered “wanted” posters of Hall that featured a drawing of her above the words “The Enemy’s Most Dangerous Spy — We Must Find And Destroy Her!” ‘A Woman Of No Importance’ Finally Gets Her Due by Greg Myre, NPR.

As the net closed in, Virginia Hall escaped to Spain by crossing the Pyrenees which was an incredibly arduous journey for anybody (over 50 mountainous miles in the heavy snows of winter), never mind someone dragging a wooden leg. The British SOE refused to sanction a return to France, fearing it would be fatal for her, such was her reputation with the Nazis. Hall was nonetheless determined to return and instead went to the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) for a role with them and was sent back to France. She went to extraordinary lengths to remain undetected, knowing the risks her return entailed.

“She got some makeup artist to teach her how to draw wrinkles on her face,” she said. “She also got a fierce, a rather sort of scary London dentist to grind down her lovely, white American teeth so that she looked like a French milkmaid.”

Her tour of duty in France in 1944 and 1945 was a great success in which she avoided detection and established a thriving network of up to 1,500 members of the Maquis in three battalions, one of whom, a French-American soldier, she went on to marry. After the war, she worked for the CIA but was apparently unhappy at what were effectively senior bureaucratic desk jobs. Furthermore, as a disabled woman, it is unlikely that she received the same treatment as male colleagues would have been at that time.

Virginia Hall of Special Operations Branch receiving the Distinguished Service Cross from General Donovan, September 1945. By CIA People – Making an Impact: Virginia Hall. The People of the CIA. CIA Official Website, Public Domain.

The US President Harry Truman was unable to get her to agree to a public ceremony to receive her US Distinguished Service Cross (DSC) honour. She was also awarded the British MBE and the French Croix de Guerre. Hall was implacably against any exposure or public recognition and slipped into obscurity after retirement. Belatedly, 40 years after her death in 1982 in Maryland, she is finally being recognised with a number of books and movies being made about her life. In 2016, a CIA field agent training facility was named the Virginia Hall Expeditionary Center.

That’s my final figure for the month of FEMbruary – an idea by Alex at Lead Balloony’s blog. You can check out other submissions for this challenge by going to the comments section of his original post and keeping an eye out for his final round up post due at the end of the challenge.

And a final reminder of my five female SOE agents…

SOE Sisters No.1: Nancy Wake (#Fembruary2021)

Posted on 03/02/202111/03/2021 by Marvin

“I don’t see why we women should just wave our men a proud goodbye and then knit them balaclavas.“

Nancy Wake

Born: Wellington, New Zealand, 1912.
SOE Rank: Captain.
AKA: ‘Hélène’, ‘The White Mouse’.
Died: London, England, 2011.

It’s Fembruary and my first SOE agent is now operating under cover in France! One of five female WWII agents courtesy of Bad Squiddo Games, Nancy Wake was once described as;

“…a real Australian bombshell. Tremendous vitality, flashing eyes. Everything she did, she did well.” Training reports record that she was “a very good and fast shot” and possessed excellent fieldcraft. She was noted to “put the men to shame by her cheerful spirit and strength of character.”

Something of her independent spirit can be gleaned from how she ran away from home at the age of only 16. Living in France at the outset of WWII, she and her husband aided allied airmen to escape from France after 1940 until she eventually had to escape herself (something she was very good at – the Germans calling her ‘the white mouse’ because she kept slipping out of sight). Sadly, her French husband was captured, tortured and executed, a fact she only discovered at the end of the war. Her survival technique included her natural brazen self-confidence, Nancy later saying;

“A little powder and a little drink on the way, and I’d pass their (German) posts and wink and say, ‘Do you want to search me?’ God, what a flirtatious little bastard I was.”

The sculptor seems to have captured that nerve and poise with this pose. Nancy is attractively dressed and nonchalantly strolling on her way while casually examining her fingernails, but her hidden steel and deadliness is nicely represented by a dagger tucked away just out of sight by her side.

Alongside the Maquis, she certainly took part in a number of firefights and battles with the Germans, later confessing to reluctantly having to kill a sentry with her bare hands, in a manner she’d been trained repeatedly to use by the SOE.

Nancy survived the war and was decorated lavishly by a grateful UK, France, New Zealand, Australia and USA. She emigrated to Australia with her next husband, an RAF officer, where she unsuccessfully stood as a Liberal candidate in elections there. After her 2nd husband died in 1997, Nancy returned to the UK where she lived at the Stafford Hotel in Piccadilly, London. Here she ‘would usually be found in the hotel bar, sipping her first gin and tonic of the day and telling war stories‘. She ended her days living at a home for disabled ex-servicemen and women until she passed away at the ripe old age of 98 in 2011.

So ends my humble salute to Nancy Wake of the Special Operations Executive. I have purchased some cheap plinths for my ladies which I will probably pop them on to them for a final post. In the meantime, my next instalment of these SOE sisters is hopefully coming soon!

FEMbruary 2021

Posted on 17/01/202117/01/2021 by Marvin

It’s that time of the year again that many of us figure painters, makers and bloggers look forward to. Fembruary has been declared by Alex at Lead Balloony blog. I’ve not missed a Fembruary yet and there’s no way I want to miss out this year.

My previous Fembruary submissions:

So I’ve been taking a look at my figures as usual to find something which could satisfy the core aims of Alex’s great idea which is namely to paint and post some female miniatures in the ‘name of fair representation in the hobby’. In his blog post, he goes on to say “Given that this is intended as an encouragement to think about inclusion in the hobby then it makes sense if your entries are kick-ass ladies, and not the product of some socially awkward mini-sculptor’s sexy fantasies…” A final round-up is in early March (in time for International Women’s Day, on the 8th March).

For more details on Fembruary, see the Lead Balloony post and you could do a lot worse than check out his son’s very impressive Amazon quartet while your at it.

Nancy Wake in First Aid Nursing Yeomanry uniform, 1945, Public Domain,

If it’s kick-ass ladies that Alex wants to see, then my selection should more than fit the bill. This year I couldn’t resist Bad Squiddo’s wonderful new range of WWII female SOE agents. All of them, with one exception, are based on real life heroic agents who served the cryptically named Special Operations Executive. The characters include:

Krystyna Skarbek
Nancy Wake
Virginia Hall
Noor Inayat Khan
Annie Norman

The first four are based on real WWII SOE agents, the last one is Bad Squiddo supremo herself, Annie Norman, aka “Gestapo’s Most Wanted”. Annie might, of course, even be a genuine agent too but I’m not allowed to talk about that…

Krystyna Skarbek, SOE agent, Public Domain

I’ve also had my eye on another female figure from Bad Squiddo but it’s doubtful I will get time to paint that before Fembruary’s deadline, so (like a good SOE agent) I’m keeping that very ‘hush-hush’ for now.

Man of Tin blog has submitted some lovely Fembruary work in recent years – are you in again this year, Mark?

I’ve been painting figures again this week, so more news on that to follow.

FEMbruary 2019: Soviet Sniper Sisters in the Snow

Posted on 17/02/201917/02/2019 by Marvin

For my final submission for FEMbruary, I’ve been tackling Bad Squiddo Games’ WWII female snipers. Bad Squiddo do an amazing range of soviet soldier women including all-women infantry squads with rifles or SMGs, scouts, medics, tank riders, heavy machine gun teams, mortar teams and even flame throwers.

My second FEMbruary 2019 submission – a female soviet sniper squad!

Bad Squiddo also do sniper teams like mine, including other non-winter duos. Coincidentally, Mark at Man of Tin blog has been tackling Bad Squiddo’s female soviet command set for FEMbruary too, whilst also setting himself a FEMbruary challenge read that resonates perfectly with my sniper women figures – The Unwomanly Face of War, an oral history of Russian women in WW2.

The two figures fit well together, with one lady calling out and pointing, while her comrade stands poised ready to act on her advice.

Svetlana the Spotter:

Individually, I like this figure’s face with her hair falling out from under her fur hat. She holds a pair of binoculars by which she has clearly identified a target. I painted the eyeglass parts for these in silver, in a rare use of bright colour.

Over her shoulder is a sub-machine gun, which I’ll tentatively identify as a PPSh-41 (aka “pepesha”) with a drum magazine.

Lyudmila the Sniper:

Lyudmila is depicted holding her weapon as if in readiness to select a target. The rifle could be anything under that wrapping so I’ll randomly call it a Tokarev SVT-40 (aka the “Sveta”), which I know the female soviet sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko once used.

Lyudmila Pavlichenko was the most successful female sniper in history. Her memoirs entitled “Lady Death” have been very recently published in English for the first time by Greenhill Books. A well-educated lady who later became an historian, Pavlichenko was eventually withdrawn from combat because of her growing status. She was subsequently fêted by the allies (touring both the US and Great Britain) as well as being honoured by her mother country.

Lyudmila’s SVT-40 rifle appears to be smothered by some covering which may have acted as some sort of sound suppressor, or at the very least I would have thought, camouflage.

These two sculpts are so good that even a guy not at all used to painting WWII figures, never mind female snipers in 28mm metal, finds himself terribly tempted to build up my collection of these soviet women even more. As I’ve already got a huge army of unpainted figures – I don’t need more temptation, dammit!

And with those completed figures, I bow out out of FEMbruary 2019. I must say that I’m very pleased with my submission of figures; the locally made M.J. Mode 54mm Wrens and these fabulously sculpted Bad Squiddo snipers. Imperial Rebel Ork and Man of Tin have been busy also and I urge you to keep an eye out for more updates on Alex at Leadballoony blog for his and other submissions!

2018 in Review

Posted on 31/12/201831/12/2018 by Marvin

As the fourth year of Suburban Militarism on WordPress comes to a close and a New Year looms, it’s a time for reflection. Swedish Napoleonic cavalrymen; Ottoman Turkish artillerymen; Serbian and Austrian infantry of the Great War; Belgian Carabinier cyclists; 28mm Yeomanry figures based on illustrations by Marrion; Saxon Cuirassiers and not forgetting some Napoleonic Poles back in January.

So, here’s a brief pictorial overview of some of the figures painted over 2018.

RedBox Ottoman Turkish Artillery (17th Century)
Strelets Polish Napoleonic Infantry, 12th Regiment.
Strelets Polish Napoleonic Infantry, 13th Regiment.
HaT Belgian WWI Carabinier Cyclists
Caesar French WWI Infantry (1914)
Cracker Battery, Christmas Artillery.
Caesar French WWI Infantry with St. Étienne machine gun.
Pegasus WWI Infantry (1917) with Hotchkiss machine gun.
HaT Swedish Cuirassier
Strelets Serbian Infantry in winter dress (1917)
Dorset Soldiers, 3rd County of London Yeomanry (Sharpshooters), 1902-07.
Dorset Soldiers, Westmorland and Cumberland Yeomanry, 1905-14.
Pegasus WWI French Infantry (1917)
Zvezda Saxon Cuirassier
Strelets Serbian Infantry in winter dress (1914)
Dorset Soldiers, 3rd County of London Yeomanry (Sharpshooters), 1905.
Strelets Austro-Hungarian Infantry (1914)
Strelets Austro-Hungarian Infantry in Gasmasks (1914)
Dorset Soldiers, Sussex Imperial Yeomanry, 1905.
HaT Swedish Scanian Carabiniers
HaT Swedish Horse Guards of the King
HaT Swedish Morner Hussars
Hat Swedish Smaland Light Dragoons

Looking forward to 2019, I know well enough by now not to forecast my painting plans in any great detail as distractions lead me on to other unforeseen areas over the year! However, currently demanding my attention are:

My Ottomania project – now well under way with the artillery corps progressing nicely;
The Great War project – I have a number of excellent kits I intend to tackle as I continue to develop my WWI collection;
Some 54mm Yeomanry cavalry figures are crying out for attention;
I have my eye on a couple of soon-to-be-released new figures for 2019;
And of course, there’s the Nappy Cavalry Project which continues proudly into its fifth year being now up to 31 regiments strong!

My ever growing pile of unpainted model soldier kits suggests the likely fate of at least some of these hobby intentions, however!

Best wishes for a happy and peaceful 2019 to all Suburban Militarism’s friends and visitors!

Marvin

The Post Office Rifles in Egypt

Posted on 12/11/201712/11/2017 by Marvin

The fourth and final group of Victorian Rifle Volunteers is now completed. The group are depicted in the hot sands of Kassassin, Egypt in 1882. It was here that the Post Office Rifles (known officially as the Army Post Office Corps or APOC) came under fire from Colonel Urabi’s Egyptian army (see my previous post on this). I know that they took no casualties and am assuming for the purposes of this project that they actually returned fire.

In my little diorama, the men of the Post Office Rifles have formed a firing line, variously loading, firing or assessing their shots under the instruction of an officer.

I’ve added a few arid looking plants to the sand and rocks. Given the hot and dusty conditions, I’ve dry-brushed some of the desert onto their puttees and trousers to make them look suitably campaign-weary.

Ah, those puttees… As mentioned in a previous post, I rashly began painting them with Indian army style puttees rather than selecting figures with leather gaiters, which is what they would have worn. Never mind, putting puttees aside, I still think it gives a nice impression of these men taking part in the 1882 Egyptian campaign.

I took some time playing around with the white foreign service pattern helmets. Too much shading and the white helmet looks unnatural; too little shading and it looks too bright. After some last-minute tinkering, I think they look satisfactory.

GPO — Artist’s impression of the PO Rifles in Egypt.

That’s all from my Victorian Rifle Volunteers project; for the foreseeable future at least. Next up on the Suburban Militarism “To Do” list are a number of possible figures. The ongoing Napoleonic Cavalry Project has been in hiatus since July and I’m about ready to tackle another regiment.

But creeping quickly up on us all, of course, is Christmas and with that in mind I’ve some more figures under way for what has been something of a seasonal tradition at Suburban Militarism – Christmas Soldiers! More about this soon.