U.S. Marine Standing Firing Trench Shot Gun, Belleau Wood, 1918

This figure depicts a U.S. Marine at Belleau Wood, June 1918, armed with a pump-action trench shotgun. The 4th Marine Brigade fought through the wood for twenty-six days during the German Spring Offensive, advancing across wheat fields against entrenched machine guns, wire, and gas. By the time they cleared it, they had taken nearly 5,000 casualties. The Germans, the story goes, called them Teufelhunden — Devil Dogs — a name the Corps still carries.

The pump-action shotgun was an American innovation in WWI fighting. The Winchester M1897 and Remington Model 10 were issued to a small number of men in each company for trench clearing and close-range work where a bolt-action rifle was too slow. The Germans formally protested the weapon as illegal under the Hague Convention; the U.S. dismissed the complaint. A Marine with a trench shotgun is a relatively rare figure in any WWI collection — most ranges lean rifle and machine gun — and this release is sculpted in the firing pose, weapon shouldered, which makes him work both as a standalone display piece and as an unusual element in a Belleau Wood squad scene.

1/30 scale (60mm), matte-painted, single figure boxed. Catalog number 13076. As with the rest of the W. Britain modern range, the painting is photographic-quality detail intended to read well in dioramas and display cases.