U.S. Marine Advancing, No.2, Belleau Wood, 1918

On 6 June 1918 the Marines walked into a wheat field and suffered the bloodiest day in their Corps' history to that point. It came from Pershing's faith in "open warfare" — the belief that aggressive American infantry with good rifles could cross open ground and overwhelm a dug-in enemy, without the creeping artillery barrage the French and British had bled four years to learn. So the 4th Brigade advanced in waves across eight hundred yards of knee-high wheat, into machine-gun fire that swept the whole field. One battalion was cut to shreds short of the trees. Major Thomas Holcomb wrote home of it: "There was never anything finer than their advance across a place literally swept with machine gun fire."

The pose is that advance — crouched low, rifle held ready across the body, one boot driving forward. This is the man in Holcomb's letter, out in the open with a long way still to go. Build the sequence around him: he crosses the wheat toward the grenade-thrower working the treeline, and the shotgun and the rifle-butt fight are what wait once he reaches the trees. Set several advancing figures in a loose line across bare groundwork and you have the wheat field itself — the empty ground between the start line and the wood is the whole story.

W. Britain model 13097. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Single figure on a sculpted groundwork base. Boxed.