K&C CSM Stanley Hollis VC — only Victoria Cross winner of D-Day, 6th Battalion Green Howards, British Normandy Memorial Gold Beach Collection

King & Country June 2026 Dispatch: Gold Beach, Alamo, and Napoleonic

Today is June 6, 2026 — the 82nd anniversary of the largest amphibious invasion in history. On the morning of D-Day, some 60,000 British soldiers and marines came ashore on the two British beaches — GOLD and SWORD — alongside American, Canadian, and other Allied troops on three more. King & Country's June dispatch leads with a new collection that honors the British men who fought on GOLD Beach, and I'm leading this month's post with the same.

There's more in the dispatch — additional Mexican soldiers for the Alamo series we covered in April, a German Guard Box, and a separate section about the K&C Napoleonic French Line Infantry I've been waiting to add to the Breagans catalog. But the Gold Beach story is the news this month, and it's worth telling in full.

The Gold Beach Collection

This is one of the most unusual releases King & Country has done in recent memory — a small, focused series produced in partnership with The British Normandy Memorial. The story behind it is worth knowing.

In early 2025, a visitor walked into the K&C shop in Hong Kong's Pacific Place. He was Nicholas Witchell, the former BBC journalist and Royal Correspondent. Looking at K&C's existing D-Day Tommies in the case, he noticed something most of us would miss: every figure wore the shoulder titles and divisional patches of units that landed on SWORD Beach, not GOLD. He asked K&C founder Andy whether they'd consider producing figures for the GOLD Beach landings — because GOLD Beach is where The British Normandy Memorial stands.

The British Normandy Memorial above Gold Beach, Normandy

The memorial itself has a story. It exists because a D-Day veteran named George Betts began pressing in 2015 — a year after the 70th anniversary — for Britain to build its own national memorial in Normandy. Britain had been the slowest of the major Allied nations to do so. Nicholas Witchell heard him, and the two helped found the Normandy Memorial Trust. The Trust acquired farmland just above Gold Beach, the British and French governments backed the project, and the memorial was formally opened by the then-Prince of Wales — now King Charles III — on June 6, 2021.

For the figures themselves, K&C chose to miniaturise the 6th Battalion of The Green Howards, part of the 69th Infantry Brigade of the 50th (Northumbrian) Division. The reason: that battalion produced the only Victoria Cross awarded for D-Day Operation itself. Company Sergeant Major Stanley Hollis won it on the morning of June 6, 1944, by single-handedly clearing two German pillboxes and later rescuing wounded men under fire. He's the marquee figure in the collection — which is why he's the hero of this post, shown from five angles. The British Normandy Memorial's logo runs through the photo because this entire release was produced with the memorial's blessing and support.

King & Country Gold Beach Medic with Stretcher, RAMC corporal in MkII helmet with scrim and Red Cross brassard, folded stretcher over shoulder, D-Day Normandy 1944, 1/30 60mm matte figure, DD416

The full set:

If you visit the British Normandy Memorial in person, a small selection of K&C mementoes is also available at the Winston Churchill Centre nearby — proceeds support the ongoing upkeep of the site.

I've ordered all nine.

More Mexican Soldiers Join the Alamo Series

The April dispatch covered K&C's launch of new Mexican soldados for the Remember the Alamo series. June adds five more figures to the same line — additional poses plus the Mexican Army flagbearer:

These pair directly with the figures from April — adding poses and a flagbearer to round out the Mexican line. Ordering all five.

German Guard Box

One small set piece release worth flagging: a German Guard Box from K&C. Useful for any WWII German display, fitting equally well in Eastern Front, Western Front, or occupation-period dioramas. I'll be stocking it.

Building Out the Napoleonic Collection

The next section isn't strictly a June release — it's a note about what I'm adding to inventory this week, because I've made a deliberate decision to build out the K&C Napoleonic line at Breagans, and these orders go in alongside the Gold Beach ones above.

A confession: Napoleonic French troops are my favorite category in all of toy soldiering. The uniforms are spectacular — shakos, plumes, sashes, gold lace, gaiters — and there's a case to be made that they look best in gloss, the way the old Tradition of London French Grenadiers of the Guard set still looks on the shelf where I have it now. That was one of my first sets, picked up early in my collecting years. Forty years later I still pull it down to look at it.

But K&C does Napoleonic in matte 1/30, and they do it well. As of now I carry ten K&C Napoleonic figures, with these as the best sellers:

What I'm ordering this week to expand the line — nine more figures, mostly French Line Infantry plus a pair of mounted officers and a drummer:

That'll roughly double the K&C Napoleonic catalog at Breagans by the end of the month.

That's the June dispatch. Gold Beach is the historic anchor, the Alamo line keeps growing, the German Guard Box is a useful small piece, and the Napoleonic build-out is the long game — one of my favorite eras getting proper representation in the Breagans catalog.

If you want figure suggestions for your own display, or you're hunting for something I haven't covered, write to me at daniel@breagans.com.

— Daniel

Back to blog