In December 1944, with the end of the war seemingly in sight, Hitler gambled his last reserves on a surprise blow through the snow-choked forests of the Ardennes. The offensive the Allies called the Battle of the Bulge fell hardest on the American army — and it was the American soldier, cold, often outnumbered, sometimes surrounded, who absorbed it and turned it back. This King & Country collection is that soldier's story in hand-painted 1/30 scale metal: the GIs who held the crossroads and villages of Belgium through the coldest winter in memory.

The Ardennes cold was an enemy in its own right, and much of the range captures the human texture of that winter — men Staying Warm at an oil-drum brazier, a hot meal at Chow Time, the long freezing hours of Guard Duty. Threaded through them is the war's cost, in the Red Cross-marked Medic and the men Carrying the Wounded to safety.

When the shooting starts, the collection fields a full American squad and its firepower: riflemen with the M1 Garand, the Tommy-Gunner with his Thompson, grenades, the BAR, and the Bazooka Team stalking German armor. Rolling up in support comes the armor itself — the whitewashed Sherman "Kraut Killer" — while the broken, no-front-line nature of the battle is caught in the Four Man Patrol groping through the snow to find the enemy.

At the top stands the campaign's defining American: General Patton and his bull terrier Willie, whose Third Army wheeled ninety degrees north to relieve Bastogne. Set his GIs against the enemy who nearly broke the line — the German side of the same battle, beginning with the MG34 Machine Gun Team — and the whole Battle of the Bulge takes shape across one snowbound diorama.