The 43rd Foot's grenadier company landed at Long Wharf in Boston in 1774, and on the afternoon of June 17, 1775 it took its place on the right of the composite grenadier battalion that General William Howe sent up the eastern slope of Breed's Hill against the rebel works on Bunker Hill. The grenadier battalions were the British army's strongest assault troops — every line regiment's tallest and steadiest men, drawn out of their parent units to form flying battalions under brigade command — and they led the first two assaults that the Massachusetts and Connecticut militiamen broke up with point-blank fire from the rail fence and the redoubt. The third attempt, made with bayonets only after the rebel powder failed, finally carried the position. Major John Pitcairn, who had also fired the first official shot at Lexington Green ten weeks before, fell at the foot of the redoubt as the grenadiers went over the parapet. British casualties in the four-hour fight came to 1,054 men — roughly forty percent of the assault force, the heaviest losses the British army would suffer in a single action of the war.

This W. Britain figure shows a 43rd Foot grenadier at the march in regulation dress — musket held vertically against the right shoulder, butt in the hand, bayonet fixed and pointing up. The order is the post-1768 grenadier company uniform: tall black bearskin cap with brass front plate carrying the regimental device and the King's cypher, red regimental coat with the 43rd's white facings (collar, lapels, cuffs, and turnbacks) and the regimental lace at the buttonholes, white waistcoat under, white breeches drawn over the knee, black tall gaiters fastened above the knee, white cross-belts supporting the cartridge box and bayonet scabbard. The flank-company wings at the shoulders and the brass mitre plate mark him as a grenadier rather than a battalion man — the elite of the regiment's right flank. He marches alongside his fellow grenadier the 43rd Foot grenadier NCO, and forms up with the line-company men in the 43rd Foot battalion company marching — three figures showing the regiment's flank and battalion companies in the same column of march.

Model: 16120 / W. Britain 1/30 (60mm) / matte finish / 1 piece set