A musket ball in 1780 was a brutal weapon. The flintlock smoothbore that armed British infantry — the Brown Bess, in service from 1722 to 1838 — fired a soft lead round about .75 caliber, roughly an ounce of solid lead moving at around a thousand feet per second. The damage it did when it struck a man was disproportionate to the small size of the projectile: the ball deformed on impact, often dragged fragments of clothing into the wound, and made a wide irregular channel through flesh and bone. Survival depended on where the ball hit, on whether the wound could be cleaned in time, and on the surgeon's willingness to amputate before infection set in. British casualties in America during the Revolutionary War totaled about twenty-five thousand killed, wounded, captured, or dead of disease across the eight years — a meaningful fraction of every regiment that served. This figure depicts the moment a soldier of the 43rd Foot ran out of luck.

This figure shows a 43rd Foot infantryman in the moment of being hit — body arched backward, tricorne tumbling off, mouth open in the shock of impact, musket still in his hands as he falls. He wears the standard British line uniform: scarlet coat with white facings, white cross-belts and waistcoat, white breeches, black knee gaiters. The figure is captured at the instant of contact, before the consequences arrive — a deliberately ambiguous moment that lets the viewer decide whether the wound is survivable or not. He pairs with the Continental Line kneeling firing soldier (the kind of man who might have fired the shot), the British 43rd Foot at "Make Ready" (his fellow soldier still in the fight), and the British 43rd Foot Company Officer (the officer who will have to write to his family).

1/30 scale (60mm), matte-painted, single figure boxed. Catalog number 16204. 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.