Walls did not stay whole for long where the fighting went. A tank round, a mortar, or an artillery shell could blow a breach in a stone wall in an instant, and the gap became part of the battle. Attackers funneled toward a hole rather than climb an intact wall in the open; defenders sited their guns to cover exactly those breaches. Soldiers also made their own openings — "mouse-holing," blasting or hacking a passage through a wall to move from one enclosure or building to the next without stepping into a fire-swept street. A broken wall like this, its middle blown out to bare stone, is the record of a position that was fought over hard.

The piece is a hand-painted stone wall with a shattered breach, ready to anchor a contested-street or farmyard diorama. Fight it from both sides: send the U.S. Infantryman Running rushing the gap, with the German Panzerknacker — whose tank-hunting Panzerfaust could open such a hole — and the Volksgrenadier Firing StG 44 covering the breach.

W. Britain model HA2098. 1/30 scale, matte, hand-painted. Hand-cast high-density urethane foam, approximately 3"H × 13.5"L × 0.75"W, with a blown-out breach; can be trimmed to fit a custom footprint. Made and hand-painted in the USA.