The Irish Brigade's first major test was the Sunken Road at Antietam on September 17, 1862 — the worn farm lane between cornfields that the Confederate division of D.H. Hill had occupied as a natural rifle pit. The Federal II Corps attacked it for nearly four hours. The Irish Brigade, attached to Richardson's division of the corps, advanced through artillery fire and came up to within thirty yards of the lane. From there the two sides fought a brutal close-range firefight that lasted until the Sunken Road was finally enveloped from the flanks and the Confederates were driven out across the corpses piled in the road bed. The brigade had lost more than five hundred men. The 69th New York alone lost sixty percent.

This W. Britain figure depicts an Irish Brigade soldier in the regulation standing-fire stance — body angled, weight back on the right foot, rifle musket leveled at the shoulder. He wears the standard Federal infantry kit: dark blue blouse, light blue trousers, dark forage cap, the rolled blanket and haversack across his chest, the cartridge box on his belt with the cast U.S.-pattern buckle. The rifle is the Springfield Model 1861 or Pattern 1853 Enfield. The standing firer is the rear rank of any two-rank firing line and pairs naturally with the brigade's kneeling firing figure for a complete two-rank diorama. Pair this figure with Irish Brigade Kneeling Firing, the front-rank companion; with Irish Brigade Kneeling Ramming for the loading sequence; or with Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, the II Corps commander under whom the Irish Brigade served from Antietam through the Overland Campaign.

Scale: 1/30 (60mm). Matte-painted metal. W. Britain model 31352. From the American Civil War range. Single foot figure, supplied painted and ready for display.