The Iron Brigade sustained the highest percentage of battle casualties of any brigade in the Union Army during the Civil War. The arithmetic is grim. At Brawner Farm on August 28, 1862 — the brigade's combat debut against Stonewall Jackson — they lost a third of their strength in ninety minutes. At Antietam's Cornfield three weeks later, they lost forty percent in twenty minutes of point-blank rifle fire. On July 1, 1863, on McPherson's Ridge at Gettysburg, the brigade lost sixty percent in three hours of close-range fighting in Herbst Woods. Less than a year later, in the tangled second-growth of the Wilderness in May 1864, the brigade absorbed casualties it could no longer replace from the dwindling Western regiments that had originally manned it. The Iron Brigade as a distinct combat formation effectively ceased to exist after the Wilderness. The men in the advancing line during the brigade's later campaigns knew the arithmetic. They went forward anyway.

The W. Britain figure depicts an Iron Brigade soldier in the right shoulder shift position — the regulation U.S. Army carry for marching to contact, with the rifle musket balanced on the right shoulder and the right hand gripping the trigger guard. The body is angled in mid-stride: right leg back, left leg forward, the whole figure pitched into the advance. He wears the early-war Iron Brigade kit — the nine-button frock coat, white canvas gaiters, light blue trousers, the tall black Hardee hat with the brass eagle on the side, and the cartridge box and haversack on his belt. The bayonet is fixed. The figure pairs naturally with the Reaching for Cap and Standing Firing figures in the same range — the same soldier at different points in the same fight. Pair this figure with Iron Brigade Reaching for Cap in Gaiters, the same uniform at the seventh motion of the loading drill; with Col. Henry A. Morrow of the 24th Michigan, the brigade's regimental commander at Gettysburg; or with Color Sergeant Abel Peck, the brigade's color sergeant killed on McPherson's Ridge.

Scale: 1/30 (60mm). Matte-painted metal. W. Britain model 31392. From the American Civil War range. Single foot figure, supplied painted and ready for display.