On 7 July 1918 Ludendorff signed Army Order II No. 91,366 and told the German army what colour to be. Helmets were to be painted green, brown and ochre for summer, the patches divided by a black line a finger wide, and the finish had to be matte so nothing caught the light. The order specified the paint by weight — five kilograms each of ochre, green and brown per thousand helmets, and two of black. Men had been daubing their own helmets for a year by then; this made it doctrine. It also dates this figure. The camouflage on his Stahlhelm puts him in the last four months of the war.

W. Britain has him low and moving — head down, shoulders forward, the Gewehr 98 carried level in both hands, marching boots in churned ground. The helmet is the point of the sculpt: hard-edged patches of green, ochre and rust divided by black. Across his back are the blanket roll, mess tin, bread bag and canteen. Build the assault around him — the officer directing, the ammunition carrier coming up behind — and give the diorama broken ground rather than a neat trench line, because going round the trench was the whole idea. For the other side of it, the American doughboy is the man he would have met in those last four months.

W. Britain model 23145. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Single foot figure advancing on a sculpted groundwork base. Boxed.