When Italy surrendered in September 1943 and German troops poured in to occupy the north, they seized enormous stocks of Italian Army equipment — including bolts of camouflage cloth. That fabric carried the telo mimetico, a three-color pattern Italy had adopted in 1929, making it the world's first standardized, mass-issued military camouflage. Running short of their own printed material as the war dragged on, German units — the Waffen-SS especially — had smocks and coveralls tailored from the captured Italian cloth. It is one of the small ironies of the late war: SS soldiers going into battle dressed in the camouflage of the ally that had just changed sides.

The figure is a Waffen-SS soldier — the combat branch of the SS, formations that fought as some of Germany's hardest troops and also compiled a well-documented record of war crimes — standing and firing a captured Soviet PPSh-41. His smock is cut from Italian camouflage cloth, muddied and worn. Pose him with his squad-mate in the same fabric, the Waffen SS in Italian Camo Firing 98k, and cross him with the shared Soviet weapon of the German NCO with PPSh-41. A late-war diorama built on captured kit — Italian cloth, Russian gun — tells the story of an army improvising.

W. Britain model 25119. 1/30 scale, matte-painted metal. Single figure — a Waffen-SS soldier in Italian camouflage, standing and firing a captured PPSh-41. Boxed.