The signaller was the man who made the British infantry's tactical communications work — at least in theory. On D-Day morning the 6th Battalion Green Howards came ashore at Gold Beach with their link from battalion HQ to brigade running through Wireless Set No. 18s like this one, a thirty-two-pound two-piece HF man-pack carried in a haversack with a three-foot whip antenna and a headset and hand-microphone trailing to the operator. The Set 18 had a voice range of up to ten miles in good conditions and longer on Morse — enough to keep the rifle companies in touch with battalion as the line moved inland through the Norman hedgerows. The signaller's lot was always to be a marked man: German snipers learned to look for the antenna, the radio's bulk slowed him on the move, and the set had to be unfolded and tuned under fire whenever the company stopped. The British Normandy Memorial at Ver-sur-Mer — opened in 2021 above the very landing sector the Green Howards came ashore on, named for the 22,442 servicemen who died under British command in the Normandy campaign — stands directly above this radioman's beach.

This King & Country figure shows a Green Howards signaller on the move with the Set 18 unfolded for use: the green canvas wireless-set haversack on his back with the whip antenna fully extended, the hand-microphone at his mouth and headset clamped under his MkII steel helmet, a gas-mask haversack in pale canvas at his front. The helmet carries the same foliage-strung scrim net the Normandy infantry adopted within hours of landing. His No. 4 Mk. 1 Lee-Enfield is slung across his back with the long spike "pig-sticker" bayonet fixed, and the Green Howards' shoulder flash is visible at the upper sleeve. He works the battalion's wireless link directly under CSM Stan Hollis VC — same regiment, same battalion, same day on Gold Beach — and his line of communication runs up to brigade and ultimately to Field Marshal Montgomery in Normandy commanding 21st Army Group. His K&C British WWII signaller counterpart in the airborne range, three months later at Arnhem, is the Bloody Radio figure — whose name captures the British 1st Airborne's notorious Market Garden communication failures.

Model: DD417 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set