The "potato masher" in the squad leader's hand was more versatile than it looked. The German Stielhandgranate — an explosive head on a long wooden handle — used its stick for leverage, letting a soldier throw it farther than a ball-shaped grenade, and it was armed by pulling a cord threaded through the handle. Its cleverest trick was improvised: by wiring six extra grenade heads around a central one, troops made a "Geballte Ladung," a bundled charge with many times the blast — a field-expedient bunker-buster and, before purpose-built rockets arrived, one of the few things an infantryman had against a tank, wedged in the tracks or dropped on the engine deck. Simple, adaptable and deadly, it served the whole war.

The figure is a Waffen-SS squad leader standing watchful — MP40 machine pistol in one hand, a stick grenade ready in the other, in field tunic and pea-pattern camouflage trousers. The MP40's close-range firepower and the grenades marked the man who led the assault from the front. He commands the collection's Waffen-SS squad: the MG34 Gun Team that anchors his fire, the riflemen Advancing Under Fire, and the firefight of Open Fire!. In a diorama he is the figure the others take their cue from — weapon up, reading the ground, about to send them forward.

Model: WS378 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set