He could not see. Truman's eyesight had already cost him West Point, so he memorised the eye chart and joined the Missouri National Guard instead. What he was handed in France was Battery D — a Kansas City outfit of Irish and German Catholic boys with a reputation for having no discipline whatsoever. Truman said himself that he would have to work hard to be accepted by them. Their first real action, in the Vosges, ended with men running from German counter-battery fire. Nobody was hurt, and Truman wrote down the name the battery gave it: the Battle of Who Run. "Some of them ran when the first sergeant did and some of them didn't."

W. Britain has put the glasses on him, which is the right call — they are the most important thing he is wearing. Overseas cap, trench coat over the uniform, Sam Browne and holster, breeches and laced field boots: a thirty-four-year-old farmer from Missouri commanding a battery of French 75s. The Montana Hats artillery are serving that same gun. In a diorama, the mortar crew are another American team working borrowed French kit at the same scale. And Rickenbacker was the other American captain in France that year, building a reputation he would spend for the rest of his life.

W. Britain model 10121. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Single standing figure on a sculpted groundwork base. Boxed.