On 22 December 1944, with the 101st Airborne surrounded and freezing at Bastogne, a German party came forward under a white flag carrying a formal demand: surrender the town, or face annihilation. The message reached Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, the division's acting commander — the senior man on the spot, standing in for a commander away in the States. His first muttered reaction, "Aw, nuts," became the official reply, typed out and sent back: "To the German Commander: NUTS! The American Commander." The baffled Germans had to be told it meant, roughly, "Go to hell." The 101st held on until Patton's tanks broke through four days later, and one word passed into legend.

The figure shows McAuliffe as he looked that winter, in a fur-collared B-10 flight jacket and a star-marked helmet, sidearm on his hip. As the command anchor of a Bastogne diorama he stands over the men who held the ring — the paratroopers of "Welcome to Bastogne" and their company commander Capt. Dick Winters — awaiting the relief driving up from General Patton.

W. Britain model 10117. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Single foot figure on a sculpted groundwork base. Boxed.