A soldier's raincoat carries a hidden story about the war's scramble for raw materials. When Japan overran Malaya and the Dutch East Indies in early 1942, it seized the plantations that supplied the great majority of America's natural rubber — a strategic blow that touched everything from tires to gaskets. Rubber was rationed hard and funneled into a crash synthetic-rubber program, and small comforts had to give way: the infantry raincoat, introduced in 1938 with a rubberized cotton coating, was switched in 1942 to a synthetic resin finish to free the rubber for more urgent uses. The men still preferred it to the later poncho — proof that even a rain garment was shaped by global strategy.

The figure stands waiting in the full-length OD raincoat, M1 Garand resting muzzle-up on his hip, netted helmet low against the drizzle. He joins the foul-weather patrol built around the Infantry in Raincoat Walking, the Infantryman with Raincoat over Equipment, and the Infantryman in Raincoat Pointing for a rain-soaked column halted in the mud.

W. Britain model 25237. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Single foot figure on a sculpted groundwork base. Boxed.