The man losing this fight has his own story. Belleau Wood was not held by elite stormtroopers but by ordinary German line divisions — five of them fed through the wood across June 1918, with more than two thousand men and thirty machine guns dug in among the trees. Those guns scythed the Marines down in the wheat. But once the Americans reached the treeline the machine guns mattered less, and the fighting became what this figure shows: knives, bayonets, entrenching tools and clubbed rifles at arm's length. When it ended, a captured German assessment rated the American 2nd Division "a very good division," even fit to be used as assault troops — the enemy's own verdict, worth more than any nickname.

The piece is two figures cast as one: a Marine in the Brodie helmet and gas-mask satchel of mid-1918, rifle reversed and swung up to bring the butt down on a German infantryman sprawled on his back, one hand flung up. It is the whole battle compressed to two men and a yard of ground. Because both sides are already on the base it stands alone as a diorama — but it also bridges the ranges: the field-grey on the ground is the same worn by the German infantry advancing, and the Marine belongs with the shotgun and pistol Marines of the same wood.

W. Britain model 13074. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Two figures — a U.S. Marine and a German infantryman — on a single base, cast as one piece. Boxed.