Every Marine was trained to be his wounded buddy's first hope. In the minutes after a man was hit — the "golden hour" when blood loss and shock did their work — it was whoever was nearest who packed the wound, stopped the bleeding, and kept him alive until a corpsman or a helicopter could reach him. And the man they all prayed for was "Doc," the Navy hospital corpsman who served alongside the Marines, unarmed or lightly armed, running toward the cry of "Corpsman up!" through fire that pinned everyone else down. Corpsmen died in great numbers doing it, and the Marines who owed them their lives never forgot.

K&C sculpts the scene with unflinching honesty: one Marine bent over his badly wounded comrade, pressing a field dressing to the wound, two M16s cast aside on the ground. The set is K&C's homage to Don McCullin, the British photojournalist who spent weeks embedded with the Marines at Hue and made some of the finest combat photographs ever taken — the inspiration behind this piece. It stands with the other figures of the war's cost: the men taking care of a buddy and the covering fire that bought them the moment. Read about McCullin and the cameramen of the war in our feature on the photographers of the K&C Vietnam series.

King & Country model VN128. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Two-figure set — a Marine treating his wounded comrade — with two M16 rifles, on a sculpted groundwork base. Boxed.