The BAR was born for a tactic that barely got to use it. When John Browning designed his Browning Automatic Rifle in 1917, the U.S. Army had a specific idea in mind: "walking fire." Advancing infantry would carry the automatic rifles forward and fire from the hip and shoulder while walking across no-man's-land, hosing the enemy trench to keep heads down until the attackers arrived. The gun even had a special belt cup to steady it on the move. It reached France only in the last weeks of the First World War, and the fighting ended before the idea could be proven. The weapon found its true calling a generation later — and the marching-fire concept it was built for was revived in WWII by commanders like Patton.

The gunner strides forward with the BAR held ready across his body, the wide belt of heavy twenty-round magazines at his waist and a PFC's single stripe on his sleeve — the squad's automatic rifle and its base of fire. He shares his .30-06 with the riflemen he covers, like the Advancing Rifleman, and it was his squad leader the Sergeant who told him where to put that fire. For the commander who most loved sending men forward firing on the move, link across to General Patton. In a diorama the BAR man anchors a firing line — the gun the whole squad's fight was built to support and be supported by.

Model: DD402 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set