After Gettysburg, ordnance officers collected nearly twenty-eight thousand rifle muskets from the battlefield. Most were loaded. Of the loaded weapons, more than twelve thousand contained more than one charge — a paper cartridge rammed down on top of another paper cartridge, sometimes three or four deep, in one case twenty-three loads stacked in a single barrel. The men firing those weapons had loaded the cartridges in the smoke and chaos of close combat, lowered the hammer onto the percussion cap, pulled the trigger, and never noticed that the cap had failed or the powder had not ignited. They reloaded and tried again. The Confederate soldier ramming this cartridge in his rifle musket would have no way of knowing whether the previous load had actually fired.

This W. Britain figure depicts a Confederate infantryman at the fifth motion of the loading drill — left hand bracing the rifle muzzle, right arm raised high to drive the ramrod down the barrel with two firm strokes. He wears the Confederate kit: gray shell jacket, light blue trousers, dark forage cap, the bedroll and haversack across his chest, the cartridge box on his belt, knapsack on his back. The ramming motion takes seconds in the choreography of loading but represents the most exposed pose in the firing cycle — rifle held upright, hands off the trigger. Pair this figure with Confederate Infantry Reaching for Cap for the next motion in the loading sequence; with Confederate Infantry Kneeling Preparing to Fire for the firing pose; or with Confederate Corporal Urging Men Forward as the NCO directing the line.

Scale: 1/30 (60mm). Matte-painted metal. W. Britain model 31357. From the American Civil War range. Single foot figure, supplied painted and ready for display.