The Iron Brigade got its name on the afternoon of September 14, 1862, at South Mountain in Maryland. Brigadier General John Gibbon's brigade of Western volunteers — at that point still officially the "Black Hat Brigade" because of the Hardee hats Gibbon had ordered them to draw — was sent up the National Road to clear Confederate troops from Turner's Gap. They went uphill into massed Confederate rifle fire and pushed the defenders off the crest by sundown. George McClellan, watching from a hilltop with his staff, reportedly turned to a subordinate and said the brigade "must be made of iron." The line was repeated in dispatches and the nickname stuck. Three days later, at the Battle of Antietam on September 17, the same brigade went into the Cornfield against Stonewall Jackson's corps and lost more than a third of its strength in twenty minutes of point-blank fighting. The nickname earned at South Mountain was confirmed at Antietam.

The W. Britain figure catches an Iron Brigade corporal in the moment of firing — body angled away, rifle musket leveled with bayonet fixed, weight back on his right foot. The weapon is the standard Federal infantry arm of 1862–65, either the Springfield Model 1861 or the Pattern 1853 Enfield, both rifled to fire the .58 caliber Minié ball at effective ranges over three hundred yards. He wears the regulation dark blue federal blouse and light blue trousers, the rolled gum blanket diagonally across his chest, the cartridge box and haversack on his hip, the canteen at his side. The tall black Hardee hat is tilted slightly — a man in motion. A corporal in a Civil War infantry company was typically a junior NCO, either a file closer behind the firing line or a member of the color guard. Pair this figure with Color Sergeant Abel Peck of the 24th Michigan, the brigade's color sergeant killed at Gettysburg; with Col. Henry A. Morrow, the 24th Michigan's regimental commander; or with Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, the army commander whose remark at South Mountain gave the brigade its name.

Scale: 1/30 (60mm). Matte-painted metal. W. Britain model 31374. From the American Civil War range. Single foot figure, supplied painted and ready for display.