By the winter of 1944-45, a German attack was a careful, dangerous thing. The army that had once advanced in confident columns now moved knowing that the Allies owned the sky and out-gunned it on the ground — that any careless movement in the open could bring down fighter-bombers, massed artillery, or the fire of a better-supplied enemy. So the late-war grenadier advanced like this one: crouched, watchful, weapon ready, using every fold of ground and stretch of cover, giving away as little as possible. Caution was not timidity but arithmetic; a soldier who bounded into the open in 1944 rarely got the chance to learn from it.

The figure eases forward in an M40 greatcoat under a splinter-pattern Zeltbahn — the modern German camouflage shelter-quarter — his 98k slung, steel helmet low. Advance him with his winter squad, the MP40 Grenadier and the Grenadier Running with 98k, mirroring the same wary movement on the other side of the line, the U.S. Infantryman Advancing with Caution.

W. Britain model 25274. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Single foot figure on a sculpted groundwork base. Boxed.