The Germans had their own word for the ordinary foot soldier: "Landser." Like the American "GI" or the British "Tommy," it was plain, a little rueful, and worn without pretension — the name the common infantryman gave himself. The Landser did the unglamorous bulk of the war: the endless marching, the digging of trench and foxhole, the holding of a line in weather like this, and, increasingly after 1942, the dying. Whatever the propaganda said about wonder weapons and elite formations, it was this man in his heavy wool greatcoat, kneeling with a bolt-action rifle in the snow, who actually fought Germany's war — and, by the end, mostly lost it.

The figure kneels in a full-length greatcoat, 98k held across his body, steel helmet low. Set him in a winter line with the Grenadier Kneeling Looking Up and the Grenadier Running with 98k, mirroring the same greatcoated cold on the American side, the U.S. Infantryman Firing in a Greatcoat.

W. Britain model 25236. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Single kneeling foot figure on a sculpted groundwork base. Boxed.