By the winter of 1916 the blockade had done its work. The potato crop failed in the cold and the wet, and Germany ate turnips — boiled thin, mashed onto bread — through what the country still calls the Steckrübenwinter. City rations fell to between 1,000 and 1,500 calories a day, against the 3,000 the Imperial Health Office reckoned a working man needed. Somewhere between 400,000 and 700,000 civilians died of it. That was the army's home, and the hunger followed the army into the field: when the German advance of March 1918 overran the British supply dumps, discipline came apart. Men who had not seen food like it in two years stopped to eat, and the offensive slowed down around them.

W. Britain has him striding forward with the Gewehr 98 held across his body, ready but not yet up — the moment before the shoulder. His Stahlhelm carries the same camouflage as the stormtrooper, though he is in noticeably lighter order: cartridge pouches, bread bag and canteen at the hip, no pack, no blanket roll, marching boots. He is a useful figure precisely because he is doing the ordinary thing — walking toward it. Put him in a diorama with the ammunition carrier coming up behind and the walking wounded going the other way, and the whole arc sits on one board.

W. Britain model 23142. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Single foot figure advancing on a sculpted groundwork base. Boxed.