Infantry did not walk toward the enemy — they moved in rushes. Fire and movement was the basic arithmetic of an assault: while one group fired to force the enemy's heads down, another sprang up, sprinted a few seconds across open ground, and dropped again before a rifleman could settle his aim. Three to five seconds up was the rule of thumb — "I'm up, he sees me, I'm down" — because a man on his feet was the easiest target on the battlefield. The soldier here is caught at the worst instant of that cycle, rising from cover into the open, the moment every rush begins and every one is most exposed.

Bundled in the grey Kharkov parka — a reversible winter suit descended from a Luftwaffe anorak, white on one face for snow — the grenadier is pushing up off one knee with his 98k, the first instant of a rush. He completes the Kharkov-parka group with the Grenadier with MG 42 and the Rifleman Advancing, and in a diorama he reads best beside covering fire — the "Hitler's Buzz Saw" MG42 Team keeping the enemy down while he bounds. Stage the fire and the movement together and the scene explains itself.

W. Britain model 25262. 1/30 scale, matte-painted metal. Single figure — a Waffen-SS soldier in a Kharkov winter parka, getting up to move. Boxed.