The Bren gun was the British infantry section's automatic weapon — the heart of every infantry attack and the steadiest base of fire in the section's combined arms. Adopted in 1935 and built at the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield from a Czech design originating in Brno (the name "Bren" combines the two), it fired the same .303 cartridge as the Lee-Enfield rifle from a thirty-round curved top-mounted box magazine. The British section's doctrine put the Bren on its bipod with the gunner and his Number Two providing covering fire from cover, while the rifle group bounded forward to the next position — then they swapped, or the section moved up together while the Bren gunner carried the gun at the hip, firing on the move to suppress the enemy ahead. The Bren's rate of fire was lower than the German MG42 the British faced in Normandy — about a hundred and twenty rounds a minute against the MG42's twelve hundred — but the Bren was famously accurate, less prone to overheating, and easier on the section's ammunition load. British infantrymen who had carried it from El Alamein to the Rhine remembered it with the affection that veterans usually reserve for their first rifle.

This King & Country figure shows a Green Howards Bren gunner firing on the move from the hip — the assault-fire position, the gun braced against the right hip with the left hand under the barrel, the curved thirty-round magazine top-mounted as the design required so that the gunner could lie low behind the gun on its bipod when firing prone. The MkII helmet wears the foliage-strung scrim of the Gold Beach figures, the battledress and 1937-pattern webbing in standard infantry order, the rolled greatcoat across the small pack at his back. The Green Howards' regimental flash and the 50th Northumbrian Division formation sign are visible at the upper sleeve. He pushes forward providing covering fire for the Gold Beach Advancing Rifleman and the Gold Beach Running, Firing Rifleman moving up beside him, with CSM Stan Hollis VC leading the attack on the pillboxes ahead.

Model: DD410 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set