On the Eastern Front there was no safe rear. Behind the German lines stretched a vast occupied country laced with Soviet partisans — irregulars who blew up rail lines, ambushed convoys and vanished into the forests, making every road and rear-area post a place of danger. The threat was real, and it tied down huge numbers of German troops on security duty far from the front. But the war in the rear was savage on both sides: the German response to partisan activity was often collective punishment — burning villages and murdering civilians on suspicion alone, atrocities dressed up as "anti-partisan operations." These two guards, scanning the treeline while the flak crew watches the sky, embody a front that had no front at all.

The two guards stand in white snow suits with the red identification band on the left arm, one shouldering a K98k rifle, the other an MP40, eyes on the surrounding ground rather than the sky. They are the security half of the flak team: pose them around the Flakvierling half-track they protect, with the Skywatcher covering the air above, and the winter infantry of the MG34 Team nearby. In a snowbound diorama they add the tension the whole scene needs — the sense that danger might come from any direction, and often did.

Model: BBG133 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 2 piece set