The most dangerous moment in a firefight was the one this figure is caught in. To reload, a soldier had to stand, draw the long steel ramrod from beneath the barrel, and drive the ball and cartridge home — several seconds with an empty weapon and his body upright and exposed. Under fire, men fumbled it: ramrods were dropped in the dark, bent, or fired off down-range by mistake, leaving the musket useless. When Santa Anna's columns crowded against the Alamo's walls before dawn on 6 March 1836, packed too close to maneuver, the soldiers in the press had to load and fire shoulder to shoulder, and a dropped ramrod could not be found again in that crush.

King & Country's figure has drawn his ramrod and is driving a charge home, the musket held upright against his body. He wears the Mexican line uniform — dark blue coatee with red collar, cuffs, and lapels in white piping, white crossbelts with a brass plate, a black shako with a red-white-green pompom — a gourd canteen and a buff cartridge pouch at his side, white campaign trousers stained from the road, and huarache sandals. He is the middle beat of the loading cycle: line him between Santa Anna's Soldier Reaching for a Fresh Cartridge and Santa Anna's Soldier Biting Open a Fresh Cartridge, with S.A.A. Soldier Advancing Firing at the end, and a firing-line diorama runs the whole drill from cartridge to shot.

Model: RTA131 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set