At 0900 on 20 November 1943, the first waves of the 2nd Marine Division ground onto the reef off Betio, a coral island in Tarawa Atoll barely two miles long. The tide was wrong; the Higgins boats hung up on the reef hundreds of yards out, and Marines climbed over the gunwales to wade ashore through chest-deep water and interlocking machine-gun fire. In seventy-six hours roughly a thousand Marines were killed taking an island most Americans had never heard of. Tarawa exposed the true cost of the island-hopping campaign and reshaped how the Corps planned every amphibious landing that came after it.

W. Britain poses the rifleman on the move and looking off to his right, the M1903 Springfield slung muzzle-down over a marching pack. He wears herringbone-twill dungarees, the M1 helmet under a camouflaged cloth cover, canvas leggings over field shoes, and a cartridge belt heavy with clip pouches, canteen, and entrenching tool. He builds out a Pacific rifle squad alongside the Marine Raider, a Marine with SCR-300 radio at his shoulder, and the rifleman-memoirist Eugene Sledge, who fought the same island war at Peleliu and Okinawa.

W. Britain model 13018. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), solid metal hand-painted in a matte finish. Single foot figure on a sculpted groundwork base. Supplied in original W. Britain packaging.