This is the flag of the Greatest Generation. The forty-eight-star Stars and Stripes — one star for each state after Arizona and New Mexico joined the union in 1912 — flew over the United States for forty-seven years, longer than any version before it, until Alaska and Hawaii added their stars at the end of the 1950s. It was the flag of both world wars, of the Depression and the New Deal, and of America's rise to global power. It was the flag the Marines raised on Mount Suribachi at Iwo Jima in 1945, in the most famous photograph the country ever took. For the sailors and soldiers of the Second World War, these were simply the colors — the forty-eight stars they served and fought beneath.

The figure completes the color party: a bluejacket in dress blues and white cap, striding out with the 48-star national flag on an eagle-topped staff, its stripes catching the movement of the march. He carries the national colors where his companion the Infantry Battalion Flagbearer carries the Navy's own — the two of them a complete color guard. Back them with a sailor like the one in summer whites and set the whole party before Admiral Chester Nimitz. Colors on the march — or planted on a hard-won Pacific beach — give a naval diorama its ceremony and its pride.

Model: USN030 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set