Two-thirds of Civil War deaths were not from combat. The standard estimate is about 620,000 American military deaths across both sides over four years of war, and roughly 400,000 of those were from disease — typhoid, dysentery, pneumonia, malaria, smallpox, measles, and the various intestinal infections that swept through camps where sanitation was poor, water was contaminated, and pre-germ-theory medicine was unable to identify what was killing the men. The figure of a soldier struck down by a bullet captures the visible, dramatic, photographable death the war is remembered for. The fact of the Civil War for most soldiers, however, was the contagion ward and the camp latrine. Disease killed twice as many Federal soldiers as Confederate bullets did.

This W. Britain figure depicts a Federal infantryman at the moment of being struck — body arched backward, arms thrown out from the impact, the rifle dropping from his hands, the forage cap flying from his head. He wears the regulation Federal infantry sack coat in dark blue, light blue trousers, the bedroll across his chest, the cartridge box on his belt. The pose is the kind of close-observed casualty sculpting that anchors a diorama scene of a regiment under fire. Pair this figure with Iron Brigade Casualty Falling for a matched moment-of-impact pair; with Union Infantry Casualty in State Jacket for the fallen aftermath of the same engagement; or with Col. Henry A. Morrow of the 24th Michigan, the regimental commander wounded at Gettysburg.

Scale: 1/30 (60mm). Matte-painted metal. W. Britain model 31429. From the American Civil War range. Single foot figure, supplied painted and ready for display.