The rifle in this soldier's hands outlived the regime that issued it by generations. The Karabiner 98k was the last in a line of Mauser bolt-action rifles reaching back to the 1890s, and its action — the controlled-feed claw extractor, the twin locking lugs, the gas-handling safety — was so sound that it became the template for the modern bolt-action rifle. After 1945 the design soldiered on with armies around the world, and in sporterized form it became the ancestor of countless hunting rifles still made today. A collector who owns a bolt-action deer rifle very likely owns a grandchild of the Mauser this figure is firing.

The soldier stands firing his 98k, an Italian-camouflage coat over his uniform and a machine-gun belt slung across his chest — the same captured cloth as his squad-mate the Waffen SS Firing PPSh-41, the two of them a matched pair in Italian pattern. Group him with the other SS riflemen working the same Mauser, Advancing with K98 and Kneeling with K98, to build a firing line. Standing, kneeling and advancing poses together give a diorama the staggered look of a real fight.

W. Britain model 25129. 1/30 scale, matte-painted metal. Single figure — a Waffen-SS soldier in Italian camouflage, standing and firing a 98k. Boxed.