The helmet is as much a symbol of the German soldier as any weapon he carried. The Stahlhelm — "steel helmet" — first appeared in 1916, when the flat caps and spiked leather Pickelhauben of the early war proved useless against the shrapnel raining into the trenches. Its distinctive shape, with a flared skirt sweeping down over the ears and neck, was engineered to shield the wearer from fragments falling from above, and it covered more of the head than the shallow bowls the Allies wore. Refined but barely changed between the wars, the same silhouette carried into the Second World War and remains, to this day, the instantly recognizable outline of a German fighting man.

The grenadier kneels with his 98k across his thigh, oak-leaf smock and matching helmet cover on, the SS-runes decal just visible at the temple — a marking often painted over later in the war to keep SS troops from standing out. Kneeling, he completes the firing line with the Grenadier Advancing with K98 and the Grenadier Firing 98k, all under their squad leader the Unterscharführer. Mixing standing, kneeling and advancing figures gives a diorama the natural, staggered spacing of men actually in the fight.

W. Britain model 25130. 1/30 scale, matte-painted metal. Single figure — a Waffen-SS grenadier kneeling with a 98k in oak-leaf camouflage. Boxed.