A running figure with an immediate task
Movement and firing meet in this Gold Beach infantryman. He represents the pressure to keep an advance going while an opponent is still close enough to engage. The figure belongs with the Green Howards subjects inspired by the British landing and fighting inland on 6 June 1944.
For the Green Howards, getting ashore on Gold Beach was the beginning of a day’s fighting inland. Roads, villages and defended positions lay beyond the sand. That change of setting is easy to miss in a landing scene: the same men had to keep going after the beach, carrying their weapons, ammunition and equipment into the next encounter.
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