Probably most collectors of military composition figures have some marching formations of infantry soldiers in their collections. Usually these figures are models of a marching infantry soldier with a rifle on his shoulder. To buy this type of figure is quite inexpensive and most collectors don't look very closely at them. Even dealers for composition of figures do not care a lot for them, hence you will usually find them in a box together with all the broken and not very valuable models. However, to put some kind of parade together you will need a large number of these type of figures.

Some years ago, when I started putting the catalogue about military figures together, I faced an unexpected difficulty. Looking at these type of models I realized there were various differences between them. This would be normal if you are thinking about different manufacturers, but in this case it was all figures of Hausser/Elastolin and I could still observe many different items. This fact raised my interest and I searched for these type of models at fairs, auctions and in collections of friends. Some of the models are very common, while others are hard to find. There were even a few I could only prove existed through using old catalogues from Hausser, without ever having actually seen them.