I'm down to the last few additions to this sculpture. For all intents and purposes this piece, titled "The Grenadier", is finished. Originally it was going to be simply a Marine rifleman. But last week, thinking about my own battlefield experiences, I decided to put a pomegranate in the figures' right hand. During Operation Steel Curtain, while standing in a bombed out garden, I tried my first pomegranate. A heavily damaged pomegranate tree had a few ripe fruits clinging to its leaveless branches, and I decided to give one a try. It was delicious; despite the seeds you need to navigate around. But what does adding a pomegranate have to do with changing the piece?
What you're looking at here is the grenadier standing next to a heavily damaged pillar. The ground is scattered with chunks of concrete, spent shell casings, leaves and a branch with a solitary pomegranate still attached. The Marine has an M16A4 with a M203 grenade launcher attached. Why change the figure to a grenadier at the last minute? Simple. It turns out that the origin of the word grenade is the French word for pomegranate. The Spanish word for pomegranate, granado, is another word for grenade.
