BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — Sergeant First Class Nick Archibald of Tonawanda said he was honored to be a model for life-sized soldier figures for a new exhibit at the National Museum of the United States Army.
He was part of the WWII exhibit.
"Preparing for D-Day. Coming off the ship. So I was one of the soldiers coming down the ship into the cargo net that would go onto the boat that actually drives up into the, during the invasion onto the beach," said Archibald.
Archibald and six other New York soldiers served as models for the figures in 2018, and it all started with a phone call.
"Asked if I was interested and I was like oh you think I'm pretty huh? And so I said I would do it and then a couple, probably about a week later I got a call from the exhibit director and he said I was picked," he said.
He went to a studio in Brooklyn that specializes in making museum exhibit figures.
"They put me on a wall, on a cargo net, and then took a bunch of pictures. And they set up like a brace thing, and it put in the exact position I was in on the cargo net," said Archibald. "So I pretty much had to sit there for about 4 hours. And they started with my face, you know, I got my face completely covered and molded."
The museum opened its doors to the public on November 11 - Veterans Day.
"It was honoring and kind of humbling, just thinking about what those soldiers went through back then. And then being able to kind of be mortalized through the museum as part of the representation of that, what they went through," he said.
Archibald is currently serving as a platoon sergeant at the Masten Armory.
