Charleys War comic reprints- Volumes 3-5

[Pete Hill]

Hello Forumers,

The classic UK comic "Charleys War" was a serial comic-strip about a young British soldier and his comrades on the Western Front 1916-18. Charley, an eager and tough but naive youngster from a working-class London family with minimal schooling behind him, joined up at 16 and arrived at the Western Front on the Somme shortly before the July 1st opening of the battle.
Printed weekly in the newsprint UK comic "Battle Weekly", the strip lasted from the late 1970s until the early 1980s. Written by Pat Mills and superbly illustrated by the late Joe Colquhoun, I bought many issues from my local newsagent when I was at school (each weekly issue was 50c down here in Australia). I only wish I had kept them!
But to my delight, 4 years ago, 'Charleys War began to be re-printed in hard-cover volumes and I have collected all 4 volumes so far (volume 5 is released next month (October).
I reviewed volumes 1 & 2 in this forum last year so I will talk about volumes 3& 4.

"Charleys War 17th October 1916- 21st February 1917 (Volume 3). Titan Books, published 2006.

It begins with the sudden and furious counter-attack by the dreaded 'Judgement Troopers', a tough and ruthless unit commanded by Colonel Zeiss. Veterans of the Eastern Front, the unit has managed to get across no-man's land with minimal losses by using rear-line men (cooks, clerks, labourers etc), that have been press-ganged by Zeiss to become Infantry, as sacrifical lambs to soak up the British fire. Feigning surrender, which fools Charley's commanding officer, the Germans get to within a stone's-throw of the British lines and then, abruptly, they are handed weapons by comrades who have been hiding, half-buried, in no-man's land since the previous night.
After a bloody hand-to-hand battle, the British stage a fighting withdrawal, but have to concede a large part of their sector to the advancing Germans. Reaching a rearward trench line, the surviving men of Charley's platoon are horrified to see several wounded men they had left behind now being tortured by the Germans. Hoping that the dying men's pleas for help will lure the British into a fool-hardy attack, the Germans hoist the injured prisoners above the parapets by tying them to stakes. One of the prisoners yells a warning to Charley and the others that the Germans have flame-throwers waiting. The enraged Germans kill the prisoners but the British call down a bombardment on them and Charley's platoon retake the trench.
During a lull in the fighting, Charley and his surviving platoon members take a short meal-break in a dugout only to realise that the trench above has been occupied by Judgement Troopers.
The Germans force the dugout's occupants to emerge one at a time per 30 seconds whereupon each Tommy is shot dead as soon as he reaches the open air. Charley tries to save what is left of his platoon by digging out of the dugout in another direction but whilst he is working, the platoon must keep sending men up to die one by one. Charley reaches the surface and surprises the Germans from behind, allowing the other survivors to fight their way out.
Later, after more bloody battles, Zeiss' men are on the verge of achieving a major breakthrough with the last British-held trench is held only by a thin line of exhausted survivors.
To his fury, Zeiss is refused reinforcements by German headquarters. He goes there to protest but the aristocratic senior officers, sneering down their noses at Zeiss' humble background, refuse because of the Colonel's ungentlemanly conduct and his un-orthodox tactics.
Charley, wounded by a shell and suffering combat-trauma is sent home to hospital and he is enjoying a spell of leave when he is swept up in a Zeppelin attack. His mother is trapped in the arnaments factory where she works and he has to rescue her before the attacking Zeppelin destroys the whole building.

"Charleys War -Blue's Story" - (Volume 4)- Titan Books, published 2007.

Volume 5 opens with Charley rescuing his mother from the burning factory. Luckily firemen quell the blaze before the munitions detonate and, overhead, lightning strikes the Zeppelin, igniting and destroying it.
Still on leave but shortly due to return to the Front. He encounters a deserter on the run and despite his mixed feelings, agrees to help him. This is largely due to the fact that the deserter is being kept at a safe-house organised by Charley's cowardly and greedy brother-in-law . After getting out of the trenches via a self-inflicted wound, Oiley has become a petty thug, thief and con-artist, looting bombed houses, selling black-market goods and organising escape-routes for deserters in exchange for payment. Charley helps the deserter as a way of getting back at Oiley and also he does feel some sympathy towards a fellow veteran.
Hiding from a team of Redcaps, the deserter tells his story to Charley. His name is Blue and he is an Englishman who enlisted in the French Foriegn Legion. Blue and his unit were sent to defend Verdun and took part in the epic defense of Fort Vaux.
With Fort Vaux (the "French Alamo") under siege, the surviving defenders are trapped inside the deep bunkers, soon desperately short of water, whilst the Germans try to smoke them out with gas. An American member of the Legion named Lacey steals water from a comrade and then tries to blame Blue. The latter manages to expose the real guilty party and Lacey redeems himself by venturing into no-man's land to snatch water-bottles from the corpses of dead Germans only to die in the process.
The Germans mine explosives into the fort and begin to demolish their way in. With the fort about to fall, the French Commander offers Blue and the other surviving Legionaires permission to try and break out as he knows the Germans will show no mercy to these men that they will label as Mercenaries.
Blue and a few of the others manage to dig their way out and escape before the Fort falls to the Germans. Reaching the French lines, Blue rejoins his unit and falls foul of the bullying Lieutenant Volmar ('Monkey-Face').
Volmar and Blue despise each other and the Lieutenant relishes any excuse to bestow some harsh punishment on the latter. The feud comes to a climax when Blue leaves his position to give assistance to a newly-arrived unit of African Sengalese troops who are suffering heavy losses. He assists them in beating off a German attack but Volmar has Blue placed under arrest for insubordination. Sent to a penal unit, Blue deserts and ends up in London.
Betrayed by Oiley who has telephoned the Military Police as to their location, Charley and Blue flee from the determined pursuit of a 'Drag-Man', an officer wounded at the Front and now charged with rounding up deserters in London. They climb on board a munitions train and the Drag-Man is about to fire his revolver at them when he suffers heart failure and dies due to his previous wounds.
Having reached the dockyards, Blue informs Charley that he has had a change of heart and wants to go back to France and find his old unit. They part company and Charley prepares himself for his own return to the trenches.


More to come. Pete

[Pete Hill]

Charley's war is a comic aimed at younger readers so therefore the action must come thick and fast and our hero must always be where the fighting is bloodiest. Some writers have criticised the strip for exaggerating the horrors and fury of the Western Front whilst others, including some veterans, have praised its realism.
The tone of the comic is very much 'Anti-Establishment'. In his newly-written introductions for each of the volumes of reprints, Pat Mills makes very clear his feelings on the war and what he hoped to convey with his comic. To Mills, the Great War was a bloody, pointless conflict that betrayed a brave, trusting Generation and achieved nothing except to make maintain the status quo of power and wealth. To Mills, WW1, indeed all wars, are Class Struggles aimed at exploiting the poorer peoples of society to fight and die to gather more wealth and power for the priviledged minorities. Mills writes; "the Great War saw the biggest betrayal of the working class by their betters" and elsewhere he says, "Charley and his mates were fighting to make someone rich"
This comes across in the tone of the strip. Most of the Officers are portrayed as dim-witted, selfish and cowardly buffoons who stand behind in the rear and make patriotic speeches whilst the foot-sloggers are sent forward to the real work of fighting and dying. Even the German officer Zeiss, as cruel and ruthless as he is, is seen fighting this class struggle as his lower-class background and un-orthodox (ie 'Modern') methods put him at odds with his aristocratic superiors. The only likeable officer was Charley's first platoon commander, Lieutenant Thomas. Alas, even Thomas is seen as a victim of the cruel system of officialdom as he is court-martialed and shot for cowardice only because he abandoned a trench without orders before the remants of his platoon were wiped out by shellfire.
The Army Surgeon, the aptly named 'Dr No', who pops up several times in the course of the strip, is shown as an un-feeling, dis-interested automaton who shows no emotion or guilt as he sends even badly injured men back into the line with just a 'Number 9' Pill which is basically a glorified laxative.
Whilst on home leave, the wealthy Industrialists who are raking in the profits from the war are depicted as pompous shirkers who make their workers stay on the assembly line even when there is an air-raid on and yet who flee in their private, chauffeur-driven cars when the bombs begin to fall.
In his introductions, Mills makes plain his contempt for the current 'revisionist' historians such as Hew Strachen & Gary Sheffield who try and justify the huge losses on the Somme and Ypres, calling them 'Retro-Imperialists'.
In this sense, Charleys War can be put into context of the time it was first released in 'Battle Weekly' in the late 1970s and early 1980s, arriving at the time of the reign of PM Margaret Thatcher whose Conservative Tory government arguably polarised and ideologically divided Britain like few previous governments ever managed to. Massive job-losses, cuts to Government services and the dismantling of much of the so-called post-war Welfare State led to considerable bitterness and anger in many sectors of British society. At the other end of the scale, a growing aspirational Middle-Class led to increased divisions in society and a yawning gap between the rich and poor. With the majority of the UK Media largely in support of the Tory Government (despite the prevailing myth that the media tends to lean to the liberal left), it was left to a vocal and angry minority to take their swipes at the prevailing establishment.
Charley's War belongs to the latter group which also included music-acts such as Billy Bragg and The Clash, comedians such as Alexei Sayle and film-makers such as Ken Loach, all of whom made social and political comment a major part of their work.

Mills takes some historical liberties, whether intentional or not. In Volume 2, Charley is confined to a Punishment Camp behind the lines. The camp is attacked by German aircraft. Yet, it is set in August 1916 but the aircraft that attack are Albatros DVs and the RFC fighters that come to the rescue are Sopwith Camels, some seven or eight months before they actually arrived into service in reality.
The 'Judgement Troopers' of Volumes 2 & 3 look more like Storm-Troopers of 1918 rather than German Infantry of 1916.

Some have criticised Mill's depiction of the German Infantry, especially the 'Judgement Troopers' as being little better than the ugly, thick-necked stereotyped Germans of wartime propoganda. Certainly, there have been very few sympathically-portrayed Germans so far.
In Volume 1, on the opening day of the Somme, Charley captures a young German who speaks some English and the two share a chat, finding some common ground. The meeting is cut short as the cruel upper-class Lieutenant Snell executes the German POW on the spot and berates Charley for fratenizing with the enemy.

I enjoy this comic very much and Colquhoun's artwork is superb. Charley is a likeable hero as he avoids the usual trappings of a cliched central figure. He is a simple young lad who wants to do his bit and survive, nothing more. And so far he has managed to keep his humanity.

Volume 5 will begin in February 1917 and sees Charley returning to the Western Front, presumably to take part in Third Ypres. The cruel Lieutenant Snell who is now Charley's commanding officer, will no doubt cause our hero more trouble. Other things I know about his future is that Charley will for a period join the miners, underground diggers laying mines underneath German trenches, his younger brother Wilf will join the RFC and also Blue will return to the story. Charley's War extends all the way to November 1918 and beyond when he is sent as part of the British Expeditionary Force to the Russian Civil War.
So there are a few volumes still to go. Shame that there is only one per year.

Pete

[Willi Von Klugerman]

Where do you find these reprints?

[Pete Hill]

Hi Willi,

I recommend you try Amazon.com or eBay. I have purchased all my 4 volumes thus far from Amazon. You might get cheaper copies from eBay or even abebooks.com.

Hope this is helpful, good luck. Pete

1903, anyone?