Charley's War Vol. 1: Boy Soldier: The Definitive Collection: Volume 1

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I think I cheered out loud when the bully RMP, Sgt Bacon, was about to beat Charley up, but he was foiled by the appearance of a pair of huge Aussie soldiers, who proceeded to administer some well deserved Karma! He has nightmare visions and sees Ginger as ghost sitting on a cloud smoking a fag, demanding to know why he was killed and not the more ignorant Charley. To aid Big Brother in this Orwellian fantasy around the centenary, any film, comedy (like Blackadder Goes Forth ) or drama that maintained a critical view was rarely shown on television. Rather, they are in the same genre as the ‘War is Hell’ films Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket .

The German 'Judgement Troopers' led by the ruthless Colonel Zeiss stage a counter-attack, penetrating deep into the British lines and nearly wiping out Charley's platoon but their success is halted by the German high command's refusal to give Zeiss reinforcements. Charley finds and rescues his wounded brother Wilf who has joined up under-age by assuming the identity of a deserter (in a scheme arranged by Oiley). Smith is the eccentric and cheerful machine-gunner who regards his work as both a science and an art-form and Albert is his injury-prone but uncomplaining loader. In this explosive new volume of never-before-collected comic strip, Charley comes face to face with a young corporal who will eventually change the face of the world as leader of the Nazi party: Adolf Hitler.World War One was calculated mass murder instigated by the British State for imperialist objectives. The final and least successful tangent was the story of Charley's cousin Jack Bourne, a sailor in the Royal Navy and the story of his ship HMS Kent and its participation in the Battle of the Falklands in 1914. After the platoon is wiped out only minutes before the 11am ceasefire, Snell and Charley have a final showdown.

An overtly anti war strip in the war comic Battle Picture Weekly, it was like nothing we’ve seen before or since. Or consider the poet Siegfried Sassoon, a member of the establishment who was decorated for bravery on the Western Front, yet admitted, ‘I believe that this War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. By taking a huge, strong and tempestuous Irishman not afraid to be seen knitting he was playing with what people regard as ‘normal’. A Sandhurst historian had insisted, with killjoy relish, that British machine gunners firing off belts of bullets to boil their tea was completely apocryphal.During a battle against the new German tanks, Charley meets Snell, who has managed to secure a transfer back to the fighting, despite being virtually insane. Charley witnesses the last British Cavalry charge and takes part in the combat debut of the new Tanks.

His skill at producing recognizable tunes in his staccato manner was a great incentive to our own gunners to get so familiar with their own guns as to be able to emulate his example. The anti-war statements of the last soldier of the Great War – Harry Patch – were carefully edited out of the media.Without his competent and detailed scripts I dont think such a difficult subject as World War One trench warfare could have succeeded.

Injured on the Western Front in 1917, Wilf transfers to the Royal Flying Corps and serves as an observer/gunner in a two-seater Bristol squadron. His fundamental decency and conscientious sense of duty are sometimes at odds with his anger at the many injustices of military life and his growing disillusionment over the conduct of the war. The challenges these poor devils had to face are understood and we’re empathising with them as they ‘clay-kick’ their way through the earth. Written by Pat Mills (of 2000 AD fame) and drawn with excruciating realistic detail by Joe Colquhoun, the strip ran from January 1979 to October 1986.But, in the meantime, before I relate how it all began and why it all began and what happened after it ended, it’s still worth celebrating Charley’s War as the only anti-war comic book to have slipped under the wire and achieved its objective. Then he said: ‘When I saw you approach it reminded me of six days ago, when I walked this same road with approximately hundred men. That would be Alfred Milner, the heir of Cecil Rhodes, and the greatest British war criminal of all. Charley’s War broke new ground and forged what were really the first steps toward a new direction in writing for Pat that still resonates in the genre today. Mills’ was constantly playing with stereotypes in the story, from conscientious objectors being cowards, all German soldiers being evil, deserters being spineless, people with a lesser education due to their background being stupid; the examples are numerous.