In this post, Sector House 13 member Paul Clarke looks at an aspect of the classic Charley's War strip from Battle that is often forgotten as he examines the continuation of the story into World War 2, without the guiding hand of Pat Mills.
Charley’s War – The
World War 2 era
Charley’s War, the creation of Pat
Mills and artist Joe Colquhoun, made its debut in the landmark 200th
issue of Battle in January 1979.
A realistic and sometimes brutal
story of an ordinary ‘Tommy’ in World War One, it quickly became a firm fan
favourite. There was no other series
quite like it in Battle, or indeed any other British comic of the time, and it
became the heart of the weekly despite, or perhaps because of. its anti-war
stance.
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| Pat Mills' final word on Charley's War |
Pat’s involvement with Charley’s War
came to a premature end after he rounded up the Russian Civil War campaign of
1919 and brought Charley back home to unemployment and the great
depression.
Mills has his last powerful word on the futiliy of the slaughter with his final panel, with Charley ruminating on the war to end all wars while a newspaper seller gives the news of Hitler election in Germany.
One of the reasons Pat quit the
strip was IPC’s refusal to agree a research budget to allow him to continue the
stories into World War 2. Pat would have
loved to have continued the series applying the same anti-war angle that he had
for the First World War.
But Charley’s War did continue onto the
Second World War with writing duties handed to Scott Goodall. Scott was from an earlier generation of
writers and was quite popular. But he
was writing “old school” stories that were progressively losing favour with the
readers. Sadly Charley’s War was to be one
of these.
Pat’s style was more political than Goodall's and
while he felt there was anti-war material that could be applied to the Second
World War there was, perhaps, not enough of it.
In contrast Scott’s writing was more
traditional and having learnt his trade on the likes of Valiant, Lion and Cor
things were going to change. He’d
written the semi-comedic adventures of Captain Hurricane for Valiant and one of
the classics of British comics, Marnie the Fox, the adventures of a wandering
Fox cub, for Buster soon to be reprinted by Rebellion. But these strips were from a different time
and had a different tone.
I recently watched the ‘Dunkirk movie’ and was
reminded of the depiction of the same events from Charley’s war that I saw as a
kid. That inspired me to look back at
Scott’s run, take a look at some of the key aspects and see how it compares
with Pat’s.
Central to a good story are the
secondary characters. Pat provided many
memorable characters in his run of Charley’s War. Foremost among these were the villains, but
Pat’s take on villains was not the standard seen in most British comics. Bad guys were as likely to be drawn from the allied
officer class or establishment figures.
We all have a villain we love to
hate, and for me it was Captain Snell, Charley’s sadistic and
vindictive company commander. Mills
would contrast Snell with the more sympathetic and human Lt. Thomas and show
the horror of the war clearly when he orders the twenty-two year old Thomas to
be executed for refusing to carry out an order.
Pat wrote characters that the
readers cared about. They invested a lot
of emotions in these characters. Who can
forget the gut wrenching scenes of Charley carrying what was left of his best
mate Ginger in a sack after he was blown up?
That packed a huge of emotional punch for any young reader at the time.
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| Madame Flaubert |
So Scott Goodall inherited a good set of characters already
established by Pat – Kate, Old Bill and Charley’s infamous brother-in-law
Oily. But a new cast was needed for the
World War 2 stories – Charley’s son Len (Pat would have named him Charley after
his father), his friends Wattsie, Handy Hordle, Archie Bentall, Wally Forbes,
Hortense Flaubert and the officer they called Winslow Boy and the sadistic Sergeant
Nickles.
Looking back at these characters I think Len was the only
one you generally cared about. I cared
about his character as he was a young man with a very bright future compared to
the one his father started off with. You
really do want him to survive this and hope that Charley finds him. The readers wanted Charley to find his
son. But the others were just characters
used as plot devices.
The weirdest one, and perhaps the one with most un-realised
potential, was the French war widow Hortense Flaubert who waged a one-woman war against
the Germans!
A careful examination of the characters Scott created reveals that he attempted to replicated Pat’s templates and based his new characters on
older ones previously created by Pat during his time on the strip.
Handy Hordle is very like Mad Mick from the Somme
storyline. Guy great with his hands, and
in a scene replicated from the earlier series he holds up the ceiling of a
cellar as it is about to cave in. Handy
doesn’t suffer the same fate that Mad Mick, perhaps showing another difference
in the writing style.
Another character that was based on a Mills Template was
Handy’s sidekick Archie Bentall. He is
just like Smith 70 although not on the technical side. Archie was big on words and was the walking
dictionary of the team. Handy however
was no Young Albert.
Of the two commanders, Sergeant Nickles and the Winslow Boy
could easily have been in Pat’s script.
Nickles is sadistic although probably not on the same scale as Snell, although
I suspect they would have got on like a house on fire when it comes to shooting
prisoners.
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| The Winslow Boy |
The Winslow Boy reminds me of Snell when he was having his
tea and sandwiches when Charley brought the urgent telegraph message to him. His refusal to read the message until he was
finished his tea showed the arrogance and the feeling of entitlement of the
upper class officer. The Winslow Boy
brings shows that upper class characteristic in that he treats the war as if it
were a sport, hence his cricket references.
War was not a game in Charley’s book.
Goodall takes the series in a different direction to Pat’s
when he begins scripting duties on 02/02/85.
We begin three years into the future, its 1936 and Charley is married to
Kate with a young son called Len
It is a new life for Charley, no longer on the dole. He has attended night school and become a
mechanic. Education has been the key for
Charley and he emphasised this with his 17 year old son who finds school
boring.
It’s quite a contrast to the working class hero that Pat had
portrayed in his strip. It does look a
bit odd to see Charley settled in his council house with his steady job. The birth of a new middle class Charley
perhaps? I am sure Pat would disagree
with this!
We get snippets of the German build up to war. As you can imagine Charley is tired of
war. At one point he berates a punter in
the cinema and accuses him of being a warmonger. When Len tells Charley
he wants to join the army, Charley cracks up and storms out of the house. This leads to a chance encounter with Old
Bill who is getting a beating from a mob.
After fighting them off Charley is surprised to hear that Bill wants
another crack at the Germans. Charley isn’t
interested and has had enough of war.
No explanation is given on how
Charley has got back into uniform. When the
story picks up on issued dated 23/02/85 we are back in France as the scene
jumps to May 1940. According to the
narrative of the story Charley has been in the army since January of that year.
The story from this point is told in
flashback as Charley and Wattsie are been cut off from their comrades following
a German attach on refugees. Taking a
break they start to talk about the events that brought them to this point and
how they came to have been cut out from their comrades in the ongoing German
attacks.
Sergeant Bert Nickles is the topic
of conversation. Known as Old Nick by
the men, he clearly has a dislike and deep contempt for Charley because he is a
veteran from the Great War. Perhaps an
insecurity because Charley has seem as much, if not more of war than he
has. Charley almost comes to blows with
him.
They finally end up in a deserted
town and are ambushed by a German patrol.
Surrounded by the Germans it looks like the war is over for them until
they meet Cryril Hordle (AKA Handy) and Archie Bentall who come out of a cellar
and fire on the Germans, allowing Charley and Wattsie to get undercover.
They finally escape the patrolling Germans
and find a Bern carrier which begins their cross-country adventure and brings
the story up to date.
At this point the focus of the story was on Charley
finding his son Len. As Charley and his
comrades are making their way through the countryside the Germans are on the
attack. Charley scans ahead and spots a
bridge still intact. On the bridge
there is an officer instructing the demolition of the bridge and the officer is
Len. Excited by this prospect of a
reunion, Charley drives the Bern carrier at great speed to try and reach him. But the bombardment opens up again and kills
he engineers. Seeing that his comrades
are all dead, Len reaches out and pulls the switch that blows the bridge just
as Charley is reaching it.
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| Dramatic scene as Charley attempts to save his son Len |
Searching through the bodies there
is no sign of Len, only his insignia lying on the ground. At this point Charley’s adversary, Old Nick
appears. He mocks Charley and turns his
back on him. Charley attempts to strike out against him only for Handy to hit
him on the head and stop him.
The next story contains another reference
to the Great War. Charley’s commander,
Captain Nixon is confident that they have the Germans on the run. But Charley reminds him what had happened in
1917 in The Battle of Arras. Charley
remembers the battle, or Slaughter Alley as they called it, only too well. Suddenly it is the British who are on the run
and the retreat from the Germans begins.
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| Flashback to 'Slaughter Alley' |
The story takes a breather from the
action in France at this point and switches back to the home front as Charley
receives a letter from his brother-in-law Oily. He receives the news that Len is missing
believed killed and that Kate has been sent to jail for storing black market
goods. Charley smells a rat immediately
and thinks Kate is being set up by Oily.
He is desperate to get home to clear her nail but his plans are put on
hold as a German sniper starts taking out senior British officers.
One again Charley remembers his time
during the Great War as a sniper in another flashback. With the word
out that Charley’s has special experience and he is introduced to the ‘Winslow
Boy’, a chinless wonder in charge of taking out the sniper and who talks of the
war as if it was a cricket match. He tells
Charley that wants the sniper ‘bowled out’.
So the game begins. Charley Bourne
vs Heinrich Holtz. Only one can
win. The duel becomes personal when the
German sniper attacks, shooting Handy.
Charley decides to go after him and the men play a deadly game of cat
and mouse.
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| German Sniper Heinrich Holtz |
Charley, thinking back to his time during
the Great War as a sniper remembers being trapped in a wood pile. A German is trying to smoke him out via the only opening. He remembers the advice Len Southgate, his
sniping partner, gave him - to do something unexpected and take the enemy by
surprise.
Charley does exactly that, 20
years later, he catches Heinrich off guard And taking advantage of the German's mistake shoots him before heading back to his lines.
Charley’s War without
Pat Mills may not have been the ground breaking series that it had been. There was an edge missing, a political and
personal edge that made it one of the most memorable comic strips of its
time. But there was enough to enthral
and entertain the kids who read Battle.
It’s certainly one of the comics I still remember with huge affection,
and there is a lot to be enjoyed and written about. Next time I want to look at the parallels and
differences in the way Charley’s War and the recent Dunkirk film dealt with the
Dunkirk evacuation.
Paul Clarke
