|
-
News
- Features
- Events
Calendar
- Editorials
- Monthly
Zine
- Offworld
Report
- Our Daily
RSS Feed
- Movie/TV
Reviews
> Recent movies
> Movies by year
> Movies by title
- Book
Reviews
> Recent books
> Books by year
> Books by title
- Home
- Worlds
- Biography
- Bibliography
- Appearances
- Reviews
- Blog
- Community
- Press
- Links
Become
an Advertiser
- Web
Site Directory
- Search
the Net
- StephenHunt.net
- WoodenRocket.com
- Check
your E-mail
- Non Sci-Fi
News
|
Charley's War: 17 October 1916 - 21 February 1917 by Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun
01/08/2007 . Source: Paul Hanley 
pub: Titan Books. 112 page graphic novel. Price: £14.99 (UK). $19.95 (US), $27.95 (CAN). ISBN: 1-84576-270-3. Buy Charley's War in the USA - or Buy Charley's War in the UK  's Army' (named after Lord Kitchener who was the War Minister) was flung into battle. On the first day of the Somme battle, a campaign destined to go on for months, there were more than 50,000 British casualties (20,000 of whom were killed) on the first day alone. This book takes up the story when the likelihood of a swift Allied victory driving the Huns back to Berlin have very much faded.
The actual story is not itself true. However, it does give a flavour of the fearsomeness of industrialised warfare. In previous wars, armies went into winter quarters. Now mass production in factories and railways and ships meant huge armies could be kept in the field all the time, constantly supplied with weaponry and munitions and so large that they filled the available battlefield, across western Europe anyway, so there was no way around them only through them.
October 1916 opens in the story with the Germans counter-attacking using troops from the Eastern Front. They are shown to be savage and treacherous. Whilst offering to accept Charlie's sections surrender '...you have our word we will treat you well' one of his Kamaraden is shown waving a knife and making throat cutting gestures. I have no great problem with this but on a personal note having been a soldier myself - a squaddie then an officer- I did an attachment with a (then West) German Jaeger Battalion who were excellent soldiers and great fun to be with. They incidentally did have recollections from their granddads that German infantrymen used to sharpen the edges of their entrenching tools and fight with them even using them as throwing weapons. Interestingly, there are some illustrations of men in hand-to-hand combat with shovels.
Cut off by the German advance, Charlie and his pals are trapped. As the survivors fight their way back to their own lines, a counter-attack comes to their rescue. The spiteful Huns then stake out British wounded on their own parapet to tempt the British to rescue them. The battle sways backwards and forwards, bloody, savage and apparently pointless.
Clearly, this was a horrible war with slaughter on an industrial scale. Poison gas, shelling, flame-throwers, bombing and with very articulate numbers of men who recorded their experiences in poems, books and films. One theme of this book is the pointlessness of it all. A very fashionable view, probably even more so when this was first written/drawn decades ago. However, it would have been a very different world if Germany had won this war. Perhaps not as nasty as if the Nazis had won the Second World War but nasty enough.
I have to say I enjoyed the book. It does contain a complete story chronicling young Charlie's - an everyman- and his adventures over the period of the title. A sinking ship, Zeppelin raids on England (by a bizarre coincidence I was invited today for a trip on a Zeppelin next year when it flies over London) with Charlie somehow surviving it all. As well as the dastardly Hun, he is also beset by the stupidity, arrogance and sheer nastiness of the British officer corps!
I think the targets are a little hackneyed but nevertheless an excellent book and beautifully illustrated. It also has little touches of humour which those of us who have been with soldiers will recognise very well as an authentic touch. Those of us who remember the old British comics of the 50s or I suppose the 'Commando' books of the present will be transported back by the look of the illustrations.
Well worth reading.
Paul Hanley
|
|
