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A short soldier who is one of the officers' servants during Charley's time as Snell's batman. He once served in the Bantams until his regiments was disbanded because of heavy casualties. Captured during a raid on the trench, he is killed by Adolf Hitler with a grenade when he tries to escape. Charley’s War is one of the most important war stories to appear in comics. It is an anti-war story, which ran in a comic full of more traditional war time heroics and has been praised for being honest and realistic. Pat Mills, who created Charley, wanted to write a story that would counter the war comics that glorified war. Another of Charley’s enemies. Oily was his brother-in-law and was a smooth talking crook that Charley first met when he was called up into the same platoon. He instantly became a pest and was a coward through and through. Matthew: The Titan collections are very nicely presented with a fair amount of supplementary material. I think the company has done a good job. The story ended with the saving of his son Len, and him deciding that he was too old for war and that he had had enough, Charley sails off to a peaceful retirement and the story is re-run from the beginning. Mates
Charley’s War, which has been collected in ten volumes by Titan Publishing (and a new omnibus collection of the first arc, A Boy Soldier in the Great War), tells the story of Charley Bourne, a naïve young soldier who is trapped in the madness of World War One. This seminal comic strip, by Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun, ran in Battle Picture Weekly from 1979 until 1985. If you’re discovering the story for the first time…I told you this Pat Mills geezer was a genius didn’t I?) ‘Weeper’ Watkins Original comic art today fetches impressive prices on the collectors’ market. “Since acquiring the IPC/Fleetway archive we’ve scoured the world trying to acquire what original artwork survives,” said Molcher. John, who edited some of the Titan Books Charley’s War collections, recalls his ancestor, Noel Houghton TreleavenAlford, Matthew (2010). Reel Power: Hollywood Cinema and American Supremacy. London, England: Pluto Press. p.81. ISBN 9780745329833. British soldier whose parents were born in German-ruled Silesia and whose brother is in the German army. In retrospect, this is possibly the only facet of the plot I don’t fully agree with. Not all the Officers in the trenches were like Snell – in fact very few were, and although the story has good Officers such as Cooper they are still shown as ‘hooray henry’ types (for example Lt Cooper had the …er… impediment every other word in his dialogue-showing him to be indecisive and bumbling). Most officers of the Great War suffered the same hardships that the men did and although it did happen, the image of the Officers eating fresh game in a cosy front line trench while the men died in mud outside are a little over worked. That though is my only grumbling about it in the whole of the six years it ran. The story’s main strength was that it had its foundations always in truth, as we shall see. Pacifism and Profiteering It’s more complicated than this, of course. War comics were also one of the very few art forms to be explicitly aimed at working class boys. Their stories were about war and violence, but they were also about heroism and comradeship and, most of all, about people. Last year, I chatted to Simon Ward, who edited the tenth volume of Charley’s War for Titan Books. Some quotes from the conversation were used in an article that was published in the last issue of Comic Heroes magazine. Anyway, I thought it would be a good idea to present the full, unedited transcript of our conversation online in case it was of interest to comic fans generally and/or of use to scholars of comics.
Snell always reminds me of Julian Grenfell, the aristocratic young officer who famously wrote of the War as “An absoulute bloody picnic, great fun” and recorded the thrill of “Killing Huns with rifle at 50 yards, great sport”.January–October 1919. Charley and Bill Tozer head to Russia where they fight alongside the 'Whites' - pro-Monarchist Russians - against the Bolshevik Reds who are defending their Revolution, with Tozer serving as company sergeant major. Charley soon becomes disillusioned at the incompetence and cowardice amongst the Whites, some of whom change sides and join the Reds. Charley prevents rogue Bolshevik Colonel Spirodonov from capturing a White armoured train loaded with refugees and royal gold. Matthew: That must have been hard for Pat; to move away from something that he’d invested so much work in and hand it over to another writer. My understanding is that happened because of an argument over the strip’s research budget, although I might have got that wrong. He tells the judgmental Charley his life-story and they become firm friends with the common ground being the hatred of the waste of lives in France.
In 2008, Canadian journalist Arthur Kent sued the makers of the film, claiming that they had used material he produced in the 1980s without obtaining the proper authorization. [18] On September 19, 2008, Kent announced that he had reached a settlement with the film's producers and distributors, and that he was "very pleased" with the terms of the settlement, which remain confidential. [19] Awards and nominations [ edit ] Award Up until two years ago, the Indian and Jamaican veterans had no Memorial anywhere in this Country to honour their dead. The British West Indies Regiment in the First World War consisted of 15,601 troops they saw action in France and Egypt and by the end of the War they had won 37 Military Medals, eight Distinguished Conduct Medals and nine Military Crosses, and yet where is their mention in the official histories? These men were not press-ganged into the army – they volounteered to fight for the ‘mother’ country they had learned about in school. Some stowed away on ships to join the British Army and fight its enemies. Charley's first platoon commander and easily the best officer he serves under during the war. Public-schooled but enlightened, brave but never blood-thirsty, Thomas is a decent man who represents the best of his class.The veteran Platoon-Sgt, Ole Bill is one of the very few who makes it all the way through the war with Bourne, more or less in one piece. An old pre-war Regular soldier, he was one of the BEF's ' Old Contemptibles' who fought at Mons in August 1914. Burly, loud, fond of a drink and seemingly indestructable, Bill's roaring voice and courage help Charley and his fellows out of trouble time and time again.
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