'No one provokes me with impunity'
The motto is ingrained into the hearts of every one of the Scottish Ragtime soldiers. But just to be sure, on such important missions as a trench raid, they were given ‘Forced March’ tablets.
It sounds like the kind of threat the barbarian Sláine would make to his enemies (‘No one screws with me and gets away with it’). And it certainly has that Celtic menace, which is entirely appropriate as it’s the national motto of Scotland: Nemo me impune lacessit.
It features above this impressive painting of Great War Black Watch soldiers – displayed in the McManus gallery in Dundee – and it’s also the basis for our Ragtime Soldier credit box.
Armed with a murderous array of brutal medieval weapons, ROBBIE McTAGGART and his Black Watch comrades cross No Man’s Land and attack the German front line trenches for intel and to bring back prisoners for interrogation. There, to their consternation, they discover the impregnable nature of the enemy defences shortly before the Battle of the Somme begins.
TRENCH RAIDER is the title of our new Ragtime Soldier adventure, the main story in our 48-page book illustrated by Gary Welsh and Phil Vaughan. If our Kickstarter is successful, it will available as a comic edition,a hardback book and deluxe volume, which includes a dust jacket, end pages, ribbon and foil ink.
The motto ‘No one attacks me with impunity’ is ingrained into the hearts of every one of the Scottish Ragtime soldiers. But, just to be sure, on such important missions as a trench raid, they were given ‘Forced March’ tablets – cocaine and caffeine – with their rum ration.
Robbie had always been against ‘Forced March’ drugs and had refused to take them. Because he had already seen the devastating effect the tablets had on soldiers, often turning them into maniacs. But his mates tricked him into taking it, otherwise he would have been put on a charge by CAPTAIN FITZPATRICK, who is always looking for an excuse to reprimand or punish Robbie.
Captain Fitzpatrick is one of the two officer villains that feature in Ragtime Soldier, the other being MAJOR POLLARD of the Legion of Frontiersmen. Captain Fitzpatrick is very different to Captain Snell, the villain that we loved to hate in Charley’s War. Fitzpatrick is a social climber. In his native Dundee, he was originally a jute factory worker, but married the owner’s daughter, so he enjoys wealth and officer-status. Yet he is still not completely accepted by his brother officers. So he craves recognition and promotion and will sacrifice his men – if necessary – to achieve it.
Robbie has no idea why Fitzpatrick dislikes him so much and always gives him unpleasant and dangerous tasks, but he knows it’s connected with his family back in Dundee, whom we meet in the introductory story. Robbie’s brother, IAN, who is a war-resister, was imprisoned in ‘The Big Hoose’: Glasgow’s notorious Barlinnie prison. Then IAN ‘stole’ Robbie’s girlfriend MAGGIE and the two brothers became estranged.
In the trenches, Fitzpatrick jibes at Robbie for having a conscientious objector for an older brother and calls his younger brother JOHN a ‘jessie’. He suggests it’s up to Robbie to restore the family honour. Robbie is ‘provoked’, just like the motto, but he knows if he attacks Fitzpatrick it would be a court martial offence. So, for now, he has to swallow his anger.
After the war, Robbie tries to help his surviving comrades, some of whom have become addicted to cocaine. Especially his best friend, STALEBREAD, who is named after a member of the legendary Razzie Dazzy Spasm band, who first played Ragtime music in New Orleans.
Robbie persuades Stalebread to talk to a journalist, ZELIE EMERSON, a famous, real-life American suffragette who helped found THE DREADNOUGHT newspaper with SYLVIA PANKHURST.
As a Suffragette, Zelie was beaten up by police, imprisoned, went on hunger strike and was force-fed by a prison doctor. But Zelie, too, clearly believed in the Black Watch motto: ‘No one provokes me with impunity.’ When she was released, this formidable woman got her revenge. With two assistants, she waited outside the prison, captured the doctor and whipped him. She may also have force-fed him. The terrified doctor did not press charges against her.
Sylvia and Zelie had previously published war hero Sassoon’s famous letter condemning the Great War as a ‘war of aggression and conquest’, which caused a sensation and was read out in Parliament. Zelie thinks the story of soldiers being given drugs to go ‘over the top’ will be an even bigger news story. And how, after the war, traumatised and addicted soldiers are breaking into pharmacies in their desperate craving for drugs.
So there is a lot at stake for Robbie, but his old enemy MAJOR POLLARD is determined to stop him by any means necessary…
What our story TRENCH RAIDER shows is that even when there was a media blackout, censorship, police raids and prison sentences for whistleblowers, there were still journalists like Zelie and Sylvia Pankhurst brave enough to reveal the truth.
Today, there is still a media blackout on any report that shows World War One in such an anti-war light.
So no British historian or journalist – in legacy media or online – has investigated or even mentioned the drug scandal of the trenches, which was first exposed in 2009, in Holland, where the cocaine tablets were made. (Exposed by Conny Braam, author of ‘The Cocaine Salesman’.)
The media use that most effective of defences: ‘If we don’t write about it, then it never happened. Or it’s not very important, so it doesn’t matter.’
I think it does matter.
So, sadly, comics have to do their job for them. Just as Charley’s War revealed stories that were largely never written about outside comics. For example, the British invasion of Russia in 1919.
Ragtime Soldier – Trench Raider – is the first time the story of the cocaine scandal of the trenches will be originally published in Britain.
I hope you will support our Kickstarter campaign so we can make it happen.
So the truth about what really happened to our forefathers, our great grandfathers, can finally be told.
If our Kickstarter is successful, more such stories will follow in future volumes of the Ragtime saga of Robbie McTaggart and his family at war.
or as they say now, FAFO.