Secret History: Charley's War - Prisoner of War & The Final Round

Charley is reunited with his cousin Jack and the two of them plan to escape, with an ingenuity worthy of the The Great Escape.

Welcome to my Secret History of Comics: my new book serialised on Substack. The first section was on Marshal Law: now it’s all about Charley’s War.

If you’re joining me for the first time, you can read the intro to the Secret History here, it’s available for everyone, and so is the intro to Charley’s War.

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Captain Snell’s duplicitous behaviour continues, leading to Charley being made a prisoner of war. I think this story is important because in films it’s always the officers who escape, never the ordinary soldiers – with the less than subtle, subliminal message that officers are smarter, more courageous and physically stronger than ‘other ranks’. And the class divide is shown again with ‘other ranks’ expected to work down coal mines for the Germans, while officers could take it comparatively easy.

Charley is reunited with his cousin Jack and the two of them plan to escape, with an ingenuity worthy of the TV series Colditz or the film The Great Escape. Twice they fail under the most humorous circumstances, not to mention incredibly tense scenes with moral dilemmas for Charley thrown in. The fat German guard ‘Guts’ is brilliantly depicted stuck in the floor – a splendid comedy visual.

And then ‘Spanish’ flu strikes – a pandemic which cost the lives of endless  millions worldwide. 25–50 million (generally accepted), other estimates range from 17-100 million. Charley and Jack finally get away inside coffins. They are now officially dead. The scene where Charley emerges from a coffin is very vampiric and shows Joe could easily have made a name for himself as a horror artist. Jack and Charley board a train and Charley pretends to be a half-wit to explain why he cannot speak German.