Secret History: Charley's War - The German Offensive & The Arrival of the Americans

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.

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THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE

Charley is back in the trenches in time for Operation Michael, the great German offensive of March 1918. Charley and his mates are taken prisoner and he reflects: ‘All these years of fighting for a few miles of mud and we lose it in one day. There’s no justice in the world.’ He couldn’t have said a truer word. There was no justice.  

Then Charley and co. escape, and as the British retreat we are greeted by one of the most amazing and impressive scenes in the saga: German cavalry in gas masks and capes preparing to attack! It’s the subject of an impressive diorama by the skilled sculptor Marcus White and it was also in a limited portfolio of  actual-sized pages available from the French publishers, but sadly, not from the UK publishers Rebellion. To see these Uhlans then pursuing the Tommies is a truly terrifying sight. 

The tone of Charley now rightly changes. It’s a war of movement and also of disillusion. Charley’s mates complain more than ever. They’ve had enough. Back when I was writing Charley, I asked one relative – who joined up in 1919 – why soldiers were treated so harshly by their officers. His response was unsympathetic.  The gist of it was that the Tommies were hard bastards, dehumanised by years of war and they had to be treated brutally, it was all they understood.

And so were the Germans they were fighting, as soldier Skin reveals to Charley: ‘They’re the second naval infantry regiment real hard men, like our marines’. As the British retreat to Albert, Charley says, ‘If you ask me, this war will never end.’

Amazingly, this was the subject of a comedy sketch by a concert party at the time, at which General Haig was present!

In the best tradition of Monty Python and Blackadder Goes Forth – and we can see just where they get their inspiration from – the troops had a Western Front concert in February 1918  - ‘A Peep Into the Future’ ... ‘It depicted the last British and last German soldier. They were using the same parapet, the Tommy was entrenched on one side, Fritz on the other. Fritz was shown using the periscope held up by a Tommy as a shaving mirror.

Incredibly, this sketch was shown in front of General Haig!