Secret History: Charley's War - The Giant Gothas & The Battle of the Falklands

It's important for me to depict realistic heroes, so Charley gets married to Nurse Wincer. And why my ship story wasn't a hit with the readers.

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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THE GIANT GOTHAS

Talking of soap operas (see last week’s instalment) this next story does read like a classic soap. There’s the threat of the Giant Gothas bombing London with Wilf trying to shoot one down. If he succeeds, he’ll be recommended for pilot training. Charley meeting Nurse Wincer again and a romance blossoms. And a vengeful Captain Snell, a mental patient on her psychiatric ward, finally catches up with Charley. Wilf drives up to see Charley in his Yorkshire convalescent home and brings him up to date with news of the family. Predictably, Oiley has opened a nightclub in Soho and called it ‘Flappers’. The full story of nightlife in wartime London has never really been told. It was a world of hard drugs and prostitution. I’ve come across references to wealthy British industrialists keeping nightclubs open for all manner of depraved activities.

And there was also the Coterie – a group of ‘bright young things’, e.g. children of the rich elite, “best known for their extravagant parties and associated with such places as the Café Royal and The Cave of the Golden Calf, London's first nightclub. The group made a common pledge to be "unafraid of words, unshocked by drink, and unashamed of 'decadence' and gambling". The group revelled in drink, blasphemy, gambling, injecting heroin, and chloroform ("chlorers") sniffing. While the group's principal purpose was the pursuit of pleasure, their default attitude was one of cynical heartlessness, that at times was downright cruel.” – Wikipedia.

They sound remarkably similar to today’s rich elite – Boris Johnson and co. - in the Bullingdon Club.

But there is no such decadence for Charley. He marries nurse Kate Wincer in some of the most insightful scenes in the story. Kate’s mum complains to her husband, ‘She could have married someone with better prospects.’ Kate’s dad replies, ‘You can’t be choosy these days. The rate this war’s going , there’ll soon be no young men left.’ Smith 70 gives the newly weds a present of  ‘The Pelman Mind Training Course’ and Kate’s mum comments, ‘They’d have been better off with saucepans.’ Then – and even now – it was unusual for comic heroes to marry and I think it’s important to break this somewhat macho trend.