Secret History of Comics: Charley's War - Train Wars

"Lonely mounds of weed-covered clay crowned with wooden Greek crosses...the lonely graves of workmen who were butchered by the British because they might be sympathisers with Bolshevism"

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 armoured train war follows, one which many readers remember with special affection because it was so visually extraordinary: beautifully rendered by Joe, and so ‘Steam Punk’.

But there was a dark side to this clash of train titans. As John S. Clarke relates:

‘Reminders of the bloody deeds committed by representatives of civilisation and "democracy" are to be observed in these backwoods of the north in the shape of lonely mounds of weed-covered clay crowned with wooden Greek crosses. They are the lonely graves of workmen who were butchered by the British because they might be sympathisers with Bolshevism. Many a time I sprang from the train, miles from any village, and photographed these melancholy heaps. Sometimes one solitary, half-decayed cross would be seen through the trees, sometimes two, but seldom more than two. Hunters, following their calling, captured by an advance column and absolutely incapable of understanding the situation. No useful information could be obtained from such, but they might give warning if liberated. Military expediency demanded their death, and they were brutally murdered and left in the woods without burial. Some villages were almost stripped of the male inhabitants in this way. In the photograph illustrating this chapter, the reader will notice that the corpses have their  hands tied behind them, that their sheepskin  jackets and clothing generally proclaim them members of a peaceful industrial community, and that their decomposed state reveals the fact that they were left alone where they dropped. The snow alone was their shroud and its drift their grave. Such was British mercy in Northern Russia. Now imagine such people being seized suddenly by the highly civilised and intelligent  know-alls of the British army. What coherent  statements could such people make, sufficient to  satisfy a British Jack-in-office? Look at the photo and ask yourself who the barbarians were.’

The Bolshevik Colonel Spirodonov was a real-life commander of a Red armoured train, although I was unable to find him on an internet search. The opening scene where we meet him is a visual gem, with two White Russians betraying the White officer in their midst. Their eyes point to the officer, whom Spirodonov promptly executes. I found the whole story very absorbing from ‘General’ Charley commanding White Russians – who didn’t know he was just a lowly Corporal – to remarkable scenes of the revolution and the sentencing to death of the Czar’s family, to the fanatical character of Spirodonov himself.

And then the British decide to use mustard gas on the Russians. As Charley comments, ‘That’s a bit evil.’  A comrade replies, ‘But with poison gas we’ll definitely get a result.’ Charley thinks: ‘Maybe… but will it be the right one?’