Charley's War Vol. 1: Boy Soldier: The Definitive Collection: Volume 1

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Charley befriends black American soldiers: the Harlem Hellfighters and the editor imposed the most abhorrent censorship which he has since denied, but which I stand my ground on. Of course censorship is something no one will ever admit to – it’s always hard to prove – and that’s why it works particularly well in Britain.

On this page I will try to point out just some of the interesting plots and subjects handled by Charley’s War.His fundamental decency and conscientious sense of duty are sometimes at odds with his anger at the many injustices of military life and his growing disillusionment over the conduct of the war. Charley's War was a British comic strip about the First World War, written by Pat Mills and drawn by Joe Colquhoun. Unlike many war strips, we see Charley not just at the front, but on the secondary lines and back home on leave. I can’t see Captain Snell or those officers who produced the Wipers Times enjoying ragtime, can you?

Yet the documented evidence for it is formidable and chilling and has never been challenged by establishment historians. Censorship in Britain is subtle but widespread and usually involves plausible deniability that it even exists. On the front page we see Lonely rejoining the ‘lost platoon’, after shellshock has caused a breakdown. Always late to the party me, but I got an A+ in my o’grade history thanks to Charley’s war, when I had the memorable question “why were the trenches a dangerous place to be?A traumatised veteran who was the sole survivor of his platoon when it was wiped out in 1915 due to a recklessly cruel act by Lt Snell. After all, when I wrote Charley’s War, I consciously set out to subversively attack the State for its war crimes in the Great War. Morel, the journalist who exposed the truth about the Belgian Congo atrocities, was feared by the British state, because he was exposing their war crimes, so they imprisoned him and broke his health. After a battle against German commandoes, Charley is captured and sent to a POW camp where he meets his cousin Jack.

Skin is seen talking to a German soldier who is revealed to be his brother but not before the latter is fatally shot by another Briton. Public-schooled but enlightened, brave but never blood-thirsty, Thomas is a decent man who represents the best of his class. Toplis was shot dead by police in Yorkshire in 1921 after being the most wanted man in England for some five years.One of the best comic series I have ever read; It was so hard hitting and taught the youth the horrors of war and violence. Most accounts I’ve read present the Tommies as noble but cipher-like figures, usually happy to lay down their lives for their country to protect freedom and democracy.