In 1988, Battle was folded into Eagle, which also began reprinting Charley's War, which became one of the mainstays of the title.

Instead, there was a surprising flood of incredibly boring biographies – which I forced myself to read – extolling the hitherto unknown virtues of supreme Butcher and Bungler General Haig with titles like Haig, Architect of Victory and The Good Soldier: Douglas Haig . He shoots down several German planes but narrowly avoids death when he is shot down and his pilot Captain Morgan is killed.

Yet in just recent years I’ve discovered that the truth was actually even more bizarre and humorous. His posts about Charley’s War – available only to paid subscribers – are as follows… (This list last update 8th August 2023). A conscientious objector who has been forced into the army through torture and intimidation and works as a miner alongside Charley in 1917 employed to lay explosive mines beneath the German lines. A young soldier who was so disorientated while he was home on leave, he was entering a London tube station and saw people coming up. Naturally, Mills voiced loud his opinions about this ‘official murder’ of our own soldiers with the storyline, which centred on Lieutenant Thomas.

Charley deeply affected its readers and thus many boys from military family backgrounds told me they chose not to join the armed forces after reading it. This is commonplace in comics as in any media: a successful story begets other stories in the same genre. I think I cheered out loud when the bully RMP, Sgt Bacon, was about to beat Charley up, but he was foiled by the appearance of a pair of huge Aussie soldiers, who proceeded to administer some well deserved Karma! Whilst in hospital he meets a nurse Kate and after a frosty start, the former realises Charley is no coward and the two begin a romantic relationship.Would any establishment historian disagree with this analysis of how they have withheld the truth from the public? 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. It will never be on any official schools curriculum – my scathing commentaries in the back of each volume have put paid to that – but it is widely and unofficially used by teachers to bring the conflict to life. I suppose I should see it as a compliment that the British Library and its curators should exclude Charley. When the BBC screened the excellent drama of Toplis’s life and death (monocled mutineer starring Paul Magann) there was outrage from the establishment and questions were raised in parliament.

Crimes which – as long as they remain unacknowledged – are a dark curse on our country’s national karma, poisoning the present and the future. Worse, the very descriptor “War Comic” is going to make many on the left – and Social Review readers – uncomfortable, bringing with it connotations of glorification and jingoism. It’s a need to get the truth out there – facts that rarely reach a mainstream audience conditioned by today’s revisionist propagandists – that makes this Secret History so significant.Their faces stared at us like shrunken mummies, and their eyes were so immense that you could not see anything but their eyes Charley encounters Blue who is posing as a British officer whilst smuggling food to his gang of deserters hiding in nearby woods. Regardless of story or quality it is fair to say that the vast majority of strips followed a pattern of patriotic goodies and baddies.