Stephen McGinty: Still attacking Commando-style after 50 years on the front

LIKE the Japanese soldier stumbling from a jungle thicket, his imperial uniform faded to rags, his beard long and white with age, the staff of Commando have yet to be told that the Second World War is over.

Instead there is a quiet office in Dundee that is forever Armageddon, where the tip-tap of the keyboard and the scratch of the artist’s pen can still launch a fierce fire-fight or a destructive bombing raid. Every fortnight, a fresh salvo of four 68-page comics, square bound and measuring seven inches by five inches, are launched at 40,000 readers, aged between six and 76, with many recipients (though not, perhaps, the six-year-olds) in military uniform. Attenshun! Commando is now 50 years old and so deserves a smart salute.

The anniversary is being marked by an exhibition at the National Army Museum, Draw Your Weapons: The Art of Commando Comics, and a lavish new book published by Carlton, 50 Years: A Home For Heroes by the George Low, who edited the comic for 19 of those years.

For those unfamiliar with what James May, the tousle-haired engineering wonk of Top Gear fame, described as “the greatest and most influential literary canon in the history of the English language”, it is perhaps best to select a few choice lines from, say, issue number 719 (we are now up at issue 4427) the, euphemistically titled: Killer Crew, which first introduced Raike’s Raider’.

“They took their life – and death – the free and easy way. They could grin while ordinary soldiers clenched their teeth. Their leader, Major Tod Raike, was like a cavalier of old, and he’d collected about the oddest and most brilliant bunch of fighting men of the war, pestering the enemy like wasps – with death in their stings.”

First published in 1964, it has dialogue such as: “Holy smoke! I forgot that bottle of chianti in my pack. Clogger will snatch that if he’s given half a chance. I’d better get it.” While one scene featuring a fierce battle is introduced: “Angered by their let down, by the death of their comrades, by simple shame at being caught unprepared, the infantrymen went in like devils.”

“Lousy Jerry.” “Aaeegh!”

“And cold steel bit into Nazi guts!”

Now there will be those who may be appalled at such comics, viewing them as racist and reactionary, but to do so is to forget the environment in which they were created. When DC Thomson first decided to launch a new war title in the autumn of 1961, the Second World War had been over for just 16 years and the staff did not have to look far for inspiration. The launch editor, Charles “Chick” Checkley had served in the RAF during the war, his deputy Ian Forbes served with the Royal Corps of Signals. On almost every floor of DC Thomson’s headquarters, there were veterans of the army, navy and air force, the Air Sea Rescue and the Special Air Service. One popular comic was inspired by the maintenance joiner who had fought through the jungles of Burma alongside the Chindits.

While the stories were outlandish, they were never out of this world, but instead grounded in a flexible realism than ensured the strictest accuracy when it came to weapons and armaments. As a result, the office became a treasure trove for military enthusiasts with a Lee-Enfield rifle brought in to be photographed for the artists, as was a dummy Mills grenade. There was great debate over whether the purchase of a Fairbairn Sykes fighting knife, which plunges through the “C” in the comic’s logo, could be considered a legitimate office expense. It was eventually decided, that, sadly, no.

Younger writers were despatched to Dundee’s Army Recruiting Office to pump the officers on duty for information and scribble notes as they lectured on the effectiveness of Japanese mortars in jungle terrain. Those who might have mocked Killer Crew as the work of a war-hungry wannabe, would be surprised that, instead, it was penned by Eric Hebden, a retired army major, who was posted to Gibraltar in 1940 and manned the anti-aircraft guns when the rock endured a massive air raid launched by the Italian air force. A slick writer with a fine feel for pulp, he turned his experiences into Boss of the Barbary Apes which tied a mystery to the tail of a Barbary ape called Joey then chased him through the rock’s secret tunnels.

The books were soon popular among both fathers and sons, with veterans writing in suggesting how their experiences could be preserved. By 1971, DC Thomson was publishing eight issues per month, with scripts being illustrated by a battalion of freelance artists. Among the most popular was Jose Maria, who was based in Argentina and inked the fiercest battles while listening to Argentinian tango music. When the Falklands War broke out in 1982, he took to travelling to Uruguay by ferry in order to post in his pages.

The year of the Falklands War was when the comic’s popularity peaked with sales of 750,000, and, over time, the series has branched out, back in time towards the First World War and forward towards Korea, the Falklands and even the first Gulf War. There will, however, be no stories to mark the tenth anniversary of the current campaign in Afghanistan. Only once this campaign is safely “won” or, at least, over and a safe enough number of years have piled up will the writers and artists of Commando tackle Britain’s current conflict. Yet there has been strange echoes from the past for the fighting Tommy. When the office in Dundee received a request for copies of Commando from British troops in the process of taking Basra during the invasion of 2003, the bundle contained a copy of Camel Force which detailed an assault on Basra by British forces, one which took place in 1914 when the city was held by the Turks.

It is an instructive exercise to re-read the tales of daring-dos that once enchanted me as a child. I could have sworn I once read a tale with line: “Honourable Japanese soldier always shoot in back”, but it was probably a mistake. However one Japanese mortar man shouted: “Banzai! Now the sons of dogs shall die!”, while the Germans scream: “Schweinhund!” and “Gott in Himmel!” I came from the generation for whom Action Man’s principal line of work was not, as it is today, fighting fires or healing the sick, but killing German soldiers. The tales are certainly as violent, or action-packed, as I remember. Yet there is a nobility and morality that runs through the stories.

The heroes are honest and dependable and decency will always triumph, which means that they are like fairy stories when compared to the harsh, brutal and hellish reality of war. This is not to say that war cannot produce heroes who are honest and dependable and decent. The pages of yesterday’s Scotsman illustrated the actions of 12 Scottish soldiers and an RAF serviceman whose heroism could easily slip between the pages of Commando, and I’ll wager many of them would cherish a full-colour cover of their deed illustrated by the legendary Ken Barr. So for that reason, I’m glad that, at least in the Dundee offices of Commando, the Second World War is still being fought one battle, and issue, at a time.

• Draw Your Weapons: The Art of Commando Comics is on at the National Army Museum in London until April.