Charley's Parley

For Lo! We Are On Our Second Part

Of debunking or verifying the artwork and script for 'Charley's War'.  Pat Mills, the writer, gets some things spot on but also repeats a fair few canards and myths along the way, which it is my duty as a hair-splitting pedant to put right.  Art!

     This is artist Joe Colquhoun getting it picture-perfect with a cover showing a French soldier, in their sky-blue uniform, wearing a gas mask and firing their Chauchat light machine gun.  Well, as Ian 'Gun Jesus' McColm on 'Forgotten Weapons' demonstrated, it needed to be used as an automatic rifle; on sustained fire for any length of time it would overheat an

     ANYWAY that's the click-baity picture for this Intro, so let us proceed to the first picture from CW.  Art!

     This is Joe's rendering of a famous film clip of British 8" howitzers firing in succession, as part of the artillery preparation for the opening infantry attack on the Somme.  Notice that I do not say 'The First Day On The Somme' as so many people do, because for the hapless Teuton infantry in the front lines, their Somme began on 24th of June when Allied artillery began firing.  Art!

     There was a major problem with the Royal Artillery, namely the fuses on the shells they fired.  A shell fuse is a complicated piece of precision engineering, and up to a third of them failed to detonate during the Somme campaign.  Art!

A fuse.  Just so we're clear.

    Quality control in the British shell factories was simply not up to scratch in 1916 thanks to the massive expansion in production.  As a result, the Teuton positions targeted escaped being totally obliterated.  Art!

     Despite this, it's estimated that there were 10,000 Teuton casualties inflicted by the colossal bombardment.  The side panel there has a British general bloviating to his assembled men - " - the wire has been destroyed!  There will not be a German left alive in the trenches!  Our guns have blown them all to hell!"

    This was indeed the firm belief of the high command, that the attacking infantry would have to do no more than cross No Man's Land and occupy what was left of the Teuton trenches.  Reality proved otherwise.  Wire-cutting in summer 1916 was done by dedicated 18-pounder batteries firing time-fused shrapnel shells, their 'shotgun' effect shredding barbed wire, usually by destroying the stakes that held it up.  It took time and precision adjustment to manage this, and if the batteries were tasked to do anything else, the guns had to be relaid,  painstakingly and with much delay.  Art!

    No, this is not Pat Mills spinning a yarn.  Yes, British units did go into the attack punting footballs ahead of them, the East Surrey regiment as mentioned.  They were also kicked forward of the advancing infantry at the battle of Loos in late 1915.  Art!

     Pat being a bit economical with the truth here.  'The Generals' were not those at GHQ.  Tactics on the Somme were decided at Corps level, and they all adopted different methods of advancing.  Some did, indeed, instruct that the men walk across No Man's Land, believing that the Teuton front line trenches were devastated with no risk of retaliatory fire.  Walking meant that units were more likely to retain cohesion, because these infantry were not long-service regulars, they were volunteers with insufficient training - Field Marshal Haig had wanted to wait until the end of August to attack in order to remedy this.  Art!

     There was a miniature mythos generated by Allied propaganda that the Huns were so fiendish that they chained their own men to their machine guns, in order that they be unable to escape.  Art!

     You might think this specious nonsense and that Pat is repeating urban legends.  Not so.  IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.  There is a footnote in the British Official History of 1916 Volume I, where a hulking Bavarian machine gunner was captured, since he was really chained to his gun.  The twist is, he'd done it himself as an act of bravado and proudly boasted about it to his captors.  Art!

     Another reason why men walked across NML - they were burdened down with loads of kit.  This silhouette also scotches one of Conrad's criticisms about Joe's artwork, that he never draws Lewis guns.  Art!

     That's the profile of a Lewis gun, as one can tell by the front bipod and the barrel shroud.  Joe possibly didn't want to have to draw another kind of weapon.  Another omission - and this is for the realllly pedantic hair-splitters like Conrad - is the lack of wire-cutter attachments to the Enfield rifles that British infantry use.  These were used on the opening day on the Somme.  Art!

    In truth they were pretty rubbish and exposed anyone trying to cut Teuton wire in dangerous fashion.  They vanished pretty quickly, which may be Joe's excuse.

     That's today's Intro.  Be advised, we're only 50 pages into a work of 300 pages, and then there's the second volume to analyse.  I bet you can hardly wait.

Our Daily Dose Of Donold Dissing

I will miss the senile incontinent sex-pest fraudster when he drops dead of a heart attack*, he's a gift to creating content that keeps on giving.  Art!

     EXCUSE ME!  The Orange Land Whale acts like a spiteful, petty 7-year old, thank you very much.  Crediting him with the intellect of a 12-year old is hilariously flattering to BOOH.

Shot Rails To Hell

More of 'Joe Blogs' and his listing of how Ruffian industry isn't coping well with wartime, enhanced by 'Anton Geraschenko' on Twitter.  Whilst Joe attempts to remain impartial, Anton is a Ukrainian who loathes everything about Ruffia. Just so we're clear.  Art!

RZD:  Or, 'Russian Railways'.  They are - or were - the largest employer in Ruffia, with 700,000 employees.  RZD is responsible for shifting coal, metals and oil across Ruffia's immensity.  Thing is, freight tonnage being carried has dropped off a cliff, due to a sharp decline in coal and oil being transported as exports crater and domestic industry also withers.  The CEO has instructed department heads to come up with schemes for reducing numbers and restructuring, whilst there is a moratorium on recruiting any new staff.  Increased fuel costs and the ending of state subsidies have also trammelled RZD.  Administrative workers now have to take two unpaid days leave per month, cutting their wages by 10%, with another unpaid leave day in prospect.  Art!

     Anton detailed the collapse in RZD's profits: from ₽118 billion rubles in 2023, to ₽14 billion in 2024, and in Q1 and Q2 of 2025, ₽2.7 billion rubles, thus on course for ₽5 billion across the whole year.  Erk.  1/24th of what they used to be.  

     Of course - obviously! - everything is going according to plan.

A Bit Of An Oddity

Rather than blather on, I will prod Art into semi-sentience with this handy electric cattle-persuader.  

Courtesy Mark Ovenden

     This new take on the London Underground map, one of the most iconic maps ever produced, illustrates cities across the globe with an Underground or Metro system, which is why Gomorrah-In-The-Irwell is present.  Who knew that the Norks would be represented on a map such as this?

I Told You So

Art!

     Spiteful, petty and with the intellect of a 7-year old.  This is why I call him 'Mr Zeppelin Ego' because his ego is enormous yet O so fragile.

     And with that, we are done!

*  Or gets Sectioned for shouting at clouds.