Commando Comics Commemorate Armistice

The Commando series of comic books have been going strong since 1961  - something quite unique in British comics. Sure there are some titles that have been going longer - The Beano  springs to mind, but the Commando comics are the only adventure series to enjoy such a long run. Noted for their distinctive 7 × 5½ inch, 63 page format the Commando comics  have remained more popular than many other British war comics, and some would say British comics in general, despite their simplistic stories and black and white artwork, with only the covers in colour.

The series continues to prosper and these days digital editions are released alongside the regular books, taking the series into a future un-imagined when the first title rolled off the presses all those years ago.

This month Commando are commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Armistice that ended the Great War, with four new titles in the shops now that are based around that momentous day when the guns fell silent.

Titles are War Bus by George Low with artwork by Manuel Benet

Danny's War by Iain McLaughlin with artwork by Dafeo and Morhain

Stolen Glory by C G Walker with artwork by Carmoa

Front Line Fear by Robert Smith with artwork by Janek Maysiak

All are available now priced £2.25

Danny's War, although a stand alone story, is part of a five part series with the subtitle, The Weekes War - the Weekes family are all involved in the Great War and each issue will presumably centre on on a different member of the family, with the first telling the story of Danny Weekes, a trench-hardened Captain. The second and third story featuring the Weekes family will be out November 15th 2018.

Sunlight: A hundred years dead

Watching filmed footage of the First World War one gets an odd sensation - we are aware that what we are witnessing are horrific events, and yet there is so much distance between now and then that it is difficult to fully appreciate the enormity of the situation presented in the grainy film. The movements of the men on the screen seems jerky, almost as if they were created by animation and the explosions are merely puffs of smoke, fleeting and seemingly insubstantial. Photography is basically the capture of light and what we are watching is sunlight a hundred years dead.

Prior to starting work on my book, Cardiff and the Valley's In The Great War (published Feb 28th 2015 by Pen and Sword Books), my knowledge of the so called Great War was limited to a list of dates and major battles. But by the time I finished the book I had a far greater understanding of the conflict. It had been brought closer to me, and now I saw it as a very human story. No longer was it some far distant war, the combatants made up of anonymous names and faces, the devastation lessened by the passing of the years, but something very real, something that I felt on a deeply emotional level. There were times when I was writing that I found tears in my eyes - one such instance was when I detailed the eventual fate of the Cardiff Pals, but there were others too. Writing the book had brought me closer to these soldiers who long before I was born took to the foreign fields to protect a way of life for future generations...for you and me, if you like.

One of the many memorials in Welsh Towns - this one is Llanharran

The research for the book was immense and I spent many hours going through old newspapers in Cardiff's excellent Central Library, covered many miles traveling up and down the country visiting graveyards and the offices of military records and on several occasions meeting people who had stories to tell of relatives who had fought in the war.

I am immensely proud of this book and now have to work with the publishers on the proofing stages, before the book is ready for the printers. It's due out on Feb 28th 2015 and is already showing up on Amazon where you can request to be informed when the book is available for purchase.

I do hope many of you pick up a copy.



Cardiff in The Great War - Looks at the Cardiff Pals and other local regiments who fought in the Great War and how the experience of war impacted on the area, from the initial enthusiasm for sorting out the German Kaiser in time for Christmas 1914, to the gradual realization of the enormity of human sacrifice the families of Cardiff were committed to as the war stretched out over the next four years. An important place for Coal export this book looks at how the balance between working and fighting was achieved by the Dockyard workers The Great War affected everyone. At home there were wounded soldiers in military hospitals, refugees from Belgium and later on German prisoners of war. There were food and fuel shortages and disruption to schooling. The role of women changed dramatically and they undertook a variety of work undreamed of in peacetime. Meanwhile, men serving in the armed forces were scattered far and wide. Extracts from contemporary letters reveal their heroism and give insights into what it was like under battle conditions.

The Great War

It's been a lot of work, both in terms of research and the actual writing, but other than slight publisher edits my book, Cardiff and the Valleys During the Great War is ready to go and will be published later this year.

 I'm not really what you could call a historian but rather an eager amateur with an interest in history, and I think of myself first and foremost as a fiction writer - the fact that I'm not a professional historian and a fiction writer to boot helped me get the commission for this book.

The publisher, Pen and Sword Books, were looking for writers who were not really historians for a series of books that would concentrate on the home front in specific towns and cities in the United Kingdom. I put in my proposal and a few weeks later I got the contract and then the advance.

 I suppose the theory was that a professional historian would deliver a book more interested in the facts and statistics of the Great War, while a writer used to dealing with characters and plots would be able to find the human story, and present a narrative that pays full justice to these remarkable and terrible times...I hope I've done that. I've read it through recently and do think the narrative reads as smoothly as fiction, that the story almost lives on the page. That was something that I kept in mind when writing the book, and I was conscious to try and develop the mindset of the times, so that I would better understand the way people felt about the war, the way they acted.


I started out the project with only a limited knowledge of the Great War, I knew far more about the second war, but I finished the work with a far more rounded knowledge of the war, regarding both the various theaters of war and on the home front.

 One of the larger sections of the book deals with the 11th Welsh Regiment, the Cardiff Pals and when I concluded their part of the story I had a very real  tear in my eye. I found that section of the book to be particularly emotional - and I know that from now now until the end of my days I will always remember the sacrifices these men made. Indeed the sacrifices that everyone made - for the Great War was truly a people's war and the conflict was, for the first time, brought over into the home front. Prior to the Great War conflicts would often end after only one or two battles, but this war was different, this was the war to end all wars....if only the last were true and of course a couple of decades after the Great War ended the world once again found itself involved in a global conflict.

There'll be a series of books looking at the home front coming out soon from Pen and Sword Books - many of the towns and cities across the country will be covered. So look out for them and please give my own particular title a go. I know it'll appeal mostly to those with an interest in the particular areas covered in the book, but I think the book will be an enjoyable and informative read no matter where you come from.

I cried as I typed those final words....

MEN ENLISTING FOR THE PALS 1914

For the best part of a year now I've been working on a non-fiction book, provisionally entitled Cardiff During the Great War which will be published by Pen and Sword Books later this year. I'm getting very close to completing the work now and only minutes ago I wrote the final words in the section detailing the 11the Welsh Battalion, The Cardiff Pals and I literally cried, I still have the moisture from those tears in my eyes as I type this.



The Wiki tells us of the famous Pals battalions - The pals battalions of World War I were specially constituted battalions of the British Army comprising men who had enlisted together in local recruiting drives, with the promise that they would be able to serve alongside their friends, neighbours and work colleagues ("pals"), rather than being arbitrarily allocated to battalions.

Herbert Paine Smith 1914

The center-piece of my section detailing the Pals are the memories of one particular soldier - Herbert Paine Smith. I am deeply in the debt of his son, the late Major Bob Smith who in 1981 sat down with his father and a tape recorder and recorded the priceless memories. Anyone interested can listen to these HERE and I do urge you all to do so. Mr Paine Smith was an intelligent and eloquent man and the recordings he made with his son sum up the experiences of an ordinary man during the Great War, or as we call it these days World War One. I'm also in touch with his granddaughter Gilly Smith who has supplied me many photographs and interesting documents. Gilly has said that both her grandfather and son would be deeply honoured by their inclusion in my book, but in truth it is I who feel honoured to write this story. These are great men who gave more for their fellow man than I could ever hope to do.

Paine Smith survived the war but only because he received serious injuries on the night before the assault which would see the 11th Welsh Battalion annihilated by fierce Bulgar machine gun fire as they attempted to attack the Grand Couronne peak in Macedonia. I started the Pals section by saying that the cream of Cardiff went to war one sunny afternoon in September 1914, and I ended the section with the words, and now four years later most of them lay dead or dying as the blood red dawn started to rise over Grand Couronne.

It was then that the tears came - throughout my period working on this book I have learned much about the Pals, heard many interesting, horrific and funny stories of some of the characters that made up this brave band of men, and I now feel their loss on a very personal level.

 Ah well I've got to get on with completing the rest of the book, my deadline runs out in just over two weeks. The cover's already been designed at the so that it  was ready for this year's  London Book Fair, and I should get a firm publication date very soon. Expect news here soon.

The Great War - A call to America

Although the sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-boat in 1915 would not bring America into the Great War it was a key event to the nation eventually joining the allied forces.

The Sinking of the Lusitania, released in 1918, is an animated short film by American artist Winsor McCay. It features a short 12 minute explanation of the sinking of RMS Lusitania after it was struck by two torpedoes fired from a German U-boat. The film was one of many animated silent films published to create anti-German sentiment during World War I. McCay illustrated some 25,000 drawings for the production. The film is stylized as a documentary, informing viewers on details from the actual event, including a moment by moment recap, casualty list, and a list of prominent figures who were killed.

Gavrillo Who?

I'm now burning the midnight oil and eating up the sunlight as I work on finishing the first draft of my non fiction work, Cardiff During the Great War which will be published later this year by Sword and Pen Books.

Prior to starting this work my knowledge of the Great War, the conflict that stretched from 1914 - 1918, was pretty good but what continues to really strike me as I get deeper and deeper into my research is the little that I really knew. Just this last week I've been tracing the lives of a group of Belgian refugees who made their homes in Cardiff and the Valleys for the war years.

I've also come to the conclusion that if there was one man who shaped the last century more than any other then it was Gavrillo Princip, and yet his name remains unknown to most people. It was Princip who on an eventful June day in 1914 assassinated  the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his young wife, an event that kicked off the global conflict that we know now as The First World War. Without Princip there would have been no first world war and thus no second. Those shots fired all the years ago in Bosnia and still be heard today - the echos have sounded down through decades and now almost a century later still ring out. He killed two people - the archduke and his wife and yet was in some way responsible for the death of millions since.

Hitler during his service in The Great War

Adolf Hitler was wounded during the First World War and seethed for many years afterwards because he felt the German rulers had sold his people out by surrendering in 1918. In 1919 he joined the German Workers Party and it was from this start that he would eventually rule all of Germany and send the country, and the world,  into another global conflict. Hitler's politics were formed because of the first world war, a war that started because of that assassination on that June day almost a hundred years ago.

The assassination was a momentous moment in history and yet if you ask most people to name a famous assassin then the chances are that they would say Lee Harvey Oswald, and he may not have even done it, while Gavrillo Princip remains unknown by most people - many of us would have to Google him when asked who he was. I must confess that the name wasn't familiar to me until I started my research.


No doubt I'll be posting more on this subject as my book nears completion - I've managed to collect together a mass of humorous stories from the period and these are particularly heartwarming and reflect the true character of the human spirit - for even in such catastrophic times people can still manage a smile when their hearts are being broken on a daily basis.

Cardiff appeal

CARDIFF AND SURROUNDING AREAS - Next year (2014) will see the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War and author, Gary Dobbs is busy compiling information for a book entitled, Cardiff During the Great War which will be published byPen and Sword Books. Gary is asking for the help of anyone who may have any photographs or family stories of this period. All photographs and documents will, of course, be handled with great care and returned. If anyone has anything they would like to share then please contact Gary on 01443 300 156 or 07817 778301. Alternatively email cardiffgreatwar@outlook.com