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| cover art by Luis Dominguez |
"The Platoon that Wouldn't Die" (Weird War Tales #19--November 1973) is a very clever story. Written by Arnold Drake and with art by Gerry Talaoc, it is about... well, a platoon that wouldn't die.
Unfortunately, the platoon in question is German, known as the Blue Bolt platoon. We meet them while they are in the middle of a commando raid. The purpose of the raid is to recover one particular
body among many from a graveyard--the body of their commanding officer, Major Bruekner.
In fact, this is the third time Bruekner's body has been recovered by the Blue Bolts. Apparently, the German keeps coming back to life. The Blue Bolts policy of never leaving a body behind seems to indicate that they all keep coming back to life.
The Allies need a man on the inside to find out what's going on. A con man named Harry "The Actor" Neilson is doing a twenty-year stretch in prison. He's offered a full pardon if he takes the place of a captured Blue Bolt, "escape" back to Axis lines and find out what the heck is going on.
It's a dangerous job that becomes more dangerous when Harry--now Corporal Schlosser--"rejoins" the Blue Bolts and immediately gets assigned to help assassinate an American Intelligence officer--the same guy who just recruited Harry out of prison.
There's a neat twist here that has us thinking for a good portion of the story that Harry shot his own boss to maintain his cover, though it turns out in the end that he was able to fake this. But that's not the really big twist.
Major Bruekner gets killed again while the Blue Bolts are making their escape, though it takes dozens of bullets to put him down and Harry notices that the body weighs a lot when he helps carry it away from the battle.
Back in German territory, the body is sent to a building labeled "Institute for Para-Psychology Studies." Harry sneaks inside and discovers voodoo ceremonies going on that are bringing the Blue Bolts back as zombies. That's the answer!
Or at least we spend a few pages thinking its the answer. This is what I like about this story. This is, after all, an issue of Weird War Tales. It's full of zombies, vampires, ghosts and dark magic. When we find out the Nazis are zombies, we have absolutely no reason to doubt it.
Except it turns out that this particular story is science fiction, not a tale of the supernatural. The zombie thing is a cover--even the Blue Bolts who haven't been killed yet are now under the impression that they are effectively immortal--which is a major boost to their moral. In reality, though, when one of them is killed, he's replaced by a robot.
Harry manages to shoot the head scientist, then spends some time vainly pumping bullets into robots before realizing he can just destroy the main control panel.
So the story effectively plays with our genre expectations. The clue about the corpses being particularly heavy is a nice one, but not to obvious to give away the plot twist. When we find out about the "zombies," we have no real reason to doubt it. In the universe of Weird War Tales, such things exist. So, when this story turns out to be one of the occasional forays into science fiction, it is equally believable but still an effective surprise.
The story is otherwise well-constructed and there's lots of good action. The protagonist is a con man rather than a regular spy mostly for the irony of him nearly falling for a con himself. But it also makes him enough of an outsider to be able to declare everyone--Axis and Allies--nuts after he's criticized for risking the mission by not killing his boss during the commando raid.
As far as I know, this is Harry's only appearance. It's not impossible that the editors at DC might be hoping he'd catch on and become a regular or reoccurring character in their war comics and he probably would have continued to be an interesting protagonist. But Harry's war ended after he shut down the robot factory. Still, he got to shut down a Nazi robot factor and keep the Germans from flooding the battlefield with unkillable soldiers. That's not bad for a single mission.
Next week, we'll return to the Hyborian Age and watch Conan team up with a certain red-haired lady warrior.
body among many from a graveyard--the body of their commanding officer, Major Bruekner.
In fact, this is the third time Bruekner's body has been recovered by the Blue Bolts. Apparently, the German keeps coming back to life. The Blue Bolts policy of never leaving a body behind seems to indicate that they all keep coming back to life.
It's a dangerous job that becomes more dangerous when Harry--now Corporal Schlosser--"rejoins" the Blue Bolts and immediately gets assigned to help assassinate an American Intelligence officer--the same guy who just recruited Harry out of prison.
Major Bruekner gets killed again while the Blue Bolts are making their escape, though it takes dozens of bullets to put him down and Harry notices that the body weighs a lot when he helps carry it away from the battle.
Back in German territory, the body is sent to a building labeled "Institute for Para-Psychology Studies." Harry sneaks inside and discovers voodoo ceremonies going on that are bringing the Blue Bolts back as zombies. That's the answer!
Or at least we spend a few pages thinking its the answer. This is what I like about this story. This is, after all, an issue of Weird War Tales. It's full of zombies, vampires, ghosts and dark magic. When we find out the Nazis are zombies, we have absolutely no reason to doubt it.
Except it turns out that this particular story is science fiction, not a tale of the supernatural. The zombie thing is a cover--even the Blue Bolts who haven't been killed yet are now under the impression that they are effectively immortal--which is a major boost to their moral. In reality, though, when one of them is killed, he's replaced by a robot.
So the story effectively plays with our genre expectations. The clue about the corpses being particularly heavy is a nice one, but not to obvious to give away the plot twist. When we find out about the "zombies," we have no real reason to doubt it. In the universe of Weird War Tales, such things exist. So, when this story turns out to be one of the occasional forays into science fiction, it is equally believable but still an effective surprise.
The story is otherwise well-constructed and there's lots of good action. The protagonist is a con man rather than a regular spy mostly for the irony of him nearly falling for a con himself. But it also makes him enough of an outsider to be able to declare everyone--Axis and Allies--nuts after he's criticized for risking the mission by not killing his boss during the commando raid.
As far as I know, this is Harry's only appearance. It's not impossible that the editors at DC might be hoping he'd catch on and become a regular or reoccurring character in their war comics and he probably would have continued to be an interesting protagonist. But Harry's war ended after he shut down the robot factory. Still, he got to shut down a Nazi robot factor and keep the Germans from flooding the battlefield with unkillable soldiers. That's not bad for a single mission.
Next week, we'll return to the Hyborian Age and watch Conan team up with a certain red-haired lady warrior.
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