Dinosaurs Committing Suicide

 

As I've said in previous War That Time Forgot reviews, these stories existed entirely as an excuse to show World War II soldiers fighting dinosaurs. And that, by itself, more than justifies its existence. I don't want to live in a world in which WWII soldiers didn't fight dinosaurs. No sane person would want that.

The story in Star Spangled War Stories #106 (Dec. 1962-Jan. 1963), written by Bob Kanigher and drawn by Ross Andru (who also did the cover) is typical of the appeal of the series. The human characters are pretty much just ciphers--the human soldiers who are used as a gateway to bring us into their dinosaur-filled world. 

The humans have two gimmicks attached to them. One is that they are the crew of a 155mm cannon. The other is that all three keep having the exact same dream of being chased by dinosaurs.

At first, they laugh this off as coincidence. But then, while being transported by a glider, they fly through a strange cloud and end up on an island inhabited by dinosaurs.

This was early in the series and Kanigher never really made an attempt to link the tales together with a strong continuity. Usually, the dinosaurs are on an island (or islands) in the modern-day Pacific Ocean, which unfortunate soldiers, sailors and Marines continually stumble across. A few stories are set in the Arctic, with frozen dinosaurs getting thawed out. In this case, there is actual time travel involved, with the strange cloud being some sort of warp gate.  

Anyway, the soldiers make liberal use of both their cannon and their hand grenades to fight off dinosaurs. They lose their cannon, though, when a large pachycephlosaurus picks it up and inadvertantly commits suicide with it. Of all the dinosaur deaths we see in this series, this one is the most heart-breaking.

click on the above image to enlarge it.

All the while, the three soldiers are looking back up at the cloud, hoping to figure out a way to get up to it and hopefully get home. 

Well, it's rarely a good thing to be scooped up by a pterodactyl. But when it happens to the soldier and the creature flies them over the cloud, this proves to be serendipitous. A burst of tommy gun fire convinces the ptero to let them go and they fall back through the warp gate, splashing into the Pacific near a navy destroyer.

The story ends with the three men once again dreaming of dinosaurs and wondering if that meant they would be having another prehistoric adventure. But though the War That Time Forgot sometimes repeated human characters, I don't think our artillerymen put in another appearance.

That's it for now. Next week, we'll tag along with the Invaders as they fight among themselves when they should be rescuing Winston Churchill.