Holiday times with Easy Company!

[kingrockwell]

We continue our holiday posts with a few focusing on Sgt. Rock, which, aside from the strip in Wednesday Comics, are honestly the only stories of him I've read.

We open with "The Longest Night", written by Robert Kanigher, with art by Dick Ayers and Romeo Tanghal, from DC Special Series #21 (1980). About three and a third pages out of ten.

Easy Company has been tasked to secure the town of Santa Maria from its Nazi invaders. Probably the weirdest thing about this story is it could almost take place in Italy, considering the civilians who appear, but the presence of Nazis throws that through a loop.

Anyway, it's a dark night, and Rock's compass was damaged by crossfire, so they're a little unsure how they'll make it to the town until they see something that just might guide the way.


Following the star, they come across a group of pilgrims.


The pilgrims won't turn away from the danger, so Easy Company has to capture the town so they won't turn into targets, and the star gets them there quickly. Rock takes point, blasting his way in. The village around him is battered and wartorn, with nary a civilian in sight.

Suddenly, Rock sees movement in the cellar of a nearby building.


Rock can't shake the kid, and he's running low on bullets. They find themselves surrounded as they come across a statue. Rock tells Mario to take cover as he lobs a grenade.


Later, after the pilgrims have filtered into Santa Maria,

"-- And our love can light up the world!" she says, as the star shines down on them all.


The next story is "A Christmas Carol", written by Chuck Dixon, with art by Russ Heath, from DCU Holiday Bash #2 (1998). One and a third pages from four.

It's Christmas Day, 1944 in Bastogne. Easy Company is settled in a trench and Rock is dozing off when a man in a WW1 uniform taps him on the soldier. The man leads him through an old, bloodied battlefield before disappearing in the fog.

When Rock turns around, an emaciated man is there, waiting to lead him on further.




A Desert Storm-era soldier takes him from here and leads him to Arlington National Cemetery.

With a renewed vigor, Rock leads Easy Company in a charge into the battlefield.


Our last story comes from the DCU Holiday Special 2009, "A Peace On Earth" by Billy Tucci. About one and two-thirds pages of five.

It's the day prior, Christmas Eve, 1944, and Rock has his hands full of champagne and cognac as he heads back to the front line to celebrate the holiday with his compatriots. As he walk below an underpass, he sees an enemy solider in much the same position! Scrambling for their rifles, they both slip on the ice and hit the ground. After sharing a laugh at their common clumsiness, they sit up against the overpass with a bottle of cognac and swap stories.



After a while, the bottle empty and their cigarettes burned out, they put some thought into being soldiers again.




It's really a lovely tale, prolly one of the better one's this year. Billy Tucci shares the story that inspired it over on Newsarama, along with scans of the all five pages. Definitely worth a look!

Tomorrow: See what holidays mean to the magical side of the DCU with Deadman, Shadowpact and a Christmas party at the House of Mystery!

Comments

[lamashtar]

The second story reminds me of people who've gone to CERES school--to learn to withstand enemy imprisonment and torture. At the end of the school, they unfurl the flag when they're released. People tell me they've felt like crying and kissing the ground.

[cf105]

In the first story it is possible that they were fighting in Italy, if memory serves during the later days of the Italian offensive the Germans had troops stationed there as well.

[stratosfyr]

Yeah, that's right. The movie Miracle at St. Anna was set in Italy around then.

[iskander]

The Germans took over Italy in 1943 to keep them from changing sides.

[halialkers]

Well, more to keep the side-change from meaning anything. The Italians ditched the Axis the moment Uncle Sam invaded Sicily. Germany simply took over and eventually established the Salo Republic in Northern Italy. They'd already switched sides beforehand.

[halialkers]

Er....the Italian Front is a sadly-neglected theater of World War II that lasted right up until VE Day. The German troops were there to start with because the Italians ditched Benny the Moose and wanted to join the Allies. Sadly the Allies were douches to the Italian Partisans in their war against the Salo Republic.

[iskander]

Rommel wanted to abandon Italy all together and create a defensive line at the alps. this would have freed up troops to bolster the Russian front.

[cf105]

Scans Daily, more then just slash, it teaches history too!

[iskander]

yes, and that is good. check out this thread.

http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/1373348.html

[nezchan]

War stories and Christmas reminds me of my friend who was a M*A*S*H buff being endlessly amused by the fact that there were more Christmas episodes of that series than the US troops actually spent Christmases in the country.

I really love that last one.

[iskander]

Wasn't there one espisode that encompassed an entire year ?

[nezchan]

You know, I'm not really sure. There might have been. I do know there were three actual Xmas episodes, when the US only spent two Xmases in theatre.

[iskander]

I remember hotlips' is making a scarf at the first new years, and by the end of the episode she has made a blanket for the second. Father Mulcahy has a garden and grows corn for the 4 th of july, to have as ears and it ends up getting creamed.

[kamino_neko]

At least one. Probably a few others. And a few that spanned months. (One covering an entire baseball season, where most of the camp had money on the results of the World Series, and Charles, who'd backed the losing team at Klinger's advice was getting more and more frantic.)

One can generally assume some overlap with the long-span episodes with the usual ones that only spanned a few days, although the personnel changes cause some issues with that. Even adding up all the ones that span days for Hawk becomes iffy. And Margaret's marriage (a season and a half) would have lasted mere months - the courtship weeks, at best!

So...it's generally not the best idea to think too hard on MASH's chronology, even ignoring things like too many Christmases, or WAY too many season changes. The had a lot of running retcons, too - seasons 6 and 7 were both set in 1952 - an early season 9 episode is set on New Years Eve 1951.

In a bit of comics-related 'wait, that can't work' - one of the comics Radar's shown reading is Avengers #9*, which didn't come out until 1964.

* I'm not 100% on the exact issue - but it was Avengers, and it had basically that same format. One character as the focus of the cover, the heads of the (other?) Avengers arrayed above.

[pallas_athena]

In that panel with the tombstones in the second one, the German soldier's name is Johannes Felson... and "Felsen" is German for "rock."

[kingrockwell]

And Johannes is equivalent to John, that's a really cool catch!
I'm going to guess Oberfeldwebel is a similar rank to Sergeant, but what about Fritz? Maybe it's a nickname?

[pallas_athena]

"Fritz" and "Jerry" were early 20th century slang terms for a German person, much as "Tommy" was for the British. (I think.)

[kingrockwell]

I'd considered that, but I wasn't sure whether it would've been slur-level and in bad faith. Though I might be thinking about that wrong, and it's more on a more innocuous level, which would mirror the beginning when Felson asks "Got a cigarette, yank?"

[pallas_athena]

If his name actually is Fritz, he needs to come back! "Fritz Felson" is too good a name to waste!

[pallas_athena]

Or, having read the pages again: it's possible that both their fathers were named John and died on opposite sides in WWI, and that Fritz and Frank are meant to be parallel first names for this generation.

(Fritz is actually a nickname for "Friedrich;" the true parallel name for "Franklin" would be Franz.)

[leikomgwtfbbq]

I loved the pretty art in the last story.

Next time requests go up, I'm gonna request more of Sgt Rock. He seems really cool. :D

[kingrockwell]

Billy Tucci apparently also recently did a Sgt. Rock mini, so I'm totally interested in seeing that now!