The RAF's finest bomber pilot finds himself with a new crew and new challenges as the Nazis press forward and losses begin to mount. Can Braddock overcome his demons and ensure the survival of his Blenheim crew? Or will Suddaby finally push him over the edge...
(Matt Braddock, the working class, non-com bomber pilot, is a fine character and author Ferg Handley delves deeper into his psyche in this story, but he also neglects to provide a very satisfying climax to the story, resulting in probably the weakest issue of COMMANDO that I've read so far. However, it was still enjoyable, and I look forward to reading more of the series.
After my post about the first of the current Braddock stories, my friend Keith Chapman alerted me to these websites which give a lot more information about the character's history, and about the history of British war comics in general. Fascinating stuff.
British Comics: I Flew With Braddock
"Braddock of the Bombers" Revived for New Commando Stories
Bear Alley: I Flew With Braddock)
His superiors described Captain James Ramsey as unconventional. His enemies described him as a menace. His men described him as The Boss.
No matter how he was characterised, though, the man was a fighting fury that no-one in their right mind would cross. Then a bunch of Italian guerrilla fighters did just that. Despite the snow, sparks would fly!
(No Rat Patrol-type action in this one, as Ramsey's Raiders find themselves in Italy carrying out a secret mission that reminded me of an episode of GARRISON'S GORILLAS, another TV reference for those of you with very long memories. I found it to be an enjoyable story anyway, although I think I prefer the ones in this series set in North Africa.)
"Better you just forget about being a pilot," said Squadron Leader Roy Suddaby when Matt Braddock first tried to enlist in the auxiliaries. But he wasn't a quitter, and the blue-eyed man with uncanny talent would fight his way to the best bombing squad in Britain before he could bring the fight to Nazi Germany. The war is on, and the RAF's best known bomber ace is back in this all-new adventure!
(I assume from the sales copy that the protagonist of this yarn has appeared previously in COMMANDO, but this is the first story I've read about him and chronologically the first Braddock tale as well, since it begins before World War II and concerns his early days in the RAF. Braddock is a working class guy who becomes a pilot over the opposition of the upper-crust officers and fellow pilots, but he's still only a sergeant when he takes command of a bomber. Braddock's ambition is to fly fighters, so he tries to make the larger, slower, and clumsier bomber do things that a fighter plane would, and manages to succeed most of the time. This is another excellent story from long-time COMMANDO scripter Ferg Handley. I've already bought the next issue in the Braddock series.)
Captain Jimmy Ramsey and his maverick Special Raiding Force were used to doing their own thing - dangerous hit‑and-run raids deep behind enemy lines.
So, during the battle of El Alamein in autumn 1942, when the Raiders were teamed with a Long Range Desert Group unit to capture an isolated German airfield, tensions mounted between the tough, hard-headed factions. Both the SRF and LRDG felt they could do the job better on their own. They would have to stop clashing long enough to fight the real enemy!
(This is another excellent, Rat Patrol-like adventure yarn about the war in North Africa. Scripter Ferg Handley concentrates on different characters among his ensemble cast, and all of them are developing nicely. These COMMANDO issues are proving to be very nice breaks between longer books for me. And let's face it, with my attention span these days, anything that can be read fairly quickly is much appreciated.)
They were a motley bunch - two Scotsmen, one Englishman, one Welshman, one Irishman and an Australian. Led by the unconventional Captain James Ramsey, they were known as the Special Raiding Force, and their job was to operate behind enemy lines in North Africa. They wrote their own rules, and their specially armed jeeps packed a real punch.
They were good at their job - very good - and the Germans had every reason to fear Ramsey's Raiders!
When I was a kid, I loved the TV series THE RAT PATROL, as well as the paperback tie-in novels based on it. When I was writing my World War II series years ago, that was a big influence on parts of those novels, as well. As you can see from the description above, this Commando comic, RAMSEY’S RAIDERS, uses a similar premise, and does a great job of it as far as I’m concerned. Written by Ferg Handley, with art by Ian Kennedy, I found it to be a very enjoyable yarn. There are several more Ramsey’s Raiders stories in the Commando series, and I plan to read them all.
