Little Known Incidents of WW2 (No 9) - Bizarre Brutality 3 - Darkie Crucified

 The story of Darkies Mob ran from 1976 to 1978 in the 'Battle Picture Weekly' Comic
Considering the young age of the target audience, it contained, and implied, remarkable levels of violence, illustrated in this extract.

'Darkie', shown above, led his troop through many daring exploits, in this example pretending to surrender in order to be able to destroy a railway being built by Prisoners of War and the POW camp itself.


Darkie's mob were depicted as a thorn in the enemy's side and fought with a cruel ruthlessness that seems highly dubious by modern standards. The enemy retribution against Darkie himself as a prisoner explicitly reflects that provocation.

The idea of nailing a captive to a bamboo roof, crucifixion style, is certainly spectacular 

and definitely fits into the category of 'bizarre punishments'. Not ideal I would have thought for tormenting the victim physically, necessitating the verbal taunting shown here.

(By an enemy who speaks decent english, note).

Darkie frees himself in truly heroic fashion by simply ripping out the nails.

This artist has a knack for capturing men's faces in a nice, realistic style.

If you like the mature look, Darkie has his attractions (if you can cope with the physicality!)

There's even a hint of sexuality in that hairy torso. Nipples though are taboo.

The portrayal of the enemy soldier here seems to dally with more extreme caricature but, apart from the bared teeth and the obvious racial characteristics, this man is not so very different from Darkie himself and the craggy faces of the other British soldiers shown in the picture at the top of this article. 

In this strip Darkie himself metes out ruthless vengance, sometimes against undeserving opponents and occasionally including his own men, striking a balance of nastiness on both sides which is refreshingly frank and disturbing.

I will be featuring this artist and his heroes again in future articles.

Go to No 10

Click to read other Bizarre Punishments from No 1

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