Dick Emery was still the club President of the Airfix modellers club which had a page dedicated to hints and tips on model building, and if you managed to get your letter printed, a new model kit would wing it's way to you. Issue 103 (19th Feb 1977) saw a 4 page advert for a brand new comic of the future coming soon. The title? .......... 2000AD of course! El Mestizo, another Carlos Ezquerra strip, was set in 1862 during the American Civil War. A black man and ex-slave who swore allegiance to neither the North or the South, but he worked for both to achieve his freedom. The Sarge, drawn by Mike Western, was Sergeant Jim Masters, a veteran soldier from WW1 who was now leading his inexperienced squad into battle at the start of WW2. He was constantly smoking a pipe and often grabbed victory from the jaws of defeat using his experience, ingenuity and cunning. A great little story. Gaunt, another strip drawn by John Cooper, was also set at the beginning of WW2 and a story of revenge. Gaunt worked for the SOE, the same secret service agency as Mike Nelson. At the beginning of WW2 he was captured and tortured by the Paris Butcher, Colonel Bluthal, to such an extent that his right hand became mutilated. Having no further use of him, the Butcher had Gaunt dropped over England like a parcel. He was found and sent to a hospital where it took him 10 weeks to recover. Because his hand was so mutilated, he designed, and had built, a metal hand, Gaunt's Gauntlet as it was to become known. The SOE no longer wanted his field services, and Gaunt didn't want a desk job in Edinburgh, so he set about his revenge on the Paris Butcher. After this revenge story ended, the SOE then wanted to gain the services of Gaunt again, and after a few rejections to Gaunt by friends and girlfriends, he finally re-attached himself to the agency. After this he was sent on many dangerous missions. Sea Wolf, drawn by P. Wright, was U-Boat Commander Kurt Wolf who, along with all U-boat commanders, was promised a Knights Cross with Oak Leaves by the Fuhrer for all U-boat Commanders who sank 200,000 tons of allied shipping. On board Kurt's sub, U159, was a devout Nazi called Schnyder who made it his goal to ensure that Kurt never received it. And that's how the story continued, with Schnyder sabotaging all of Kurt's plans and attacks whenever he could.

Manfred Von Richthofen was The Red Baron, and his true-life story was classically illustrated within the pages of Battle Picture Weekly from 24th September 1977. The next big event was the merging of Battle Picture Weekly And Action. The final BPW saw the last installments of Gaunt, Sea Wolf and the "The Bootneck Boy". The story of Action has been well chronicled over the years, and if you were there at the time, you just wondered what all the fuss was about when you compare it to whats available now. Anyway, that's another story. After 22 months, Action's eventful life had ended. It joined Battle Picture Weekly in issue dated 19th November 1977 (#142) and brought with it, Dredger, Spinball Wars and Hellman.

Dredger was set in the current times and was the name of a mysterious D.I.6 secret agent (his first name was never divulged). Throughout his Action days he had a 'by-the-book' partner called Simon Breed, and in this first combined issue Breed was unceremoniously killed off in a car bomb incident , which was the work of a 'gone-bad' agent named Hunter. After Breed's death, Dredger was captured by a secret organisation called the Military S.I.S. (Special Intelligence Service) who took on the undercover jobs that other government departments didn't fancy. Hellman was German tank commander Kurt Hellman and from this issue of Battle-Action, it told of the 'Early Adventures Of Hellman Of Hammer Force', which was just before the time that Action picked up the story two years previously. The Spinball Wars was the third incarnation for this story which started as, 'Death Game 1999', then after the ban on Action was lifted, it was known as 'Spinball' and now, with the event of this combined issue, 'Spinball Wars'. The game of Spinball was set in the future, (2001 to be exact) and it was basically a human form of pinball. This new story had team captain Joe Taggart and his fellow spinball players, recruited by an ageing war tactician who was the supreme overlord of the World Security Battalion. An organisation that ensured that no one nation or world leader became stong enough to threaten world peace. By way of cover, Joe's spinball team, the Black Gladiators, did not only become commandos, they were also the official spinball team of the United States Army (never a dull moment really!).

The size of the five issues dated between the 4th February 1978 to 4th March 1978 reverted back to the original smaller size. Although I personally preferred this size it didn't last and that was the last time we were ever to see that format.

Achilles The Avenger was set in 1942 Greece and was about a huge man called Achilles Stutopopulos, who struck out at the German soldiers who pushed a villager boy to the ground. Eventually he was halted and tortured by the Germans before he managed to escape, but not before he had been seriously scarred for life. Achilles then seeked his revenge. Rat Pack returned in the 17th June 1978 issue, exactly one year after they last appeared. They replaced the Major Eazy story (their old boss) and took up their usual six pages in the middle of the comic, including the two coloured centre pages. Crazy Keller was the story about US Signal Corps Captain Kermit Keller and his sidekick, Corporal Aerial Arkin. Apart from being dab hands when it came to building and repairing radio equipment, they also dealt in selling army supplies on the black market. They drove around in their Jeep which they named Scoot 3 and a dangerous question to ask Keller was, "What happened to Scoot 1 and 2?". He got a bit touchy. Samurai drawn by C.Cruz, was the story of Lieutenant 'Tiger' Tanakai, the leader of Kamikaze Force. Set in 1941 Malaya, it has Tanakai leading the fight against the British, which was unusual in itself. Usually when the story was from the Axis point of view, it normally had them fighting against the Russians or the Spanish. Apart from fighting the British, the story focused on Tanaka's battle with Captain Moskeeto of the Kempei Tai, the equivalent of the German Gestapo. Skreamer Of The Stukas was about a German Stuka fighter pilot Otto Skreamer, who was not only hated by the British, but also by his fellow countryman for his blood-thirsty approach to killing. This story has him killing, amongst many others, Sam Fletcher as he was helping with the Dunkirk rescues. His 15 year old son, Jimmy, is told who killed his father, and then his whole family are destroyed in an air raid, led by Otto Skreamer. A year later Jimmy illegally joins the R.A.F. and is determined to avenge the deaths. A well-written and enjoyable story this one. The General Dies At Dawn opened with a court-martial in progress at the end of the war. Lieutenant-General Otto Von Margen of the Panzers was in the dock and had just been convicted of cowardice, disobedience, high treason and defeatism. He was striped of his rank and decorations and was ordered to be shot at dawn. While Otto was in his prison cell, his guard asked him why he had been found guily of such charges. This is when Otto told his story and the reader saw it in flashback style.

From issue dated 11th November 1978 the publishers started putting the issue number on the front cover so as to give a weekly countdown to the 200th issue on 30th December 1978. This issue NEVER arrived. Instead, the next issue was dated 6th January 1979, one week late. Take a look.

When issue 200 did arrive, it gave us four new stories. The first was Charley's War. Written by Pat Mills, drawn by Joe Colquhorn and set in the first world war. It tells the story of simple lad, Charley Bourne and his adventures during his time in the Army. 16 year old Charley fibbed about his age to get into the forces and once there, started writing home about his exploits in the trenches. Excerpts from these misspelt letters were used as narration for the story, and gave an excellent indication of just what life must have been like within the rat-infested trenches. The letters also gave the thoughts of his fellow soldiers and what Charley would do when he returned home, like repair the garden fence and take the whole family on holiday to Margate. He was accused of ignorance by other soldiers because he didn't seem to fully understand why he was there. Charley just thought it was his duty. A truly brilliant story and one which warranted two books containing the whole story of his WW1 exploits. H.M.S. Nightshade was a naval story told by Grandad to Grandson in flashback mode. He told the story of the battles that the corvette H.M.S. Nightshade was involved in and about the men that sailed her. Very nicely written and drawn and always started with the Grandad telling the story. Colonel Jeb Rider was US tank commander Glory Rider. He fought with a Georgia Cavalry Regiment, which had battle honours dating back to the American civil war. One of the more famous of those General's was Reb Rider and now, in North Africa 1943, cigar chomping, loud mouth, Major Jeb Rider rode into the 'outfit'. Fortunately for the regiment, Colonel Sharp was in charge and he was more methodical in his battle strategy. However, while Sharp carried out reconnissance work for the next attack, he notices a dust cloud, assumes it to be a German Tiger tank advancement and gives the order to move his tanks from out of the pass. But just as he was to make the order offical, he gets killed by an enemy shell and Rider resumes responibility. Rider writes out an order to attack the 'unknown' area and hands it to tank-sergeant Steve Hilts. Rider then promtly leads the whole regiment into destruction. Only a few survive, incuding Hilts and Rider. When a General enters the carnage and asks for an explanation as to what had happened, Rider said that it was Colonel Sharp that gave the order to attack. The General instantly promoted Rider to Colonel and Hilts discovered that the message containing Rider order to attack had been burnt. And this is how the story continued. Gun-Ho Rider leading his men into certain death and Hilts trying to stop him. The last of the four new stories was True Life Heroes which were complete weekly stories of a true-life event during WW2. The first frame was always either a real black and white photograph or a nicely detailed drawing of the place in the story.

Issue dated 17th March 1979 was interesting in that on the front cover it had, 'Stand ready for tough war thrills...with Crazy Keller', but when you thumbed through the comic, there was NO Crazy Keller story!

Up until autumn 1979, these same stories kept going. The run was only occasionally interupted by a week of true stories, usually at the expense of The Sarge, Crazy Keller or Glory Rider. My personal collection now jumps from August 1979 to February 1982. Charley's War was still going as strong as ever, as was Johnny Red. However, issue dated 27th February 1982 was a time of change for Battle. From this issue Battle became a war AND adventure comic. Joining Charley and Johnny we had Truck Turpin which was set in modern day USA and followed the story of ex-soldier Tom Turpin and his co-driver Grover McBee, nicknamed Jacknife. The Hunter S.I.6. was the name of an all-action TV series starring Larry Fox and Ned Hare who, apart from being the stars of the very popular T.V. show, were also real-life secret agents that used the show as a cover. Fighter From The Sky the old Battle Picture Weekly story was being reprinted. This all-new issue had the story from issue dated 29th May 1976. The only other difference was that the artist/writer/letterer were now given full credit for their work. The Fists Of Jimmy Chang was set in Hong Kong 1981 and concerned a bunch of Triad thugs who extorted 'insurance' money from anyone they wanted. One of these exploitees was Mister Chang, grandfather of Jimmy Chang and non-payer of the Triads insurance. When gang-leader Luna came calling to collect his premium, Mister Chang refused to pay. This led to him being accidently killed and Kung Fu expert Jimmy Chang seeking revenge.

On the 8th October 1983, Battle incorporated the Action Force toy characters and handed over 12 pages to them. This was later extended to half the comic when Action Force had its own pull-out 16 page supplement within the comic, which also included the coloured centre pages. This supplement usually consisted of two 6 page stories, a letters page and a page (or two) dedicated to members of the group or the hi-tech equipment that they used. Charley's War was still set in WW1 and when this excellent story ended, we saw how Charley fared in WW2. The Johnny Red story was still going. Invasion 1984 was about an invasion of Earth by a nasty bunch of aliens who had used germ warfare to destroy all of its inhabitants. It gave a good insight to what it must be like if germ warfare IS ever used. The Hunters of the Special Intelligence Group were continuing their fight against terrorist groups and Ron Carpenter's D-Day Dawson story was enjoying a nice re-run. There were three Action force stories in this first issue, namely Dessert Strike, Operation Bloodhound (coloured centre pages) and Q Force. The Action Force was an organisation set up to fight the worlds megalomaniacs and terrorist groups. It was set in the current day and apart from the 'dodgy' character names like Duke, Gung-Ho, Baroness and Ton-Up the stories were pretty good. They were the modern day Rat Pack. They all had special skills and killed all the baddies without getting killed themselves. It proved very popular with the readers and ran for over three years before the the Action Force name was sold off to Marvel towards the end of 1986. A nice touch was attempted from the 29th October 1983 issue which harked back to the old Eagle days when a story appeared on the front cover, not just a full page taster of what was inside. A good example of this appeared in the following weeks issue.

In 1985, Charley's War was fully engrossed in WW2, Johnny Red was still fighting with the Russians and The Sarge had made an appearance in a storyline that didn't seem to be a reprint. The Nightmare was set in wartime Britain in 1941 and the family of young Ian Wilson had been attacked by a mystery man. His parents went into comas as a result of the attack and their house was also bombed out. Ian set up camp in the woods with the other homeless refugees, but was once again attacked by this mystery man. He managed to escape by pushing the man into a river and thought that was the last he had seen of his would-be assassin. But he was wrong.

Issue dated 9th March 1985 marked the 10th anniversary of Battle and issue dated 25th October 1986 was sealed in a polythene bag and came with a free copy of the MASK comic. The very last Battle-Action Force was dated 29th November 1986, due to Marvel Comics buying the rights to the Action Force name. Marvel later released a new comic called Action Force. There was now a seven week period where the comic was renamed Battle and then on 24th January 1987 Battle was joined by the Storm Force fighting team. These were basically Action Force type characters but under a different name and they wore 'special' super-hero type outfits and had names like Stiletto, because she could detach the stiletto heel of her fighting boots and use it as a weapon. There was John Storm with a detachable left arm which could be a flame-thrower, machine gun, drill, hammer, even an explosive hand. Alexander Kruise was a man who died, yet lived again thanks to an amazing computer link that activates his body!! The initial Storm Force story was 12 pages long and introduced us to most of the main characters. From the second issue it settled down to six pages in length while another six page Storm Force story, Tarantula - leader of the evil WEB organisation, started. Amongst this melee of comical combatants we still had Johnny Red and WW1 reprints of Charley's War. A new story called Invasion was set during the Falklands conflict and followed the story of little Tommy Baker, his family and his community from the moment the Argentinians landed on the islands which the invaders called, Las Malvinas. There was also reprints of the very good Vietnam war story, 'Fighting Mann'. In 1967, while attacking a North Vietnamese Army (NVA) gun nest, flight leader Walter Mann had orders to destroy it, and destroy it he did. However, the NVA launched a missile attack on Mann's aircraft to which he responded by out-manoeuvering it. Just as it was safe to fly on, we see a picture on Mann in shocked disbelief at what confronted him. One month later, and after many unsuccessful searches for Mann's aircraft, the USAF sent a letter to Mann's father stating that his son has been classed as, 'Missing - Believed Deserted'. Colonel Mann is livid and sets of for Vietnam to solve the mystery using all the contacts he'd established when he was Military Adviser To The Army Of Republic Of Vietnam during 1961-1963. Death Squad also began in the second issue and was set in WW2 and followed the story of five German misfit soldiers, who all possessed certain fighting abilities, like knife-throwing and axe-throwing. They were the German Rat Pack!

The 'Battle Stations' letters and jokes pages didn't go untouched either. It was renamed 'Battle Lines' and Captain Hurricane was to be seen no more. On the 23rd May 1987 the look and feel of the comic changed again. This time the old rough 'bog-roll' paper had gone and in it's place we had the nice smooth, white stuff. The height of the comic had increased and it's width had decreased. The front covers were pre-dominantly Storm Force related with the occasional interuption by Charley Bourne and Johnny Red. On the 5th September 1987, Rat Pack returned in a '4' page story, as opposed to their usual 6 (another reprint). Two weeks later a brand new story started called Cosmic Cowboys!!. This was set in a galaxy far across the great void of space and was basically robotic cowboys fighting villainous cyborgs! On the 17th October 1987 Lofty's One Man Luftwaffe was rerun from the very beginning, and the story from this issue was the one which ran in the very first issue of Battle Picture Weekly. By now it was getting obvious that Battle was dying and when the very last issue was published on 23rd January 1988, the contents were reprints of Johnny Red, Charley's War, Lofty's One Man Luftwaffe, Fighting Mann and Rat Pack. There was also Storm Force and Cosmic Cowboys.

The following week Battle joined Eagle and the three stories which survived the merger were Charley's War, Johnny Red and Storm Force. During its golden years of 1975 to 1982, Battle was an excellent read with classic stories like The Bootneck Boy, Darkie's Mob, Charley's War, The Sarge, Mike Nelson, Johnny Red, Terror Behind The Bamboo Curtain, Rat Pack and Major Eazy to name but a few. The turning point seemed to be when Action Force was added. Although the Action Force stories were pretty good, there was something about them that just didn't feel right. Another contributory factor to Battle's downfall was the fact that this was the early 1980's, a time of huge changes in the way people approached the old traditional ways. The art of comic reading as a pastime was getting lost amongst computer games, street cred, television and an abundance of other activities for the youngsters.

As they say, "All good things come to an end" and in 1988 Battle came to an end.......but it was good!