Our Fighting Forces #123

Our Fighting Forces #123 (On Sale: November 6, 1969) has a Losers cover by Joe Kubert.

This is the first appearance of The Losers as a cover feature and even they are prominently featured on the cover, it is kind of strange that we begin with a different story, "Cold Deadly as a Bullet" by Howard Liss and Russ Heath. His company pinned down on the back of a frozen river by a Nazi machine gun nest, Joe Martin is ordered to cross the river on the flank and toss some grenades into the nest, but he falls through a soft spot in the ice and has to swim away under the water to avoid the Nazi guns. He breaks through the ice near the shore and out of the gunman's sights and is able to destroy the next with a grenade.

Because of the nearby enemy they are unable to make a fire and Joe begins to freeze in the cold night air. The Nazis attack and Joe uses an enemy soldier's body to shield himself from a Nazi grenade, the blast throwing Joe into a soft snowbank, where he plays possum as the snow covers he freezing body. Surrounded by enemy soldiers, Joe lets the snow cover him completely. At dawn Joe hears the sounds of fighting and realizes his company has reached the river bank and is attacking. Coming up from his hiding place behind the enemy nest Joe is able to catch them in the crossfire.

Promised a hot shower, a warm meal and a toasty bed if they can just force the Nazis to leave a nearby town, Joe and a Lieutenant ride a machine-gun mounted jeep with towards a farmhouse containing a Nazi sniper. The Lieutenant is shot, the jeep crashes and Joe is shot. He tosses his last grenade, taking out the sniper, then dies. A fellow soldier remarks that at least now, Joe is no longer cold. Not much of a story, but great Russ Heath artwork.

Next is a one-page "Warrior: Histories Mightiest Men of Combat" featuring Napoleon and drawn by Ken Barr.

The back-up is just nuts. The first page identifies it as Lt. Hunter's Hellcats in "Exit Laughing." The Hellcats blow up a man-made volcano and proclaim this to be their last mission, if they can find someone to take their place (this is, in fact, their last appearance). The very next page is introducing The Born Losers in "No Medals No Graves" by Robert Kanigher and Ken Barr.  Now I know the cover says the book stars The Losers, but DC seems to not be sure that is the name they want to use, as the group is once again called The Born Losers.  Ken Barr's artwork is wonderful, though editor Kubert has his fingers in the mix on a few panels from page to page.

Capt. Storm, Johnny Cloud, Gunner and Sarge are all lamenting their lack of assignments and secretly thinking that they are not given one because they are "Born Losers" or simply "Losers." The word appears on nearly every page of the story and multiple times. Lt. Hunter shows up and lets them know that they are going on R&R and that Capt. Storm and the group must take the Hellcats' place, to which they all respond, "What have we got to LOSE?" As luck, or really bad writing would have it, their mission is for Capt. Storm to take the place of a man named Howard, who is known to the Nazis and looks exactly like Storm, right down to the wooden leg (one has to wonder how the Hellcats were supposed to pull this mission off!).

Storm is supposed to parachute into a Nazi stronghold, get captured, hold out in interrogation for 48 hours, then give the Nazis bogus information as he "cracks" while the rest of the Losers or Born Losers or whatever, launch a diversionary attack. Does any of this make sense? Not really, but it is Kanigher, so what do you expect? After a lot of fighting, the team is successful in their mission but still refer to themselves as "born losers" as they fly to safety. Read it for the wonderful Ken Barr artwork and try not to think too much about the story.

Edited by Joe Kubert.