DC had hit a goldmine with their mystery/horror books and kept looking for ways to expand their offerings. Here they blended the genre with war books and let Joe Kubert take the helm. Since the title lasted twelve years, I guess you could say it was a success.
The book begins with "Let Me Tell You the Things I've Seen" a series introduction written and drawn by Joe Kubert. In the winter of 1944, a lone G.I. is separated from his outfit and is lost in the woods that are located in German territory. He is almost hit by a German tank shell but is left with a broken leg. The G.I. painfully drags through the icy fog to try to find and warn his outfit about the Germans until he comes upon a house in the middle of a clearing.
He is taken inside by an old man who then helps him patch his leg and giving him time to rest. When the G.I. insists on returning to his men despite his injury, his host tells him that he is too weak and that there is time to warn his friends. To spend the passage of time, the old man, the series host: Death, tells the G.I. stories about the wars that he had seen in his life.
Our first real story is "Fort Which Did Not Return" by Robert Kanigher and Russ Heath and reprinted from G.I. Combat #86 (1961). A bombardier returned from a mission to be greeted by his fellow airmen. As more bombers flew into the sky for another raid, the bombardier recalled the mission when he and his squadron flew in a B-51 bomber called "Mother Hen" to Munich. When Mother Hen and the other bombers entered Nazi territory, the enemies fired at them with artillery and sent their own planes, taking down the Brooklyn Belle and Powerhouse Pete.
The American bombers exchanged fire with the Nazis as the former of the forces attempted to reach their target. All of the bombers except for Mother Hen were destroyed and Mother Hen's tail gunner, two pilots, and waist gunners were both killed, but the bombardier managed to drop their bombs on the target; three oil tanks. The bombardier noticed that nobody was piloting the plane and that more Nazi planes were chasing him, so he jumped out of Mother Hen in a parachute. In the present, the bombardier decided that he couldn't tell the others what had happened to Mother Hen. A week later, he was in another bomber, on a mission, and saw Mother Hen flying by.
Next up is "The Story Behind the Cover" written and drawn by Joe Kubert. A German patrol under Lance Corporal Mueller suddenly comes across an American patrol and a fight breaks out. In the narrow confines of the ditch both sides are in, a grenade is lobbed among them and explodes. By some miracle, only Mueller survived much to his astonishment. Mueller runs back to his position to warn his Lieutenant about the enemy.
Mueller tries to explain to the Lieutenant, who then doesn't speak a word to him and acting as if Mueller wasn't there. Mueller believes that the Lieutenant doesn't like his report and that he had failed him. When he tried to explain to his comrades, they too ignored him. Mueller thinks the men are shunning him for losing his patrol. Gripped by terrible guilt, Mueller believes that the only way to wipe out his shame and regain the respect of his comrades is by facing the entire Allied army by himself.
Mueller never felt the storm of lead that lashed him and the crushing death dealt by enemy guns. But the pain and agony will be with him forever, as a skeletal specter on the battlefield. Reprinted in Sgt. Rock #401 (1985)
We end this fort issue with "The End of the Sea Wolf" by Bob Haney and Joe Kubert and reprinted from Star Spangled War Stories #71 (1958). Sometime after World War II, a German ship was sailing through the North Sea, looking for Allied ships to salvage. The captain recalled the time he had captained a U-boat called the Sea Wolf. The Sea Wolf encountered an Allied fleet. They sunk one ship before they encountered a Q-boat that opened fire on them. The Sea Wolf fired back, taking down the Q-boat's guns. The Q-boat was sailing towards the Sea Wolf, about to ram into it. In the present, the captain of the ship came upon wreckage, which happened to be both the Q-boat and the Sea Wolf, which had been sunk while sinking the Q-boat.
All the new material was reprinted in Showcase Presents: Weird War Tales Vol. 1 TPB (2013).
Edited by Joe Kubert.
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