Bibliophilia: Sgt. Rock: The Lost Battalion by William Tucci

Sgt. Rock: The Lost Battalion – William Tucci

I recall reading a Sgt. Rock comic book or two when I was a kid and thinking it was asinine. This however, is something else altogether. Tucci’s art is great, very accurately detailed, beautifuly coloured, and it relates a slice of history. In the story, he is with the 1st Battalion, 141st Infantry, which was surrounded by numerically superior German forces in the Vosges Mountains on 24 October 1944 and eventually rescued by the Asian-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The latter was a unit comprised of Japanese-Americans. Their families were interned back home, and forbidden from fighting in the Pacific theatre, they distinguished themselves in the European theatre.

And my dad is likely spinning in his grave, but I have to, and hate to, admit that German mountain troops always looked really damn cool. Those bastards had panache.