June 6th, 1944: American troop carriers embark on what will be a slow and dangerous journey across the English Channel. Their destination: An anonymous stretch of French coastline, codenamed Omaha Beach. Or, as it is known in the native tongue: Plage d'Omaha.
Having disembarked, the US forces will endure a relentless barrage of artillery and small-arms fire from entrenched German positions. Before the day is out, many young lives will have been cut down in their prime; many frail hopes and dreams reduced to smouldering ash and blown away with the battlefield smoke.
Among the young men, crowded together like cattle on the troop ships, is 29th Infantryman, Private Johnny Hollis. As the cumbersome vessel lurches awkwardly over the undulating waves, he removes a neatly folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket and shows it around. Sketched onto the paper is a rough, hand-drawn portrait of a muscle-bound, male figure, dressed in figure-hugging, red, white and blue spandex.
“This is what I’ve got to come home to,” says Hollis.
A soldier next to him emits a low whistle of approval.
Johnny Hollis isn’t the only one to have this dream. He shares it with roughly 200 other soldiers in the 29th. Upon landing at Omaha, their goal is to fight their way to the German bunker, where Marvel Comics Commissioning Editor, Andy Bushmann, is conducting interviews for the position of Penciller on the popular Captain America book.
* * *
Flash forward three decades. The showy, spread-eagle of The Third Reich has been knocked off its perch. Rising like a phoenix in its place is the staid, yet sensible Bald Eagle of the United States of America. Meanwhile, Andy Bushmann, now in his 70s, is reminiscing about the war:
“From 1938 onwards, Marvel Comics were based exclusively in Nazi-occupied Europe. One day Joel Jarman - our artist on Captain America - got on a train and was never seen or heard of again. We were all scratching our heads and wondering where the hell we were going to find another artist at such short notice. We tried a few Krauts but for some reason they weren’t too keen on the Captain. They would always draw him so that it looked like he had a pair of tits and a vagina. And they did various other things to him that would undermine the character, like one time, for instance, they put tassels on his uniform.
“By a stroke of good fortune our head office was located in one of the concrete bunkers on the cliffs, overlooking Omaha Beach. One morning me and Marty O’Donnell were fretting over the impending deadline when I happened to look out across the English Channel and saw all these American troop ships advancing in our direction. We couldn’t believe our luck!
“Our boys sure made a meal of getting past those minefields and barbed wire. I must have stood for hours looking over the shoulder of a German machine gunner, praying that some of them would make it up to our position. Eventually a few of them got there, but it was a close call!”
As for Johnny Hollis? That day on June 6th, 1944, seconds after his carrier runs aground in shallow water, he takes a round to the chest. The carefully-folded piece of paper that bears his drawing of Captain America, and which he carries in his breast pocket in place of a bible, is not thick enough to stop the German sniper bullet, which kills him instantly.
“I have to admit, when I first saw the picture my son carried next to his heart, I felt the deep shame of a parent who has unwittingly raised a homosexual," says John Hollis Senior, speaking a couple of years after his son’s death.
“Later, after I learned that the drawing was of Capitan America, I realised that if my son had any queer leanings at all, they were those of a true patriot who is gay for the U.S of A.”
Last edited by Wondrous.Platinum.Owl; 2007-11-11 11:54 AM.
