Battle Cry #18

Soldiers Heinz and Schmidt of the Afrika Corps witness ancient Roman ruins unearthed by shellfire in the North African desert, marveling at the parallel between Caesar's failed conquest and their own mission under Field Marshal Irwin Rommel to seize the Suez Canal. As Rommel's forces push eastward across fifteen hundred miles of desert, crushing British strongholds one by one, the two men grow confident that unlike the Romans, they cannot fail—until the tide of battle turns when the British, backed by American supplies and led by Montgomery, mount a fierce counteroffensive. The Afrika Corps finds itself in full retreat across the same sands, with history repeating itself in ways the soldiers never anticipated.

In "Roar in the Sky!" from Battle Cry #18 (1955), a group of concerned locals voice their complaints about the thunderous noise of jet test flights. When an Air Force Colonel arrives to address them, he explains how these powerful aircraft are vital to defending the nation from a potential threat from the Kremlin—turning their frustration into quiet understanding.

Captain Johnson refuses to abandon his prized Long Tom artillery guns when a German breakthrough threatens the airfield they're defending—so instead of retreating, he sets a trap for the advancing enemy column. With his unit hidden in prepared positions, the captain waits for the right moment to spring an ambush that will test whether his guns and his men can hold the line against overwhelming odds.

Charley Bishop, a battle-hardened veteran of Europe and Korea, takes the idealistic young recruit Danny Ryan under his wing, teaching him the hard lessons of survival—that staying alive matters far more than chasing glory. When a patrol goes wrong and Danny falls, something shifts inside the cynical soldier, pushing him to act with the reckless heroism he'd spent months warning against. A powerful tale about how war can strip away even the strongest convictions.