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Ramsey's Raiders - Part Two

Apr 09, 04:11 PM

The adventures of Captain Jimmy Ramsey and his Special Raiding Force squad – Lucky, Jarv, Fitz, Oz and Monty – continue. There are some changes ahead for the Raiders as one vital member of the squad departs and two new recruits are brought into the line-up.

For info on the team and their first three escapades together, see Part One.

RAIDERS’ REVENGE
(Issue 3874 – Script by Ferg Handley, Artwork by Keith Page)

Autumn 1943 – The Raiders have been stationed at a base in Northern Cyprus alongside another S.R.F. team led by Jimmy Ramsey’s good pal, Captain Mo Mortimer. Mortimer’s team are due to be landed in Yugoslavia, where they will train Partisan groups to tackle the Nazi invaders. But the grim news soon comes back that, following a bad parachute drop and a glider crash, Mortimer and his team are missing, believed to be either in enemy hands or dead.

Ramsey’s Raiders are chosen to replace the missing team, and undergo a parachute refresher course and familiarise themselves with the area before being flown into action. The parachute drop goes to plan and the team are greeted by Jan Zolic and a group of his partisan fighters. The landing is observed by an S.S. Patrol, but the Raiders and their Yugoslavian allies ambush the truck, capturing the weapons and ammunition. Zolic then informs Jimmy that Mortimer’s men were wiped out, apart from a single survivor who was rescued by another partisan band.

At the group’s hideout in a dense forest, the Raiders begin their training programme. The Yugoslavian freedom fighters are keen to fight, but a few days later when an S.S. roadblock is set up nearby, Jimmy decides that the partisans are unprepared and will only be able to observe while the Raiders tackle the enemy. They set off in the jeeps intended for Mortimer’s ill-fated mission. The raid is a success, but a strange gesture by Fitz – throwing a Spanish coin on the ground by the fallen S.S. men – causes concern that the sniper, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, is carrying out a vendetta of his own.

When they return to the hideout, the survivor from the previous team has arrived and proves to be Jimmy’s friend, Mortimer, who refuses to be evacuated back to Cyprus and is desperate to fight back against the S.S. men who killed his team. Training resumes and the group begin scouting the area. Despite some successful raids, Jimmy soon realises that all is not well and that he has not one but two men on his team who are out for revenge!

RAIDERS FROM THE SKY
(Issue 3877 – Script by Ferg Handley, Artwork by Mike White)

December 1943 – The Raiders are in England preparing for the invasion of France. The S.R.F. is undergoing changes after a merger with the Tactical Assault Service. Jimmy fears that Colonel Radcliffe, the T.A.S. commander taking over the expanded unit, will attempt to impose rules and regulations on the maverick team.

On Christmas leave at Monty’s ancestral home, the Raiders learn of their upper class driver’s contempt for the old-school-tie system and the type of person who that will allow a privileged background and family influence to push themselves ahead. Shortly after returning to base, the team find themselves under the command of Major Brian Mercer, just the kind of man Monty hates. Mercer’s strict discipline and willingness to claim credit for others’ achievements while avoiding direct action himself soon causes resentment among the others. Mercer’s own boastful blustering backfires on him, however, when he is ordered to lead the S.R.F. troops as they aid in a commando attack on a RADAR Station on the Brittany coast.

The raiders and their jeeps are dropped at night by parachute, while the commandoes are to arrive by landing craft. Jimmy and his squad are detailed to hold up German reinforcements while the commandos make their attack. They succeed in this when Jarv blows up a bridge as enemy trucks speed to the scene, but what should be routine for the Raiders is hampered by Mercer’s constant interference. And, as they make their retreat, Mercer’s hasty reaction to a German patrol gives their position away, leading to the deaths of two T.A.S. men.

An attempt to rescue the Major sees Lucky Evans wounded, and when the Navy Patrol boat that is due to evacuate the team is targeted by an e-boat and is forced to return to England, tensions flare. When Jimmy relieves Mercer of his command, the Major pulls a gun on him. Jarv easily disarms the cowardly officer, and the men make for the woods to await another naval escort the next night, following standard procedure. But with German forces closing in on the Raiders, their second in command injured and the Major willing to resort to any tactic – even cold-blooded murder – to preserve his reputation, there is nothing standard about this mission.

D-DAY RAIDERS
(Issue 3885 – Script by Ferg Handley, Artwork by Keith Page)

June 1944 – The raiders are in the South of England working with the U.S. Army in preparation for D-Day. When a training exercise in explosives goes wrong and a young American lieutenant is badly injured, Sergeant Jarvis relives an unhappy memory of his days in India, when a young officer had died in the blast from a faulty charge Jarv had set.

With a mission looming to destroy a German mobile artillery unit before the Allied troops can make their landing on the Normandy beaches, the news that the French Resistance fighters monitoring the enemy unit have been wiped out in an explosion only worsens Jarv’s feelings of impending doom.

With the Resistance to keep watch on the battery, the Raiders have difficulty pinning the enemy down. An attempt to trap a prisoner for interrogation goes wrong when Jarv mistimes the explosion intended to halt a German truck, leaving the Scotsman convinced he can do no right. His doom-laden attitude begins to grate on the team and, when the capture Sergeant Hans Meyer, the driver for an Artillery Major, the others ignore Jarv’s warnings not to trust the man.

The mission is a success. Thanks to Jarv’s swift instincts, disaster is narrowly avoided when a stray grenade lands next to the Battery’s explosives magazine. His confidence beginning to return, the Sergeant soon finds himself in charge of a jeep full of Raiders as well as a troop of stranded U.S. Paratroopers, after Jimmy is knocked out and the others are separated. And it soon emerges that Jarv’s instincts weren’t only correct about the explosives, when the captive Sergeant Meyer turns out not to be the man he had seemed.

RAIDERS ON THE RAMPAGE
(Issue 3898 – Script by Ferg Handley, Artwork by Mike White)

June 1944 – A few days into the D-Day landings, the German forces are mounting a strong defence against the encroaching Allied troops. The S.R.F. are scattered throughout the British-Canadian sector in Normandy. When the commander of one of the other teams is killed, Lucky Evans is assigned to take his place. Jimmy is reluctant to lose his second-in-command but Lucky mistakenly believes Ramsey just doesn’t think he’s up to the job.

His replacement in the Raiders is Lieutenant Johnny Hall, nicknamed Tex as, despite being a Londoner he was brought up in America. His childhood amongst immigrant families in a poor area of New York had made him an excellent mimic and his boyhood fascination with radios has developed into a useful skill in his military career, which has seen him in Greece, Africa and Norway after enlisting in the British Army.

The teams are charged with patrolling and tackling targets amongst the dense French countryside. Tex quickly proves himself in action, taking out a Panzerfaust team and providing some excellent tactical ideas, proving himself a true Raider. But tensions are growing between Jimmy and Lucky, who is determined to prove he doesn’t need his former commanding officer’s guidance, and even when Ramsey’s team come to his aid against a Nazi squad, the young lieutenant resents the intervention.

Lucky’s determination to prove himself leads to him taking some unnecessary risks. So, when the two S.R.F. teams are detailed to work together in attacking the German garrison holding the village of Varonne, it turns out to be a very uneasy alliance.

RENEGADE RAIDERS
(Issue 3902 – Script by Ferg Handley, Artwork by Keith Page)

Autumn 1944 – The Raiders, with Tex Hall now a full time member of the team, are behind enemy lines in Belgium. Torrential rain has delayed supplies and the Allied advance is faltering. Jimmy and his men are sent to the front line to help an Infantry battalion that has suffered heavy losses against the S.S. Unfortunately the battalion is the one headed by an old adversary, Colonel Lockett. Lockett encouraged by his toadying second-in-command, Major Compton, resists the S.R.F. team’s tactics, but he is ultimately powerless thanks to the Raiders’ independent status.

The battalion has been holding its position on the vital high ground overlooking the battle-ravaged village that has become the bolt hole for a Panzer Grenadier unit armed with mobile Howitzers. Jimmy, appalled that Lockett has merely held his ground rather than take on the enemy directly, is determined to take out the heavy guns.

There isn’t only an old foe awaiting the Raiders, as a former unofficial member of the squad, Sergeant Joe Haynes, is brought onboard again. A scouting raid sees Jarv take a bullet but the tough sergeant soldiers on. Jimmy has seen enough to make him insist Lockett draws back the battalion’s perimeter to concentrate their firepower – a decision the reluctant officer has no choice but to follow. And, as the S.S. advance, they are swiftly ambushed by the Raiders’ jeeps.

The Nazis withdraw, but their commander is the brutal Major Ernst Heinz, a man who shows no hesitation in ruthlessly gunning down two British prisoners in full view of their comrades. The Raiders and the battalion press on with explosive results. And, with Jimmy Ramsey’s life on the line, they come to realise there is an unlikely hero in their midst.

(Ramsey’s Raiders returned in “Raiders to the Rescue”. This, plus their remaining adventures will be covered in Part Three.)