I wrote last month about Night Witches, the latest tpb out from the Battlefields series of WWII comic books by Garth Ennis. Last night I read the third (and final issue) in Ennis'sDear Billy and felt my heart sink down to my knees on the last few pages. This book is that kind of good - and also that kind of sad.

Dear Billy is about Carrie, a British nurse in WWII who survives the Japanese invasion of Singapore and sees all of her friends killed. Ennis never reveals exactly what happened Carrie and the other nurses but the artwork by Peter Snejbjerg (while not being blatant) makes it clear that her trauma was very nearly unbearable. She is evacuated out but remains in the East where she meets and slowly falls in love with RAF pilot Billy. He has suffered his own horrors but Carrie does not share anything about her background even as she begin to fall apart. As Japanese POWs are brought into the military hospital where she works, she finds herself unable to resist exacting a personal revenge against each of them. Meanwhile Billy keeps flying and as they meet on occasional weekends his passion for her is clear but he remains unaware of her fears or the acts she commits because of them. In the end, after the war ends and Billy quickly adjusts to a new world where Japan will become an ally, Carrie finds herself falling completely apart. Here's a bit from one of the final panels describing the letter Carrie writes:

BIlly, to you the war was like a giant game of rugger, despite the horrors that you suffered. They've hit us, so we've got to hit them twice as hard - then the ref blows the whistle and it's over, with the lasting satisfaction of knowing that you won.

And got a few good digs in that the blighters won't forget. That's enough for you to feel content.

Not me.

When I taught history the conflicts and battles ran one into another; there was no room to discuss how much slower time might have moved for those who lived the wars - or how much longer the violence would endure for them even after peace was declared. We talk about PTSD in terms of flashbacks and depression, anger and alcoholism. We talk about as something broken, like a limb, that we have just not yet figured out how to perfectly fix. But really, is it more normal to get over it or not? In other words, those who live through the kind of horror that Carrie suffers in the book feel a pressure to be okay because that is what everyone wants (or expects) but how reasonable is it to expect that?

How reasonable is it to expect that peace can come as easily as war?

Many times I have written here about the high caliber of writing to be found today in comics and graphic novels. Garth Ennis is at the top of his game when writing about war - there is really no one better. In less than 100 pages he takes readers to a place in Dear Billy that would receive only a single sentence in a history book - only five minutes in one of my classes - and he makes it clear the sort of epic story that dwells there. Nurse Carrie Sutton lives through the horror of war - the deepest blackest of horrors - but Ennis knows that is not enough. The real question, is can she bear to live through the peace.

When you turn the final page and read the last few words, you will wonder how anyone, on any side, could.

[I'm sure the three issue series will be out in tpb soon - I'll keep you posted.]