What makes a good fighter pilot? It's mostly skill, and Charles Crombie had plenty of that. But it isn't only skill - you also need to be able to fly through a hail of bullets and flak threatening to hack you out of the sky at any minute. And that was what Charles was afraid of.
Then he took to wearing an old coin around his neck. It was his lucky charm. As long as he had it with him, he knew no fear.
As long as he had it with him…
Introduction
You might be interested to know that the original working title for this story was 'The Courage Is Inside'. Obviously, I wasn't in the Commando office in 1977 when the script came in (I was aged 5 at the time). But I'm guessing that one of the reasons it wasn't used is that although appropriate to the subject matter, it somehow just doesn't seem 'Commando-ish' enough to go in front of Ian Kennedy's dynamic cover montage.
The story's a good one - even though it features the fairly well-used plot device of a lucky charm - and there's a main character that we're genuinely rooting for. And it is all brilliantly illustrated, as usual, by Gordon Livingstone.
Scott Montgomery, Deputy Editor
Note: Originally published as Commando No 1152 (August 1977) and was re-issued as No 2476 (June 1991).
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