By Paul Baldry

The comic was never just a comic. Its pages smelled of fresh ink and cheap paper, but to the boy from Nottingham they carried something far richer than stories. They carried passports.

He would lie across the living room carpet, elbows pressed into the rug, turning each page with the care of someone opening secret orders. Outside, children shouted and footballs rattled against brick walls, but he heard only the crack of distant rifles, the rumble of tanks, the drone of aircraft, and the steady voice of courage calling from somewhere beyond the next panel.

Every issue was another campaign.

The faded armchair became a command bunker. The hallway stretched into a jungle trail. The stairs climbed through snow-covered mountains where every step demanded determination. One moment he was crossing rivers under enemy fire; the next he was creeping through moonlit forests, carrying messages that could change the course of history.

He never wondered if he was brave.

In those pages, bravery simply meant taking the next step.

Sometimes he would pause, close the comic, and stare through the window. Nottingham carried on as it always had. Buses rolled past. Washing danced on clotheslines. Neighbours chatted over garden fences. Yet somewhere beyond those rooftops was a world he longed to see.

Not because he wanted war.

Because he wanted purpose.

The comics never taught him to love battle. They taught him to admire loyalty, sacrifice, friendship, and the quiet strength of ordinary men who discovered they could do extraordinary things when others depended on them.

He folded the comic carefully and placed it beside him.

One day, he thought.

Just one day.

Years slipped by almost unnoticed. School gave way to work, work to opportunity, and opportunity to a recruiting office where a young Nottingham lad took his first real step towards the adventures, he had imagined so many times before.

The battles were no longer drawn in ink.

The boots became real.

The uniform carried weight.

The comrades laughed louder than any speech bubble ever could.

The rain was colder.

The miles were longer.

The friendships lasted a lifetime.

He travelled farther than that little boy could ever have pointed to on a school atlas. Across mountains, forests, frozen valleys, distant islands, and streets where history was still being written, he found himself living the very adventures that had once begun between two paper covers.

The comics had promised excitement.

Reality gave him something better.

It gave him belonging.

Sometimes, even now, he picks up an old Commando comic. The paper has yellowed, the corners are worn, and the colours have faded with time. Yet somewhere between those familiar pages he still finds that boy lying on the carpet in Nottingham, dreaming impossible dreams without the slightest idea that life was quietly preparing to grant them.

Perhaps imagination is not an escape after all.

Perhaps it is where our future first learns to walk.

And perhaps every extraordinary journey begins with an ordinary boy, an old comic, and the courage to believe that tomorrow might be bigger than today.

About this Poem.

As a boy growing up in Nottingham, I escaped into the pages of Commando comics, fighting imaginary battles and dreaming of one day becoming a soldier myself. Little did that young lad know those childhood dreams would eventually become reality. I became a Commando soldier for real and went on to serve for 26 years. This prose poem looks back at the boy I once was, whose imagination carried him on adventures long before the uniform, the boots and the adventures became part of my real life.

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