Everyone in Europe who lived through the horror of World War 2 has their own story to share, but they don't all have a son who happens to be one of the world's finest comics artists to really tell the tale in a gorgeous three-issue hardback series.
Like the best of these kinds of books, it is blatently unsentimental, with human beings doing whatever it takes to survive just one more day. There is still genuine emotion in it anyway, and remorse for the people you were forced to kill, never forgetting what your tank did to their fragile bodies.
That entire generation destroyed so much, from lives to physical relics to faith in man's humanity, and we still need to learn so many of their lessons.
The best part about this telling of the story is that its attention to detail goes beyond the end of the war, into the chaos of peace. It goes beyond what most stories only leave in postscript, showing that it can be just as hard to rebuild everything, when you've all been trying to just get by. It's as confusing and as sloppy as conflict, but the long slog of rebuilding always deserves as much attention as the destruction.
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