Been reading: Darkie's Mob.

"In 1946, after the defeat of the Japanese, a small, bloodstained notebook was found at the scene of a brutal jungle battle. In it was one of the strangest stories ever to come out of World War 2"
Burma 1942, a small group of  British soldiers are trapped on the wrong side of the Chindwin river and surrounded by Japanese troops. Tired and demoralised, they are waiting to die when Captain Joe Darkie walks into camp and takes over command. As his new troops discover to their alarm, he's not there to get them back to India but seems hellbent on waging his own private war against the Japanese.
 Then one day Private "Shorty" Shortland hears a radio message from HQ. There is no such person as Captain Joe Darkie and never has been...

 I read this one while  a kid and my abiding memory is of a particular scene: one soldier, his mind gone, sitting in the rain making crosses for each of his dead comrades. So when I found the reprint I was curious to see if it matched up to my memories. If anything, it was even more brutal.
 At some point in the mid 70s British comics started moving towards something darker and grittier and this strip is a pretty good example of where they were going.  Alright, so Darkie and his boys are still capable of astonishing feats of valour but these are not the stiff-upper-lip characters of former days.
Narrator " Shorty" Shortland and his comrades are tired, hungry and ill and while they eventually become the killing machines Darkie wants, they are all aware that they are too badly damaged to ever leave the jungle. Darkie himself is heroic only in the loosest sense, a savage beast of a man, and leads through force of will and brutality. As an example, here's another incident that stayed with me: After one of his  men steals vital medicine Darkie ties the thief to a stake and marches off into the jungle, leaving him to die slowly, screaming and alone. Even today that would be considered grim and back in the 70s, to an audience brought up on films where the plucky British were always the forces of good, this was downright shocking.
 The one thing that probably sits uneasily with a modern reader is the depiction of the Japanese. Let's just say that while Darkie may be  a monster his enemies are worse.
 If, like me, you remember this comic from the first time around I can promise that it's as good as you thought it was..
 And if your experience of British comics begins and ends with 2000ad then maybe you should check  out "Darkies Mob" -among others -  and see where some of the ideas began to take shape.