Remember the War Wheel

Remembrance Day sends my thoughts spinning back to the Great Wars, and this time around to a great international team of WWII heroes, the Blackhawks. Not Americanocentric like most war comics, the stories of Blackhawk (whether in his own book or Quality's National Comics where he got his start) and his band of heroic pilots were from all over the world - France, the United Kingdom, China, the Netherlands, Sweden, and yes, the United States - Blackhawk himself was Polish. Today we honor all these nations' sacrifices and many others'. Lest we forget... the War Wheel.

If you'll allow this slightly ridiculous, but also terrifying, Nazi weapon to be "memory" (the name is at least a good symbol for the sad cyclical nature of these things), I'm taking us back to Blackhawk #56, 1952, when the first War Wheel was unleashed on a Malkorian town. And nothing can stop this engine of destruction.
It crushes buildings easily. It is impervious to heavy artillery. Even Blackhawk himself is crushed under its weight!
No wait! He's okay! He's okay!
If the War Wheel rolls on you, make sure you're in between those fat spikes. Blackhawk eventually defeat the juggernaut by attracting the attention of its drivers and racing towards a swamp...
Ah yes. Even the biggest wheels can get mired in mud. Cue the real point of every war story:
But it WAS a wheel, and as the wheel turns, so does the great axle of time, and the War Wheel would come back to haunt the Blackhawks...
...again...
...and again...
...and again...
...and again...
...and again...
 ...into our own era.
When will we learn our lesson? And so every year, we remember, lest we forget again.

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