The following is an unreleased portion of Ken Burns' new documentary THE (FAKE) WAR, produced by PBS, narrated by Tom Hanks, the text all authentic fake letters home from World War Two.


Dear mother, things sure are exciting here with the Howling Commandos. Just the other day we crashed through a plate glass window to rescue one of our men from the Compound Of Death. No, it's nothing like "Compound W."


Yes mother, I know windmills don't work like that. But it's wartime, crazy things happen.


I don't want to give away too much of our strategy, but it turns out that Germans are really sensitive about insults.


We snuck into the rocket base and only had to knock out two German soldiers. And by "knock out" I mean "stab to death with a knife."


When the smoke cleared, the Germans knew they'd "tangled with commandos", mostly because of the bullet holes in their bodies. Kind of a giveaway.


Our commanding officer Sgt. Fury is a crack shot with any weapon, including fire extinguishers. Turns out the plans for the buzz bomb didn't really help in defending against them so our mission was almost totally pointless, but whatever.


At one point we were trapped between two groups of Germans and we just ducked and the Germans all shot each other. Why exactly did this war last six whole years?


Dear mom. Sorry it's been so long since my last letter. We took a side trip and walked into Germany to infiltrate a concentration camp and rescue somebody's uncle. I know it seems grotesque to trivialize one of the horrors of the century in this fashion, but that's comic book war for you. Anyway we were discovered and there was a lot of shooting, you could see bullets flying and hitting the ground and hitting buildings all around us. It was scary.


Only it turns out the Germans were really firing blanks, and they must have hired top Hollywood special effects artists to plant squibs in all the buildings and the dirt to make it look like bullets were hitting all around us. Those Germans are tricky!


Our Sgt. Fury is tricky too and he faked a heart attack, and then he snapped his ropes with the brute force of his manly strength. I want to be just like Sgt. Fury when I grow up.


Usually the Germans like to tell everybody how great it's going to be to shoot Americans before they actually shoot Americans, giving us the chance to shoot them first. Again, this war lasted six years WHY, exactly?


It turns out the uncle was really a Nazi in disguise. Which is good because Sgt. Fury shot him. It would be embarrassing had Uncle turned out to not be a Nazi. And it wasn't all for nothing, because each death-defying mission makes us a better, sharper fighting unit! I can't wait for next month's exciting adventure!

(EDITOR'S NOTE: This was the last original Sgt. Fury story, all subsequent issues were reprints, which was "better" for "sharpening up" the budget at Marvel Comics, I suppose.)

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