Star Spangled War Stories #86

In "A Medal for Marie!", a young resistance fighter must make an impossible choice: summon a bombing run to destroy an enemy artillery gun by marking her own position, using the same desperate methods her grandfather and father once did—smoke signals and mirror flashes—only this time, she’s the one calling in the strike. Trapped in a farmhouse with a tank closing in, she plays dead, uses the tank’s burning smoke as her signal, and escapes just in time. The story’s quiet courage is honored not with gold, but with a single red rose—a symbol as simple as it is profound.

In "U-Boat to Nowhere!" from *Star Spangled War Stories* #86 (1959), a lone U.S. Navy frogman races against time in a tiny sailboat toward Shipwreck Rock, where a desperate Nazi submarine awaits a supply run. As both sides converge on the rocky outpost, the frogman sets a trap that sinks the supply ship, only to face a deadly final gambit from the U-boat—its last torpedo, a hail of gunfire, and a brutal attempt to drown him with compressed air.

In snow-covered Europe during a brutal winter campaign, a gruff general known only as "Old Iron Hat" arrives to demand a precise inventory of every weapon in a beleaguered company’s possession. As the men scramble to comply, they’re suddenly caught in a fierce assault—tanks and Stukas tear through their lines, devouring every round and rifle in a desperate fight for survival. When the general returns, his list is no longer a formality, but a grim tally of the wreckage left behind: a Nazi tank, a half-track, and a Stuka bomber—all now accounted for.