Always with Honor: The Graphic Novel, Chapter 1, published by Passage Publishing, is the first installment of Alex Wisner’s comic book adaptation of Always with Honor: The Memoirs of General Wrangel.
Was Gavrilo Princip actually squeamish in real life, such that he had to look away as he pulled the trigger upon Franz Ferdinand and inaugurated the most terrible conflict the world had ever seen? This is how the Black Hand assassin is depicted in a flashback by Alex Wizner, at any rate. It is probably no coincidence that the character Princip contrasts strikingly with that of Baron Pyotr N. von Wrangel—commander of the White Army during the Russian Civil War, and protagonist of Wizner’s graphic novel Always with Honor. “Do not let them look away,” Wrangel directs the officer in charge of a tsarist firing squad preparing to execute captured Communist leaders. Per Wrangel, those compelled to avert their eyes from the awful consequences of their actions have no business shedding blood. While those of us subscribing to the Western chivalric ethos and just war doctrine reject the cold-blooded killing of prisoners—even Communists—Wrangel surely had a point in insisting that we must own up to our choices.
Based upon Wrangel’s autobiography of the same name, the art of this black & white comic book adaptation suggests neither the childish cartoon panels of mainstream comics nor the surreal imagery of some independent productions. The finely-detailed first chapter relates the Russian Empire’s fateful entry into the Great War and the disastrous revolution, Bolshevik uprising, and Russian Civil War which followed. Even as the chronology of catastrophic violence is faithfully related, famous figures are humanized in a manner befitting the best historical fiction.
The often-belittled Nicholas II is here shown as an affectionate and energetic man who teases his daughters and relishes a good game of tennis, while Wrangel is driven by aristocratic discipline, along with the passionate conviction that Communism represents a vile betrayal of Russia, perhaps even of humanity itself. It should be added that Wizner is not peddling simple propaganda, with all the courage lying on one side; even in the face of the firing squad one stalwart Communist officer gruffly dismisses an offer of clemency, coming as it does at the price of letting down his convictions and comrades.
For the reader unfamiliar with the biographical subject, some explanation is in order. Serving during the disastrous Russo-Japanese War, Wrangel would later be decorated for his exploits against the Germans in the First World War. Soon after the Revolution he was placed upon the Bolsheviks’ blacklist, and had to slip around the apocalyptic ruins of the Empire in order to enlist under the banner of General Anton Denikin. As commander of White forces in the Caucasus, the dread he inspired in his Bolshevik enemies earned for him the nickname “the Black Baron.”
It was Wrangel who stepped in to take supreme command of counter-revolutionary efforts in the wake of Denikin’s surrender. Like Robert E. Lee and Napoleon, Wrangel had a knack for winning in the face of overwhelming odds, and against all expectations retook the hotly-contested Crimea from the Reds. As it became clearer and clearer that the Crimea could not be held, he personally directed the military evacuation both of his troops and of refugees fleeing sovietism. During his later exile from Russia he served as an international philanthropist, resettling and succoring Russian emigrees throughout the West.
Although his reputation is based primarily upon his relentless pursuit of military victory, Wrangel’s original memoirs give an idealistic cast to his struggle that may strike a chord even today, long after the end of the Cold War:
History, which knows no favouritism, will tell the importance of our Struggle, the capacity of our sacrifices. It will know that the fight we carried on for the love of our country, for the resurrection of Russia as a nation, was indeed at the same time to safeguard the culture of Europe, the Struggle for an age-long civilization, for the defence of Europe against the Red terror.
So Wrangel is best remembered as one of many intriguing, forgotten defenders of Christendom, rather like Louis de Bonald or Engelbert Dolfuss, a man whose legacy should be revived in the interests of carrying on Christendom’s defense today. No less stalwart an American conservative than Herbert Hoover would preface the original Always With Honor, having become familiar with the baron’s reputation while directing post-World War I relief measures in the Black Sea region. Hoover explicitly compared Wrangel to George Washington, and the comparison is apt insofar as the Baron was not only a military hero but a statesman of vision, “one of the first of the Russian leaders to realize the dangers of the Communist revolution to the Russian people and the world.” That pretty much sums it up.
