By Andrew Brown Stand Up For Southport
A Southport artist met with the daughter of a local D-Day veteran who inspired a new wartime comic strip on display at The Atkinson in Southport.;
Stuart Harrison created the artwork to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the World War Two Normandy landings.
The comic strip is one and a half metres high and has been inspired by Southport D-Day veteran Ted Jackson.
Ted and his comrades in the King’s Liverpool Regiment stormed Sword Beach on 6th June, 1944.
Stuart was delighted to officially unveil it last Thursday (6th June 2024) with Ted’s daughter, Angela Jackson.
Ted’s son, Dave Jackson, opened Southport Hobby Scene shop on Princes Street in Southport town centre in the 1980s, and ran it until he died recently.
The last independent model shop was an ‘Aladdin’s cave’ of model trains, planes, boats, cars, tanks and regiments of toy soldiers.Airfix, Revell, Italer and Heller models packed the walls of the unique shop, which was in many ways a fortress against the forces of modernity.
Medals and memorabilia from Ted Jackson’s military career, such as his dog tags, were on display alongside a deactivated Lee Enfield rifle which was the British standard issue weapon during World War Two.
Ted died aged 91, in 2010, and RAF Woodvale sortied two planes to roar over the cemetery as his coffin was interned at Our Lady of Compassion Church.
Ted’s story has now been told in comic strip form by artist and illustrator Stuart Harrison, as a way of engaging with younger generations and encouraging them to learn about this crucial part of world history.
Stuart was originally commissioned to produce artwork as part of the Sefton Borough Of Culture celebrations in 2020, until they were sadly curtailed by the Covid pandemic.
His artwork has now finally gone on show in Southport.
Stuart said: “For the Borough of Culture 2020 I was commissioned by Sefton Council to produce 12 comic strips of the lives of famous people who come from Sefton and wished to continue this series telling the story of a local man who fought on D-Day.
“Ted Jackson’s son, Dave Jackson, owned the model shop on Princes Street where I bought my Airfix models, and he had some amazing military ephemera, such as a cigarette tin of sand from Sword Beach.
“The Atkinson professed an interest in showing the strip, printed at a large scale.
“I live in Southport and I wanted to do something to commemorate D-Day, and to help inform younger generations that it actually happened.
“Lots of people now don’t know much about D-Day.
“I felt that a comic strip was an effective method to tell a story in a fun way.
“It’s now on display in the Atkinson and is one and a half metres tall.
“Ted Jackson was from Southport and fought on D-Day. He had wanted to join the RAF, but they wouldn’t let him. So he joined the Army, and signed up with the Liverpool King’s Regiment. He loved aircraft, and was looking up and spotting aircraft flying over the beach at Normandy.
“Before D-Day, he had done some training on Formby Beach.
“During the fighting he was temporarily blinded by a German bomb blowing up in his face, but luckily got his sight back.
“He had some remarkable stories. He rescued a tiny kitten which was on the beach during D-Day.
“He remembers hearing the bagpipes, from a piper playing them during the landing.
“They were played to raise the morale of the soldiers, and he had a lifelong love of bagpipes as a result.
“The German soldiers were so confused by the sound of the bagpipes when they first heard them that they reportedly stopped fighting!
“Another story he told was when a spider was crawling on his helmet and he moved to one side to shake it off, and next thing a sniper’s bullet whizzed past his ear. If it wasn’t for that spider, he would have been killed.
“As a result, Ted and his family always saw spiders as lucky, and they could never bear to kill one in their house.”
Stuart Harrison is an award-winning character designer and cartoon illustrator with over 25 years of experience across children’s media and the communication design industries.
He co-founded Fun Crew, an independent content creation studio and creative consultancy in 2006 with Angela Salt.
Stuart has provided character design and illustration for a broad range of international clients from blue-chip companies to individual, bespoke commissions.
He works across children’s media, animation, publishing, advertising, consumer products, packaging, games and apps.
For more details visit: www.stu-art.biz
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