The cartoonist who left his drawing board for the Flanders mud

Not content with ridiculing the Kaiser in the pages of the Daily Express to the delight of Lord Kitchener, artist Sidney Strube served with distinction in the First World War trenches before returning triumphant to Fleet Street

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Before the great Carl Giles was employed to entertain and delight readers with his cartoons in the Daily Express, his predecessor at the paper had been just as prodigious in the years preceding him. Sidney Strube first joined the Express in 1912 and would remain one of its superstars for more than 35 years.

He became so popular that, in 1931, he would become the highest paid journalist in Fleet Street on a salary of £10,000 a year, When the First World War broke out, Strube's cartoons highlighted the alleged atrocities to women and children by the invading German army in Belgium, German barbarism was symbolised by the figure of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Strube produced a morale-boosting cartoon calendar for the following year, which focused on the misfortunes of the Kaiser, who was depicted as an arrogant, militaristic but inept autocrat.

The calendar was entitled The Kaiser's Kalendar for 1915 or the Dizzy Dream of Demented Willie. Although it proved popular with the Daily Express readership, there was one drawback, the paper felt it necessary to print a pertinent warning on the back of the calendar: "The Daily Express warns purchasers not to send these calendars to troops at the Front as the Germans have been known to kill prisoners on whom they have found caricatures of the Kaiser."

Excepting the fact that Britain was at war, Strube's cartoons were, by and large, humorous and light-hearted. The Minister for War, Lord Kitchener, who was immortalised in the 'Your Country Needs You' recruitment poster, became an avid fan of the cartoonist.

Kitchener took the time to write to Express editor Ralph Blumenfeld congratulating Strube on his morale-boosting cartoons: "Your artist is a genius! And in this time of stress and sorrow his sense of humour and power of conveying it are invaluable."