P&S - 1947 - a variation

This isn't part of my own TL, but sprang out of it after reading the main P&S thread. It won't be long, I suspect only one more post.

***

P&S 1947


Monday 23.45


Champagne Charlie is my name, Champagne Charlie is my name.
Good for any game at night, boys, who'll come and join me in a spree?

Birmingham

The Observer shifts uncomfortably in his post, high in the shattered clock tower of the University. It is a cold night and he isn't as well fed these days to hold off the chill. He pulls his worn overcoat tighter around his neck. Peering around him through the falling snow he sees the glow of a new fire somewhere to the East. Wearily he cranks the handle on the side of his field telephone.


“New fire, bearing 40°. Can't get a reading on distance because of the snow, but looks like Longbridge again. Out”


He is hungry, but that is nothing new. Even as an observer he gets little in the way of rations these days. “When was the last time I had a nice chop?” he muses idly to himself. His stomach rumbles and he laughs humourlessly. These days, even the rats have gone.


The bombers rumble overhead. Suddenly a solitary searchlight beam leaps out the smoke a few hundred yards away. It waves around aimlessly unable to find even one of the bombers.


Put it out you fool!” Even as he speaks he hears the distinctive whine of the Stukas, whipping overhead towards the searchlight emplacement. Within minutes the light blinks out, whether from the bomber's action or from an instinct for self preservation, he cannot tell. It is pointless trying anyway. The AA guns are long silenced.


Throughout the night the city is pounded. To the north he can see the glow as the City Centre burns. The fires have raged now for a week, unchecked. There is simply no water left. Even the university site has been hit. In the process, the surrounding housing have been almost levelled, while the former Cadbury's chocolate factory, converted to munitions production at the outbreak of war was reduced to rubble months ago.


News is scarce. So far as he can tell, the Army has fallen back from the original GHQ Line and is now fighting for its very existence in several sectors. There is still fighting in the south; Gloucester and Oxford areas still hold out, but there is no information about elsewhere. For all he knows more landings have taken place in the North. The RAF is little seen these days, conserving their forces it is said, although he suspects they have precious little to conserve. There are rumours of US forces landing in Scotland, but nothing official is ever said. There are always rumours.


He can no longer care. His days are spent looking for food or trying to sleep. He never gets enough of either. The nights are grim. He starts as the telephone rings. “Stand down”. Thankfully he stands up, then stiffly makes his way down the makeshift ladders to the ground, before stumbling his way home through the smoke and fumes of another raid to the sound of the 'All Clear'.


Tuesday 05.30 am


There'll always be an England
While there's a busy street,
Wherever there's a turning wheel,
A million marching feet.



Nottingham


It is still dark when the alarm goes. The Worker drags herself out of bed, or what passes for a bed these days. Upstairs she can hear others moving. She goes behind the curtain and uses the bucket. “Little dignity these days” she thinks. She sluices her hands in a bowl of grimy water before wiping them on an equally grimy piece of cloth, then joins the steady flow of people heading out to start work.


No food of course. No nice cup of tea. A piece of hard bread at the factory; if she is lucky with a piece of dry cheese, more likely just bread with some greasy margarine and not much of that. Nobody speaks. No one has the energy and there is nothing to speak about. Every day, every night is exactly the same – unremitting hard work for 12-14 hours a day, little food, no heat, no Music While You Work. Every bit of power is reserved for war work.


Birmingham


The Observer trudges home through the snow, passing the workers heading for the makeshift factory set up in the University Great Hall. He doesn't see them, or they him. He goes into a house and throws himself down on a bed, any bed. No sleep. He sees in his mind's eye his Wife and Son. The Wife is dead, killed in the evacuation of London. The Son? Who knows – even the army has lost track and bodies litter the streets and lanes of the South, unburied, unknown.


He closes his eyes but even in sleep he is not spared. He weeps and whimpers where he lies.

 

Falkenburg

Monthly Donor
Good job. Very P&S.
A nice original touch while still in keeping with the originals' tone and style.

Falkenburg
 
Thanks for the comments

This uses some of the ideas from the first attempt at my Frozen Spring TL which jumped ahead to 1947. I crossed those with the 'look and feel' of P&S.

I haven't pretended to find a POD for this, but given where we are it was probably an extended war with an invasion of Britain some time late in 1946, then getting into a 'Winter War' scenario, but with neither side really well enough equipped.
 
Wednesday 3.00am
A quarry in Oxfordshire

When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you

If your heart is in your dream
No request is too extreme
When you wish upon a star
As dreamers do.

The Boy is asleep. Wrapped in a tattered piece of tarpaulin he'd found in the broken down hut he is dreaming, crying in his sleep, his thin body shaking with a mixture of terror, grief and anger. Technically he is a Deserter, but at 15 he doesn't care. His life stopped in 1940. His Dad was dead at Dunkirk, one of the last pathetic survivors of the BEF, holed up in cellars, starving under relentless pounding from artillery for weeks until finally told to surrender. The last few pitiful survivors were packed onto cargo ships and sent back over the Channel to a demoralised Britain.

His Mother is dead too. Killed by a drunken Squaddy as she tried to protect her children. Her body sprawled across the bedroom floor, neck broken as his Sister screamed under the Squaddy's brutal assault. Afterwards he shamefacedly left them a few notes and some food, before leaving, not looking back.

That was when he became a Killer too. He saw the Squaddy the next day, with his unit, resting before going back into the line. He watched him break away and go behind a wall to piss. He crept silently around to see the man facing away. He jumped forward and slashed down with his knife, the one his father had given him before leaving for France. The Squaddy screamed then collapsed in shock. He grabbed his gun and fled. A gun was as good as money, even without ammunition. A few more days food at least.

Sis was dead now. Dysentery. He was alone at 13. No one cared. In the chaos no one noticed. Then the call for volunteers. He turned up at the recruiting centre, said he was 15, was given a gun and a few rounds and sent off to war. It had been like that ever since. No wonder he shook in his dreams. He had been one of the last out of London, fighting their way back, each street paid for in broken bodies. Building booby traps, cutting throats, shooting collaborators, looters and deserters – he had done it all.

Now it was his turn. He didn't care. As they had finally left London the squad had simply disintegrated. The last regular forces had retreated towards Oxford, while units like his had held off the invader, making them pay for every inch. He didn't care. Now, sleeping, wrapped and moderately dry and warm in a broken down hut is the most comfortable he has been since – he can't remember when.

The snow continues to fall as it has for the last three days. Only the location of the hut under a larger corrugated iron canopy prevents it from being completely buried. Even so it looks unlikely that he can escape any time soon. The path to the top of the quarry is steep and winding. It will be impossible to use in these conditions.

The Boy sleeps on.
 
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To be honest I have no idea what is going on outside the stories. They are written for atmosphere alone. In the Observer's story there is reference to a rumour of US landings in Scotland, but now you know as much as I do!
 
Thursday 12.45pm

Nottingham

The Worker sits on the floor next to her machine. It is officially the lunch break, but of course there is no lunch. She shivers. It isn't too bad while she is working, but once she stops, the cold creeps in. Sitting doing nothing doesn't help the memories either. Her husband is dead – lost in the chaos of France. So probably is her daughter – she'd gone missing as they fled London. If she still lived it would be a miracle, although she was probably better dead in the circumstances. Then the long walk north – weeks of walking it seemed like, before they got to an evacuation point to be shipped further north still, away from the incessant shelling, but still within range of the bombers now operating out of Kent and Sussex.

She puts the walk out of her head. She isn't proud of what she had done to get food. Sleeping with the odd farmer or policeman had been the least of it. Once they had come up with another refugee column with food they refused to share. That was understandable, they didn't have enough for themselves, let alone another 50 men and women. The two groups had fought – a bitter no holds barred brawl using nothing but clubs and stones and the odd knife. The other group had lost – fleeing into the fields – and they had fallen on their food ravenously, fighting amongst themselves by then.

The tears stream down her face, streaking the grime. It isn't the first time she had sat by this machine crying, nor will it be the last.

Oxfordshire

The Boy hunches over a small fire. The snow still swirls around the hut, but for the moment he is tolerably warm and isn't hungry. By some miracle he'd found a hedgehog buried in straw at the back of the shed. He'd never eaten hedgehog, but it turned out to be surprisingly tasty. He lies by the fire, wrapped in his scrap of tarpaulin and thinks of the Hell that had been London. As he dozes he remembers the girl. She was about his age, but tiny, malnourished. She wanted food and offered herself to several of the group, but by now they knew that food kept them alive while sex didn't. She came to him last perhaps because in some way sex with him would have reminded her of a normal life.

“Please” she said “I need to eat. You can do anything”

He had looked at her. He'd seen rape and worse, but was still physically virgin. He offered her a scrap of unidentifiable meat. She snatched it from his hand and wolfed it down. He knew the feeling of being alone.

“Can you use a gun?” he asked her. She shook her head.
“If you fight you will get some food. You might die, but if you don't fight, you will definitely die – but probably not easily by a bullet.” He jerked his head towards the others. “It could be anyone who kills you” he said.

“Show me” she said. He bent forward to pick up his weapon to demonstrate its use. As he did so a whistling sound passed over him and he dived to the earth, as did the others. He turned to the girl. She was dead, her head blown apart by a bullet – a bullet that would have hit him had he not chosen that moment to bend forward. There was no more firing. Just one more vicious meaningless death among many.

Tours, France

The Prisoner hefts the handles of his wheel barrow and takes away another of the uncountable loads of rubble he has handled over the past seven years. He trudges through the rain towards the waiting lorry. This is his world now – a heap of rubble, a wheelbarrow and a shovel. He is hungry, but not starving. His captors have decided it is cheaper to feed him and the tens of thousands of others captures in 1940 than to spend precious fuel on mechanical tools. So his days grind on. Soon the site will be cleared. He does not know what is to be built, but he is sure he won't see it completed. He and his fellows will simply move on to the next pile in the next town.
 
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