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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.

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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.

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