Part 1 (1/2)

JUST WAR.

by LANCE PARKIN.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Ca.s.sie and Mark Jones for, well, everything really: advice, constructive criticism, proofreading, support, punctuation, encouragement. The nun and the giant rubber hamster were Mark's idea, by the way. Thanks to Michael Evans for inspiration, John Langdon and Mark Clapham for historical snippets and David Pitcher who would never forgive me if I didn't mention him. As subscribers to rec.arts.drwho will know, Benny's birthday was astrologically determined by Jim Sangster. Thanks to Paul Cornell for settling the matter, and to everyone else who took part in the discussion.

Once upon a time, when the world was black and white...

Prologue.

'Doctor. It's been a long time.'

'Yes, Ma. Even longer for me. Too long. But this still feels like home.' The Doctor stared into the hearth, the light from the flames flickering in his eyes. He sipped at his cocoa, and watched as the firewood blackened and curled. No doubt, thought Ma Doras, he was divining patterns in the smoke and messages in the crackling of the flames. At times like this, Ma really could believe that he was as old as he claimed. At times like this, the Doctor scared her. Ma turned to the young woman crouched at the fireside. Her daughter, Celia, whom the Doctor had brought back from the dead.

'Are you warmer now, Celia?'

'Yes, Ma. I'm sorry, we've just been somewhere a lot warmer than this.' The young woman looped a strand of blonde hair back over her ear.

'My dear, this is a tourist resort. People come here for their holidays. You're right, though, this is what we'd call the ”offseason”. It has been since June.'

The Doctor finished winding his pocket-watch and lent forward. 'Tell us.'

'You must know. You must have read about it. An historic moment: the first successful invasion of the United Kingdom since 1066. The Day the n.a.z.is Came.'

Celia sat alongside her, looking puzzled.

'It's not the same as hearing it from someone who was there,' the Doctor said.

'No? Well, there isn't much to tell. The British government gave up. The Germans swept across France in a matter of weeks. You must remember Dunkirk?'

'I was there,' said the Doctor quietly. 'Refugees from Paris were blocking the roads. The British army was stuck in traffic and running out of petrol. Messerschmitts wheeled overhead mowing down the civilians. All the time, German tanks were getting nearer. Every fis.h.i.+ng boat, every little barge on the south coast of England had been commandeered. The army was being evacuated by civilians: fishermen, old men in yachting club jerseys. All the time, their little boats were being fired at by the German guns. Even British propaganda afterwards admitted that it was a ma.s.sive defeat.'

Ma continued. 'After that, it was clear that there was nothing we could do to stop the attack. The Cabinet decided to pull all the soldiers back. Demilitarize, and we might be able to stay out of the war. s.h.i.+ps were sent to evacuate everyone that wanted to go. A second Dunkirk. Within a couple of days around a third of the population had gone; the rest of us decided that we couldn't afford to leave our homes or farms, a few stayed out of patriotism. Many of the young men who left vowed to join the armed services: they'd come back and liberate us. Some stayed. A few have even come back since.'

Ma looked down at Celia, who smiled nervously. She was so tall, so pretty. Celia s.h.i.+vered again and Ma handed her a poker. Celia looked uncertainly at it for a moment, until the Doctor took it from her hands and jabbed at the hearth with it. The fire began to flare up again. The Doctor handed the poker back to Celia, who smiled and began prodding the fire experimentally for herself.

'At a quarter to seven on June twenty-eighth, the Germans attacked. I was there, most of us were. It was Friday, the warmest evening of the year. We were just coming back from church and Mayor Sherwill was making a speech on Smith Street, trying to rea.s.sure everyone. There was a droning noise, a squeal, and then a thud. We'd never heard a sound like it before, so we didn't realize at first that the Germans were bombing the harbour. A lot of vans were down there, and the planes targeted them. The drivers didn't know what to do. A lot of them sheltered underneath their vehicles. They died. We all saw it; there was nowhere to go.

We just didn't know what we would do. Do you know, there wasn't a single bomb shelter in the whole town? It just shows how naive we were. It's odd: my main impression was of the colour pink. The explosions were a sort of salmon pink. I don't suppose that fact will ever make it into the history books. Noise and panic. Confusion. Screaming and black smoke.

'Look, it's not really much use remembering. We had to piece together what had happened afterwards, anyway. For nearly half an hour, half a dozen bombers soared and dived overhead, strafing the area with bullets and dropping bombs.

Then, it was over. Twenty-seven men and four women had died and forty others were wounded. Two hours later, at nine, we all listened to the BBC news, and learnt that the government had demilitarized us and hoped to keep us out of the war.

'Later, the Germans said that they regretted the deaths - the purpose of the raid had been simply to prevent the s.h.i.+pping of a consignment of tomatoes, the deaths had been incidental.

'The real invasion wasn't long in coming. We were all terrified on Sat.u.r.day. We thought that there would be another raid. Or a gas attack. We were very worried about being ga.s.sed. On Sunday afternoon, three German planes landed at the airstrip, but they were scared off by an RAF patrol. I learnt about that later. The Germans returned in force at six in the evening, most of us heard the plane circling. They must have been looking for ground defences. There weren't any.

Half an hour later, Major Lanz had a.s.sumed command, and had set himself up in the Royal Hotel. Most of us didn't learn this until the day after, when we read the declaration. Some people, the ones in the outlying farms, well, some of them didn't find out for over a week. All private transport had been outlawed. The curfew was in place. The Swastika was raised from every flagpole.

'It was so strange that it didn't sink in for a couple of days, until the planes came. Wave after wave of troop transports, Junkers, barely clearing the rooftops. One hundred and seventy-eight huge aircraft bringing thousands upon thousands of n.a.z.i soldiers. We just stood around, watching them arrive, watching all these young men pouring off the planes, then marching in regimented lines.' Ma couldn't think of anything else to add. Celia had turned to the Doctor.

'Doctor, what's happening?'

'You know, it's so long since one of my travelling companions asked me that. It really takes me back to the good old days...' There was a toothy grin all over his face. Ma sighed, hadn't he been listening?

'Well, it's a long time since you gave a straight answer to a straight question. Perhaps that's why we stopped asking.

This never happened, did it? Britain won the war. History has changed.' Ma listened to Celia's cultured accent, the sort of voice you heard on the Home Service.

The Doctor's voice was a whisper, there was no trace of his grin now. 'Well, strictly speaking, according to ”real”

history, you died on Hallowe'en 1913. You were three years old. A lovely young girl. I couldn't prevent it.' Was that a tear in his eye?

'Stop it, you're giving me the creeps.'

'This isn't a parallel universe, this isn't an alternate timeline. History is running exactly as you know it. This is Guernsey, late December 1941. Merry Christmas, Celia.'

1

Resistance is Useless

The woman who called herself Celia Doras woke early, half-past six on the morning of 1 March 1941. She could hear planes flying overhead. Four of them, bombers, nothing out of the ordinary. They had spent the night on a bombing raid, and now as the dawn approached they were returning to the aerodrome at St Villiaze, three or four miles away. Just as the droning had died down, a second wave arrived, five or six of them this time. She pulled the sheet back and lay flat on her back, staring blindly at the ceiling, listening to them.

Everyone on Guernsey had grown used to the planes; most islanders could identify the different types by their propeller sounds. Usually, about sixty-five planes would leave during the course of the evening. Rather less returned the next morning. The islanders no longer resented them; truth be told, they hardly even noticed them.

The planes were German. It had been nearly a year since the n.a.z.is had invaded. Celia hadn't been there, hadn't seen the invasion. She reached under her pillow and fished out a small hardback pocketbook. She'd been reading it the night before, and had forgotten to put it away. The t.i.tle was embossed in gold letters on the damaged spine: Advice For Advice For Young Ladies Young Ladies. The book did contain a great deal of useful information - maps, codes and so on. One chapter, Chapter 8, recounted the events of the invasion in some detail and she'd pieced together the rest by talking to islanders.

Celia stared at herself in the mirror. She looked pale, her face sallow due to worry and rationing. No, it was more permanent than that. She was beginning to get old. She had her first wrinkles now: traces of worry lines across her forehead, crow'sfeet around her eyes. She wasn't particularly old, but three months here had taken their toll. All the children had gone last year, all the young islanders. Something vital had been sapped. All that remained now were the middle-aged and the elderly, people waiting to die. The British government had told the Channel Islanders that because the islands weren't of military importance there was no point committing acts of sabotage. They needn't risk their lives, or those of their families, by organizing resistance. Could they resist anyway? There were Germans everywhere, in every house, in every shop, lining the coast, filling up the towns. In France, if you sabotaged a railway line you could be two hundred miles away before the Germans noticed. On an island only twenty-four square miles in area, there was no escape. So the islanders sat out the war - not cooperating with the n.a.z.is any more than they were forced to. It sounded so easy. Some tried more than pa.s.sive resistance. Marcel Brossier had cut a telephone line. Celia thought that she had met him a couple of times: he was a quiet man, an ordinary man. The n.a.z.is discovered him and shot him without even the pretence of a trial. Everyone had a story like that, everyone had lost a friend. What could be done, though? The n.a.z.is were everywhere. Young, fierce and ambitious, it was as though they'd come from another world. Celia had never been so aware of her own mortality.

Just before Christmas last year, much to the astonishment of the German authorities, Celia had come back to the islands to help her mother at the family boardinghouse, or so she claimed. Until she arrived, the full extent of the horror of what was happening here hadn't struck her. She hadn't realized that the Germans might deport her to a labour camp just because she was born in England. If she had been Jewish, she'd have gone, if she made even the slightest anti-German remark. She hadn't been prepared for the oppression that began the moment you woke, that surrounded you as you fell asleep. For months now her dreams had been filled with droning black aircraft, the sound of marching, the feeling that she was being watched. The irony was that this was, in the words of Mayor Sherwill 'a model occupation' - even though the situation had turned for the worse recently as the winter ate up the food and fuel supplies, not too many had been shot, the troops had been ordered to keep their hands off the local women, medicines had been imported from the Continent. Life continued as normal. What could it be like in Poland, or France?

Celia stood stiffly and scooped up her book. There was a large pine dresser alongside the bed. One of the drawers had a false back, and she kept Advice for Young Ladies Advice for Young Ladies behind there along with her diary and some other things. Both books contained information that would compromise her. A euphemistic way of describing what would happen if the Germans discovered them, but the only one she could bear thinking about this early in the morning. She eased into her underwear and tried to suppress her fears. Under German Law, 'Local commanders of occupied territory may pa.s.s summary sentence on persons who are not subject to Military Law if the facts of the case are self-evident and if this procedure is adequate in view of the guilt of the offender' - behind there along with her diary and some other things. Both books contained information that would compromise her. A euphemistic way of describing what would happen if the Germans discovered them, but the only one she could bear thinking about this early in the morning. She eased into her underwear and tried to suppress her fears. Under German Law, 'Local commanders of occupied territory may pa.s.s summary sentence on persons who are not subject to Military Law if the facts of the case are self-evident and if this procedure is adequate in view of the guilt of the offender' - in other words she could be shot here and now if a German officer felt that she ought to be.

Celia took her work clothes out of the wardrobe, her heart beating faster now. She pulled the plain blue dress over her head and struggled into it. That done, she stood still, breathing deeply. Finally, Celia felt ready to step out onto the landing, she locked her door, and went downstairs. On the way down, she pulled back the blackout screens and drew back the curtains.