"1941. Right now, not very far from here, the German war machine is rolling up the map of Europe. Country after country, falling like dominoes. Nothing can stop it, nothing. Until one tiny, damp little island says "No. No, not here." A mouse in front of a lion. You're amazing, the lot of you."
It was politics, the pressure Europe places on her inhabitants, tension rolling across the channel to Britain like a bad stench. The atmosphere was still something like anxious, following the Great War, the trenches and pits and mud under your fingernails and in your teeth.
Warfare had changed since the turn of the century. It was no longer a matter of aiming for a clear cut victory—now surviving had become a goal, and every day that ground was gained—figuratively, literally—felt like the most enormous victory imaginable.
Total war was not a new concept. Cutting off trade and any chance for economic health alongside the usual fighting had become commonplace since Napoleon. But to that degree—it hurt, economically, and in casualties. Such is to be expected, when powerful nations fight each other.
The end of the Great War had felt like taking a deep breath for the first time, after having been under water—it made lungs ache with cold and pain, but there was no longer any lingering smoke or dust to inhale. And the only thing left to do was to forge on, to rebuild.
And then it's 1939. Parliament is a mess, and they're acting like schoolboys—the Germans have invaded Poland, and why have they not yet declared war? All the while, Arthur is anxious, on edge. It hardly shows though—the wars in the past decades have made him old and tired, and the Empire crumbles beneath him in a gradual sort of way, a pretender to an imaginary throne.
An exhausted, bitter old man who can't even bring himself to be angry over the lack of decisiveness, and that will only become more tired as the years wear on. Days had never seemed as long as this one, this second day of September, 1939.
He watched as the Chamberlain first put fault to the French—a statement Arthur might have laughed at once, but now seemed more depressing than anything. At last, one, perhaps two of the backbenchers stepped forward—this was not, they said, an Anglo-French pledge to Poland, but a British one, and Arthur's stomach did something strange and twisting, guilt and shame.
The day England went to war was one of the sunniest as had been seen that year, too ironic and mocking for comfort, and feeling almost like foreshadowing, like it was to be the end of days.
And it's almost dreamlike at first, the German war machine crushing its way across Europe, like a bad nightmare, a terror in the middle of the night that freezes his limbs and lungs and leaves Arthur gasping for breath at the oddest times, even when London isn't being savaged. Shrapnel sometimes feels like it tears through his lungs and there's blood in his eyes from the dead. The eyepieces of his gasmask fog from the inside and outside, smeared with dirt and rain and dust and blood, and every time he touches the lens to clean it, it only becomes filthier. It's ugly and should be remembered as such.
France falls, and Britain stands alone, a lonely isle in the midst of chaos, as it is and has always been. There is no air to be had, no army with which to fight. But still, they stand, proud and tall.
Rationing begins in January of 1940, as the Germans try to starve Britain into submission, and still they march forward, holding their own. The home front is theirs and always will be.
Because as long as Britain can fight they will continue to do so, and even beyond that. Even when the worst of humanity is on display, this is to be their finest hour.