When The Tigers Broke Free
A Brigadier-Centered Music Video
By Jennifer
A few words of explanation before I begin. I'm not sure if they celebrate Father's Day in England, being a Yank myself, but it's here for the purposes of my story. I think I've gotten the date of the Battle of Anzio right.
I came across the "music video" concept in other fanfiction archives, for other shows, and fell in love with it. The way it works is, the line in parentheses describes the action during the line being sung. Think in pictures and you'll do fine.
"When The Tigers Broke Free" was written solely for the movie version of "The Wall" and is not on the original concept album, nor is it on "Is There Anybody Out There?". The only place I could find it recorded was an unauthorized CD called "Pink Floyd: The Film," and even then, it was only the second half. Which is a shame, because this song is one of the best in the movie. It basically describes the death of Roger Waters' own father, which must have made it very hard for him to sing…no wonder the emotion in his voice is so raw during the last part of the song. So I basically applied the situation to another military man whom we all know and love. The Doctor in this is the Eighth Doctor, who I really think deserves a chance to strut his stuff some more on screen.
So, get the music playing in your mind and let's begin!
FATHER'S DAY 2000
(The Brigadier and the Doctor enter a quiet churchyard with stately marble tombstones. The Brig takes a deep breath and motions for the Doctor to stay where he is. He approaches a pair of headstones, first making a little bow towards the one on the left, then turning towards the one on the right. Close on the stone's inscription:
HERE LIES COL. GEORGE GORDON LETHBRIDGE-STEWART
BORN JUNE 16TH, 1904
AND GAVE HIS LIFE IN THE SERVICE OF HIS COUNTRY
AT ANZIO
FEBRUARY 16TH 1944
THE VALIANT NEVER TASTE OF DEATH BUT ONCE
As the somber, wordless male chorus begins the song, we close on the small tintype on the gravestone…a man in uniform, the exact image of Alastair as we first knew him. The Brig reaches out to gently brush it with his fingertips…brief cut to the living George, as little Alastair reaches up to touch his cheek…then back to the Brig, as he stares quietly at the picture, imagining what his father's last day on earth must have been like…)
It was just before dawn
One miserable morning in black 'forty-four…
(George and his comrades huddle in the bunker, awaiting the battle to come.)
When the forward commander was told to sit tight
When he asked that his men be withdrawn…
(The men look up at their commander's face. The commander shakes his head, indicating that no help will be coming. In his face is the inevitability of combat, and perhaps death.)
And the generals gave thanks as the other ranks
Held back the enemy tanks for awhile…
(George and his friends stand and straighten their uniforms. If they are going to die, they will die as British soldiers.)
And the Anzio bridgehead was held for the price
Of a few hundred ordinary lives.
(As the other men exit, George takes out a worn, sepia-toned photograph of himself, his wife Alice, and their son Alastair. He kisses it, and follows the men.
Cut to Alastair holding the same photo—now aged, and marred with a bloody fingerprint—to his own lips. Cut to the Doctor at the gate of the churchyard, tears in his eyes, perhaps remembering his own father. The somber chorus is carrying the tune once more. We fade once more from the tintype, and the Brig's eyes looking at it, to George as he looked the last time Alastair saw him in that uniform.
George is at the front door of his home, kissing Alice goodbye, both knowing it could well be the last time. He breaks off to smile down at little Alastair, beaming proudly at his indestructible, heroic father in uniform. He hugs the boy tightly, telling him to look after his Mummy while Dad is gone. As he starts down the garden path, his hat falls off. Alastair runs after him to pick it up. George laughs in spite of himself, plops it on Alastair's head and tells him to keep it. With one last hug for his son, he departs. Cut from little Alastair in the hat to the Brig in a similar hat in the present day…and a flood of memories is re-awakened in the son's mind…)
And kind old King George sent Mother a note
When he heard that Father was gone…
(Young Alastair finds his mother weeping with the King's message in her hands…)
It was, I recall, in the form of a scroll
With gold leaf and all…
(He stares at it, uncomprehending…)
And I found it one day
In a drawer of old photographs, hidden away…
(A short while later, he finds it once more, surrounded by other things of George's the Army sent back, the old photo among them.)
And my eyes still grow damp to remember
His Majesty signed with his own rubber stamp.
(He stares at the scroll and the items around it…and it finally sinks in that his father, the indestructible, is not coming back. He cries out in anguish and rushes outside to the garden path where he said goodbye to George, screaming for Daddy to come back, come back!)
It was dark all around, there was frost in the ground
When the Tigers broke free…
(A shot of the Anzio battlefield under siege from Tiger tanks…)
And no one survived
From the Royal Fusilliers Company C…
(George is shot trying to aid a wounded comrade…)
They were all left behind,
Most of them dead, the rest of them dying…
(The battlefield is strewn with bodies. Shot of George, managing to pull out the photo with a bloodied hand…)
And that's how the High Command
Took my daddy from me.
(Quick cuts from the photo in George's now-dead hand, to Alice trying to comfort little Alastair, to little Alastair's tear-stained face, to the Brig's face in the present, tears streaming from his eyes.
The Doctor has now come up behind the Brigadier and puts a gentle hand on his shoulder, asking if Alastair is okay. He indicates that he is, reaches down to put a bouquet of white roses—for love—on the grave, then stands and salutes. For George knew what could await him the moment he put on the uniform, just as Alastair did the moment he donned his. And Alastair knows that he can best honor his father and his father's sacrifice by honoring the uniform and all it stands for.
The Doctor also salutes, then the two friends depart the churchyard, the Brig putting a grateful hand on the Doctor's shoulder.)
So…what do you think? (I must add that if there have been any other sources about the Brig's childhood and family life that might contradict this, I'm afraid I haven't seen/read them yet, but this is just a creative attempt to fill in a little of our beloved Alastair's past.)
Thanks and hope you enjoyed it!