Prologue: A Shadow over the World
Egypt, 1941
"Take him out! Quick!" Bellowed a voice. Screams echoed hauntingly, piercing the inky darkness of the desert at night. Another series of scarlet flares whistled into the air, blinding many an inexperienced Tommy.
Screams in frenzied Arabic accompanied a fresh flurry of footsteps, soldiers scrambling for a new position, their British officer corps too engaged in assuring their own survival to order otherwise.
The next round of shots, though, was unerring in accuracy.
Three dull thuds in the sand.
Three more young men who had no need to die that night.
Three more bodies would lie there, forgotten in the sea of sand.
The sniper knew better, though. The sniper merely loaded another bullet, and exhaled. 'Breathe out slowly,' they reminded themself. A sniper was no use dead, for the moisture would condense in the cold and reveal the little outcrop behind which they hid.
'Worry is for the weak, ' they muttered, and relaxed their tense form.
Their gaze scanned across the rows of khaki heavy machinery across the field, ignoring the crack of rifle fire and the rumble of artillery in the distance.
A regimental badge gleamed on a peaked cap, and that was all the sniper needed.
A finger pulled a trigger, an officer collapsed, dead, and the sniper was gone - nothing but a murmur upon the cool breeze in El Alamein.
North France, 1941
Aeroplanes roared overhead, the Messerschmitt's engines buzzing like a swarm of bees as they soared towards La Manche, and towards their targets in Angleterre.
It was nice, of course, that Monsieur Hitler and his sympathisers wanted the prize of the little island, but they seemed to forget what they had captured not so long ago.
It was a team of six who crept, under cover of night, towards the railway line. Their treasured cargo was a landmine.
Mercifully, it was not yet armed, and yet in not long it would bring destruction to the enemies of France.
Her troops may have been surrendered, their spirit broken, but the mighty nation could never be crushed so, not the mighty empire which had once been the terror of Europe, the boot under which the Austrians and Prussians had once been crushed.
Such a shame it was, that those same countries now dared fly their flags atop France's sacred flagpoles.
No, this would not do, not at all.
Under the scant light of the moon, the group went to work, shovels and pickets moving the soft earth away from the train tracks, and preparing hell for those who would seek to destroy freedom.
The mine was buried, and the team fled.
Early the next morning, an agent tapped a message in Morse into a radio set as they watched from the distance, a Lee Enfield rifle hidden in the undergrowth behind them, loaded and ready for action.
A train raced across the landscape.
It closed, closed, closed…
Boom
The agent left the scene, their mission complete.
The rifle would be put to work not too far in the future, in any case, and that day would come when the time was right.
For now, though, the place of a spy was in the shadows, and Garbo's muse would flourish another day.
The SOE would be happy.
English Channel, 1941
"Fire!" Came the cry.
The huge guns let loose, belching hell and vengeance from their barrels.
They were oh, so close to their quarry. Eye-wateringly, tantalizingly close, and yet so far from their goal.
Perhaps, a century or two prior, the captain of a vessel as proud as this might've licked his lips at this chance, a broadside at point blank range.
Alas, this was not such a time.
It was with bated breath that the officer
watched the enemy vessel take such a beating.
In ways, it was sad to watch such a majestic warship meet its end and yet it had to go down.
It had to sink, for a symbol of national pride had been violated.
He'd watched, that day, as HMS Hood left port, like so many others.
And like so many others, he had looked at that ship, that pinnacle of British shipbuilding, that sign of victory, and smiled, for Britannia ruled
the waves.
He remembered, with a grimace, as the Rodney had been rerouted from its convoy mission, and how a distraught midshipman had reported the Hood's demise.
Sink the Bismarck
Sink the Bismarck
Sink the Bismarck
Melted steel dripped from the portholes of the German Battleship, flowing like a stream of liquid moonlight into the waters of the channel.
Fires broke out aboard the crippled behemoth, marring the sky with ugly plumes of thick black smoke, and yet the firing did not cease.
Hitler's pride would meet the seabed, and its remains would stay there to rust. The monster that sunk Hood deserved no better.
Off to one side, another plume of smoke caught the eye, as HMS King George V let loose another salvo.
It was not long later that the mission was done.
They'd found that German battleship that was making such a fuss
They'd gone and sunk the Bismarck. The world depended on them.
They'd hit the decks a-runnin', and spun those guns around.
They'd found the mighty Bismarck and then they'd cut her down.
HMS Rodney's guns ceased to fire, her mission accomplished and her work done.
Fitting for the majestic battleship, once the flagship of the Royal Navy, it sailed away in victory, vengeance wrought for King and Crown.
Vengeance for the continent was a mere whisper in the mind, and yet every man jack knew that that too, in time, would come.
The world was shrouded in shadow, and yet, even in the darkest of times, light could be found if one looked hard enough.
A/N
Welcome to 'Even in the Darkest of Times'. This was just a prologue, of course, so expect longer chapters than tis, for sure. From the dates, you can see that it's set in the Second World War. I'll be dealing with the stories of ten characters to varying degrees - definitely not a light undertaking - and we'll kick off from D Day next chapter, to the fall of Berlin a while down the line.
Enjoy!