ANVIL OF NECESSITY
Stuart Slade
Dedication
This book is respectfully dedicated to the memory of General Ivan Cherniakhovskii
Acknowledgements
Anvil of Necessity could not have been written without the very generous help of a large number of people who contributed their time, input and efforts into confirming the technical details of the story. Some of these generous souls I know personally, others I know only via the internet as the collective membership of “The Board” yet their communal wisdom and vast store of knowledge, freely contributed, has been truly irreplaceable. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Shane Rogers who provided much valuable insight into South East Asian and Australian politics and history.
A particular note of thanks is due to Ryan Crierie who willingly donated his time and great expertise in producing the artwork used for the cover of this book.
I must also express a particular debt of gratitude to my wife Josef a for without her kind forbearance, patient support and unstintingly generous assistance, this novel would have remained nothing more than a vague idea floating in the back of my mind.
Caveat
Anvil of Necessity is a work of fiction, set in an alternate universe. All the characters appearing in this book are fictional and any resemblance to any person, living or dead is purely coincidental. Although some names of historical characters appear, they do not necessarily represent the same people we know in our reality.
Copyright © 2007 Stuart Slade.
Contents
Part One: Anvil
Chapter One: World After War
Chapter Two: World Still At War
Chapter Three: World Going to War
Part Two: Hammer
Chapter One: Raised
Chapter Two: Poised
Chapter Three: Falling
Chapter Four: Striking
Part Three: Necessity
Chapter One: Demands
Chapter Two: Options
Chapter Three: Solutions
Chapter Four: Consequences
Epilogue
Part One – Anvil
Chapter One World after War
Wallsend, Tyneside, UK
“Good simple, solid grub, that's what I like. Not this foreign mucked-about stuff.” John McMullen's voice took up a sneering overtone. “Ree-Zot-Ow. Rah-vee-owli. Spar-get-ee. What's wrong with foreigners, why can't they eat honest meat-and-two-veg like normal people? Nah, they've got to muck around with everything.”
“I'm sorry luv, but its alt the shops have. I searched all day but there aren't potatoes to be had for love nor money. Tried everywhere I did. Even went down to the corner.” Maisie McMullen used the euphemism for the black market with the ease of long habit. “They didn't have none either, not for any price. Had some fish they said was cod from the Atlantic but it looked like herring to me. Didn't want to chance it. But the grocer had this risotto stuff, it was only one point for the box, and I thought it would be best. Looks a bit like potato don't you think?” She tried to smile bravely but tears were trickling down her cheeks.
McMullen looked at his wife crying, guilt at his outburst coiling around inside him. He hadn't been fair, she was doing her best to keep their home looking nice and trying to see they got as close to being well-fed as the scanty food rations would allow. It wasn't her fault there was so little food available and what there was didn't count as honest food for a British stomach. It was the damned Yanks who were responsible, what with them dropping their atom bombs on everybody. “Aye Maisie love. It does look a bit like a good mashed spud doesn't it? And it's pretty tasty when you get used to it. You've done us proud love, I don't know how you keep food on the table honest I don't.”
And that was the truth. The crops had failed in 1947, they'd started the year strong enough, but come harvest season, the ears of wheat withered and the fruit on the trees had shriveled. And the eggs, McMullen's stomach turned at the thought of what the eggs had been like. Even in the worst years of the war, the ration of an egg a week for each adult and one extra for each child under five had been maintained. Now, eggs had gone completely, only the dried egg ration, one packet per month per adult, was available.
Then, the winter had been terrible; it had started snowing in mid-November and hadn't stopped until March. The streets had been blocked up, what little transport was left had come to a halt. Coal was already rationed, then power had been cut as well. The gasworks had shut down, it had only been kept working by a miracle after the Yanks had bombed it, so the snow had just finished the job their Corsairs and Skyraiders had started. Old Missus Archer, they'd as good as kilted her. Two wars she'd survived, then she'd frozen to death, alone in her house. She'd just been one of thousands.
Still, the winter hadn't been all bad. The government had kept conscription running, but instead of putting the men into the armed forces, they'd formed them into shovel-gangs to dig the streets clear. That had at least been work of a sort and it had brought money into the house. Other conscripts had been sent into the mines, trying to get them up and running again, while more had been set to work on the railways. Nobody admitted it but it was the hard cases, collaborators and black marketeers, who'd been sent to work on the railways. It was dangerous work, the Yanks had dropped delayed-action bombs on the railway lines and a lot of them hadn't gone off.
The worst had been down south in Clapham. When the work teams had gone in to try and get the big junction there back into operation, one of them set off a 2,000 pounder. Killed more than two dozen it had. It wasn't just the danger, though, that made clearing the railways a job to be feared. In their relentless bombing of the railway system, the Yanks had found trains had started to hide in the tunnels so they'd drop their rocket-powered bombs on one end to cave the exit in, then toss some jellygas tanks in the other. Nobody got out alive from that death-trap and nobody who saw what the inside of the tunnels looked like afterwards ever forgot it.
Spring had come, such as it was, the snow melted and the work gangs were moved to other tasks; clearing bombsites, removing wreckage, trying to repair what could be repaired. McMullen had been working on clearing bombsites and learned the arts of that task well. It wasn't just a case of shifting the rubble out of the way; each piece had to be inspected for its salvage value. Intact or superficially damaged bricks had to be put carefully to one side for re-use, metal piping sorted and stacked for recovery. Also, the unending vigilance for unexploded bombs and rockets was critical. Every man had a whistle, if he saw something that looked like a UXB, he'd blow it and work would come to a halt. Then a bomb disposal team would come, check it and if it was a danger, either defuse it or blow it up on site.
Everybody had thought that when the spring came, the famine would be over. McMullen had drawn his seed ration from the Government office, gone to his allotment and planted them. He'd been there every evening, tending his little plot of land and babying his crops. Only, they'd come up sick and yellow, then died in the ground. He'd cursed his ineptness, tearing at himself with the accusation that he'd done something wrong to ruin his crop, but then he'd seen that the same had happened all over. It wasn't just his little patch, or the allotment area it was in, but the whole city. Then, on the radio, increasingly grave voices had revealed it wasn't just the whole of the country, the crops had failed across Europe. The winter of 1947/48 had consumed the last food reserves of the war-ravaged continent and there was nothing left. The voices on the radio didn't say so but people in the street knew the truth, it was the damned Yanks and their atom bombs that had caused the disaster.