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    Avenging Steel 1: The Fall of Edinburgh
    Avenging Steel 1: The Fall of Edinburgh
    Avenging Steel 1: The Fall of Edinburgh
    Ebook138 pages2 hours

    Avenging Steel 1: The Fall of Edinburgh

    By Ian Hall

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    October 1940... When German troops march triumphantly along the streets of Edinburgh, James Baird feels drawn to watch.
    At 20 years old. he is a student at Edinburgh university, and is ashamed he has done nothing in the defense of his country.
    Behind him the high ramparts of Edinburgh Castle are festooned with garish red swastika banners. Sickened by the music and swaggering Nazis, James takes refuge in Edinburgh University bar, determined to drown his sorrows before returning home.
    As his new role in German-controlled Edinburgh is revealed, he is determined to fight the new oppressors.
    In long novella parts, we follow James's story as a nation begin to rebel against Nazi jackboots.
    Thus begins, Avenging Steel, a new Alternative History series.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIan Hall
    Release dateMay 28, 2016
    ISBN9781310664045
    Avenging Steel 1: The Fall of Edinburgh
    Author

    Ian Hall

    Ian Hall is a former Commander Officer of No. 31 Squadron (1992-4), as well as being the editor and writer of the Squadron Association's three-times-a-year 32-page newsletter. He is the author of Upwards, an aviation-themed novel currently available as a Kindle download. This is his first full-length historical study, having previously penned a 80-page history of No 31 Squadron's early Tornado years.

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      Book preview

      Avenging Steel 1 - Ian Hall

      This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living, dead or undead, is purely coincidental.

      Copyright © 2016. Ian Hall. Hallanish Publishing. Smashwords Edition.

      Published by Ian Hall at Smashwords

      ISBN- 9781310664045

      All rights reserved, and the author reserves the right to re-produce this book, or parts thereof, in any way whatsoever.

      This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Avenging Steel

      1: The Fall of Edinburgh

      Ian Hall

      (From The Tree of Liberty)

      By her inspired the new born race

      Soon grew the avenging steel, man;

      The hirelings ran — her foes gied chase

      And banged the despot weel, man.

      Robert Burns

      On 10th May, 1940, Germany attacked the British and French troops.

      At that time, Britain had half a million men in France.

      By 4th June 1940, Britain had rescued 330,000 men (British and French) from the defensive bubble around Dunkirk.

      Between 15th and 25th June 1940, they rescued another 190,000 through Operation Ariel from French coasts and ports.

      In the short Battle of France, Britain had left behind 70,000 men, 450 tanks, 2500 artillery pieces, 85,000 vehicles, and 600,000 tons of ammunition, fuel and stores.

      The figures show Britain had 500,000 men for its defense… but with little arms, armour and ammunition to fight. Britain was ripe for invasion, and everyone knew it.

      Churchill spoke…

      … we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; We shall never surrender…

      On 16 July 1940 Hitler issued Führer Directive No. 16, setting in motion preparations for a landing in Britain. He prefaced the order by stating…

      "As England, in spite of her hopeless military situation, still shows no signs of willingness to come to terms, I have decided to prepare, and if necessary to carry out, a landing operation against her. The aim of this operation is to eliminate the English Motherland as a base from which the war against Germany can be continued, and, if necessary, to occupy the country completely."

      On the 16th August the first waves of German paratroopers descended on rural England. The next day, under the cover of the Luftwaffe, tanks and armored vehicles drove ashore in numerous locations.

      Within a month Germany had captured London, Birmingham and Manchester.

      A month later, Churchill’s much vaunted Battle of Britain was over.

      Churchill spoke to the British people from a fleeting headquarters in Ireland…

      … let us not consider this a retreat, not a farewell to our homeland, but as a gathering for a new offensive. And let me make this promise to Herr Hitler; we will return…

      Thus begins a brand-new Alternative History series… Avenging Steel

      Chapter 1 The First Flagellation

      Chapter 2 A Feeling of Hopelessness

      Chapter 3 Men in the High Castle

      Chapter 4 A Fly in the Ointment

      Chapter 5 Biggles Goes Forth

      Chapter 6 It All Becomes Official

      Chapter 7 Alice from Wonderland

      Chapter 8 Mums are the Rock of Humanity

      Chapter 9 Of Corpses and Patriots

      Chapter 10 How the Other Half Live

      Chapter 11 Of Wedding Bells and Honeymoons

      Chapter 12 It was the Best of Times

      Chapter 13 A Slice Into the Rough

      Chapter 14 The Four Man Stagger

      Chapter 15 Killing a Dead Man

      1. The First Flagellation

      I remember the day the Germans marched into Edinburgh like it was yesterday.

      It was exactly one week after my twentieth birthday, Tuesday 22nd October, 1940.

      Apart from the Nazis in their grey uniforms, Princes Street was perhaps the quietest I’d ever seen it, autumnal trees shedding their leaves like tears, the traitorous sky above loomed blue and cloudless.

      And yet still some Edinburgh residents turned out to see the spectacle. I must admit I was one of them, curious, searching for some remnant of reason why our own men had been beaten so quickly by these smiling grey automatons. I looked at each face under their coal-scuttle helmets, and wondered what made them so much better than our soldiers, now scattered into the hills like so many modern-day Bonnie Prince Charlies.

      I remember my own emotion, my own personal feeling of shame. I had done nothing to stop them myself, so how could I possibly set the blame on the soldiers who had fought so bravely against the German onslaught. Overcome with overwhelming tanks and artillery, with theirs so cruelly abandoned at Dunkirk just weeks before, how could they have stopped the juggernaut? Poland had fallen in just three weeks. Mighty France had surrendered in five. Our own forces had fought for seven weeks against the Nazi onslaught, then fled.

      Churchill’s much vaunted ‘Battle of Britain’ had been a pipedream, blown away as quickly as our resistance.

      I, however, had stayed safely in the hallowed halls of Edinburgh University, my own advancement considered loftier than the humble defense of my own country. I knew would have to deal with that particular morsel at a much later date. There was no doubt that if I had not directly helped bring this on, me and my similarly minded academic comrades had certainly done nothing to stop it.

      I thought of my father in Palestine, fighting in the desert against the Hun horde. I took some encouragement from his deployment, away from the fighting here at home. He’d never surrendered; he’d never fled to Canada.

      As I heard the first distant strains of music, I now realized I waited to see the Nazi procession, a self-delivered punishment for my inactivity, the first flagellation to atone for my previous misdeeds.

      Or more accurately… my lack of deeds.

      I stood on the garden side of the wide street looking down the shiny tramlines, my back to high Edinburgh Castle, my eyes unable to deal with the huge Nazi insignia now festooned from its ancient battlements. The shops before me were closed, all of them, their boarded up windows a remembrance of the street fighting of the last week, the threads of resistance, the brave heroes who had fired their guns for a few fleeting moments, then vanished from the streets. I recall sitting in the university buildings, head immersed in some technical book as if the pages could dull my senses to the random shots, the sporadic gunfire of a retreating and broken army.

      The shopfronts had been taken by the Germans, their long blood-red banners dripping from high windows, the pristine colors degrading the grey stone even further. The sun reflected from the huge swastikas where proud tattered Union flags had flown just days earlier. Somehow the gaudy Nazi colors greyed the scene, making it monochrome before a picture was ever taken; the red banners leaching whatever color remained in the stone, leaving them sterile.

      I knew I would never shop on Princes Street again; the appeal had been torn away, replaced by a reminder of my own complicity in my country’s defeat. I could picture a line of new cafés, offering the conquering heroes a view of their newest conquest, as they had done in Paris, just four months previously.

      When the marching band approached, I resisted the urge to run from my vantage point, to escape the final ignominy of my own personal surrender. I looked around; there was no wide-armed blue-uniformed policemen ushering eager children from the streets. My fellow Edinburgh residents stood sullenly on the pavements with no urge to see the band before they approached. We accepted its looming advance, yet perhaps hoped it would never arrive.

      My skin crawled against the shifting of familiarity, the dichotomy of sounds, the basic longing for a memory which had been snatched from me, replaced by this alien presence. Considering how many times I’d stood as a child, as a teenager, my heart racing, my mind dancing with the sounds of the oncoming pipe band. I’d felt giddy and excited, my core lifted by the Scottish-ness of it all.

      In precisely that moment, as I stood immobile like a deer caught in headlights, the full comprehension of surrender jarred me like a hammer blow. Today I would witness no Scottish parade. This would be no celebration of our traditions, paraded in front of me like some elaborate people’s opera… no familiar high skirl of pipes, no chanter drone, no rousing tunes of war.

      This procession was not an Edinburgh Festival March.

      My head reluctantly turned; the need to assuage my curiosity overcoming my reticence to acknowledge the passing of an era.

      In the brilliant sunshine that only northern climes can provide, an immaculately uniformed grey drum major marched in front, a red sash across his chest, but there any similarity with old memories ended. The helmet of this new leader was polished silvery grey; his weird manic goosestep looked awkward and staccato compared to the confident swish and swagger of tartan we were familiar with. The brass band behind him played strange tunes which seemed to hurt my ears, and I grimaced in recoil. I sensed we all did.

      The bass drone of the pipes was gone, replaced by the

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