Fall and Rise: An ISOT

[jemhouston]

That happened quite a while ago, in both worlds. What is now following isn’t really war.

Pest Control?

[Simon Darkshade]

Something in between shooting an over large rat that wandered into your backyard with a battery of M110s and that great childhood game of “Stop hitting yourself.”

[jemhouston]

Something in between shooting an over large rat that wandered into your backyard with a battery of M110s and that great childhood game of “Stop hitting yourself.”

I was thinking about this when I posted https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX39RDxA9dM

[Simon Darkshade]

A little issue that will come up in Part 5 is the @ Duke of Windsor and wife at Biarritz. In DE, he died as PoW in 1930, without there being an abdication crisis, so some of the bad blood isn’t there; it has the makings of a strange reunion, particularly with a living Prince John being part of the DE Royal Family.

Come to think of it, Tsar Nicholas II and the Russian Imperial Family are in Scotland, whilst the @ Kaiser Wilhelm is in the Netherlands…

[Simon Darkshade]

Warsaw had seen infrequent RAF overflights since The Event, with highflying Lancasters and Windsors cruising in the wild impartial skies above the Polish capital even as it suffered under the Nazi jackboot. Each night, the BBC could be heard on the wireless sets hidden in homes across the shattered capital, giving news of change, of hope and of victories. Again and again the message would come through

Hold on. Hold on. Poland has not been forgotten. The morning will come.

On this night, as to the West, Frankfurt burnt and the British Army smashed across the Seine, and in Warsaw as the Nazi oppressors continued to erect the wall around what they intended would be a Ghetto holding hundreds of thousands of Jews, the first inklings that something was afoot could be felt. For tonight, the RAF bombers dropped leaflets, telling that British, French and Polish armies were coming and that Poland would rise again.

They weren’t the only things to drop in that night.

…………….

Lieutenant-Colonel Gustavus March-Phillipps had had more comfortable landings, but the momentary discombobulation was swiftly ameliorated by his headquarters group being able to quickly assemble around their landing sight. Glider insertion from a skyship platform had been judged as the best means of getting his force into Poland on that night, taking advantage of the havoc Bomber Command was wreaking on Jerry back in Boschland.

His deputy in this hastily assembled force was an RN Lieutenant-Commander Fleming seconded from the Commandos in some intelligence role or the other, but right now, he looked to a figure on the other side of him, whose keen almond shaped eyes could penetrate through the night in a manner that a human’s could not.

”Someone is coming up ahead, through the woods approaching the field beyond next. There. They are pausing to make the signal, as appointed.”

”Hantatyë, Master Celebhethil. We may have need of your blade and magery yet on this night, but so far, so good.”

”Indeed. I’ll to my circle, then; we shall endeavour to make contact with Lord Laurefindelë in the second battalion, for they have the more fell duty ahead, even as he bears the Sumorsweord.”

The forward pickets of the British Commandos returned the appointed torch signals from the Polish Związek Walki Zbrojnej and their accompanying SOE agents hastily parachuted in to meet them.

[jemhouston]

Material for a new Bond novel, excellent.

In case you didn't know, the TV series Timeless did an episode where they went back in time to WW2 and they met up with Ian Fleming in Germany.

When they got back, there was a new (to them) James Bond novel inspired by that mission. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6046814/?ref_=ttep_ep4

[Simon Darkshade]

I haven’t come across that, thanks.

The thing in DE is that Bond is a genuine person in and of himself, having previously made an appearance fighting Nazi dinosaurs in the Congo and tracking Count Dracula.

Funny we mention Bond, as he is with the other battalion.
This one has the elf Celebheth, which means Silver Blade, being an original character.

The other one has Laurefindelë, who has been known by other names, which carry the same meaning of ‘Golden Tresses’. I am informed that he was tall and straight; his hair was of shining gold, his face fair and young and fearless and full of joy; his eyes were bright and keen, and his voice like music; on his brow sat wisdom, and in his hand was strength.

The second location being visited by his group, which includes others such as Moshe Dayan, A.D. Wintle and a Commander Bond, is a new concentration camp near the town of Oświęcim.

[Simon Darkshade]

Narvik
June 26th 1940

As Leutnant Unglückselig stood waiting on the dockside for his turn to embark upon the ship that would carry him across to England, captivity, and safety, he finally remembered the French phrase he had been trying to remember through the day.

Coup de main.

The 2nd and 3rd Mountain Divisions had retaken Narvik less than three weeks ago, and in that time had quite naturally little opportunity for the erection of any permanent or major fortified defences and fieldworks. There had been some concern of repetition of the earlier naval raids and the rampage of Warspite, but the Allied evacuation of Norway had seemed to have put paid to that prospect. In any event, General Dietl’s force had maintained outer pickets out in the Ofotfjord and the surrounding heights overlooking and controlling the approaches to Narvik harbour, and these were naturally expected to provide warning of any approaching enemy.

It was thus a circumstance of no small perturbation and confustication to the German garrison when, at 0942, an enormous British fleet had appeared in the middle of the fjord and began shelling the battered remnants of the coastal batteries and other strong points. There had been no warning, nor even any telltale sound, just a normal June morning and then a veritable maelstrom of destruction. Five huge battleships, ten cruisers and dozens of destroyers, all flying battle flags and bristling with guns, had delivered the first punch, but that had not been the most disturbing feature of the day.

Nor, for that matter, had been the sudden appearance of hundreds of English fighters and dive bombers out of an empty sky, swooping down to strike everything in feldgrau that could be seen in the open with withering cannon fire, barrages of rockets and some sort of horrific jellied gasoline bomb. It was a shock, to be sure, and he still couldn’t understand how they seemed to appear out of nowhere without the usual noise of engines, but aircraft and ships were known threats and ones that could be understood.

What had came as a true shock beyond the ken of ordinary experience was the troops who had seemingly rose up from the mountainside and fell down upon the Gebirgsjager emplaced around Narvik, for one simple reason.

They were not men.

Thousands and thousands of heavily armoured dwarves had charged down forth at the Germans, firing stubby automatic rifles and machine guns and supported by mortars and mountain howitzers. Many of the mountain troops had tried to fight back gallantly as befits good German soldiers, but they were outnumbered, outgunned and beset from all sides; those positions that did offer resistance were swiftly subdued by some form of shoulder mounted rocket launchers wielded by the dwarves or equally devastating grenade guns.

The German troops on the other side of the Rombaksfjord had the distinctly strange experience of being better off facing a surprise attack by several thousand Gurkhas, even as the tender attentions of the furious fighters from the far-off Himalayas would very, very rarely be seen as the lesser of two evils; a ferocious smile and razor sharp kukri was only ever so slightly less disconcerting than a bearded midget trying to introduce a landser’s nether regions to a doubled-bitted battleaxe.

Within an hour of the appearance of the fleet, the swarms of aircraft and the troops, all semblance of organised resistance had ceased. The landing ships carrying the Light Division then appeared from behind their screens of illusion and began to land the division directly onto the dockside, whereupon they proceeded to fan out into the town as per the carefully laid plan. Once empty, they were used to ferry the German prisoners out to the transports further out in the fjord.

The morning would see other landings at Trondheim and at Bergen, similarly using the decidedly unfair combination of concealing magics and overwhelming force to come down upon the Germans as the Assyrians of old, like a wolf on the fold. Royal Air Force bombers and Mosquitoes flying from Scotland and Gloster Reapers out of the Shetlands continued to hammer every airfield in Southern Norway through the morning, following on from the constant bombing of the last week, all working towards a greater purpose.

From airfields across the North of England, hundreds of Vickers Victoria transports took to the skies carrying the first wave of I Airborne Corps. The British and Canadian paratroopers were bound for Sola and destiny.

The liberation of Norway had begun.

[jemhouston]

The Germans are having a bad day, what fun.

[Simon Darkshade]

Considering what else occurs on this day, it turns out to be a little bit of an unpleasant one.