World War Ii - Blog Posts

Hudson if he actually went to The royal Canadian Air Force during WW2.

This would be the Poppy Field AU where Hudson actually survives the studio. No telling if he survives the war though...

War movies that I personally recommend

1917 (2019)

Anthropoid (2016)

Flammen & Citronen (2008)

Napola (2004)

The Pianist (2002)

Idi I Smotri (1985)

Schindler's List (1993)

Nanjing! Nanjing! (2009)

Der Hauptmann (2018)

13 Minutes (2015)

Forecasting D-Day From Above

Image Credit: Department of Transportation. U.S. Coast Guard. Office of Public and International Affairs

It was the raw courage of the more than 160,000 Allied troops who stormed an 80-kilometer (50-mile) stretch of heavily fortified beaches in Normandy, France, that made victory on D-Day possible. But without the sound advice of meteorologists and geologists working behind the scenes, one of the most consequential battles in human history could have gone quite differently.

As D-Day neared, the American meteorologists predicted fair weather on June 5 and pushed for invasion, based on a forecasting method that gave great weight to historical weather conditions for a given date and location. The British forecasters took a different approach, focusing instead on analyzing measurements of temperature, pressure, and humidity to try to map out weather fronts. Unlike the Americans, the British teams predicted low clouds and stormy weather on June 5. At the last minute, Captain James Martin Stagg, the highest ranking of the meteorologists, convinced Eisenhower to postpone the invasion.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey

Meanwhile, on the other side of the English Channel, German meteorologists had come to the same conclusion—and then some. Their forecasters had predicted that gale-force winds would arrive on June 5 and persist until mid-June. The Germans were so confident that the Allies would not dare attack that they allowed many soldiers to leave their posts on the beaches and take part in war games in Rennes, France. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel felt comfortable enough to return to Germany to deliver a pair of shoes to his wife as a birthday present.

Image Credit: Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. U.S. Army Audiovisual Center. ca. 1974-5/15/1984  

When the first paratroopers were dropped behind enemy lines around midnight and the first wave of Allied boats began to swarm the beaches at dawn on June 6, the weather was still far from ideal. Cloud cover meant many paratroopers ended up in the wrong locations, and rough seas and high winds made the task of landing boats and unloading tanks a terrible challenge. But by noon the skies cleared, just as the Allied meteorologists had predicted. The Germans, meanwhile, had been caught off guard. That day the Allies endured thousands of causalities, but they established a toehold in France that they would never give up.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey

An enormous amount of scientific expertise went into even the most unscientific of tasks, like rolling a tank up the Normandy beaches. Prior to the invasion, Allied military planners studied nearly one million aerial photographs of the shores of Normandy to find the best landing sites. The aerial photographs would have looked something like the Landsat 8 images shown above. Acquired by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on July 15, 2018, these image offer a top-down view of the sandy Normandy beaches that were center stage on D-Day.

Read the full story: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145143/forecasting-d-day

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alright, let me tell y’all a story about two badass gay (allegedly, but who are we kidding) resistance fighters in nazi occupied poland.

(rudy is on the left and zośka is right)

tadeusz zawadzki (aka “zośka”) and jan bytnar (aka “rudy”) met in 1937 at age 16, being classmates in high school in warsaw. they were also members of an underground polish scouting association called gray ranks (pol: szare szeregi) and they were both active in resistance actions and sabotages. some of the actions included ripping down nazi flags and putting up polish ones, painting “PW” on walls, symbolizing “polska walcząca” (”fighting poland”), blowing up train tracks or writing slogans over nazi propaganda.

rudy was arrested by gestapo (nazi police) on march 23rd and interrogated to get information out of him about gray ranks and the resistance. and by interrogated i mean beaten until he lost consciousness and then woken up to be beaten some more. but rudy was like “screw you i ain’t tellin you shit” and basically acted like he didn’t know anything. he was injured so severely that on the second day of his arrest he had to be taken to the prison hospital and transported back for interrogation on a hospital stretcher. so zośka decided “fuck this” and gathered a team of 28 people to rescue him from arrest. the action was succesful on march 26th when they rescued rudy and 20 other prisoners during their transportation to a different location. rudy died from his injuries on march 30th with zośka being right by his side. before his death, rudy managed to tell others the names of the two main officers who were interrogating him, one of which was herbert schulz who was shot a month later by zośka.

aleksander kamiński, also a resistance fighter, wrote a book called “stones for the rampart” which describes the history of zośka, rudy and other people from their scout team fighting in warsaw. the title, “stones for the rampart”, comes from a poem “my testament” by juliusz słowacki, which zośka has read to rudy on his deathbed and has insisted on calling the book that. (also because another book, rudy’s favorite, was called the same way)

“But I beg you – let the living not lose hope ever

And bear the torch of learning before their compatriots;

And when called, go to their death one after another,

Like the stones tossed by die Lord onto the ramparts…“

zośka died 5 months after rudy during a resistance action. they were both 22 when they died and both were awarded with the war order of virtuti militari (latin: “for military virtue”) which is poland’s highest military decoration for heroism and courage at war.

alright, you might say, but why do some people think they were gay? well, elżbieta janicka from the institute of slavic studies said “because we’re talking in a homophobic culture, where questioning someone’s heterosexual orientation isn’t an ascertainment but an accusation, i’d compare zośka and rudy to achilles and patroclus, a couple of legendary warriors.” in her opinion, a particularly telling part from “stones for the rampart” was where after rescuing rudy from arrest, zośka lies down next to rudy in bed and they talk about moving in together after the war and living in a countryside where they would spend unforgettable and happy days. zośka also says that during that time “when we were together, he enjoyed me holding his hand or petting his hair.” there were also rumours about the boys’ sexualities during the war, said zośka’s liaison officer. 

but whether they were gay or not, they were still bomb-ass resistance fighters and you should read “stones for the rampart” by aleksander kamiński (there’s also a movie from 2014)

On this day, 80 years ago, the US and Soviet armies met at Torgau in Germany.

how i feel after being the only person to post under the MLD tag for a whole year now (all my MLD posts get 0 notes) (the only other person in the fandom deactivated) ☺️☺️☺️☺️

For International Women’s Day, several feminist book recommendations! By feminist, I mean both books about feminism, and books about strong, complex, nuanced female characters created by female authors. (This is a pretty long list. Took a while to put together.)

Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie can find her way right to the heart of the issues that confront women every day. This advice can apply to women in all cultural contexts, and in my opinion is a must-read for all feminists. There Are Girls Like Lions: Poems About Being a Woman by Cole Swensen   A short poetry anthology about the moments of growing up as a girl and a woman. Circe by Madeline Miller Madeline Miller’s Circe is a triumph of storytelling and a triumph for feminism. In the Odyssey, Circe is treated as the selfish witch that Odysseus subdues. Here, she is given agency, life. She feels real and her desires and her courage and her fears will become your own. Madeline Miller has a true talent for epic prose. The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish An aging historian in London growing close to retiring as her body begins to betray her is given a chance to discover significant truths when papers come to light that tell an unusual tale. That of a young Jewish woman far in the past who longs to study and learn, to question philosophy and faith, and does so in secret while dreading the prospect of marriage. This book takes an unerring view of courage, personal truth, faith, philosophy, and what it means to be a woman. Flight of Dreams by Ariel Lawhon Emilie is not what she seems. And on the Hindenburg, it seems that everyone has something to hide. Suspenseful and enthralling, Ariel Lawhon’s imagining of the tale of the doomed airship flight is nothing less than a masterpiece.

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi Tomi Adeyemi has created a high fantasy book that draws its inspiration from African cultures and legends. Her characters and setting are refreshing and compelling, and the words will settle in your heart and blood. The people love fiercely and deeply, and the losses are wounding. The parallels drawn to racial violence in America are at once heart-breaking and enraging. A necessary read.

The Ash Princess by Laura Sebastian Her home was invaded. Her family murdered, and her paraded about as a trophy. Princess Theodosia struggles to reclaim who she is and what she stands for in a world that has beaten her and her people to the ground. If she is to free herself and her people, she must remember what she truly is. A queen. The Chosen Maiden by Eva Stachniak   In the early 20th century, the world of ballet experiences a revolution. Vaslav Njinsky, hailed as a prodigy, provokes confusion and outrage with choreography that is strange, halting, jarring – to many, ugly. This is the tale of his sister, Bronia, also an extraordinary ballet dancer. As revolution sparks in Russia and war begins in Europe, she learns to chart her own path and defy expectations. Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road by Kate Harris Kate Harris loved to read. She wanted to explore. To see the frontiers of everything. So, she decided to become an astronaut. But exploration can come in many forms, and she chooses to bike the Silk Road on her own journey of exploration. Told with candor, wit, and sweeping prose, this is my favorite travel book. Sold by Patricia McCormick A young girl in Nepal believes she has the chance to have a job, to help provide for her family. But when she arrives, she finds that the ‘work’ is not what she expected. Trapped in a brothel, she is forced into sex slavery. This is a difficult and emotional read, but an important one. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley A retelling of the Arthurian legends from the point of view of Morgan Le Fey, Ygraine of Cornwall, Guinevere, Viviane, Morgause, and others. It’s a very good read with very human characters and a heart of tragedy. The women in this book are wholly women and wholly human, with flaws and love and fear and difficult choices. Though I have one important note: I discovered this after I read the book, but later in life the author was revealed to have sexually abused her daughter and other children. Because of this, I wasn’t sure whether to include this one. I decided to because of the book’s merits and its influence on feminism in the nineties. I leave it to your judgement. Women & Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard Mary Beard is a historian with penetrating understanding of the place women occupy in society. Her manifesto addresses the power imbalances women have faced throughout history and in the present. My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg A collection of the writings of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman ever to be appointed to the Supreme Court. Accessible, logical, and wryly amusing, she provides insight into the workings of the Supreme Court, law, women’s rights, and many other topics. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah During World War II, two sisters are separated in occupied France. They find their own ways to survive and rebel against the German presence in their land. A well-written tale of sisterly and familial love, loss, courage, and endurance. The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson A fantasy story about a princess chosen by a prophecy. Her journey to find, understand, and accept the power within herself is as poetic as the book’s title. The Perfume Collector by Kathleen Tessaro Two women, separated by a generation, bonded by memory. This book is captivating – and makes you wish you had some perfume of your own! Memory and scent, love and resentment, mystery, and fearless choices twine together in this story. A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland Poems honoring black women who have been held back and trapped and chained throughout America’s history. This is not a comfortable read. But it is a worthwhile one. I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai This one doesn’t really need any explanation. It’s definitely a must-read though. Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II The meticulously researched story of the girls who broke codes in World War II. While their husbands and brothers and sons went off to fight, they went to Washington and learned to do work that greatly impacted the course of the war. Since they were all sworn to secrecy, their stories were almost lost. But not anymore. The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict Mileva Maric was a brilliant physicist and mathematician from Serbia. She attended the University of Zurich and was the only woman in her classes. After university, she married her former classmate: Albert Einstein. Her husband’s shadow is very long, but this woman deserves to step into the light. This is a rich portrait of a woman who was far more than merely Albert Einstein’s wife. Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World by Rachel Ignotofsky This one’s pretty self-explanatory too. It’s an awesome book with gorgeous illustrations and many awesome and brilliantly smart women. Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo Well, Wonder Woman, obviously. In this novel, Diana is finding her place as an Amazon, a warrior, and a teenage girl. Her confidence, courage, and loyalty is extraordinarily compelling. The book tackles the difficult issues she must face, involving war, peace, and the true meaning of strength. A Secret History of Witches by Louisa Morgan I always pay attention when I see the word “witch” on the cover of a book. In history, witches have been the women who were feared for their differences – for their knowledge, their beauty, their independence, etc. It’s a powerful word with a powerful meaning. In this book, witchcraft is real, and the women are too. It follows five generations of the same family of witches, examining and celebrating the bonds between mothers and daughters while telling a tale fraught with tension and courage. Face Value: The Hidden Ways Beauty Shapes Women’s Lives by Autumn Whitefield-Madrano An examination of the perception of beauty and its effects in women’s lives today, touching upon insecurity, image, idealization, and numerous other things. The Map of Salt and Stars by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar Another tale about two girls in different time periods (I love these). Here’s the blurb: “- a modern day Syrian refugee seeking safety and a medieval adventurer apprenticed to a legendary mapmaker – places today’s headlines in the sweep of history, where the pain of exile and the triumph of courage echo again and again.” The prose is lyrically beautiful and the story is richly crafted. An incredible read. Double Bind: Women on Ambition edited by Robin Romm Ambition can be a complicated thing for women. What we want to do can be altered by how we want to see ourselves – or more accurately, how we are socialized to see ourselves. An ambitious woman may seem aggressive and overconfident to others – while an ambitious man may seem dominant and just the right amount of confident. This book is worth a look. Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore A collection of her own writings tied together by the biographical work of Jill Lepore. In this portrait of Benjamin Franklin’s younger sister, Jane Franklin emerges as a shrewd, resilient, and confident woman. Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas by Laura Sook Duncombe This book is so awesome. It just is. Badass women from all over the world who wanted their freedom and took it. Need I say more? Geisha, A Life by Mineko Iwasaki ‘"Many say I was the best geisha of my generation," writes Mineko Iwasaki. "And yet, it was a life that I found too constricting to continue. And one that I ultimately had to leave." Trained to become a geisha from the age of five, Iwasaki would live among the other "women of art" in Kyoto's Gion Kobu district and practice the ancient customs of Japanese entertainment. She was loved by kings, princes, military heroes, and wealthy statesmen alike. But even though she became one of the most prized geishas in Japan's history, Iwasaki wanted more: her own life. And by the time she retired at age twenty-nine, Iwasaki was finally on her way toward a new beginning.” A tale of courage. the princess saves herself in this one by Amanda Lovelace A story told in four collections of poetry. The story of the princess in the tower, and the story of you. The Diplomat’s Daughter by Karin Tanabe After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Emi Kato is imprisoned in an American internment camp. Later, she and her family are sent home to Japan, where war threatens everything. This is a tale of love, sacrifice, resilience and hope in the middle of a war told in elegant and touching prose. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker A retelling of the Iliad (The Trojan War) from the point of view of the women – primarily Briseis. The wars of ancient times are often thought of as glorious. The picture this book paints of the siege on Troy shows the other side of war. It’s illuminating, intricately detailed and bluntly told. Everything Here Is Beautiful by Mira T. Lee A difficult story of family, mental illness, sisterhood, immigration, and fulfillment in life. Every word rings true, sometimes painfully. Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo This one was a really difficult read for me. It’s heart-rending. The love, jealousy, commitment to family, completely different cultural context… A difficult read, but worth it in the end, for the exact reasons that made it hard. The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff Another World War II spy story! But this one is less about code-breaking and more about the feet on the ground in Paris. A fictionalized version of a true story. Daughters of the Winter Queen: Four Remarkable Sisters, the Crown of Bohemia, and the Enduring Legacy of Mary, Queen of Scots by Nancy Bazelon Goldstone “Brilliantly researched and captivatingly written, filled with danger, treachery, and adventure but also love, courage, and humor, Daughters of the Winter Queen follows the lives of five remarkable women who, by refusing to surrender to adversity, changed the course of history.” Pretty self-explanatory. An awesome and engaging book. Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen by Sarah Bird Based loosely on a true story. Cathy Williams is a slave. But she is also the daughter of a daughter of a queen, and her mother never lets her forget it. In this daring tale, Cathy rebels against her constraints as a black person and a woman and joins the army disguised as a man during the Civil War. Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly I’m sure a lot of you have seen the movie based on this book. The untold story of three of NASA’s brilliant black female scientists during the Space Race. The book came before the movie and is just as satisfying in print as on the big screen. There’s also more exposition and nuance to the story. The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King Sherlock Holmes has retired to keep bees in Sussex. Then, he meets Mary Russell, a young woman with a mind to rival his own. What adventures shall they encounter? It stays true to the tone and spirit of the original Sherlock Holmes stories, but Mary provides a fresh perspective. Wonderfully done. She Explores by Gale Straub These stories are so inspiring. I want to go out there and travel the world and explore the wild and live on the road every time I read them. All Hail the Queen: Twenty Women Who Ruled by Jennifer Orkin Lewis Ruling throughout history has not been only the domain of men. There have been multiple women that have ruled with strength, cleverness, and sheer daring. These are the stories of twenty of them from all over the world. 

Do you know what I need? I need a fanfic focused on Wolverine and Captain America during World War Two. Picture it, newbie overexcited Steve doing his best to represent the US overseas and already battle hardened Logan committing war crimes left and right with his Canadian comrades.

Steve: It's so nice of you and your unit to be throwing food over to the enemy side. We'll be able to gain their trust and maybe convince them to surrender!

Logan *chuckling*: There won't be much to convince once we start throwing grenades.

Steve: Start throwing what? 😰

Faustus '47: Ch. 2 - Darkness

Photo by Veit Hammer on Unsplash

Chapter 2: Darkness

  The night’s darkness descended on them as they slowly crept into the cemetery, and soon Caldwell was squinting and swearing under his breath as the Scot ahead of him kept disappearing. The clinging rain-mist that had descended was not helping either. Knee-high grass clung wetly to his legs as he hunched forward, one foot slowly in front of the other, and every so often he found himself suddenly lurching into a gravestone or cast-iron railing around a small family plot. Wicker would turn back and hiss, and Caldwell would slowly fumble onwards in the new direction, trying to home in on the hiss and instead just discovering more gravestones with his kneecaps. The darkness was absolute.

  Caldwell felt the grass underfoot changing, becoming shorter, and suddenly he was on what felt like a gravel patch. The grating of the stones overfoot sounded like a gunshot to his straining ears, and Wicker was at his side moments later, gripping his upper arm.

  “Careful now. We’re almost in the old Breton district.” Wicker breathed the words into Caldwell’s ear, the sound barely audible over the soft patter of the rain. “It should be over the little rise ahead.”

  Caldwell murmured agreement, and wondered how the Scot could see a little rise ahead.

  True to his word, after another handful of minutes of slowly shuffling up what felt like an incline, Wicker stopped Caldwell and pulled him down to his knees, and the two crept forward on hands and knees from there. Caldwell kept the Sten slung around his neck, praying that the muzzle or action would not foul on something in the grass they snaked through. The ground was cold and sharp beneath his hands and knees, and his woollen trouser legs were soon soaked through. Pebbles and stray shards of gravel dug into his palms as well, making him grit his teeth at the sharp pains that sporadically flashed up his arms.

  After almost colliding head first with another gravestone, the first hint of light ahead crept into Caldwell’s sight. Buttery yellow flickered and twisted through the grass ahead of him, and upon reaching the crest of the rise, he found himself looking down on the Breton district of the Sains Grieu cemetery. Wicker was already there, flat on the wet ground, and pulled Caldwell down beside him to study the scene below.

  The Breton district, based on the old records that Caldwell had been able to scrounge up in Ireland, dated back to the time of the Crusades - if not earlier. A long list of noble - and a shorter list of less noble - knights and lords had been buried here in those years, and the centuries since had seen the district expand with more tombs, mouldering mausoleums, and burrowing crypts as others had been laid to rest in the same area. Statues of weeping angels, broken-armed men, and a host of other funeral themes loomed into the night sky here, and only the faint light of the distant lanterns made their outlines visible. Darkness loomed thick and heavy where the light failed to fall, and created a veritable maze between their position and the light ahead.

  It was the list of less noble dead that had drawn them here, after the informant message had arrived those weeks ago. The Paranormal Division had been canvassing the French countryside for years now, seeking out old tombs and burial places - but Sains Grieu was different. Sir Jacques Montbard was allegedly buried there - the same man who had, according to the rumours, sold his soul to the djinns of Persia during the Crusade, and returned a changed man. The story had been legend and myth for centuries, recorded as a footnote in the serious histories of the Crusades - until Caldwell and the other researchers in Dublin made the link between the stories told of Montbard, and those coming out of Occupied Europe. What the stories recounted of Montbard and his deeds in France had sounded like pure fiction - until 1942 changed everything.

  Someone else had made the connection too, though, which was what brought Caldwell and Wicker to this place. More lights were going up in the distance, achieving little more than multiplying the number of shadows and pools of darkness that lay ahead of them, and after a signal from Wicker they both set off down the other side of the rise. The grass here was shorter and thinner, and crawling along on their bellies took them into the shadowy alleys between the tombs in no time. Here, over moss-caked gravel and through standing puddles of water, they wend their way steadily closer, until eventually they found themselves at the perimeter of the light. Drawing up close behind a gravestone, Caldwell took a moment to check the muzzle and action of his weapon, fumbling through the motions with cold, stiff fingers, before turning his attention to the sight ahead.

  There were seven of them.

  Four were regular footmen, clad in bulky field-grey trench coats and with the lantern light gleaming off their rain-streaked coal-scuttle helmets. They had rifles slung across their backs, and were hauling more lantern stands into position from a stack of crates further away. Drops of rain glistened on their equipment and on the damp patches on their coats, but they worked in silence, without complaint.

  The other three were as different as could be. The first was a field chaplain, with a purple sash around his neck that reached down almost to his knees. A peaked cap gave him no protection from the rain, and the medals on his chest glittered wetly. He stood with head bowed, as if in prayer - Caldwell thought he could see his lips moving, but the distance was too great to be certain.

  The second was one of what the reports were calling necromancers. His uniform was black from head to toe, and a leather coat hung around his shoulders like bat wings. He too wore a peaked cap, but where the death’s head of the SS would usually leer there was instead an eye symbol in silvery metal, lined with purple. The same purple eye was visible on the collars of the four footmen, and had become the unique identifier of the Paranormal Division in 1942 already. By now, five years later, it usually evoked feelings of bowel-churning terror wherever it surfaced.

  An articulated, cable-clad gauntlet covered the left hand and much of the left arm of the necromancer, and a faint blue glow emanated from the shoulder area where it was strapped onto the man. Caldwell squinted and tried to see what powered the device, but the telltale cables which usually linked them to a generator of some kind, were conspicuously absent for this unit.

  Wicker nudged Caldwell, and pointed at the third figure.

  “Is that our contact?” The Scot’s eyes were large in his darkened face, and Caldwell could only give a grim-faced nod in return.

  The third figure was Codename Merida, and she was already soaking wet. Clad in only a thin white shift, and with her hands bound together in front of her, the Special Operations Executive agent knelt on the ground between the necromancer and the chaplain. A livid bruise covered one side of her face, where it was visible under her wet, dark hair, and a fabric strip had been used to gag her quite thoroughly.

  In the centre of attention, ringed by the lantern rigs, stood a waist-high stone casket partially overgrown with vines. A stone statue of a knight, depicted in Crusader grab and almost black with lichen, stood with arms and sword raised behind it, warding off a sun that had already fled hours before. The lanterns around it limned the statue in orange and yellow, and its outline blurred and shifted in the thin veils of rain that swept down.

  The rain tapered off just as the last lanterns got hauled into position, and when their lights were finally lit, the four footmen began to spool out reels of copper wire, connecting each lantern rig to the other via some complex pattern. Caldwell followed their movement like a hawk, drawing a mental image of the copper outline as it took shape, and when they were halfway done he could already see what the final design would be: a giant septagram, each arm tipped by a lantern rig, and with a large ovoid eye shape in the middle, centred around the casket. The reason for the oil lanterns, and the lack of generator lines on the necromancer’s gauntlet, suddenly fell into place in the professor’s mind: they were crafting the Eye of Ankara, a ritual that was notoriously troubled by the presence of mechanical machines.

  Whatever they wanted to do here, was going to be a highly sensitive ritual.

  A plan began to unfold in Caldwell’s mind as he studied the setup, and when the footmen were briefly on the other side of the clearing, he rolled sideways and ended up next to Wicker. The Scot was a puddle of darkness and mud, invisible except for the whites of his eyes. Caldwell realised that the man’s Enfield was aimed unerringly at the necromancer, and hastily clapped his one hand over the rifle’s rear sight.

  “Don’t shoot until I give the signal.” It was Caldwell’s turn to hiss, and it took a long moment before Wicker’s eyes shifted from the Germans and met the professor’s. Caldwell saw blackness there, blacker than the night that surrounded them, and the cobwebbed voices in his head seemed to titter with glee. “They are going to use Merida as some part of this ceremony, but before that there is going to be a lot of talking and ritual. I need you on the other side of the clearing, behind that angel with the missing head. Wait for my signal there.”   Caldwell pointed to where he wanted Wicker to move, and after a brief moment the Scot grunted and lowered his rifle. He scuttled sideways behind another gravestone, drawing his rifle close to his body, and was gone from sight a moment later. Caldwell blinked and squinted hard into the darkness, but there was no sight the man had ever been there.

  In the ring of lights, the necromancer barked an order at the footmen once they were done with the copper spools, and the four men retreated out of the circle to where the distant supply crates squatted in the dark. The man’s voice was low and hard, and when he ordered the chaplain to the head of the stone casket, Caldwell caught a glimpse of hard blue eyes flashing below the black cap. The recruitment and training programme that produced these men for the Paranormal Division was a great mystery to Caldwell and his colleagues, although it seemed to favour candidates that were cold, calculating, and very much in control of every encounter and event they partook in. Shrieking demagogues and bloodthirsty lunatics did not seem to pass into their ranks.

  Caldwell shifted, trying to make himself more comfortable atop the grave mound he was lying on, and gently drew the journal from his jacket pocket as the three figures in the septagram moved into position. Merida, still kneeling, was dragged to her feet by the necromancer and taken to the foot of the casket, where a loose end of one of the copper wires was quickly wrapped around her left forearm. The Crusader statue loomed over her, as cold and as silent as the hands that worked the copper wire. Caldwell waited - prayed - for her to struggle and resist, but the woman was limp and unresponsive to the hands that dealt with her. Whatever the interrogators had done to her, had taken its toll, and now she could only shiver in her wet shift.

  One of the lanterns guttered and suddenly went out, right in front of the headless angel where Caldwell had directed Wicker. The professor found himself holding his breath as one of the footmen hurried up, tinkered with the lantern to relight it, and then returned to his previous post. Caldwell thought he could see two eyes gleaming in the dark behind the statue, but it was probably his imagination. Wicker would not be seen until he wanted to be seen.

  With his journal opened before him, Caldwell slowly paged through it until he found the section containing the Ankara notes. The lantern light was fragmented and dim here, between the gravestones, and he had to squint hard to make the letters on the page focus. It was one of the rituals they had discovered second-hand from sources here in Europe, and had never managed to replicate in Dublin. It always seemed to fail at a critical moment - after they learnt to do it far away from anything mechanical and moving - and the longer Caldwell studied the scene in front of him, the more he began to suspect the reason for their failures.

  They had never tested it with a human sacrifice.

  At the casket, with Merida finally secured and the chaplain still standing with his head bowed, the necromancer positioned himself at the midpoint between the two, and began to speak in a clear, sharp voice. His German was only mildly accented - Caldwell placed him around the eastern side of Berlin within a few words - and carried through the lit clearing with ease. With Merida on his left, and the chaplain on his right, the necromancer stood looking across the casket - almost directly at where Caldwell lay, and the professor had a disconcerting moment of terror when he imagined that the German was actually looking right at him.

  The German words soon snapped over into something else, something Slavic, and Caldwell felt his eyes drawn to matching phrases on the journal pages. The paper seemed to shiver under his fingertips, vibrating in sympathy to the words being uttered, and the first outward sign of the building power was when the lanterns started to dim.

  Merida’s damp shape seemed to come to her senses at that time, and she began to struggle, but the necromancer clamped his gauntlet onto the back of her neck and kept chanting, never missing a beat. Caldwell could see the pain etched across the woman’s face even across the clearing, but between her bonds, the copper tying her into the septagram, and the gauntlet on her neck, she could go nowhere.

  The chaplain lifted his head at the same time and started chanting something in Latin, words that Caldwell could only half-hear, as a counterpoint to the chanting from the necromancer. Frantically trying to memorise the phrases, Caldwell did not even notice the copper wires starting to glow - until the lanterns suddenly popped out, and the blue glow of the septagram was the only light left in the clearing.

  That, and Merida’s shrieking as her forearm began to glow and wither.

Faustus '47: Ch. 1 - Fibres

Photo by Carl Tronders on Unsplash

  The first reports crossed our desks in 1940. The Germans were digging in Poland, in the middle of nowhere, ripping up ancient forests and tearing down old castles at a breakneck pace. Hunting for something, something that their people were desperate to find. The next year, when they turned on the Soviets and chased them out of Poland, the first thing they did was dig some more in the territories the Soviets had held. Scattered reports, unreliable witnesses, informants that went missing as soon as they spoke about it - it was a fog to us, and there were more important things to deal with at the time.

  Or so we thought.

  We suspect that between the digs in Poland, and the raiding of the Soviet science facilities that they captured, the Germans finally - some time in the autumn of 1941 - got their hands on whatever it was that had been driving them . Our informants grew frantic - and then disappeared. One by one the stations in their territory stopped transmitting. Our last report was from Warsaw, in December 1941. The agent spoke of a new German unit, the Paranormal Division, and that was the last we heard from that frequency.

  Spring 1942 saw the first dead walking in Russia.

Chapter 1: Fibres

  Caldwell stubbed out the last bit of the cigarette against his boot. The forest around him was dim, the midday rays already hidden behind a thick blanket of iron clouds. The drip and splatter of infrequent raindrops seemed to reduce the world around him to the clammy confines of his lean-to. The manual said it was a Tent, Canvas, Standard - but the reality was a bit of a wet mess that barely managed to earn its title as a tent.

  Wicker was outside somewhere, stalking along the perimeter. The Scot could not sit still to save his life, and his highlands experience made him a woodsman second to none. Here, in the damp woods of France, he could at least put that energy to use. At the Dublin camp, he had been as cagey as a hound with a sore tooth, and when their Whitley had finally taken off two days ago, Caldwell had breathed a sigh of relief. Dropping Wicker into the wilds seemed to be the only way to keep the man sane.

  Caldwell missed his books and his smoking jacket. To him, the wilds were a place best experienced between two sturdy book covers. The journal he sat with now was something else, something that felt wrong to him somehow - despite all the practising back in Dublin - and he could not look at it for long before bundling it back into its waterproof wrap again. Then, wrapped up, it would nag at him, with that little voice that felt like cobwebs in his mind, until he opened it up again.

  Footsteps crunched outside, and the tent flap opened. Wicker was dripping wet, from his tartan cap all the way down to his muddied boots, but had a smile plastered across his face that showed more teeth than Caldwell had seen in a long time.

  “I found them. On the northern road, heading east. Purple pennants on all the cars,” the Scot burred. Caldwell had spent enough time with the man to at least make sense of the accent without much effort by now. “One staff car, two trucks, handful of motorcycles. They are heading towards Sains Grieu.”

  “About bloody time we had some good news. Small mercies for informants that are reliable, these days.” Caldwell got to his feet, stuffing the wrapped journal into a jacket pocket, and reached for the over-loaded backpack that stood waiting. “I trust you can get us there in time?”

  Wicker grunted as he swung his own pack up and onto his back. Both of the men were laden with enough supplies to last them the next three or four days, if all went to plan.

  The rifles and the dynamite were there for the alternative.

  “There’s an old lumber trail that runs to the village. I walked it yesterday - dead quiet. I think even the locals must have forgotten about it.” The Scot had his Enfield wrapped in an oilcloth cover that left only the muzzle and trigger free. It went onto his shoulder, next to the pack, with a muffled clink. “We follow that until night falls, and then we should be close enough.”

  Caldwell took his own rifle - one of the last Sten guns, smuggled out of England before it fell - and made sure the waterproof cover was tight before also slinging it across his chest. The little guns were nasty and scrappy, and failed as often as they worked - but when they worked, they gave a terrible accounting of themselves. His woollen commando cap went on last, keeping the inclement weather mostly at bay.

  “Good enough. Let’s get this done with, then.” Caldwell stepped out behind Wicker, receiving a gush of rain in the face as he exited the tent, before turning and kicking in the lone tentpole that kept the canvas up. With a wet sigh, the tent folded in on itself, taking with it the loose branches that had been propped against its sides. Within moments, no part of their erstwhile shelter was visible except a tangle of fallen branches, and a guy rope which Wicker stomped on to push deeper into the mud.

  The Scot set the direction and pace from there, and Caldwell had to stretch to keep up. This region of France was far from the gleaming civilisation of Paris and Vichy, and after the culls of 1945 and ‘46, it had become an empty, dark place. The Germans had little use for this region, and left it to the devices - and ghoulism - of the Paranormal Division and its creatures. The handful of villages that survived here were fortified affairs now, walled and gated and barred against the night. Only the most critical of industries survived if they were fortunate enough to obtain a gendarmerie guard from the Occupation Government.

  Caldwell walked, lost in thought, as Wicker led them up stony hills and down mossy, leaf-choked forest paths. The place reminded him of home, of England - of the England that had been before the Germans came.

  1942 was the first time the dead walked. The Russian reports were confused and contradictory, and the British agents were hampered by the Soviets’ insistence on keeping them away from things. Communism could not admit to failure or weakness - every comrade knew this. Moscow fell when the dead from the disastrous winter of ‘41 rose from their graves, and swamped the city in their thousands. Stalin disappeared, rumours took his place. Leningrad and Stalingrad followed - the mighty Soviet citadels, overrun by their own dead. In the south, the Libyan desert twitched and stirred, and the dead there did what the living had failed to achieve the year before. Rommel marched into Alexandria by the end of the year, and the eagle of the Reich flew over the Nile.

  The next two years were chaos. The Soviet front collapsed, infighting and petty politics turning the communists against each other as they scrambled to make deals with the Germans. In England, there were reports of German paratroopers landing in the countryside, and the dead there too rose. Caldwell received a last frantic letter from his family outside Cornwall, and then he was on a boat to Ireland. Poison gas fell on the cities from bombers at night, and the dead would rise by morning. Buckingham Palace signed the surrender documents after that, while Churchill fled to Canada. Ireland played up their neutrality, like Spain, and managed to escape an invasion - but the Germans sent their agents over anyway, and one by one the resistance members and “government in exile” voices fell silent. No-one was brave enough to make a fuss about it.

  The Americans sued for peace in December of 1944. They had no bases in Europe any longer, and the fighting in the Pacific had achieved nothing. Russia had fallen as well, and the Lend-Lease ships turned around and went home. The Germans agreed, everyone shook hands, and the Atlantic became mostly peaceful again - at least on the surface. It was a big ocean to carry a grudge over.

  Wicker’s hiss broke Caldwell out of his reverie. They had approached the edge of the forest, and the distant outlines and hazy smoke lines of the village of Sains Grieu swam through the fog and the murk ahead. Its boundary walls were wooden palisades over a brick base, with lone watchtowers swimming in the fog. Blind sentinels that watched the forest, yet saw little. The two men found a lightning-struck tree as a landmark to stash their backpacks, unwrapped their weapons to do a last ammunition check, and then carefully transferred the waxed dynamite sticks to their knapsacks. The rain had not let up, nor had it gotten worse, and the pervasive damp was raising all manner of paranoid alarms in the back of Caldwell’s head. The Sten would not like it - nor would the explosives. Caldwell had a backup revolver, but in a firefight it was barely one step above having a letter-opener. You were already royally sunk if things deteriorated to that point.

  In his coat pocket, the journal with the drawings and the phrases still waited, wrapped in its waterproofing. The voices were silent now, for once. Caldwell did not trust those voices.

  Lightened and with weapons in hand, the two snuck the rest of the way in. Wicker had a knack for finding gaps and spaces to move between the foliage, while Caldwell felt like every branch and twig and errant bit of foliage somehow ended up in his face. The Englishman gritted his teeth and pushed on, trying to not lose sight of the flitting Scot ahead of him. Raindrops rolled down the back of his collar, icy cold against the sweat from the ruck march, and the forest floor swallowed his feet up to the ankles, soft moss parting and shifting as his boots came down.

  The cemetery was surprisingly large for the size of the village, and was located at least partially up the side of one of the small hills that dotted the area. Caldwell’s first look at the overgrown space left him with an impression of blackened trees, heavy bramble hedges growing up and over rocky walls, and a strange procession of tombstones that twisted and tilted in every which way. A neck-high stone boundary wall looped around it all,  the grey stones capped with wicked cast-iron spears that seemed to keep the clouds propped up from below. There appeared to be little rhyme or reason to the layout of the place, and while Wicker loped down the boundary wall to look for a gate, Caldwell burrowed into one of the wall-hugging shrubs. His hidden vantage point allowed him to peer over the wall and study the cemetery’s interior, the iron spears beading with moisture this close to his face.

  What was it about this place? Caldwell could not put his finger on it, but the longer he looked at it, the more it felt like there was something pulling at the edge of his vision whenever he looked for too long at any one area. Random jumbles of headstones would suddenly seem to form a pattern just aching at the edge of recognition - and then he would blink, and the fog would shift, and the pattern was gone. A black tree split in two as he watched, the trunks widening and moving away from each other as if born on the backs of some subterranean beast - but then they were one again, and dripping silently and unmoving in the grey that swirled over the ground.

  Caldwell felt his mind starting to spin into the pattern of dread that he had come to associate with the practice fields of Dublin. There was an energy here, something that spoke to the journal that lurked against his chest, and it was reaching out for him with fingers of ice and fear.

  Wicker was at his side the next moment, silent as a ghost, and Caldwell’s lurch of surprise almost sent him toppling back onto his backside.

  “I found a way in. There’s an old breach about a half-mile thataway,” The Scot pointed back the way he had come from. “The rest of the wall is brambles and spikes all the way, we’re not getting over it without a fight.”

  “Any signs of life?”

  “Dead quiet, all the way. The main gate looks to be past our breach, I reckon the main focus will be there.” The Scot had his Enfield in hand, the rifle cradled expertly under his one arm, and with the other hand he dug up a handful of muck from the forest floor. “Put this on your face, and then we can go.”

  Caldwell shuddered at the touch of the slimy soil and leaves against his skin, and soon both men were muddied and darkened. The sun, long lost to the clouds overhead, had been sinking towards an unseen horizon all afternoon, and the gloom of evening was fast approaching.

  “So, professor - are you ready for this?” Wicker’s voice was low when they were finally ready to set out.

  “Can I lie and say yes?” Caldwell tried to smile, but instead of relief felt only the trickle of mud down his cheeks. “I do not have great faith in our chances.”

  “I have great faith in this,” Wicker replied, and patted his bag of dynamite. “It’s not every night I get to hunt Germans, and I have never - in the entire history of my family line - heard of anyone in my family who has hunted the beast that we face tonight.”

  “An interesting perspective, for sure,” Caldwell muttered.

  The Scot grinned toothily again.

  “Come now, professor - how often do you get to tell people that you spent your summer hunting necromancers in France?”

  “Hopefully never, if we survive this - and then hopefully never, because of all the paperwork we signed.” Caldwell sighed, and rolled his shoulders to try and lessen the tension there. “You know we can never talk about this, to anyone.”

  “I know, I know. So we better make sure it’s a big beast then, to match the size of the secret.” Wicker winked, and set off down the side of the wall. Caldwell gave one last look at the cemetery on the other side, then crossed himself briefly before setting off after the Scot.

  In his jacket pocket, the journal voices started speaking again.

  They sounded hungry.

Wrote this in like two hours how do y'all feel about this?

Percy can’t believe it went wrong so quickly.

He was enjoying his well deserved retirement from the demigod life, hell he was getting to a point where he almost believed he deserved it. That’s when he heard his mom call his name.

“-Percy! Hurry come quick!” Sally called out and he came rushing into the other room, clutching his pen.

“Mom? What’s wrong..?”

The only thing she did was point to the radio and turn up the volume.

“…This is KTU in Honolulu, Hawaii. I am speaking from the roof of the Advertiser Publishing Company Building. We have witnessed this morning the distant view a brief full battle of Pearl Harbor and the severe bombing of Pearl Harbor by enemy planes, undoubtedly Japanese. The city of Honolulu has also been attacked and considerable damage done. This battle has been going on for nearly three hours. One of the bombs dropped within fifty feet of KTU tower. It is no joke. It is a real war–”

His hands began to tremble. War? Oh no, oh hell no. He’d had enough war in lifetime. First with Kronos and then with Gaea. He was not going to fight in another war, he wanted no part in it, especially a war against mortals. Killing insane Titans and Primordial beings was one thing, but humans? Humans who bled red? Humans in which the only difference between them is that their ambition wasn’t golden? Not humans. He’d avoided directly killing demigods, people with flesh and blood like him – maybe not like him, he felt more god than human these days, those people were more human than he was weren’t they? – before, but he had a feeling. This might not be something he could escape from. He clenched his fists as they began to tremble and the talking continued.

“The, uh…public of Honolulu has been advised to keep in their homes and away– uh from the Army and Navy. There has been serious fighting going on in the air and on the sea. The heavy shooting seems to be…”

Fuck. Was it just his mind or did everything seem to be closing in on him? It got way harder to breathe, like it was a struggle to inhale and exhale. He could feel shaking at the balls of his feet but he didn’t know where it was coming from. All he could hear was static in his ears. Was he dying? Was this the part where his life would flash before his eyes? Would he open his eyes (he doesn’t remember closing them) and be in Charon’s boat? 

“--Percy!”

Something cut through the static. It sounded familiar, the voice (not like the voices in his head– something real). He heard the voice again, calling for someone. Percy? Who was Percy? Was that him? He didn’t know. 

“Percy. You’re in New York right now and I need you to calm down sunshine.’

Annabeth? That sounded like Annabeth. But Annabeth wasn’t here, was she? (Suddenly it got a lot easier to breathe.)

“Sunshine, I need you to open your eyes.”

Well, if it was Annabeth, he could trust her. He opened his eyes hesitantly to see an IM of Annabeth in front of him. “Annabeth..” He let out a sigh, looking up at her. “... I– we’re going to have to fight. Again. Against mortals.” 

“Percy you can’t think like that.”

“Yeah, you’re right I guess.”

-

“Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya. Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong: Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island. And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our Nation.

As Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.”

Percy began packing his bags, staring at the sheet of paper on his desk. He felt a surge of rage and bitterness thinking about it. He was supposed to be done with fighting, all of this. But no, now he has to go fight for a country he’s not even sure he wants to fight for. But he has to fight, he has to fight against another evil, an evil that's not something of the godly world, but someone (thing) so terribly human it disgusts him.

“But always will our whole Nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.

No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.”

He slung the bag over his shoulder with the letter in his pocket, taking – possibly – one last look at his room before closing the door. He stepped out to see his mom and Annabeth standing beside each other. He couldn’t help but smile a little as he stepped forward to kiss his mom on the cheek. “I’m gonna miss you both. Ma, don’t get all lonely without me. Don’t forget I’m an IM– or a letter – away, don’t hesitate to reach out.” He couldn’t help but be upset. Paul was at Pearl Harbor and died (in water, in his domain, in his dad’s domain. He can’t forgive himself for that) and now he was being drafted. His mom would be all alone (because of him the voice in head head helpfully supplies).

“With confidence in our armed forces with the unbounding determination of our people we will gain the inevitable triumph so help us God.”

He turned to Annabeth and cupped her face, leaning in for a passionate kiss. He could taste the coffee on her tongue as he brushed his thumb over her cheek. After kissing way too long for being in front of his mother he pulled away. “I’ll be back. I promise. Never Again remember?” He said, his voice shaky, as if he was trying to convince himself more than her. 

“Yeah.” She said back, her voice just as shaky as they pushed their foreheads together for a brief moment. Annabeth was the first one to pull back. “Go.”

“I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.”

 February 5, 1942 Percy Jackson left for war.