Chapter 108: A Christmas Story in the Three World Wars (4)

December 24, 1946 at dusk, southwest England, spa city of Bath

While the Germans are struggling to rebuild their homes from the ashes and celebrate Christmas, the British are watching their homes irretrievably reduced to ruins. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

Twenty-two-year-old former RAF Women's Volunteer Corps Soldier Anne Brown. Mormont, now wrapped in a woolen coat, stood on the third-floor balcony of his house in Bath, listening to the bells of the church in the distance, overlooking the street at dusk.

Redhead and blue-eyed Anne. Mormont is a beautiful woman with obvious Scottish ancestry, with bright eyes and a nose, snowy skin and red lips, a fiery red hair coiled high, revealing a snow-white slender neck, and a few freckles on her delicate cheeks, but it does not destroy her beauty, but adds a bit of innocence and playfulness. At this time, standing on the balcony of his apartment, he was slightly open, frowning, and his expression was obviously full of sadness and worry.

Hey, it's only been a month or two, how can the appearance of this city of Bath become almost unrecognizable?

As a famous tourist city in the southwest of England, Bath is known as the most beautiful city in England in Victorian novels, and has been a popular health resort since the Georgian Dynasty in England: because it has the only hot spring in the whole of England: Bath Springs.

As early as ancient Roman times, the Romans of the British Province built gorgeous thermal baths here to enjoy the comfort of hot springs. In the dark Middle Ages, the thermal baths of Bath were abandoned for a time, but with the advent of the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution, as well as the change of Western concept of hygiene and cleanliness, the picturesque spa city of Bath has once again become a favored holiday destination for the British rich and powerful. Luxurious villas, apartments and spa hotels have sprung up in the city of Bath. Cream-colored stone facades and columns, Roman-style marble sculptures, manicured Western gardens, and antique Romanesque open-air pools can be found throughout the city. On the outskirts of Bath City, there are also a number of palace-like estates with private hot spring baths for the enjoyment of the dignitaries from London.

Even though the British Empire had spent six years in the war, because the tourist city of Bath was neither an industrial town nor a garrison fortress, it had little military value, so it was rarely bombed before and after, let alone a nuclear bomb, and the various landscape buildings and pastoral scenery remained intact.

As a native of Bath, Anne. Mormont has always been proud of the beautiful scenery of his hometown. But at this moment, in her field of vision, the streetscape of Bath, a tourist city, has long been unrecognizable.

-- At least a quarter of the city's elegant Victorian buildings have now been burned to blackened ruins, and only a few crumbling remnants of the walls still stand in the cold wind. The once clean and well-groomed streets, dotted with greenery and flower beds, are also full of unsightly objects - all sorts of discarded furniture, useless debris, toppled stone and bronze statues in the streets, burned car and carriage wreckage, and construction debris found in the rubble...... The citizens used these things to build barricades, and they pulled up barbed wire outside the barricades, turning the city into a huge fortress. Other buildings were also roofed with sandbags and machine guns or mortars, reminiscent of the French Paris Commune during the revolutionary era.

Although twilight had fallen, the city was still sparsely lit - the city's street lights had been extinguished for more than a month because of the collapse of the power grid, and kerosene and candles were so precious in this winter of scarcity that no one was willing to light them unless absolutely necessary. Still, the curling smoke from the kitchen chimneys gave the dimly lit city some life. Especially now, when the light of civilization in the whole of Great Britain is gradually extinguishing and falling into the Dark Ages, even such a little ordinary breath of life is extremely precious.

Recalling all the things she saw, heard and the thrilling encounters when she escaped from London more than half a month ago, Anne. Mormont couldn't help but sigh faintly, thinking that even if the beautiful city of Bath had become an ugly giant fortress, as long as the neighbors survived, it was already good......

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Before the outbreak of World War III and the nuclear bombing of London, she was drafted into the Women's Volunteer Service Corps Anne. Mormont was originally working as a telephone operator at the communications office of an RAF airport near Dover. By the time she enlisted, the Battle of Britain between Nazi Germany and the British Empire had long since ended, and the Soviet Red Army and the British Expeditionary Force had fought on the continent, but had rarely bombed the British mainland.

So, as a woman who didn't have to fly her own planes, her work at the Royal Air Force airport in Dover was heavy and hard, but not very dangerous, and she was able to enjoy the special treatment of a soldier, very dignified and honorable - at least Anne. Mormont himself thinks so.

However, in the late autumn of this year, with the official outbreak of World War III, everything she knew was destroyed.

- London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester, Oxford, Liverpool, Belfast, ...... Familiar place names have been wiped out under the mushroom cloud of the Soviet atomic bomb. Whenever I heard the bad news of the destruction of a city on the radio, a girl in the Women's Volunteer Service Team who was born in that city wept bitterly and even fainted with grief.

On the other hand, despite their best efforts, the boys of the Royal Air Force were unable to stop the Soviet strategic bomber group from roaring again and again, gradually turning the country into radiant ruins, and in the end, even the Royal Air Force base in Dover itself was destroyed.

Although the Soviets did not include Dover in the list of nuclear bombers, the city and its military airfields were still the main targets of the Soviet strategic bomber group, as an important point in the Strait and the first barrier against the invasion of the European continent by the British.

And so, on that nightmarish night, from dusk to early morning, the air was constantly tumbling with the rumbling of muffled thunder. Before hiding in a bomb shelter, Anne. Mormont saw with his own eyes that the terrifying blast tore through brick walls, ripped power lines, and broke street lamps, shattering the glass of an entire row of buildings into pieces like a rain of crystals. And the building where he worked also collapsed in the explosion. Dense balls of fireball rose from the airbase, throwing countless debris and burning debris into the air, then flying in all directions, scattering onto the rooftops and alleys of surrounding houses, raising more flames and smoke. In the midst of the fire and smoke, the fleeing people screamed and shouted like madness, but they could barely hear their own voices.

When the bombing was over and the people who had escaped were back out of the dugouts, Anne. Mormont discovers that the airbase where she works has been completely unrecognizable, as if the end had come. Everywhere there are ruins, rubble and ruins. The oil depot and ammunition depot were set on fire, and thick black smoke hung over the entire base. Not only was the runway bombed as if it had been plowed, but also an unknown number of small bombs were scattered, which exploded twice from time to time...... The survivors ran and shouted, and the wounded cried and wailed, and the scene was truly horrific.

In the days that followed, although the survivors of the base tried to repair the runway, the Soviet bombers repeatedly visited and dropped bombs, and even poison gas bombs, which not only made the base less and less alive, but also made the repair never faster than the destruction. Moreover, as early as the first bombing, the hangar, ammunition depot and oil depot were bombed, and even repairing the airfield would be useless, so it had to be gradually stopped.

Then, as more and more nuclear bombs fell on the British mainland, the social order became more and more chaotic, and the domestic communication network quickly collapsed. Naturally, Mormont, the telephone operator, had nothing to do. After Prime Minister Winston Churchill moved the government to Belfast, communication between Dover Airport and the higher authorities was completely cut off, and everyone had an ominous sense of impending disaster and the end of the world.

As a young and beautiful girl, like ordinary people, Anne. Mormont's first instinct in this situation was to go home.

However, the way home was not easy. The more than 200 kilometers from Dover to Bath are only half a day's train journey in peacetime. But in today's time of nuclear explosions everywhere and the collapse of the country, a weak woman wanting to travel such a long distance alone is almost no less than a desperate adventure.

However, it was obviously more dangerous to remain in Dover, not to mention that as the first line of position to hold the Channel, Dover would certainly be the first landing site if the enemy invaded from the Continent. Mormont really didn't dare to hope that he would not be played to death in the prisoner of war camp; Just the colonial soldiers who have turned into bandits and robbers around them, and the Soviet bombs that fall overhead from time to time, are enough to make people tremble.

So, Anne. Mormont managed to get a pistol and more than thirty rounds of ammunition, found an ownerless pickup truck, collected some biscuits, canned food and wine, and managed to steal a barrel of oil from the still burning oil depot. Mormont and three other girls from the Women's Volunteer Service Corps left Dover Air Force Base and hit the road together.

Then she enters a wild land - England, which has experienced multiple nuclear explosions and has been abandoned by the queen and the cabinet at the same time!

England, once the brightest beacon of civilization, has now become a wild world where all civilization and order have disappeared, leaving only the boundless expanse of land. In this land, people wander everywhere in search of community communities that no longer exist. There is no government in any sense there, neither central nor local. There were no means of obtaining information - newspapers and magazines, railways and roads, telephones and telegraphs - all destroyed in the war, and the post office was no longer able to deliver letters. The panicked people had no means of communication, only a few contradictory rumors that had been passed on by word of mouth. Radios can be of some use occasionally, but the signal is always blurry and mostly in a foreign language.

Banks are gone, but that's okay because money is no longer useful in these dark ages. Shops are also closed because there is nothing to sell. In both urban and rural areas, all production activities have stopped, and even if the factories and enterprises that once existed have not been destroyed, there is nothing to do because the upstream and downstream industrial chains have been interrupted. And the workers had nowhere to get food. Law and order are gone, because the police and judges are gone. Right and wrong no longer make sense. Everyone has to fend for themselves, ignoring legal ownership, and in fact, even legal ownership itself disappears. Property belongs only to those who are strong enough and who risk their lives to save it. Men armed with weapons, roam the streets, snatching what they want, and killing the unfortunate ones who have fallen into their hands. Regardless of class or age, women do not hesitate to sell their bodies for food and shelter. There is no courtesy, righteousness and shame, there is no ethics and morality, only survival is above all else.

And what makes it even more terrifying is that even such scenes are not the most terrible, and even more terrible are not even all these seemingly evil and chaotic scenes—you can't see the tears of the dark and thin little girl, you can't hear the painful moans of the old woman, you can't see the hungry baby's face like a vegetable. In the charred rubble and ruins, there was only a dead silence, only a silence. Entire villages and towns were brutally slaughtered.

Along the way, they saw countless burning or dead villages and towns, and the roads were full of war refugees who had lost their homes in the bombing and nuclear bombings. Driven by hunger and cold, many of these refugees had become thieves, pretending to be honest and waiting on the side of the road, waiting for pedestrians to let their guard down at the slightest moment, then they would burst out and take out the weapons hidden in their clothes to kill and steal the goods. There are also a considerable part of the ruptured army, which has simply stopped cars and set up blockages in the open, or looted villages...... All law and order have been reduced to decorations, and the whole country seems to have fallen completely into the hands of thugs and hooligans, who stone shops, loot goods, kill people in the streets, rape houses ♂, set fires, and destroy corpses, but no one has to control or suppress them. Victims who lie in pools of blood are also denied any medical treatment.

Wait until Adam Brown. Mormont finally returned to her unrecognizable hometown of Bath after three days and three nights of terrifying adventures, her pistol had run out of bullets, and one of her three female companions had died on the way.

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Relative to Anne. Mormont saw all the chaos and tragedy on the way home, and the situation in the tourist city of Bath was quite lucky.

-- Although the Soviet Union's strategic bomber group also dropped a poison gas bomb on Bath in late November, killing several hundred citizens, it did not reduce the city to ruins. As for Annie. Mormont's parents and her house were also safe and sound in the bombing.

Of course, even so, Bath's running water, electricity and gas supply must have been gone, so that many frail elderly people froze to death in the harsh winter, and some people contracted dysentery due to poor drinking water. But while other major cities in Britain were reduced to radioactive ruins by atomic bombs, and small towns were reduced to ghosts under the brout of soldiers and starvations, Bath was able to keep its city intact in a paradise by comparison.

However, while the whole of Britain is gradually sinking into the dark ages of hell mode, the small inland city of Bath is not immune to it. Just in Anne. Two days before Mormont returned home, a group of black soldiers who had come from nowhere suddenly broke into Bath, killing people everywhere, setting fires and looting...... Fortunately, like most towns in Britain, a battalion of the National Guard had been formed in Bath at this time, under the command of a seventy-year-old retired army major general who claimed to have fought in World War I and the Boer War, the Bath Self-Defense Battalion fought fiercely with the invading mutinous rebels for a night, although it paid the price of hundreds of casualties and dozens of houses were burned, but finally repelled the black rout and kept most of the city safe.

Later, as the situation in the country became more and more chaotic, and the news of various routs and armed gangs attacking the town and massacring the residents came one after another, in order to prevent the robbers from attacking again, the municipal authorities of Bath organized the citizens of the city, collected materials on the spot, and spent a week urgently building a barricade around the city. Naturally, Mormont also helped. When the barricades are completed, they look ugly and hideous, and they don't fit in with the original Victorian atmosphere of the spa city of Bath, but they give the citizens a sense of security - more than anything else in the chaotic dark ages.

In short, by the end of December, England had been abandoned by the rulers, and the city of Bath had become a small independent kingdom. Although there is no water, electricity or gas as in other cities, and pound bills cannot buy anything in the city, the citizens still have a ration of 200 grams of bread a day, instead of having a meal and worrying about where tomorrow's bread will be; Have a house that can shelter from the wind and rain, and you don't have to hide in the wilderness to blow the wind; The peace of mind that you can sleep in your bed at home without worrying about dying in your dreams – in hellish England, that's already a luxury.

So, as Christmas Eve was approaching, Anne, after looking apprehensively for a while at the barricades at the end of the street, put a smile on her face as much as she could, and went down to her balcony to help her mother prepare the Christmas dinner for tonight.

After another half an hour, stepping on the last rays of the sunset, a wave of guests began to visit one after another, coming to attend the Christmas party held by the Mormont family. Among them were Dr. Wallace's family next door, the Reverend Vishart's family two blocks away, and Mr. Sulmond, who had fled to the city to join relatives and friends, who had lived on a farm outside Bath...... There are all kinds of men, women and children, no less than 20 people, from all walks of life. However, they basically have one thing in common, that is, most of them have the same red hair as the Mormont family, which is characteristic of the Scottish people.

-- Because of Scotland's recent declaration of independence, a shameful betrayal of the British Empire, the Scots who now live on English soil cannot help but receive more or less ostracism. The situation in Bath City is relatively good, and in some particularly conservative and isolated small villages and towns, there are even cases of Scots who have settled for many years being driven out to fend for themselves...... Faced with such a situation, the Scots living in Bath City, in the midst of increasingly worrying hostile eyes, could not help but strengthen their contacts and huddle each other for warmth.

So, in order to whitewash the peace, the town hall of Bath announced a Christmas celebration at the Yabel Church in the city center, inviting gentlemen and wives from all over the city to attend. But the Scots, who did not want to look at them, preferred to gather in the living room of the Mormont family to celebrate their own Christmas.

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Because it's Christmas, Anne. Mormont's mother, Mrs. Mellen, not only prepared a Christmas tree in the corner, but also lavishly lit the fireplace, lit three candles on the drawing-room table, and brought out a treasured collection of Spam luncheon meat, a jar of American egg powder, and a few apples.

And the guests who came tonight also knew that in this damn year, the food reserves of every family were very tight, and the pound bills had become waste paper, and there was nowhere to buy food, and it was very, very difficult for the host's family to make a decent Christmas dinner to entertain so many people, so when they came to Mormont's house, they all brought some food more or less, which was considered to be a share, such as Dr. Wallace brought a piece of corned beef and half a pound of candy, Reverend Vishart brought a basket of potatoes and onions grown in his yard, and Mr. Sulmond brought two bottles of whiskey and a bottle of beer...... In this way, a table of wine and food was finally put together, so that the Mormont family was finally reduced to the point of serving them with rat meat......

All in all, in the dim flickering candlelight, on the table of these shabby wine and food, everyone pushed their glasses and changed their glasses a few rounds, and they could not help but feel a little drunk, and they all opened up the chatterbox-some sighed that these Scots were becoming more and more unpopular in Bath City, and God knows what would become of them in the future; Some people complain that there is a shortage of doctors and medicines in the city, and it is even more difficult to get a few aspirins; Some people worry that the future of the country is uncertain and that they do not know when order will be restored; Some people recalled the burned houses and the relatives who were killed, and could not help but burst into tears in public......

Seeing that a Christmas party that was supposed to be joyful and festive was about to turn into a meeting of bitter tears, the Rev. Vishart, who was good at rounding, quickly stood up to liven up the atmosphere, walked to the piano in the corner of the room, and skillfully played the music with the help of the faint candlelight—first a few lively and joyful folk tunes, and then the traditional repertoire of the British evening, the world-class song "Friendship Lasts Forever".

So, with a slight drunkenness and a rare warmth, everyone stood up from the table, and sang in all kinds of voices:

“…… How can you forget your old friends and not miss them in your heart? How can old friends forget? Friendship lasts forever!

Long live friendship! Long live friendship, friends! Raise a glass and drink in unison, singing the praises of friendship for a long time.

We used to wander all day long in the green hills of our hometown. We've also been through a lot of hardships and wanderings.

Long live friendship! Long live friendship, friends! Raise a glass and drink in unison, singing the praises of friendship for a long time.

We used to paddle on the green waves all day long. But now it has been separated and separated from the sea.

Long live friendship! Long live friendship, friends! Raise a glass and drink in unison, singing the praises of friendship for a long time......"

In the echoing songs, some people recalled the beautiful peaceful years before the war, and some people remembered their relatives and friends who did not know if they were still alive...... However, before the song could be sung, a loud bang suddenly came from outside, breaking the silence of Christmas Eve. Then the singing and piano in Mormont's living room stopped at once, and everyone looked around in amazement, looking around for the source of the sound.

“…… What is this sound? Whose gas pipe burst? No, hasn't the gas stopped a long time ago? ”

“…… I feel like it sounds more like ...... No way! Could it be that someone is firing a cannon nearby?!! ”

Pastor Wishhart, who had been playing the piano, frowned, as if remembering something, withdrew his hand from the keys, took out a pocket watch from his pocket, looked at it, and then stood up and announced to the crowd, "...... Be still, and don't be afraid. I remember that the people at the town hall seemed to have said that there might be fireworks at the Christmas celebration at Yabei Church tonight. It's a little early now, but maybe it's early! ”

After hearing this seemingly reasonable explanation, everyone nodded and sat down again. However, before the Reverend Wishhart could play the music again, a large metal object with the sound of a whistling wind suddenly broke through the window outside, splashing a piece of glass shards, and then landed on the red-haired girl Anne, who had just come in from the kitchen with a bowl of hot soup. At Mormont's feet, he overturned the soup basin on the spot, splashing her whole body.

When everyone reacted, they turned around and looked intently, and they saw a cannonball poking at the pine floor, the front half of which had already penetrated below the floor, and the tail of the second half of the bullet was still exposed...... But for some reason, it didn't explode, and it was like an ostrich with its head buried in the sand.

Looking at the unexploded bomb that broke through the window on Christmas Eve, everyone in the living room had a wonderful expression for a while.

Pastor Vishart, who had not finished speaking, was dumbfounded.

Anne the redhead who splashed hot soup. Mormont was dumbfounded.

The rest of the guests were equally dumbfounded.

Because, apart from the word stunned, there seems to be no other word that can describe their hearts that are almost broken at the moment.

- Santa Claus is on top! There's no more exciting Christmas gift than this!

Of course, the next moment, in this living room, which was originally still happy, there was a hysterical and crazy scream.

“…… Damn it! It's really shelling! Lie down, everybody...... No! It's a quick escape, ahh )