In February, it is still very cold in Europe. And such a cold weather is even more thorough for people who have lost their houses.

John, his wife and two children lost their house during the last bombing of London by German strategic bombers, and although the building did not collapse completely, it was already a real dangerous building that could no longer be inhabited. So now their family of four has to hide in the air-raid shelter prepared for the refugee shelter to live, the empty air-raid shelter is still very cold, there are a few families not far away, everyone is still familiar with it, but at this time they are all curled up together, shivering from the cold.

John went out during the day and sold his wedding ring in exchange for a few moldy bread and a bag of flour, and John felt that if the Germans bombed London again, at least the price of food would rise again, so he gritted his teeth and stocked up on some so that the whole family would not starve.

However, to John's surprise, he had just brought the food back to his new home in the bomb shelter, and there were more rich men in the bomb shelter, with folding beds, some simple furniture, and even some people brought radios and chairs, John did not know why so many people suddenly poured into the dark bomb shelter to live.

Later, I learned that it was the British Navy that suffered a fiasco, and the German heavy strategic bomber group attacked Manchester on a larger scale, causing nearly 10,000 casualties and destroying a large number of city buildings.

The continuous air raids and bombardments made the wealthy people of London realize the proximity of war, and finally realized how dangerous their area was. Rather than waiting for the German bombers to take care of London again, and then fleeing with their families into overcrowded bomb shelters, it is better to live in and find a better place now.

Therefore, driven by this kind of thinking, many dignitaries began to draw their own chassis in the deepest and strongest air-raid shelters, and sent butlers or servants to come down first to occupy a position. In this way, the originally cold air-raid shelter has miraculously become a little more popular.

It is a pity that the expected large-scale bombing did not come, and John, who was temporarily mobilized to serve as a firefighter's assistant, was left without a job, so John's family, who had no source of livelihood, are not doing well now, and can even be described as miserable.

He looked at his watch, and the eighty percent new leather bag in the corner, and wondered helplessly whether to find a place to sell these two things tomorrow. And while there is no chaos yet, stock up on some more food for the family in case of emergency.

But the next day, when he sold all his valuable belongings and stood at the place where the grain was sold with the money, he couldn't cry or laugh. Because he saw ten times the price of grain in the previous two days, and there was a long crowd of people buying grain with no end in sight.

The strangulation attack by German submarines on the transport line caused a temporary gap in the food supply of the already stretched British homeland, which was the direct cause of the increase in food prices. The defeat of the navy shook the hearts of the people of the whole country, and people changed their ways to hoard food for emergencies, digging another big hole for the British national food reserves.

So the price of food rose again and again, and if it weren't for the fear of not having anything to eat, John even had an urge to go home and take out the bag of flour and sell it, and it was estimated that at least he could exchange it for a wedding ring, and he could buy two more back.

On the one hand, the patriotic enthusiasm of the British people is indeed rare, and as soon as they heard that the country was in trouble, they consciously came to line up and enlist in the army. In a matter of days, the British mainland expanded from less than 100,000 to 300,000, to Montgomery's satisfaction.

Although most of the 300,000 troops have not undergone formal training, after all, the number of people there is much better than originally estimated. This also relieved the anxious Churchill a lot.

Next to the conscription registration office is the sailor's registration office, which is only a lot more crowded than the recruitment registration office. Britain is an island country, so there are many people who work as sailors in the country, many people have been sailors for generations, and there are even many experienced "old captains" in the older generation.

It is difficult for the motherland to make these old men who usually walk with crutches stand up again, these people are either the main force of the British Navy in the prime of World War I, or the waves that have gone to sea for generations, and they do not care at all about the intimidation of those recruiters that "German submarines are extremely terrifying, and the North Atlantic route will not go back in most cases", and they swear without hesitation to serve the motherland and become a powerful reserve corps for sailing.

Although the bravery and perseverance of these patriots made the British government and the Royal Navy less worried about the shortage of crews, the loss of warships and ships was truly irreparable, and in this terrible attrition of less than 25 days, Britain's almost astronomical total tonnage was cut by one-tenth of it.

Only a few in the know understood the weight of the Knight's Iron Cross with oak leaves hanging around the necks of the German Navy Lütjens and Dönitz, which was equivalent to the tonnage of millions of tons of British shipwrecks. So Raeder has frequently appeared in the Big Deutsche Zeitung these days, and even the marshal's scepter is dazzlingly blue.

Of course, this qiē was too far away for John, who was now just one of hundreds of ordinary citizens standing in line in front of the grain sales point, clutching a few bills that had been exchanged for selling his watch and purse.

He was not thinking about the fate of the fleets of the British Empire in the cold waters of the North Atlantic, nor the lives or deaths of tens of thousands of British soldiers on the French mainland. He was just worried about whether there would be food when the team arrived at him, and he was just worried about whether his wife and children would be cold in the dark and cold basement.

I finally got to the front of the line, and I could vaguely see the window selling grain, but I also saw an even more desperate scene. A clerk, under the protection of two soldiers, raised the price of flour written on the blackboard at the door by 30 pence per 100 grams of flour.

The price increase caused the dissatisfaction of countless citizens queuing up behind, and seeing that it was about to be commotion, the two soldiers were so frightened that they quickly took off their rifles, pulled the bolt and put the bullet on the chamber.

As the people's roars became louder and louder, an officer walked out of the grain sales point, he cleared his throat from the crowd and shouted: "Because the 7,000-ton grain ship Banyuemei was sunk by a German submarine in the North Atlantic, this batch of grain can only be sold at a higher price.

There were still people in the crowd waving their arms excitedly, shaking the coins in their hands, and cursing loudly, denouncing the injustice and despicability of this price increase. John didn't dare to come out at such a time, not to mention that he had just befriended an officer a few days ago, so naturally he would not oppose the army here, so he had to avoid the man in front of him who was waving his arms and cursing loudly, and ducked two steps to the side.

"Bah!" a gunshot rang out. The officer was holding a pistol, the muzzle of which was smoking, and the man who shouted the most fiercely in front of John fell on his back.

"Anyone who gathers everyone, incites emotions, or openly makes trouble will be regarded as German spies, and will be killed on the spot without interrogation!" the officer warned sharply. As his guns rang out, two soldiers at the door picked up their rifles, and two more soldiers with submachine guns walked out of the food shop with cold faces.

Two hundred-pound bills fell with two drops of blood on them. It hit John in the face, down his chest and into John's hand. He looked at the corpse at his feet, and took the banknote in his hand and neither dared to put it away, nor was he willing to throw it away.

Behind him, another woman in line stared at the banknote in his hand, but did not speak, and bent down to pick up the two ten-pound bills from the body of the man at his feet, and mixed them with her own money.

No one yells anymore, and no one doesn't follow the rules anymore. In an atmosphere of extreme silence, some people left the long line, away from the land of right and wrong, while many more chose to stay and buy the precious adulterated flour.

As John hurried home with two large bags of flour, his two children were jumping lattices in an open space not far from the floor, while his wife was standing at a low table, waiting for her man to come back for dinner.

"Good luck today. John put down the flour and said, "I'm lucky to have two bags of food." The price of food has risen again, otherwise there will be more. ”

"Don't go to dangerous places next time, honey. John's wife said to her husband with a worried look on her face.

"I ...... And nothing dangerous. John thought of the man who had fallen to the ground, remembered the unwilling and distorted pale cheeks, and stumbled to explain.

"There's still a little drop of blood on your face that hasn't been wiped clean. John's wife, thinking that her husband had done something crazy, persuaded her with some concern.

"Oh God, this damn life, this miserable life!" John quickly explained to his wife, "I didn't do anything strange! I just picked up some money from a corpse......"

"Huh......" The wife breathed a sigh of relief after hearing this, and smiled apologetically: "When will this kind of life end?"