Stephen Baxter - The Massacre of Mankind

At Baker Street station they joined in an elaborate game of queuing up and filtering through entrances and turnstiles meant for a comparative trickle commuting clerks. The station itself was a box of noise, the ringing and clanging of shunting engines, the shriek of whistles, thousands of excited voices echoing like a gull colony – but above it all there was a sense of organisation. In some ways, Frank would say to me, he thought the efficiency and order of the railways, including the underground, was one of the finest expressions of our civilisation. During the first Martian attack the railways had kept functioning even after the government itself had effectively collapsed, and here they were now, an essential part of the defence of the nation.

As they waited, he got to know Verity Bliss and her friends a little better. They all knew each other; they had been ‘munitionettes’ working at the Woolwich Arsenal, where they had picked up their first aid training, before signing up as VADs together under the prompting of the government’s public exhortations.

A military bakery van worked its way through the crowd, handing out free sandwiches, cakes, hot sausages, bottles of lemonade and water. Frank even managed to nab a paper cup of coffee. ‘Make the most of it,’ a regular told them, when some of the VADs were reluctant to take the food. ‘You sleep when you can, eat all you can get, for you never know when the Army will trouble to feed you again. And if you don’t want that sausage sandwich, love, I’ve got a good home for it…’

It was mid-afternoon, and Frank was already tired from all the standing around, when at last they were bundled onto a train. It was a Metropolitan Line commuter special that was standing room only before it finally pulled away. Frank and his VADs, among the last aboard, found themselves close to a door through which they could see something of the stations they passed through. The mood remained cheerful enough, though the MPs assigned to each compartment kept a watchful eye. In Frank’s compartment a tommy accompanied bawdy songs with a mouth organ, and at times he heard the skirl of bagpipes coming from a carriage further up the train.

Soon they were beyond Hampstead and out in the country, passing through Wembley and Harrow. They did not stop at intermediate stations, but the train did slow, and local people came out to clap and wave flags, passing up food and apples and even postcards. Frank saw troopers leaning out of the windows, trying to grab bottles of beer. And, once out of the city, Frank saw columns of troops marching, and howitzers and field guns drawn by motor and by horses. He wondered if the farmers and publicans were having their horses requisitioned, as he had lost his car: war always demanded a great number of horses.

The general flow was away from London, towards the northwest, towards Middlesex and Buckinghamshire, a pattern that did not go unnoticed by the more experienced soldiers on the train, who spoke in a variety of accents, mostly from the rich linguistic pot of London:

‘I reck’n someone knows where they’re coming down this time.’

‘Yeah, some ast – ast – rologer. ’

‘Last time they came dahn in Surrey, din’t they? Trying sumfin diff’rent this time, looks like,’ said an older, scarred man.

‘So what? Big guns would’ve knocked ’em flat las’ time, and it will this time if’n we get the chance.’

‘Won’t be like las’ time. Coming down somewhere else, in’t they? If that’s diff’rent, the rest will be. Stands to reason they’ll try something new. They lost, din’t they? They’ll learn.’

‘Huh. We don’t always learn.’

Laughter at that, and ribald comments about the failings of various commanding officers.

But the scarred man did not laugh. ‘If’n they’re smart, they’ll learn. Look at the Germans. They flattened the French in 1870, and they hit ’em even harder in ’14, and they won again .’

Nobody had a reply to that.

The train stopped at Ickenham, and they were disembarked. This, Frank knew, was short of the terminus of the line, at Uxbridge. Here personnel were formed up and marched away, and equipment was hauled off along the roads by horses or trucks – all generally heading further to the north-west, towards the town.

Frank and Verity, herding their little flock of MOs, nurses and VADs, saw little of the village of Ickenham before they were marched out into the country. They heard mention of units of troops from all over the country: the 4 thBattalion, 5 thFusiliers; the 2 ndBattalion, King’s Liverpool Regiment; the 1 stKing’s Own Shropshire Light Infantry. There were divisional troops too, specialists with their equipment, the artillery batteries there were Royal Engineers, the sappers. There was wireless gear and cables for the field telegraphs, such mundane gear as a field bakery, and more exotic items such as sections of pontoon bridges and the envelopes of spotting balloons.

Verity touched Frank’s arm and pointed at troops on motorcycles heading up the roads and across country, off to the north-west. ‘Scouts,’ she said.

‘Heading where they expect the battle to be joined.’

‘I imagine so.’ She shivered, and Frank imagined she was thinking that those forward units might be among the first casualties of any action – though somehow that prospect still seemed unreal.

Before very long the marching column broke up, and Frank’s group was led to a series of field hospitals, tents erected in the fields. The MP who brought them there briskly summarised orders he read from a sheet. ‘Get yourselves set up. You’ve got a water supply and oil heaters, or should do, check it all over. Tents over here, beds over there , supplies and whatnot over there . Bandages and a blood store, and knock-out drops and surgeons’ saws…’

Not all the medical staff were terribly experienced, Frank saw, and some of them paled as these words were delivered with gruesome relish. ‘That’s enough, Corporal, we get the idea.’

‘Then get to it.’ At the last minute the MP remembered to salute his senior officer, and made to turn away.

‘Hold on,’ Frank said. ‘What about the rest of it?’

‘What rest of it?’

‘We’ve been on our feet all day.’

‘And I’ve been walking around shouting at people, sir, and you don’t hear me complaining.’

‘We’ve only eaten once—’

‘Field kitchens over there.’ He pointed. ‘You can work out your own rota for that. Lavatories thataway.’

Frank looked around again; he had the sinking feeling he was missing something obvious, and was on the point of making a fool of himself. ‘Yes, but – where do we sleep, Corporal?’

The MP stared at him, and grinned. ‘No sleep for any of us tonight, Captain. Balloon goes up at midnight. Or rather, something big and fat and heavy from Mars comes down at midnight. Then we’ve got the nineteen-hour window, and when that’s done – why, then I reckon we’ll all be due a good kip.’

Midnight, Frank thought. So they were coming at midnight, just like before – just as Walter had noted. Looking around at the young, apprehensive faces around him – many of them could only have been children last time – he kept his sudden nervousness to himself. Nineteen-hour window , though: what could that mean?

It was late afternoon and the light was already fading. Seeing that he would get no more from the MP, he briskly set Verity, the junior MOs and the rest to organising the field hospitals and their equipment – hoping very much that he gave the impression that he knew what he was talking about – and then went stomping off to find ‘somebody in charge’, as he would later note in his journal.