Chapter 439: A Portrait of the People

In these last few days, the people of London were in a state of chaos. Those with connections were all trying to find ways to leave the city and flee to the countryside. Many wealthy people were escaping to the north; many were on their way to Liverpool, hoping to get their hands on a ticket for a ship, a ticket to Canada.

This type of escape was akin to illegal immigration, as the British military had explicitly forbidden civilians from fleeing the country. However, since only those with means could make it to Liverpool, few paid any attention to the so-called prohibitions.

American ships would absolutely not transport ordinary civilians to the United States or Canada, because the U.S. government had no desire to see the British establish a new “empire on which the sun never sets” in North America, thereby upsetting America’s geographical advantage. However, the Americans were happy to see some capable Britons come to the United States. They welcomed those with advanced technical certifications or genuine skills to come to America and become U.S. citizens.

In fact, American industry had never fully recovered from the economic crisis of the 1930s. First, Germany had poached a large number of its talents and strategic materials through large-scale, low-cost means. Later, it was forced to give a blood transfusion to Britain, which affected its own domestic industrial development. Even so, through it all, the United States was still on the path to restoring its status as the world’s number one industrial power.

Akado wanted to finish off Britain before America truly awoke, but wasn’t Roosevelt also trying to use Britain to bog down Germany so that America could rise in peace? The two giants were desperately racing against time, but what they were fighting over was the territory of another country. As Britons, they finally understood the feelings of the Chinese during the Russo-Japanese War. The feng shui truly turns; who can say it’s not karma?

Refugees filled the streets. Because London was guarded by the British army on all sides, the entire city felt incredibly crowded. John walked along the street, which had not been this lively for a long time, looking at the diverse crowd around him with the lifeless eyes of a lost soul.

The words his officer patron had said to him a few days ago were still buried in his heart. He had never mentioned it to his wife. He didn’t know which child to choose to leave Britain if the plan succeeded. He didn’t know if the one who stayed behind would die in the coming war.

Sometimes, things were just that cruel. Although he loved each of his children deeply, John had to make the best choice before the time came. He didn’t know who to choose, nor did he know if the other one would think he didn’t love them enough.

In recent days, the German air force’s bombing of London had almost stopped. The occasional visit was merely a symbolic dropping of a few bombs. So, as a coordinating officer for air defense and disaster relief, John’s work had not been busy recently. He had a lot of time to daze off, and a lot of time to think about the things he had to figure out.

“Hey! John!” A dispatch rider on a motorcycle spotted him wandering the street, called out, and drove up beside him. “Why the long face? Did you get transferred to the front?”

“No, still the same old job. What about you? Don’t you have a grandfather who’s an officer? How come you haven’t left?” John said with a smile, patting his pocket. He pulled out a crumpled cigarette pack and found only one left. He had no choice but to offer it to the young dispatch rider.

The dispatch rider took out his own cigarettes and tossed the whole pack to John, then took the slightly bent cigarette from John’s hand and put it to his lips. “I’m leaving in a few days, for Liverpool! Don’t think I’m getting off easy. The moment I leave, my grandfather will have to die on the battlefield. Sometimes I think those bastards up top are a bunch of sons of bitches. Why don’t they just negotiate for peace?”

“You should be grateful. At least you can go to Canada and escape for a while. Maybe you can even come back someday,” John said with a helpless smile, lighting a cigarette of his own. “If you’re still complaining, how are little people like us supposed to live?”

The young dispatch rider took a drag from his cigarette and sighed, narrowing his eyes. “I have my own circle, you know. A few of my drinking buddies ended up in a concentration camp at Dunkirk, and some died at Norwich. I delivered the condolence letter myself yesterday. I’m the only one left, running off to Canada to muddle through life. You think that’s easy?”

“I have two kids, a boy and a girl… I’m just a nobody, with only so much I can do… I can only send one,” the weather-beaten man said, a cigarette dangling from his lips, his eyes seeming to well up.

“…” The dispatch rider was stunned, then fell into a long daze. Finally, he gave a bitter smile. “I always thought I had it bad, but it turns out everyone has their own sorrows. Let’s not talk about it. It was good to know you. Take everything on my bike. Don’t be stingy these next few days, give your kids something good to eat.”

As he spoke, the young dispatch rider handed John the last of his bread. “I’m not a good person either. To be honest, if you eat a little more, it means someone else will go hungry. But I don’t know those people, so I feel a bit more at ease.”

John didn’t say thank you. He just took the bread and patted the young man’s shoulder. “When you get to Canada, live a good life. If I don’t die this time, I’ll come and see you if I get the chance.”

“Deal! If you can’t make it, I’ll come back to see you… and my grandfather…” the young man nodded in agreement. “When the war is over, we’ll open a bakery together! We’ll just sell bread! So that no one around us will ever go hungry!”

“Deal!” John said, watching the young man leave. He looked at the large bag of bread in his hands, took out a piece, and gave it to a shuffling old woman who was walking towards him. He ignored the old woman’s thanks and tears and quickly walked away.

Not long after he left, a hurried-looking man walked down the street. He stood at the entrance of a nearby alley, his hands in his pockets, staring blankly at a window across the street. Soon, a flash of light came from within the quiet window, then all the glass shattered, and a brilliant flame and thick smoke spewed out, followed by a deafening explosion.

After seeing the explosion, the strangely behaved man turned and left the street, which was now filled with the sound of alarm bells, screams, and cries. At the crossroads at the end of the street, he met up with several other men with the same demeanor, and they disappeared into the vast sea of people. A little while later, several more violent explosions occurred on the same street. After ruling out the possibility of a bombing raid, the British classified these incidents as sabotage.

However, no one knew whether it was the people themselves setting off the hand grenades distributed to them by the government, or if Germans had infiltrated London to carry out terrorist attacks. With the German tanks just a few dozen kilometers away, no one cared anymore whether a few German spies had slipped in.

These men were German special forces who had infiltrated London to carry out preliminary sabotage. Although they did not carry many weapons, the whole of London was now awash with military ordnance that had fallen into civilian hands, so they were truly in their element. Simply breaking into a civilian’s home, killing a few old men and women, and then using a candle, a book, and some string to make a simple timed device with a hand grenade was so easy for these German special forces that it couldn’t even be considered training.

They operated in two-man teams, and although there were only 60 of them in total, they could create 30 simultaneous explosions across the vast city of London. This was a natural battlefield for special forces, a natural special zone for terrorist attacks. The hand grenades distributed to the civilians, before they could even pose a threat to the German soldiers, had already become a nightmare for the entire civilian population of London.

Originally, some people thought they could identify these infiltrated German soldiers by spotting strangers. But they soon discovered that this was an almost impossible task. The streets of London were in ruins, and many of the air-raid shelters were filled with strangers who didn’t know each other. Even when the army went out on patrols, these German special forces could hide from the search in the many ownerless, empty houses.

And during a sweep operation on March 2nd, the body of a German special forces soldier who happened to be killed was found to be carrying meticulously forged documents and a large amount of British currency, leaving no doubt as to the intelligence of the enemy’s move to infiltrate London at this time. They used a method of attack with a negligible cost to deal a heavy blow to the morale of the British military and civilians defending London. Later, these German special forces even began to stockpile hand grenades and, under the cover of night, would throw a dozen of them at once into the entrance of an air-raid shelter, turning the refugees inside, who had been too numerous for them to target before, into terrified birds startled at the mere twang of a bowstring.

The air-raid shelter where John’s family was staying was attacked with three hand grenades by a German special forces soldier. Fortunately, John’s family and Mrs. Mary lived in the inner part of the shelter, so they were lucky enough to escape injury. John was forced to organize a few men to patrol the entrance of the shelter, stopping any stranger who tried to approach. Only then did he manage to barely ensure the safety of his own shelter.

However, as this method slowly became more popular, the German special forces also began to organize targeted operations. They no longer targeted the air-raid shelters but went after lone residents, causing endless headaches for the British civilians and the London garrison.

In the end, the London Defense Command ordered residents to gather in designated residences as much as possible and forbade them from going out or moving around on their own. The army patrolled the streets nonstop, which brought some slight improvement to the situation. However, as the German army approached London, the number of fleeing British civilians grew, and the military’s prohibition became more and more like a piece of waste paper.