Breaker Morant

Mother’s girls were partial to my cocked feather.

Back at our bivouac Vogan goes on and on to Brown about these things from Mars. He thinks the Curies may know what they are. I’m more interested in these things called X-rays, which can see through women’s clothing. Anyway, it should be a laugh.

There was a strange light in the sky. News of the strange things at Woking has spread among the boys of the regiment like we were a mob of women.

Brown volunteers to stay behind so he can cover for us again. It should be alright if we get back from Oxford before first bugle. We can’t get train tickets to Oxford, so Vogan booked the stagecoach. The return on the overnight coach will get us back in time.

Back in London, the news is that the Weybridge Artillery did inflict some damage but not enough to stop the Martians.

Brown was waiting for us at the club. We are to be Court-Marshalled for desertion, which in war means executed.

I hate Mondays.

We are at war with the Martians, but Brown and Vogan agree the threat of a court-marshal means it is unsafe for our health to re-join the regiment.

Woken in the night by loud noises.

Brown has been talking to refugees. He says the Martians are eating us. Brown reckons this isn’t a war – it’s colonisation. Not comforting!

Brown hatches a plan to go to Waterloo Station to assist the refugees in leaving. He says that if we kill Martians, they’ll send more. If we stop them from being able to survive here, they will stop coming. I tell him the only thing the Martians will understand is rule 303.

Mother and her girls join us. We have decided to stay in London to fight for and protect refugees.

I find a Colonel’s fusilier uniform. It fits me so well we decide I need a promotion. The promotion and the uniform make it easier to swing additional supplies, evoking a compliance to my authority that we need for our  growing militia.

The flow of refugees builds, and Vogan starts recruiting able bodies to help people move faster. He dubs us the Waterloo Militia.

We must work out how to keep people safe when they run out of the tunnel.

We have had two stampedes in the tunnel.

Curies have been little help. They have no idea how the Martian heat ray works.

Vogan and I begin to plan to take a tripod down to get their heat gun.

The Curies report that black smoke is rendered harmless with water.

They put together a system that bubbles our air through water in a wine bottle to protect us from the dust.

Brown leaves HQ to set up the refugee network routes and safe houses. He takes several boxes of Union Jack flags.

Have secured horses and a gun carriage, which we are keeping at the London Bridge station.

At breakfast handover, we announce that refugees can get as far as Finchley Road Station using the underground. Using the semaphore flag “R” marking the escape route Brown has made. The way is marked to at least Chesham.

Setting up safehouses where refugees can rest and be fed before their group takes its turn in the tunnels is working well. Guides report that it has helped that the refugees now know people in the group they are in.

Most Martian activity seems to be focused on Didcot and further west. Our own food supplies are getting low, and refugees are still streaming in.

At breakfast handover, one of the scavengers reported seeing a Martian capture a refugee and almost immediately release them. Apparently, the individual was hammered, and could barely stand. Pierre Curie immediately demanded we find this person.

On my mother’s advice, foraging parties have been directed to catch dogs, cats and rats to supplement food stocks. We hunt with bow and arrows and used the trapping techniques Brown had taught me. Not a popular move, but only the foraging party needs to know where the meat is coming from.

Foodstores at Borough Road is now looking better.

Before penicillin, Arsenic compounds were used to treat bacterial infections. At the end of the 19^th century, a safe dose in humans was well known. In contrast, later investigations into Martian physiology showed why it would be so toxic to them. Internally, they consist of a brain, lungs, heart, liver, kidneys and blood vessels. They have no digestive tract. Mechanically transfusing blood via pipettes from other animals, notably humans, was the only way they could sustain themselves on Earth. Metabolising or excreting arsenic would have been problematic, and it would have accumulated and caused lesions in their skin, liver and kidneys, making them very sick before they died.

It was perhaps fortunate that the Curies, were French, and were already familiar with the symptoms of arsenic poisoning from a scandal involving arsenic-contaminated wine in France in 1888. Regrettably, these findings could not have been widely disseminated as this is the only record of arsenic used against the Martians.

It also unfortunate that the Curie’s findings were not published as this was first evidence of what by 1900 would result in more than 6,000 people in England being poisoned by arsenic-tainted beer, with more than 70 of the affected dying as a result. The food safety crisis was caused by arsenic entering the supply chain through impure sugar which had been made with contaminated sulphuric acid. Although being first detected in London by the Curies the illness was prevalent across the Midlands and Northwest England, with Manchester being the most heavily affected.

Subsequent, additional investigation into the outbreak found other sources of arsenic in beer, which had been unknowingly poisoning thousands in decades preceding the outbreak.

Mother has started to take food to people who can’t evacuate. She has found a hospital.

I hope they like rat stew.

No Martians were sighted. With in my team are 3 railway engineers, 2 cavalry soldiers and Pierre Curie. We all ride horses and the gun carriage to our assembly point.

Vogan knocked down a tripod. As expected, the tripods went after Vogan and left us to retrieve the heat gun from the fallen tripod.

There were no problems from the Martians, and we had a heat gun on the gun carriage, but when we were headed back to Waterloo, we were ambushed by a group of civilians who claimed to be from the 4^th Coy. Coldstream Guards. They had a toff in charge, who said he was Lt. Kilvaney.

They took Pierre Curie, the gun carriage and our horses. Offered to write me a receipt and I told him exactly what he could do with that.

We made it to Southwark Station, then underground to Waterloo.

Marie was hysterical about where her husband might be. We have no idea.

Eventually the pub-crawl ended up at Piccadilly Circus where we found a party just firing up.

Mother wakes me for breakfast handover.

I hate Thursdays.

Marie Curie appears to be over her funk, and is asking searchers to find the fireworks for the Diamond Jubilee. Says that replacing the decorative payload with arsenic might work against the Martians.

Brown returned the pigeon that we got a refugee to take to him. He is in Edinburgh, apparently dropped by to see his father’s family and has established a refugee camp outside the city.

Marie requested an escort to Oxford but I said no. It is simply too dangerous. I have asked Mother to keep an eye on her.

Returning to the Underground, I see the Martian’s red weed has covered the Thames.

Marie Curie has discovered that a new hospital has been established at Queen Anne’s Mansions by the NUWSS, not far from St James Park Station.

We have no heat gun, but have found some bottle rockets. Therefore, I give Marie two barrels of Gunpowder, so she can make more, but make her promise not to blow herself up.

At the breakfast handover, we announced we could start directing refugees with medical problems to the hospital.

We toast Queen Victoria for her accession to the throne in 1837. This would have been the day of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

Vogan and I investigate the stationary tripod. There is no movement from the tripod except for crows that are pecking at something.

No need for Gunpowder; the tripod at Lambeth had fallen, and dogs are tearing at the Martian’s corpse.

Found an abandoned ale house and celebrate. This is good, but I tell Marie I would have preferred to blast their sorry hides with a heat gun. Marie refuses to work on the weapon from the fallen tripod but says that fifty arsenic rockets are ready.

One of my lookouts was a doctor by the name of Bernard Bloom. He claimed it was Almighty God that killed the Martians. He said that in our God’s infinite wisdom He used rotting animals to create a deadly miasma to smite the profane creatures. He chastised Marie  for using arsenic, which would have, he said, protected the Martians from the divine retribution of the miasma. She had chosen her own way instead of God’s way.

I don’t want to repeat Marie’s response. I was lucky my French is bad. Bloom wasn’t so fortunate. I got Bloom to leave, but it was mainly for his protection. Marie had many staunch followers, and it could have got messy.

I’ve never seen Marie so angry, and she had directed anger at me in the past. Told her that everyone with an ounce of sense would be grateful for her work to rid us of Martians.

Marie suggests Vogan and I go to the Martian base in Primrose Hill to release their prisoners and ensure there are no Martian survivors.

Marie instructs us on the fireworks, and we set off a test rocket. I wish Mrs Curie well as she and her escort leave the Station.