Lieutenant Peter Christopher waved for the steward to bring him another beer. It was warm, stuffy, and a little humid in the wardroom of HMS Talavera with the ship closed up at ABC Condition One. There was an east wind again tonight and nobody knew how hot the rain beating on the upper decks of the destroyer might be. They’d take readings in the morning if the storm had blown over in the night, otherwise, they’d be stuck between decks trusting the fans and the filters kept out the worst of the muck for another day. Peter suspected the now very occasional ABC lock downs were simply to keep the crews of the ships stuck in harbour on their toes. Every report he’d read on background radiation levels showed a continuing fall towards background readings between two and three times higher than before the war. Levels were lower in some places, higher in others but there’d been no reported cases of suspected radiation sickness in the Fleet for several months.
The wardroom stank of damp serge, recycled air and stale cigarette smoke. The smoking lamp had been out for the last two hours and the enforced abstinence wasn’t improving anybody’s spirits.
“We have lived through the fire,” the hated voice declaimed. There was a persistent, low-level background buzz over the ship’s public address system. Nobody knew if it was radiation degrading the circuitry or just a bad component somewhere in the system. They couldn’t do anything about the radiation levels, and spare parts were worth their weight in gold even if you could get your hands on them. “We have emerged from the valley of the shadow of death…”
The bloody man sounded more like a whiskey preacher every day!
“Already we are rebuilding our cities in memory of our immortal dead. Already our factories are running again at full capacity. Already our brave soldiers and sailors and airmen are carrying aid and succour to our loyal allies.” The pitch of the voice fell and became almost musical as if he was reading a Shakespearean sonnet. “I know there are people in this great American continent who say that ‘we have problems of our own’. They say ‘we are as yet too damaged to be able to spare our scarce food, our scarce fuels, our precious manufactured goods, and that we should not risk our irreplaceable soldiers and sailors and airmen in harm’s way’. And I hear you. I hear you all. But I say to you that we cannot stand by and do nothing because that is not the American way. Would you stand by idly while your neighbour’s house burned to the ground? Would you do nothing to prevent his child starving to death? Would you have your local sheriff do nothing while outlaws loot and rape at will? I tell you that it is our Christian duty to carry American values, American good sense, and American charity into the lands of our so sorely injured friends and allies.”
And presumably, further fire and pestilence into the lands of our foes?
Peter Christopher knew he wasn’t alone in thinking that; not content with obliterating most of the old world the new Romans seemed hell bent on remaking the new one in their own smug, self-satisfied image. He flicked a glance across the wardroom table at the Executive Officer’s stony face. Lieutenant-Commander Hugo Montgommery was seething in silence.
The wardroom steward delivered Peter Christopher’s beer and he signed the chit. He’d stopped listening to that preaching, hypnotic voice. The capacity to tune out the background noise was a thing they’d all learned quite early. Instead of listening, he viewed the pinched, grim expression of the stranger in their midst.
He guessed that Captain Walter Brenckmann, USN (Reserve) was squirming inside. He’d been a Boston lawyer, a ‘corporate litigator’ — whatever that was — the day the world went mad. Subsequently he’d been swept back into the Navy and posted to the very edge of the still civilised, habitable world. Or so it must seem to an educated, liberal minded man who’d thought the military was finished with him after Korea. Brenckmann was CINCLANT’s personal representative on the staff of the Admiral Commanding the Channel Fleet. He’d arrived two months ago and seemed to have spent most of the time since getting to know people. It was well known that C-in-C Fleet didn’t have much time for the USN, so the poor fellow had been shuffled from pillar to post, shunned by the Admiral’s staff. Brenckmann had visited Talavera several times. He got on well with the Captain and following the old man’s example, the wardroom had extended an open invitation to the grey-haired, rather forlorn lost soul. The fallout alert had trapped the American on one of his frequent visits.
“Today, I speak to you from Houston,” the whiskey preacher preached, evidently with a tear in his eye, “from the great wounded state of Texas…”
There was a break while his audience — or perhaps, his technicians — filled the airways with rapturous applause.
“I speak to you today from the great wounded state of Texas. Yesterday, I walked down streets seared by the terrible flame of a war that this nation neither sought nor would have fought but for the monstrous actions of our enemies. Let it never be forgotten that this great, peace loving American nation desiring only to co-exist in peace with its neighbours and the peoples of the world was attacked not once, but twice. First at sea, then, without warning on land. Our ships going about their lawful business in international waters were the victims of a cowardly, dishonourable act of unprovoked aggression. Hours later the illegal, barbaric, puppet regime in Havana — almost certainly at the prompting of the Kremlin — launched a pre-meditated, cold-blooded, dastardly first strike at cities in the continental United States. Two unprovoked attacks. Two attacks without warning. What great nation in the history of the world has ever turned its cheek once, let alone twice before accepting that war cannot be averted. Even then we stayed out hand. Knowing that we faced unimaginable risks we stayed our hand several more hours. Hoping, praying that our enemies would repent, recant their evil ways and step back from the brink.” The preacher’s voice was slowly rising towards an inevitable crescendo. “We asked only that they stand down their offensive weapons. We asked only that they agree, in principle, to withdraw all their forces from Cuba.” The voice was pleading, demanding. It was not the voice of one of God’s lesser children, but of a man who sat at His right hand. “We only asked that they return to the status quo before the revolution in that sad island. That they hand over Castro and his henchmen. Hand him over to us so that he might face justice for his heinous war crimes against the American people…”
The applause overwhelmed the microphones.
Thirty seconds ticked by.
“What did our enemies do?” The voice asked, sadly, as if he was both disappointed and a little bemused. “What did they do? I’ll tell you what they did, my fellow Americans! They readied their engines of war! They scrambled their bombers! They moved their missiles onto their launching pads! And they said nothing to us! Nothing, my friends!”
Peter Christopher was intimately familiar with the narrative.
We had no choice. It was us or them. What were we supposed to do? And anyway, the bastards attacked us first! For all he knew, it was true. Every word of it. Except, if it was all true why were the Americans constantly protesting their innocence? What were they so guilty about?