SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Two
Becalmed in the Ditch, the Free French Navy proton-powered aircraft carrier, Honfleur, drifted aimlessly. The great ship floundered some fifty miles off the coast of Ninety Mile Beach, New Zealand.
What was once called The Tasman Sea, lies between Australia and New Zealand – named after the Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman, the first recorded European to encounter New Zealand and Tasmania. It was, until 2022, unceremoniously referred to in both Australia and New Zealand as the Ditch. But due to political finesse – a concession to New Zealand territories – this prosaic name, The Ditch, became the official name and, Tasman Sea dropped.
Inside the ultra-modern aircraft carrier, deep in the bowels of the nuclear IBM silo, a group of seamen worked in frenzy. They were desperately hosing and pumping water into the missile housings.
‘Sir, we’ve cooled missile-one casing by thirty degrees,’ said Lieutenant Miro, a meticulously uniformed officer in starched white jacket bearing the amalgam Tricolore/Union Jack emblem on the sleeve. He spoke urgently into the intercom to his captain. ‘It is stable, but now number-four housing is overheating and none of the missile commands answer; everything has to be done manually – goddamit what is happening?’ He stopped abruptly and checked his anger. ‘Sorry, Sir. We’ll keep hosing and hope it brings the temperature down.’ After switching off the intercom he wiped the sweat and the look of hopelessness from his face. Now composed, he gave the order to continue, then delved his hands into the water, actively taking part in the task and soiling his spotless uniform. After a few minutes, he took his jacket off and hung it on the gantry, purposely hiding the offending TriJack. As he worked his thoughts travelled back to his cadet training days, his days of revolution, as he fondly liked to remember them; he with his friends and his beloved Cassie. He could see her dark eyes through the mist of steam and water spray; it was like she was there with him in the silo. But it had been passive revolution, only token protest. Money, the UK Pound, the EuroFranc and the US Dollar, was speaking. Their rallying words, when they met at the Bastilleur, were, “Vive le Europe!” – “Fief Angleterre merde!”
It was the Fête de la Fédération, Federation Holiday, or as the dammed Dirty English insisted, ‘Bastille Day’. He spat into the water. He spat every time he mentioned their name. The Bastilleur, the name given to the site of the Bastille, was the eternal rallying point for student unrest, and the café where they always met was supposedly the one Marius and Enjoiras, of Hugo’s Les Misérables, used to meet. He hummed the rallying music, but overlaying it came, ‘Jerusalem’, the Greater Britain national anthem – that’s what they’d done to him, polluted his very thoughts. ‘Their time will come! – Hopefully someone at this very moment is plotting.’ How he wished it were he. ‘Damn the English, and damn the Americans who sanctioned the damned alliance – damn, damn, damn!’ – ‘How in God’s name had France come to this?’ He said it out loud then spat again.
Historically, relations between France and England had been volatile since the Norman Conquest in 1066 – “the Frogs started it”, as the ENS, English National Supporters, would say. The Duke of Normandy, a French fief (feudal lord), became the first Plantagenet King of England, though still subservient to the French crown. But this relationship was never stable, and it only survived as long as the French crown was weak. From 1066 to 1214 the Plantagenet Kings of England held extensive fiefdoms in northern Gaul, adding to Normandy the counties of Maine, Anjou, and Touraine, and the Duchy of Brittany. After 1154, the King of England also held the title, Duke of Aquitaine, and other territories such as Gascony, Charente, Charente-Maritime, Deux-Sèvres plus other southern Gaul fiefs. This meant that the King of England controlled more than half of what is nowadays collectively called France; the so-called Angevin Empire. The centre of power of this unstable realm was Norman England; four of the first seven English kings, post-Conquest, were French-born. Thereafter the royalty and nobility of England were educated in French as well as English. England took its laws from local French laws, and the English language became saturated with French words. This situation came to an end with the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, when the King of France deposed the King of England from his northern French fiefs. In the turmoil that followed, the heir to the throne of France, later Louis VIII, was granted the throne of England by rebellious English barons. He was proclaimed King in St. Paul’s Cathedral, where the rebel English and Welsh barons, and King Alexander II of Scotland, paid homage. –
England did, however, retain some French fiefdoms, which were maintained and enlarged when war between the two kingdoms resumed in 1337. From 1340 the King of England assumed the title, ‘King of France’. Although England was generally victorious in its wars with France no attempt was made to consolidate the title until Henry V’s invasion in 1415. By 1420 England had claimed northern France, including Paris. The King of France was obliged to disinherit his own son, the Dauphin, in favour of Henry V.
But in 1429 the Dauphin’s supporters, including Joan of Arc, succeeded in crowning him as king. Fighting between Norman England and Gallic France continued on for more than twenty years. The last Plantagenet king, Richard III, was killed in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field. The English were eventually expelled from France, with the exception of Calais, which was lost in 1558. But the Kings of England and Great Britain continued to use the title, ‘King of France’, up until 1807. The French, however, got their revenge by playing a key role in the revolutionary, American War of Independence in 1775/1783. They provided money and material to arm the new rebel republic and sent ships and an army to the United States. The French intervention made a decisive contribution to the US victory. Motivated by imperialistic rivalry with Britain, and revenge for its lost territories, France began secretly sending supplies to the rebel Americans. Spain and the Netherlands joined France, making it a global war in which the British had no major allies, and with sea blockade they had no way to resupply their armies. France obtained its goal, but materially it gained nothing and was left with crippling debts that heralded their own, French Revolution.
In April 1904, the United Kingdom and the Third French Republic signed an agreement, the Entente Cordiale. This marked the end of centuries of hostilities between the two nations and the start of a peaceful co-existence. In 1939, with the outset of WWII, the French sued for a post-war United States of Europe. They envisaged an Anglo-French national union. In June 1940, the French faced defeat against Germany. This Franco/British union had agreed that neither country would seek a separate peace with Nazi Germany. But the French cabinet reneged and chose to sue for a separate armistice. Britain vehemently opposed a French surrender, which would mean the loss of the French naval fleet. The French hoped the Franco/German armistice would allow them to keep control of their country under the new ‘Vichy France, Nazi government’. British leader, Winston Churchill, was not convinced. However, the British War Cabinet conceded to the French armistice suit, on condition the French fleet sail to British harbours. The French again broke their word; the conditions of the armistice now allowed them to keep their fleet, but under German control.
On July 1st, Churchill was finally able to get the backing of his War Cabinet to sink the French ships if they would not be surrendered. The English engaged the French Fleet at Oran, Algeria. Churchill’s message was clear: “sail to Britain; sail to the USA, or scuttle your ships in the next six hours.” The French were unresponsive. Churchill was made aware of orders received from the French Admiral, Darlan, instructing the French to take the fleet to the USA in the event the Germans breaking the agreed armistice by attempting to commandeer the ships. But the British intercepted another message, from the Vichy-Nazi government, ordering French reinforcements to move urgently to Oran. Churchill saw this as an appeasing gesture to the Germans, offering them control of the Fleet as a bargaining tactic for retaining power. He gave this order to his commanders, “Settle everything before dark or you will have reinforcements to deal with.” Ten minutes later, over a thousand French servicemen were dead and three battleships sunk. This action demonstrated to the world, but mainly to America, that Britain was in deadly earnest with the war against Nazi Germany. To the French, it was seen as the ultimate treachery.
So, the rules of Naval Warfare had changed: In 1941 Germany declared war on America. In1943, Dictator Benito Mussolini, Germany’s fascist ally, had been deposed and barbarically executed. The new Italian government abandoned the lost war and ordered the Italian fleet to sail to Malta to be surrendered to the Allies. When the Nazi Germans realized the Italians were capitulating they sent a force of Dornier Do-217 bombers. The Italian sailors were relieved to see the German aircraft appear to drop their bombs into the ocean, thinking it to be a mere show of force. It was not. The bombs, nicknamed Fritz X, seemingly had a life of their own and robotically headed toward the Italian ships. One slammed into the hull of the battleship, Roma, and a second penetrated its magazine. The ship exploded, killing over a thousand servicemen. The age of the ATS guided, cruise missile had dawned – the precursor of the dreaded LARs drone. –
Back in the 16th century, England had slipped the dictates of the Vatican, and then the dictates of Brussels, in 2016. However, there was a further attempted Anglo-French union in 2018, and again in 2020, when the hypersonic Concord II was, as was the first supersonic Concorde, jointly manufactured by the two nations. But it wasn’t until 2023, in the wake of recession, and as part of a deal to underwrite the failing Eurofranc, that Britain allied France (and some said part of bankrupt Europe) into the United Kingdom, thus creating a Greater Britain. France demanded the union be called Frangleterre, resurrecting the 1956 Mollet/Eden proposal. Even the title, Union Nationale, was muted, failing that, Greater Brittany, all to no avail. To the rest of the so-called freethinking world, accepting that the name, Britain, was already a derivation of ‘Brittany’, it became universally accepted as Greater Britain. However, the French Navy adamantly refused allegiance with the British Admiralty (some wounds never heal), and resurrected the name, Free French Navy. But the dogged, egotistical British were to get their comeuppance in the most unkindlys way.
Lieutenant Miro stood for a moment studying his men. They were working in frenzy, knowing their lives depended on it. Miro knew it to be futile. Something was working them. Some ethereal hand was directing them to destruction, and it seemed nothing could stop it. This was someone’s revenge. And, ‘by God’, he thought, ‘if so, we deserve it’. How he hoped, wished and prayed it to be a Frenchman. He looked at his white coat hanging on the gantry. The TriJack emblazoned on the sleeve was still exposed. He took a sudden swipe at it, knocking the offending garment away into the swirling, oily water. He watched it sink, then spat again.