' The Longest Night ' & ' Crossing the Rubicon ': The Original Map Illustrated and Uncut Final Volume (Armageddon's Song) (66 page)
Authors: Andy Farman
2Lt Dougal Ferguson, Nova Scotia Highlanders - Missing believed KIA.
Sgt Russell Blackmore, Nova Scotia Highlanders - Missing believed KIA.
Danyella Foxten-Billings – 10yrs: Attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Simon Manson – Cashiered. Co-Defendant with Foxten-Billings
. Suicide, pre-trial.
Sir Richard Tennant (Rtd) – CEO Tennant Private Investigations PLC
.
Lt Col
Hector Sinclair Obediah Wantage-Ferdoux – CO 1RTR
Rebecca Hemmings (Former REME) – Owner: Hemmings Heavy Maintenance PLC.
Guy Thomson ex G Sqdn SAS – Author ‘How I won the war, and everyone else was a xxxx’
Sqdn Ldr Michelle Braithwaite – CO No. 47 Squadron RAF.
Nancy McGonnigle (nee Palo. Former Sgt USAF) – Married Liam McGonnigle of Galway.
Lt Barry ‘Baz’ Cotter –
Regular Commission 1RGJ and author ‘Bugles, Bayonets and Hate’.
C/Sgt Dopey Hemp – CQMS C (Royal Berks) Company, 2 Wessex
, and still a barman.
General Pierre Allain (Rtd) – Author ‘The Honorable Mutineers’
Lt Cmdr Sandy Cummings RN – Joint Harrier Force.
Elena Torneski (Russian Premier) – Skiing accident, deceased.
Review;
Armageddons’s Song by Andy Farman.
Posted on
April 30, 2014 by
old_fat_and_hairy
Ah, this is better!
In what might be scenarios culled from this month’s news, WW3 has begun. Expansionism by Russia in an unholy alliance with China has led to the invasion of Taiwan, attacks on Australia, the Philippines and even Britain. Nuclear attacks on Europe and the USA, the loss of a president and an entire British Cabinet. Not to mention the arrest of a British Prime Minister for treason, (Ah, if only!)
The books – so far there are three – are so filled with action and story-lines that it is difficult to
precis them, and as a warning, don’t get too attached to any of the leading characters!
The best way to describe this series is to liken it to a combination of ‘Chieftains’ allied with ‘Red Storm Rising’. If you liked those books, then you will like these. There are even echoes of ‘Team Yankee’ in there. I can honestly say that these are some of the best books of this type that I have read. The writing is good, the research seems to be impeccable and the narrative certainly rackets along at a good pace.
The only drawback so far is that the fourth instalment is as yet unwritten, and I for one can barely wait.
As far as I can tell, these books are only available on Kindle, but I could be mistaken about that. I’m not mistaken in thinking that most readers on here will thoroughly enjoy the books.
Volume Three and Four side tracked me with the details of commercial and military satellite operation. There are a fair few dead satellites up there but as it would cost more to refuel them than to replace them. Their technology has been superseded anyway and therefore there are two disposal options, up or down. Down requires vastly more fuel to accomplish safely than boosting to a higher orbit but there are two places that spacecraft go to die. A graveyard orbit of about 403km above the Earth and a cemetery, of sorts, 3900 km South-East of Wellington, New Zealand at the following coordinates
43°34′48″S 142°43′12″W
. Even if you could dive that deep it would not be advisable to visit. Aside from the exposed nuclear reactors of military satellites that were guided to splashdowns there, it is a toxic dumpsite for chemical weapons and old Soviet nuclear reactors.
I found the potential for new stories lying about everywhere I happened to research. For instance, there was a tiny coral atoll in the Pacific, six hundred miles from anywhere, but a hundred feet deep in inedible crabs, bad tempered sea birds and nitrogen rich Guano. (Bird poo.)
That atoll became at various times, a pirate base, a significant fertilizer resource, a retreat, a military base, the scene of several shipwrecks, and also of serial rape and murder.
The atoll’s sole financial asset is long gone, but the crabs remain. (Isn’t that just like life?)
French Guiana was a place I knew virtually nothing of until an attack upon the ESA facility by either China or Russia
seemed to be a necessity. It is a place that was much fought over by the old European empires.
When Wolfe brought an end to the French rule in North America, France was in a quandary as to where to relocate those colonists who wanted to leave. Return to France was not an option for a bunch of losers, but they were good Catholics in the clutches of the heathen Protestant British, they had to have their souls protected if nothing else. French Guiana was the eventual site for those who had lost ‘New France’ to end their days.
Has anyone seen ‘Papillon’?
Henri Charrière, ‘Papillon’, was a prisoner in the colony but not on Devils Island, that was a fabrication. Only people convicted of treason went to Devils Island.(Good movie though!)
There are whole websites dedicated to fans of Henri Charrière, and discussion groups debating the type of crimes the fans would consider committing in order for them to be incarcerated and live out their fantasy of being a Henri Charrière, and escaping from somewhere on coconuts.
Suggestions that,
1/
The book was intended as a novel, and not a memoir,
2/
That Henri is dead (Born in 1904 so he’d be pushing 110 at the time of writing), or
3/
That he really was a murderer and deserved to be a convict, can lead to expulsion from the various groups.
Papillon makes life imprisonment
Cool!
The odd case of the destroyed tooling.
The F14 Tomcat was without doubt a phenomenal war bird and one that arguably still had a decade or so left of useful life. Aircraft, like champion boxers, one day meet the young hungry wannabe who hands them their ass. No one stays at the top indefinitely. The mystery is however, why did Dick Cheyney order the F14D production halted when it was still on top of its game, and why was it so important to have the tooling
destroyed so none could ever be built again, without a huge cost implication?
The ignominious end of the Aussie ‘Pig’.
The F111D of the Royal Australian Air Force was quite iconic but getting a little long in the tooth. Of the forty three aircraft in the fleet, eight have crashed since 1973, twelve have been sold to museums or put on static display, but twenty three were chopped up and buried.
Now that wasn’t very polite!
(Since the publication of edition 1 I have since learned that the original purchase agreement specifically prohibited resale of the aircraft by Australia and consequently the sale of the aircraft to a major arms dealer was cancelled after the US Government intervened. Apparently the aircraft could only be returned to the USA or rendered permanently unusable. Those they could not give away to museums and airbases as gate features were stripped and buried.)
Characters
(In no particular order…)
I was asked whom the characters in Armageddon's Song were based upon, and to be honest there are a few who are amalgams of people I have met throughout my life.
'The President' is an easy one as I tend to picture a situation and hear dialogue form before I write. I found that the 'ideal' of a President was not a real person but rather one created by Aaron Sorkin. At least so far as speech and mannerisms, in my mind’s eye anyway, President Josiah Bartlet, as portrayed by that brilliant American actor Martin Sheen, pretty closely fits the bill. Mine of course is a little more complex as will be discovered. A good person by nature who may have trouble sleeping some nights, owing to his bei
ng forced
to work in dirty political waters.
‘Regimental Sergeant Major Barry Stone, 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards’ is a combination of three terrifying individuals (to be a young soldier in the British Army in the early 1970's)
RSM Torrance, Scots Guards, who reigned over the Infantry Junior Leaders Battalion at Park Hall, Oswestry in Shropshire.
Garrison Sergeant Major 'Black Alec' Dumon, The Guards Depot, Pirbright, Surrey and later Garrison Sergeant Major London District. And finally Regimental Sergeant Major Barry Smith, 2nd Battalion Coldstream Guards.
Sergeant Major Torrance was outwardly fierce but inwardly fair, and an ideal individual to be dealing with a couple of thousand 15 years old schoolboys who had to be turned into the next NCO Corps of the British infantry.
'Black Alec' is of course a legend. Those dark, sunken eyes and unblinking, cold stare. 'Captain Black & The Mysterons'
except for that voice, the gruff Yorkshire accent that barked a command out on one side of a parade square and flowers in their beds outside Battalion Headquarters a quarter mile away would wilt and die.
RSM Smith was a pretty decent actor I think. The act was to make everyone, including young subalterns, believe he was perpetually angry and a heartbeat removed from downright furious.
I was on barrack guard one night when one of the old soldiers, an 'old sweat' with a few campaigns under his belt, and as it turned out at least one demon, went berserk. He had a rifle and bayonet attached to it in a barrack room he was trashing. The Picquet Officer voiced the possibility of arming the Picquet Sergeant, with obvious consequences, should the soldier in question make a fight of it, which he would have. The RSM intervened, whatever past trauma was troubling the soldier, he knew about it. He sent everyone away except for a couple of us and he waited out the storm. The RSM entered on his own an hour later, and spoke in a normal voice for long minutes before exiting and handing me the rifle before leading the soldier to the medical centre, speaking quietly to him all the time.
Next day, RSM Smith was of course once more a heartbeat removed from outright furious.
General Henry Shaw USMC, another easy one, but also oddly out of time. It was back in 2004 when I added General Henry Shaw, and in my mind Henry is Tom Selleck as 'Frank Reagan' except that 'Blue Bloods' was not yet screened. Possibly Mr Selleck played another role around that time which was solid, professional and reliable-to- the-end in character. If I say so myself I do like General Henry Shaw, I could serve under a leader like that.
Sir James Tennant, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police is to me 'Foyle’s War' Michael Kitchen an exceptionally talented British actor of the finest type.
WO2 Colin Probert, Coldstream Guards.
When we first encounter Colin he is out in the ‘Oulu’ shadowing a patrol on Sennybridge training area. He is a bit senior to be ‘Dee Essing’ as a man of his rank should be running the office, keeping on top of the admin and as the company level disciplinarian; he should be ensuring no one is slacking off. Officers are not going to do that.
However, Colin is a soldier, not an administrator and not a ‘Drill Pig’, so getting out with the students is something he would contrive somehow.
Colin is a Geordie from Newcastle who did not fancy shipbuilding, when there were still ships to be built of course, and made his way to the Army Recruiting Office armed with his O level certificates.
Brookwood station is where he arrived at ‘The Depot’ he may even have visited the gents before the 4 Tonner arrived, and seen ‘Flush twice…it’s a long way to the cookhouse!’ graffiti on the wall of trap one.
‘Cat Company’ aka Caterham Company, is where Colin would have been introduced to the first mysteries of the British Army in general, and The Guards specifically.
A Platoon Sergeant and a buckshee Guardsman/Household Cavalry Trooper (the B.R.I, Barrack Room Instructor) would teach them how to iron, polish, bumper and buff, plus who and who not to salute.