Waging War (52 page)

The men, who had been moved into several
barns around the village square, were shot to death by German
soldiers. The village was then looted and burned. In the end, 642
French civilians were murdered in Oradour-sur-Glane. It is the
deadliest massacre in French history.

The village was targeted when two French
collaborators went to the Germans with inaccurate information that
Kämpfe was being held there and would be burned to death, though
apparently he was already dead by then in another village. In the
subsequent war crimes trial, the German soldiers claimed that the
massacre was legal under the Geneva Convention as a reprisal
against the extensive Maquis activity in the area. Their commanding
officer, who had ordered the reprisal, had been killed in the
war.

Although there were approximately 40,000
French people convicted of collaborating with the Germans during
World War II, there were also about 40,000 French resistance
fighters who blew up bridges, derailed trains, rescued British and
American pilots, ambushed German troops, and killed any German
soldiers who surrendered to them. The British Special Operations
Executive (SOE) was formed by Churchill in 1940 to wage a secret
war against Germany on the continent. The SOE provided weapons,
short-wave radios, money, and trained spies to the French
resistance efforts.

Nancy Wake was an SOE agent whose French
husband had been tortured and killed by the Gestapo in an attempt
to determine her whereabouts. Nancy was nicknamed the White Mouse
because she excelled in evading capture. On her first night with
Gaspard, the local Maquis leader in the Limousin area, she
overheard him tell his men to kill her and take her money. She
survived by declaring that she was the only one with the codes for
the weapons and money drops, and if they killed her, they’d get
nothing from the English. She went on to lead a network of over
7,000 Maquisards as they conducted numerous attacks against German
installations, and she once rode nearly 500 kilometers on a bicycle
to replace codes her wireless operator had been forced to destroy.
Nancy Wake was one of many extraordinary women who fought with the
French resistance and were instrumental in helping the Allies win
the war in Europe.

London was bombed for 57 consecutive nights
during the Blitz of 1940, and bombings continued sporadically for
the next five years. On June 12
^th
, 1944 the first V-1
rocket was launched against London. The Doodlebug or Buzzbee, as it
was called, made a very distinctive “whirring” sound, and my lovely
neighbor Madeline remembers running out of the shelter as a
seven-year-old Londoner to listen to them. Ben Aronovitch, in his
fantastic book series
The Rivers of London
, describes the
architecture of the modern city as the result of the air raids.
There are neighborhoods where old Victorian and Georgian buildings
stand sandwiched between concrete monstrosities that were built on
bomb sites in the 1950s. The eclectic nature of London’s landscape
is the direct result of the German bombing.

The efforts of the Bletchley Park
codebreakers did, by some estimates, shorten the war by two years
and saved countless lives, yet their work remained unknown outside
intelligence circles until 1974. Alan Turing’s remarkable work
mechanizing the breaking of the Enigma code was documented in the
Academy Award-winning (and excellent) film
The Imitation
Game
. The film also provides tremendous insight into the lives
of the men and women who worked in total secrecy and whose war
efforts went largely unrecognized until thirty years later. When I
visited Bletchley Park, several of the film’s sets were still on
display, and the props and set dressing were incredibly helpful in
bringing to life the mansion and the huts as they were during the
war.

The British Secret Intelligence Service did
order all but two of the Colossus machines destroyed at the end of
the war, but continued to use the last two to break the Lorenz
cipher, which remained in use by the USSR for nearly twenty years.
When that fact was made known to the Soviets, the remaining
Colossus machines were broken up and “thrown down a coal hole,”
according to a docent at Bletchley Park. Not only was Colossus
instrumental in breaking the code of the German high command, it
was the world’s first computing machine and would have put the UK
at the forefront of computer technology if its designers had been
allowed to talk about it.

Hitler’s Werwolves did exist, though they
weren’t formed until later in 1944 when it became clear that
Germany would lose the war. Himmler recruited young men from the
Hitler Youth program to become domestic terrorists with the goal of
disrupting whatever occupying force moved into Germany. As I was
researching them, I discovered that they had trained at Schloss
Hulcrath, a castle in the region where my mother grew up.

Despite the fact that the Werwolves
collapsed and disbanded due to mismanagement and lack of funds,
there were rumors that they were to be financed by “Hitler’s gold,”
a stash of gold, art, and other treasure that he had stolen
throughout Europe. Adolph Hitler, an unsuccessful artist who had
been denied admission to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, had a
deep fascination with great works of art. When he ruled Germany, he
empowered Josef Goebbels to systematically loot the great art
collections of Europe with the intention of establishing a European
Art Museum in Linz. I originally thought to incorporate some of
Goebbels’ actual art thefts into the plot of Waging War, but
ultimately, Nancy Wake and her French Maquis proved more
interesting, so the fictitious plan to steal the Elgin Marbles was
born.

The British Museum did, in fact, store the
Elgin Marbles on the unused track of the Aldwych line during the
Blitz, and it is also factual that in 1937-38, Lord Duveen financed
the cleaning of them as well as the construction of a new wing in
the museum to house them. Acting under the misconception that the
marble had been originally white, Lord Duveen directed masons to
use scrapers and a chisel to remove the ‘discoloration’ of the
naturally honey-colored marble, resulting in permanent scrape marks
and considerable loss of detail. The controversy about the
ownership of the marbles began when Lord Elgin first brought them
to England at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the
debate over whether they should be returned to the people of Greece
continues to this day.

There are more than forty ghost stations in
and around London, and many of those deep level stations were used
as bomb shelters during the Blitz. Aldwych station remains intact
and has been featured in several movies and TV shows including
Sherlock
, which is one of my very favorites (an astute
observer may sense my appreciation for Benedict Cumberbatch’s
work). The description of the British Museum ghost station and much
of the route to get there is from an obscure blog by an urban
guerilla explorer who actually did complete the very dangerous,
don’t-try-this-at-home journey between the ghost stations of
Aldwych and the British Museum.

And finally, the Philippine eagle is the
largest species of eagle on the planet. This fact was provided by
my youngest son, who may or may not resemble the fictional
Logan.

Thank You

I have stumbled into a remarkable community
of authors and readers, and their friendship and support is a rare
and fantastic gift. I first discovered Penny Reid and Elizabeth
Hunter when I read their wonderful books, and through fortuitous
circumstances, I now count them among my dearest friends. Their
support, encouragement, and message chats are a treasured part of
every day I spend on this writing journey. Penny Reid also designed
the new covers for the whole series, and it’s a really good thing
we don’t keep score, and that I don’t have plans for more children,
because I’m pretty sure I would owe her my next-born.

Also, special thanks to Laini Taylor, an
author of spectacular worldbuilding and lyrical storytelling in her
Daughter of Smoke and Bone
trilogy, for the use of her quote
about monsters and war.

Alexandra Fasouliotis, Heather Kinne, and
Dan Grover are the first draft beta readers every author covets –
they don’t pull punches and their insights are pure gold. Jennifer
Beach and Fiona Fisher are graphic artists with unique vision who
created the gorgeous cover reveal and book release graphics. And
the success of these books is made possible by the generosity of
bloggers like the amazing ones from Back off my Books, Have You
Heard Book Blog, Readereater, Whatever You Can Still Betray,
Nocturnal Book Reviews, The Lit Bitch, Urban Fantasy
Investigations, and Bookwyrming Thoughts, just to name a few. I am
deeply grateful to the many readers who have shared the Immortal
Descendants books with their friends on social media and in person,
and are the reason new people discover Saira, Archer, and Ringo
every day.

My editor, Angela Houle, is shockingly
brilliant and endlessly patient. My German translator, Anneke Vogt
has eagle eyes and a stunning brain. My mother-in-law, Valerie, is
one of the most generous and loving people I know. And my mother,
Helga, is my hero. She showed me how to be a strong, independent,
educated woman who values and fosters a community of friends, and
her unconditional love and support have given me the best possible
foundation to be that kind of mother to my own children.

And finally, the people to whom I owe the
greatest thanks of all, each and every day, for loving me: Ed,
Connor, and Logan. You three are my heart, my soul, and my reason
to breathe. Thank you for being my people.

This is the last thing, I promise…

Thank you so much for reading
Waging
War
. If you enjoyed this book, your review anywhere (at an
online seller, in a book club, taped to the water cooler) would be
very appreciated. You can find more information about me, my
newsletter, my books, and whatever I happen to be blogging about on
my website:
http://aprilwhitebooks.blogspot.com/
.

I sincerely appreciate hearing from readers,
and thank you, again, for joining Saira, Archer, and Ringo on their
adventures in time.

~April White

The Immortal Descendants
Series

Marking Time

Tempting Fate

Changing Nature

Waging War

Cheating Death

This is a work of fiction.
All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this
novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously.

Waging War. Copyright 2016
by April White

All rights reserved.
Published by Corazon Entertainment

Palos Verdes Peninsula,
CA

No part of this
publication may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission
of the publisher.

Edited by
Angela
Houle

Cover design by
Penny
Reid

Cover images by
Shutterstock

Quote from
Daughter of Smoke and Bone
used with permission from
Laini
Taylor

ISBN
978-0-9885368-8-3

First American edition,
January, 2016