Final Blackout - Chapter IX part II - And Then the Americans Showed Up

So the scouts fan out to cover the hill the Tower of London is built on, snipers get in position, and messengers ride out on Scottish horses to bring every soldier to full alert in anticipation of the Americans' arrival.  Meanwhile the Lieutenant deals himself another hand of Solitaire he can't bring himself to play, so he walks over to the window and watches his men hurry to their stations.

The Lieutenant raised his eyes from the gray walls and blue uniforms below and looked at the banner which floated lazily from its staff upon the Byward Tower, over the gate.  Saintly white it was, with the insignia of a lieutenant embroidered upon it in gold.

Of course.

It had been presented to him by the people and, to them, represented peace and security and justice.  To him it represented the confidence reposed in him by his people, not unlike that which he had received from the Fourth Brigade.  No questions were asked or had ever been asked by his soldiers or his people.

Naturally.  I mean, these mindless sycophants are already willing to cast off part of their national identity, the flag that has flown over England for hundreds of years, to pledge allegiance to the Lieutenant personally.  No surprise they wouldn't dare question their beloved leader.

Man, it's just not enough for a Hubbard Hero to be respected by everyone, it has to be unconditional loyalty, if not outright worship.  Even when Hubbard wasn't involved in a cult of personality, he was writing about one.

Eventually the Tower is ready to receive visitors, hostile or otherwise.  But then there's a roar that makes all the seasoned campaigners go flat out of reflex - a reconnaissance plane, the first one seen in half a decade.  It does some banks over London before disappearing east.

Carstair came in from above.  "Sir, Gian signaled me to ask if you want to shoot the next time it comes over."

"With what?" said the Lieutenant.

My mouth twitched a bit.  I think I'm trying to find something to like in this book and setting my standards low.

Carstair stood a little straighter.  "Yes, that's so.  I've never seen anything so fast.  All motors and guns and bombs."

The Lieutenant did not turn from the window.  "Pass the word if anyone wants to leave this fortress, he has my permission."

"I can answer that one," said Carstair.  "When we leave it will be over the wall and into the river - dead."

The Lieutenant did not speak.

Yeah, yeah, undying loyalty, everyone's willing to die heroically in a hopeless defense of a symbolic fortress rather than put the reader through another couple of chapters of guerilla resistance, and so on.

Swinburne shows up.  Isn't it weird how he and Carstair have become so prominent in the story?  They were the ones Lefty was conferring with the most often during the Voyage of Revengeance, yet they only appeared at the book's halfway point, and only "bonded" with our hero very briefly in that barracks of exiled officers.  Yet they're now eclipsing older characters like... Mawkey? when it comes to getting scenes with the Lieutenant, even though their relationship with him was evidently developed during the timeskip before the voyage.  Guess it's because they're officers instead of grunts like all the other oh-so-memorable characters in this book.

Anyway, Swinburne is there, and then the American delegation arrives soon after, an honor guard of marines each armed with, get this, some sort of "miniature machine gun," as well as three bigwigs to do the talking.  Two are well-dressed but overweight, with protruding bellies and jowls - these would be the politicians, and therefore bad guys.  The other is a gaunt sea captain, a military man, and thus should be given the benefit of a doubt, especially since Lefty is able to deduce that he doesn't like the politicians.

The two fat guys are Senator Frisman (Arkansas - Social-Democrat) and Senator Breckwell (Ohio - Socialist), the officer is Captain Johnson, and they have "excellent news for our English brothers."  Swinburne reminds them that they are addressing the Lieutenant and tell them to get to the point.

"The Lieutenant?" said Frisman.  "But we have nothing to do with your army.  We wish to speak with your dictator or king or Communist leader-"

"'The Lieutenant' is a title," said Swinburne.  "He rules here."

"But," said Frisman, "a lieutenant is just a lower rank in the army and we-"

"The title," said Swinburne, keeping his patience, "has been removed from our army list out of respect.  You said something about a message."

It's just baffling.  Why did Hubbard think his hero needed a rank and not a name?  Why doesn't anyone ask what this lieutenant's name is?  Why is this rank so important and esteemed, just from one man having it, that it grows from a pay grade to an official title, something so prestigious that only one man is allowed to have it?  And where did this fetish for junior officers come from?

It's only just now that Frisman and Breckwell properly notice Lefty sitting in the throne room, and we get a good fat paragraph describing how handsome he is and, of course, what he's wearing.  Hubbard at least has enough restraint to keep the sunbeam coming in through the window on Lefty's desk and not the god-lieutenant himself, or maybe he thought it would be cooler if this left "the Lieutenant all the more indefinite of image behind it."  Less flashy, more mysterious.

Lefty calls Captain Johnson up to discuss the recon plane.  Lefty more or less chews him out for spooking all these people who have suffered through so many air raids, and says that if they had any anti-air defenses, they would have sparked an international incident by shooting down the aircraft.  Cappy apologizes, and when Lefty surmises that the plane took photos, the American offers to hand them over, but Lefty says Cappy already saw them so the gesture is meaningless, before letting the matter drop and asking for the reason they're here.

Frisman says they're on "a mission of mercy," or rather they're trying to be merciful and failing.  They offer serums against the soldier's sickness and poisons to take care of the great offscreen insect plagues that have been troubling Europe, and Lefty points out that they're all immune and have bug-proof crops.  They offer food and Lefty says they have plenty.  They offer to send workers, vehicles, industrial equipment, everything England needs to repair itself, and even promise to give "back its African possessions and all the development which has been done upon them," because it's not like the Africans were doing anything with Africa.  Lefty only shows interest in who's doing the offering.

"Who is this man?" said the Lieutenant to Johnson.

The naval officer looked uncomfortable.  "He is a great man in our country, the leader of the majority group of the Senate and chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Colonies Committee."

"Committee?" said the Lieutenant, for the word had taken on poison from the B.C.P.

Oh good grief.  You're not that stupid, are you?  One bad guy used a word so everyone else who uses it is just as bad?

"Yes," beamed Frisman.  "And my worthy friend, Senator Breckwell of Ohio, is the leading light of the second great party of the United States, the Socialist Party."

I guess I should take a moment to point out the difference between communism and socialism, since Americans in particular have been well-trained to conflate the two and fly into a rage when either is mentioned.  Both have roots in Marxism, a political and economic theory that described history as a conflict between laborers and the elites who exploit them, they just differ in how to resolve that conflict.  Communists want to completely overhaul society, using the state to take control of everything and redistributing it justly, theoretically creating a classless utopia that just never seems to work out when people try to put it to practice.  Socialists aren't this extreme, and are happy with reforming the current system and working with a democracy, rather than "dictatorship of the proletariat," to make things better for the little guy, though they will at times argue for the nationalization of key industries like energy or health care.

We get a paragraph break after this latest revelation, and Hubbard dumps some more backstory now, in the second-to-last chapter of the story.

England's Socialist leader had led an abortive revolt, starting it with the assassination of many members of Parliament.  The leader, on trial, had gone free by giving up his lists and was later shot as a traitor by his own people.  The Lieutenant gave Jefferson Breckwell a very perfunctory glance.  He had no respect for creeds or statesmen; between the two the Continent and the British Isles had been destroyed.  Thirty million fighting men and three hundred million civilians had paid with their lives for mistaken faith in creeds and statesmen.

And since the argument between communism and democracy turned ugly, the only sensible solution is to shun both of them in favor of a fascist soldier government that believes in nothing but its own right to rule.

So Lefty turns down the dirty reds' overtures, saying that England doesn't need any help rebuilding and a bunch of food or machinery would just disrupt everything.  He addresses most of his statements to Captain Johnson as he says he's not eager for war, and when Cappy claims to have peaceful intentions, Lefty points out that "the first step in any war is the landing of armed forces."  I always thought it was better to go through a planning phase before throwing troops at a distant shore, maybe even soften the place up with a bombardment of some sort if I'm set on invading, but I'm no junior officer.

Frisman claims that the US is a peace-loving nation (snort) that wisely stayed out of the rest of World War II after getting A-bombed at the start of it, focusing on rebuilding until everything had calmed down.  Lefty continues to ignore him in favor of talking to Cappy about the folly of empire, how England now has a chance for at least a century or two of peace.

Then, perhaps, war will come again.  But it will not come until we again have so little that people will be foolish enough to listen to the harpings of political mob makers.

Apparently the root cause of war is resource scarcity, and not border disputes, or nationalism, or military adventurism, or a sense of irreconcilable ideological differences with a neighboring nation.  Nope, it's only when things get scarce that people listen to all that rot.

A new influx of population now will restore that chaotic stupidity which your civilian friend calls 'culture.'

Uh... yeah.  Apparently when there's not quite enough food and people start listening to warmongers, that's called "culture."  All that stuff about art and music and literature and such, not so much.

The only good government is that government under which a people is busy and, as an individual, is valued for himself.

Nothing about a government that represents the people, or even a government that has the people's best interests at heart.  Just a government that keeps them busy and knows how valuable they are.  "You're a very good laborer, #4199.  Now get back to work."

Such a government exists.  We want no machines, no colonizers, no foreign 'culture.'  We are not an exhausted people, but a small, compact band that was strong enough to survive bullets and bombs, starvation and disease.

I wonder if Hubbard might be in favor of certain forms of population reduction?  I mean, Lefty talks about the bad times when there was a bunch of "the weak and the stupid" were leading England into ruin...  Oh, wait, here's the token support for democracy.  Well, not quite democracy.

"I am neither a politician nor a statesman; I am a soldier.

Then why are you running the country instead of contenting yourself with defending it?

I know nothing of the chicanery which goes by the name of diplomacy.

On the contrary, you've got gunboat diplomacy down pat.

But I learned long ago that there is only one way to rule, and that is for the good of all;

And oh, the things you can do when you say it's For the Greater Good.  You can seize all the country's property for the state, rid the nation of its undesirable elements, torture people to death so their souls at least will see Paradise...

that the function of a commanding officer or a state is to protect the rights of the individual within the bounds of common good, but never trifle with the actual welfare of any many or to attempt to carry any man beyond his own ability and strength, for to do so weakens the position of all and is not for the common good.

Yes, our hero is very much an anti-communist - the state isn't here to help you or help you stand when you have a tumble, the state will watch dispassionately as you die in the gutter like the weakling you are.

A state, gentleman, is not a charity institution.  On this score alone I cannot accept you gifts.

So because his state isn't a charity, he can't accept anything from a state that thinks it is a charity?

Lefty wraps up his page-and-a-bit-long speech with the statement that this interview is over, and he doesn't want to see any American battleship at Sheerness come the morrow.  Everyone is very impressed.

Swinburne had never heard the Lieutenant speak before,

You literally talked with him eight pages ago.

had never believed that he could.

Hubbard probably means to say that Swinburne never heard Lefty give a big speech before, which I suppose is true going by what we've seen in the book, though this would suggest that when Lefty was preparing for the voyage to England, or talking to his men about invading their own country, or even setting up his "soldier government" - all those big events that happened off-screen, in other words - Lefty never gave an address like this.  If that's true, why not?  Why wouldn't you come up with an address to give the city you've conquered as you try to set up a new government?  Why wouldn't you want to rally your men before a dangerous voyage or potentially treasonous campaign?

But now he knew that the Lieutenant had pleaded for the life of the country he had returned from the dead - and it seemed that he had won.

And so the Americans go home and Lefty continues to rule over a golden age of English history and they all lived happily ever after, that's what doesn't happen.

Instead those evil politicians fume for a bit over how this "junior officer of some sort" has utterly defeated them, or something.

They could not attack, for he had told them that the place was defenseless against them.  They could not buy him, because he said that food and machinery would ruin his country.  They could not colonize the place, because, guilelessly, he had made that into the form of a national insult.

Um, I think the fact that they couldn't stop you makes it easier for you to colonize them, don't you think?  Or you could do it, but the guy you deposed would think little of you for doing it?  And that's holding you back?  Hubbard Villains, man.

Anyway, Frisman almost follows Cappy out, but then he thinks about the case he made in the Senate for this relief mission to Europe, and how he promises "all those millions and millions of idle workers" back in the States some "wide horizons to redeem, in place of those huge areas of radioactive prohibited land," and...

I'm having trouble computing this.  America got nuked so badly that it had to sit out a World War and there's still substantial parts of its landmass that are unfit for human habitation.  Yet it still has "millions and millions" of people in it - unemployed people, who can't find anything to do in this post-apocalyptic setting - and the infrastructure to support this super battleship and further commerce and movement across the Atlantic.

Anyway, Frisman has one last card to play, and tells Lefty about a Spanish fishing vessel that came to Florida just that spring, a ship carrying General Victor and Colonel Smythe, who told a horrible tale of "the wanton murder of your last Communist ruler, of soldiers pillaging and burning all that was left of England, of children starving and women despoiled."  So Frisman demands that, to stop all this burning and starving and raping, Lefty allow these two officers to return to leadership positions in England, something he's sure the Lieutenant will agree to since "they are, in the final analysis, your own superiors."

Surely this isn't why Hubbard made Lefty "the Lieutenant" instead of an actual named character?  Surely he didn't think that Frisman would only make this argument if he could appeal to such "logic?"

Lefty bluntly accuses the Americans of trying to install a puppet government so they can colonize England, which Frisman calls "Rather crudely stated" but "perhaps it is near the truth."  And since he can't hope to stand against the invaders, Lefty agrees to a deal - if they bring in General Victor and Colonel Smythe that evening, and if the Americans agree to let the English people live in liberty, he'll sign the treaty that makes those two bad guys we last saw in Chapter V the supreme heads of London's government.

So the Americans leave, and we end the chapter on a decidedly down note.

Frisman, beaming, went.  Just before the door was closed he looked back.  The beam of light from the high window was gone now.  The Lieutenant sat very still in the murky gloom of the ancient room, eyes cast down. 

Good ol' environmental symbolism, you can always count on it to get dark when the story does.

So, there's our thirteen-pages-left-in-the-book final conflict all set up.  Tune in next time to see how Lefty plans on getting out of this mess.


Back to Chapter IX part I 

Forward to Chapter X

Blunted Sporks - Mystery Science Theater 3000

I think it's hard to overstate how much of an influence Mystery Science Theater 3000 had on me.  I mean, it's a show that more or less invented, or at the very least popularized, the notion of "sporking" some bad media product, which this blog and so many others have imitated.  It certainly helped shape me into the sarcastic smart-ass I am today.

But let's backtrack a bit.  For those who've never heard of it (though I'm sure I've mentioned it before), MST3K was a low-budget TV show out of Minnesota about a human lead, Joel Hodgson and later Mike Neslon, watching terrible movies as part of a mad scientist's experiment.  Fortunately our hero had robot buddies Tom Servo and Crow to sit in the theater and snark with him, taking the sting off a bad flick with one-liners and sarcasm.  Aside from host segments at the start and end of the episode and after every other commercial break, the show consisted of some bad movie they could get the rights to displayed with the silhouettes of the cast sitting in theater seats along the bottom of the screen, and they'd talk over the film as they made fun of it.  So basically the parts of my posts where I'm alternating between a passage from a book and my responses to it, just in live-action and real-time.

It's one of those things that sounds weird when you try to explain it, but... I'm not sure how to finish that thought.  I mean, the show's overarching plot is absurd, a mad scientist and/or his mother trying to weaponize an awful film so they can take over the world.  Two of the main characters have a gumball machine for a head and a split bowling pin for a beak, respectively.  Mystery Science Theater 3000 is in fact pretty weird, but it's also hilarious.  It had a crack team of writers able to produce a near-continuous stream of riffs to hit back at the movie with, and the jokes ranged from toilet humor and cracks about an actor's weight, to dead-on questions about the movie's plot or characterization, to critiques about broader themes in cinema, or even obscure historical or literary references that only a minority of viewers would catch, but the sheer volume of references meant that somebody would get something.  It wasn't all vitriol, in other words, and certainly not like some critics who spend their blogs or vlogs cursing and ranting about how stupid something is.  MST3K was usually more playful than that, and reserved its sharpest verbal jabs for the very worst material, those aggressively bad or insulting films, or ones with objectionable content like misogyny or racism.

And man, it's a hell of a thing to come across when you're moving into middle school, becoming increasingly aware of the world around you and how disappointing it can be, and trying to find some way to deal with it all.  And here's this guy and two puppets showing you that you don't have to just accept something's badness, you can hit back against it, but in a way that's both therapeutic and productive instead of simply negative.  I used to stay up late on weekends watching MST3K until nearly midnight, and when the show moved to a morning time slot I'd diligently record episodes on VHS tapes until I had nearly episode of its Sci-Fi Channel run.  Which I suppose does a great job of dating me in the eyes of other MSTies - I only got in well after Mike took over, just in time to catch the show's last three seasons before its cancellation.  But I did start collecting VHS and later DVD releases, and got acquainted with the show's original cast then, even if I'll always prefer the later stuff.

If this has piqued your interest and you want to see what's so funny, here's a short highlight real from one of my favorite episodes listed below.  You can of course find many episodes of MST3K in their entirety on YouTube these days - the show's creators had a "keep circulating the tapes" attitude when it came to watching episodes where the rights to the movie had expired - but if you want a way to enjoy the show and contribute to its creators, many episodes have been released on DVD, either singly on in collections.  The problem of course is that eventually those go out of print, so it can be hard to track down specific episodes.  Prince of Space, one of my favorite movies riffed, looks to only be available if you can find a used copy of Volume 7 of the Rhino Home Video run, while right now the DVDs are being handled by Shout Factory and they're up to Volume XXVI, wow.

But it turns out that you can also rent or buy specific episodes on Amazon video, and it just so happens that some of my all-time favorites are up there too.


Puma Man - This is a movie so goofy that it almost seems self-aware of its own silliness.  The plot involves ancient Aztec aliens who dropped off a poorly-made gold-painted mask that can control minds, Donald Pleasance 's efforts to use said mask to take over the world with the help of poorly-made papier-mâché heads, and an unlikely superhero's attempts to stop him in a poorly-made costume.  The titular Puma Man has the usual superpowers associated with pumas - super strength, night vision, awkwardly-implemented flight, teleportation, etc. - but it's his American Indian "sidekick" who does most of the heavy lifting, something Mike and the 'bots quickly pick up on.

This premise combined with laughable special effects makes Puma Man perfect riffing material, from running gags involving hero Tony Farm's name and Donald Pleasance's baldness, to moments like the guys adding the appropriate sound effects when the hero is pacing back and forth on a roof like a stuck cat.  And then there's the host segment where Mike gets to become Coatimundi Man, complete with ridiculous costume and cheerful leitmotif.  Without a doubt one of MST3K's most popular episodes, and for good reason - you can even watch it on their official YouTube channel if you can't spare the cash to buy it and don't mind ads and having to load the thing.


The Final Sacrifice - A low-budget Canadian flick in which a kid tries to solve the mystery of his father's murder, only to draw the attention of a cult trying to obtain the power of a lost civilization.  Luckily he also runs into one of the greatest names in Canadian action heroes, the one and only Zap Rowsdower, a drunk with a mullet who gets to repeatedly rescue the kid when he gets in over his head.  There's thrilling bicycle chases, a grizzled outdoorsman who sounds like Yosemite Sam, and nonsense about super-advanced ancient Indians... huh, between that and Puma Man, could that be the key to a good bad movie?

Anyway, Mike and the 'bots are obviously having a lot of fun watching this one, from the simple pleasure of saying the name "Rowsdower" to playing up the kid hero's nerdiness or Rowsdower's drinking problem.  Plus the fact that the film was made and set in Canada leads to quite a few jokes, as well as an unforgettable "homage" in song form performed during one of the host segments.  

Space Mutiny - The weirdest thing about this episode is that nobody on MST3K's writing staff recognized and pointed out the fact that all the exterior shots of spaceships used in this movie were stolen from the original run of Battlestar Galactica.  The interior shots, meanwhile, seem to have been filmed in some South African industrial complex, leading to a "futuristic spaceship" with concrete floors and bright windows.  The story's plot concerns mutineers in space, go figure, which leads to a bunch of people in lame "space clothes" getting pitched over railings, and occasional low-speed chases on what look to be converted floor-waxing equipment, intercut with the aforementioned footage of dogfighting Vipers.

It's all so badly-executed that it's a movie that would be enjoyable even without a man and his puppets laughing at it, so with Mike and the 'bots it becomes a treasure.  They seize on the fact that the ship's captain looks like Santa Claus, notice that an actress is killed in once scene and shows up again a few minutes later, start calling out the Railing Kills, snark that the female love interest looks closer in age to Captain Santa than the hero, and of course come up with a staggering number of names for the generic action hero lead ("We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese!").  And then there's the host segments where the 'bots have a thrilling space battle, a safety-minded Servo installs railings all over the set, and Crow has an existential breakdown after dressing up as one of the minor characters in the film.

This is just a sampling of the movies covered by Mystery Science Theater 3000, of course - after ten seasons, there's quite a few to choose from.  But these three would definitely be in my top ten list, and unlike some from that list are easily (and legally) available.  The only caveat would be that these are so good that they might set unrealistic expectations for anyone who uses them as a gateway to get into the show.  All the movies covered by MST3K are bad to some extent, but these are all charmingly bad.  Others are bad bad, plodding and dull attempts at entertainment that are only made bearable with the help of the show's characters, and while those episodes certainly aren't unenjoyable, they're not as easily-enjoyable as these.

Anyway, I'll stop now.  Which isn't to say that there aren't other episodes of my favorite show that I can recommend, but these three are a good start.  If you'd never heard of MST3K before, I hope this post got you interested, and maybe you can see what I loved about it.  The good news is that while the show was canceled, I hear there's recently been an attempted revival, and even before that Mike and his two co-hosts went on to create Rifftrax, riffing on big-budget Hollywood blockbusters.  And of course there's a host of spiritual successors out there, which I guess might include this very blog.

Hopefully I'll living up to their example.  And if not, well, maybe I need a robot co-host or two.

Final Blackout - Chapter IX part I - Everything Was Going Great...

Do you think Hubbard regretted having his hero describe artillery as "worthless stuff" by this point, after chapter after chapter of Lefty's superior gun battery winning engagements?  I highly doubt Lefty's dismissive attitude towards artillery in the first chapter is Hubbard's subtle way of showing that the lieutenant isn't in fact a military superman, and can make mistakes but also learn from them.

I think, since this was originally published in chunks, Hubbard originally intended Lefty to be a straightforward infantry commander, but his tendency to take stuff from defeated enemies meant that Lefty had to take those Russian artillery pieces, and then once his hero had them Hubbard kept finding uses for them, and before he knew it his artillery-hating lieutenant was winning every battle with the stuff.  And since the chapter with him hating on artillery had already been published, it was too late to change it.  Which isn't to say that Hubbard would have gone back and rewritten something that didn't work even if it hadn't already seen print.

Oh, right, Lefty is now the lord of England.

For years the soldier government ran smoothly, holding sway over England and Wales.  A steady, calculating hand dealt adequately with the redistribution of the land and rehabilitation of the towns, for what war had failed to do, the Communists had done by way of wrecking any semblance of social system.

And now, after overthrowing them, we learn that the commies were in fact incompetent and destructive rulers.  Because I guess they wanted to create a classless society, and of course that would undermine any attempt to resettle the war-torn country.  How could you expect old nob families to be productive farmers if they have to live next door to their social inferiors?

There were seven hundred and fifty thousand people within the Lieutenant's boundaries and, if fully half of these were under twenty, the restoration of central power was only made the easier by making old forms not only obsolete but also unknown.

Yes, let's destroy the past so it doesn't interfere with the present.  Also, can we take another moment to boggle at how easily less than four hundred soldiers were able to take over an entire country?  Does everyone else in England think that whoever sits in the Tower of London is in control of everything?  Do they all consider the lieutenant and his forces the legitimate rulers now?  What happened to the communist government?  Was all of it in London to be wiped out in one decisive confrontation with Lefty's forces?  What happened to those rival warlords who Hogarthy was contending with?

Maybe there were a bunch of undoubtedly exciting battles during this latest timeskip, like in the one in which Lefty captured his fleet.

Hubbard goes on to lay out the perfect form of government for us, or rather what he thought was a perfect form of government at this stage in his life and literary career.  Lefty's "soldier government" takes a tenth of all production as a tax, creates currency backed by food, and maintains a governmental police force that stamps out abuses of power - it's unclear if he creates one from the ground up or continues something set up by his predecessors.  Though the war and communists have destroyed many libraries, Lefty encourages education and puts people to work cleaning up all the rubble and wreckage, but he gives up on industry since to make a clothing factory, for example, they'd basically have to start all over with smelters and mines to rebuild the infrastructure needed for modern manufacturing.  So he settles for setting up districts of people with hand looms for a low-tech, home-made clothing industry, and also manages to set up a sea trade with the King of Scotland.

No mention of, say, private enterprise.  Nothing about elected officials, just soldiers running the country.  And all political and economic decisions are coming from a centralized authority.

You know, the funny thing is, if you take away all ideological talk about dialectical materialism and the class struggle and all that rot, a communist government can look awfully similar to a military regime.  Which would make America's actions during the Cold War, all that effort spent propping up autocrats to keep commies from taking over, look almost pointless, huh?

The happiness of a country is directly dependent upon the business of that country.  And here everyone had seven times more projects to accomplish than he could ever hope to complete in his lifetime, and there was the ground goal of making a destroyed country live again.  Everyone, therefore, was happy.  And there was no worry whatever about politics.

Oh, sure, there's a million things that need to be done to get England back on her feet, but everyone's just pleased as punch about it instead of overwhelmed and/or depressed.  And because there's just so much crap to clean up, nobody has time to think "I never voted for this guy" or "but I wanted to be a musician, not a tailor."  There's no die-hard communists who are enraged that the military has taken over like this, or old monarchists looking to re-establish a royal family.  Everyone bows to Lefty's wisdom and is perfectly happy to be ruled by him.

By him personally, I should specify.

The Lieutenant sat in audience for four hours each day, his fatigue cap on the back of his head, his elbows on his battered desk and his chin cupped attentively in his hands.  He seemed oblivious of the fact that he was against a background used by half the kings of England.  He would listen to a young farmer's rambling account of how things were going up in Norfolk without any indication of the fact that agriculture bored him to the point of fainting.  And he would sift out the problems and solve them without much effort, and the farmer would go away happy and content that the government, for once, was in the hands of the grandest fellow alive.

Lick me, Hubbard.

Yes, this peerless military hero also happens to possess a mastery of agricultural science, and is able to effortlessly solve the problems of every gormless farmer who makes the hike to his court.  Not only that, he can also settle marital disputes, such as an instance where a sergeant-major in charge of a specific district is accused by a woman of not doing his job because he "would not compel her husband to take her best friend also to wife despite the fact that there was too much work for just one and that her friend was not needed in her present home."  So Lefty... okay, let's rewind a second, this is weird.

I can get polygamy being a thing in post-apocalyptica due to skewed gender ratios, but what is this nonsense?  Someone needs to marry his wife's best friend too because his first wife is overworked, and this second girl doesn't have anything to do?  How does that excuse hold any water at a time when "everyone had seven times more projects to accomplish than he could ever hope to complete in his lifetime" but there's no mention of any real hardship coming from that fact, just contented labor?  And doesn't the wife's friend get any say in the matter?  Does she actually want to marry this guy just so his first wife will have some help doing whatever undefined work needs doing?

The whole scenario is ludicrous, but at least Lefty seems like a sensible fellow, so he's sure to do the right thing and-

The Lieutenant would listen to the husband's protest that he doubted he could handle two women when he could barely mange one's uncertainties.  And the Lieutenant, smiling, might say, like as not: "Snyder, I regret to say the deed is done.  You have just been married to a second wife.  Make a note of that, Mawkey."  And Mawkey would grin and write it all in a book, and the farmer, now that the thing was done, determined to be cheerful about it if the Lieutenant thought it was right.

-force a woman to move in with a guy, do whatever his first wife tells her to, and presumably submit to him sexually.  Yeah.  That is... obviously the... correct thing to do in this situation.

Not even a priest around to do the marriage, Lefty just says they're married and that's it.  Or maybe he's also the highest religious authority in addition to being the highest military and political authority.

Apart from such... wisdom, Lefty does have two buttons that are sure to provoke a quick and fatal response: anyone who wants him to deliver on what the British Communist Party promised them, and any "discourtesy" to a soldier who served in Europe proper.  But other than that, everything is wonderful, especially after Lefty sends Bulger and Weasel back across the channel with a recall order for all the remaining British soldiers.  "A few" have become warlords, but the rest all hurry home, so that by the summer the year after Lefty seized power, he's bolstered by close to seven thousand troops "and ninety-four officers," and of course it's the officers that are important.  Like Lefty they're all hardened veterans, tested by natural selection until only the most competent, most resourceful, and most insightful officers survived.  And since they're all good guys, we can assume none of them are above the rank of major, because remember, only junior officers are competent and heroic, the rest are all maliciously stupid.

Since they're good guys, they don't view Lefty as a usurper or dictator who took over their homeland instead of reinstating a civilian government, they think his actions at the field HQ was his way of "avenging all of them," and are "anxious to please him."  The grunts become part of the National (military) Police to help suppress the "brigandism" ...and I have to stop for a moment.  Hubbard, don't.  Don't throw in a word like "brigandism" with a footnote defining it as the "Action of being a bandit, especially of one of a gang of robbers in mountain or forest regions."  Just say they're suppressing brigands.

Anyway, the troops get to fight bandits, while the officers are given extensive land rights and administrative districts to lord over, and of course they're just rulers who "did not abuse their rights and powers because there was no reason," and its a perfect aristocracy "founded on the basis of skill and leadership," and it is not fascism, the author explicitly says as such.  Yes, a former military man has taken over the country, and all positions of authority are filled by his officer lackeys, and ordinary people have no say in how things are run, but "money and military were not combined," and that's the critical difference.  In fact, there is no money, just that "food currency," the aforementioned government-issued "script which was valued as being backed by food," and since that obviously isn't money, then this government isn't fascist.  Got it?

It also helps that Lefty's bakufu has "no need for indirect and cunning controls over the populace," because its leadership is out there patrolling "walking among their people," running their lives "serving more than they were served."  And there's enough food for everyone because natural selection has finally led to plants impervious to the plagues of insects that are apparently causing problems, and England is full of "cheerful activity," and since things are so good there's no talk of revolt, and there's no problem from continental Europe because what domains survive there just want to be left alone, and the King of Scotland is on good terms with Lefty after he sent the surviving Scottish soldiers home "with their tales of the lieutenant," and there's flowers and candy and puppies and so on.

In short, it looks like we're at a natural place to end the story, with the Lieutenant returned home to fix all its problems with a fascist military government.  There's peace, prosperity, and a real hope that despite all the decades of horrible conflict, the world might be able to rebuild, and could even be better than it was before now that all those dirty commies are gone.  But there's still 34 pages left in the book, because Hubbard has one last curveball to throw at us, something even more shocking than how useful that "worthless" artillery turned out to be.

One day, after an undisclosed number of years of perfect governance, Lefty is given a report about a vessel that showed up off Sheerness.  The thing is enormous, bigger than even some of the wrecks left behind from the war, it runs on motors instead of sails, and it's flying a strange flag that not even Lefty recognizes, something with "horizontal bars, red and white, according to the message, and a field up in the corner with a bunch of white stars."  Lefty has to send Weasel to the barracks to ask some of the older soldiers about it, and someone named Old Chipper thinks he recognizes it as belonging to the "Union States," the country that Lefty remembers started the round of atomic bombing back at the start of the war.

So our hero dismisses his chief scout, and sits alone in what is explicitly referred to as an "old throne room," his mind in turmoil for the first time in the entire book - he's so agitated that can't even bring himself to play solitaire.  Lefty knows there's a chance that this is just a trading mission, but he's also inexplicably preparing himself to resist an invasion, even though he's set up additional defenses since his victory in London.

Soon he receives another report that the big ship dropped off a smaller motorboat and a landing party, which leads to a proper message:

To the Lieutenant

From Commanding Officer Sheerness Battery, Via Blinker, helio.

U.S.S. New York anchored this afternoon and landed captain of vessel and twenty marines and three civilians.  States pacific intentions.  Wishes permission of interview with the Lieutenant

He read the message through twice.  He could find no reason to refuse such a request, though he knew that he should.  But would it do any harm to talk to them?

Less harm than trying to keep an American trading fleet out, which isn't to say that your government won't collapse after this destabilizing contact with outsiders.

In the end, Lefty sends word that permission is granted to have a talk, but he also gives Order A to man all the guns and garrisons.  Weasel is struck by the "note of tired kindness" in Lefty's tone, whatever that is, and only reluctantly leaves to carry out the order.  And let's stop there, on a genuine cliffhanger during a plot twist that you probably didn't see coming.


Back to Chapter VIII 

Forward to Chapter IX part II

Final Blackout - Chapter VIII - How to Take Over a Country

So who's the bad guy of this story?  It's not a question you expect to be asking in Chapter VIII of X, but since the story is almost over, maybe we ought to figure out who its antagonist is.

Is is Malcolm, the stupid officer who showed up to issue Lefty his recall order, displayed the differences between staff officers and field officers, and arrogantly assumed he'd be able to take over our hero's command?  Probably not, since Malcolm got his head blown apart halfway through the book.  Is it General Victor, the exiled traitor who issued that recall order and wanted to steal Fourth Brigade to carve out his own petty kingdom?  Doubtful, we only met him one chapter before defeating him and moving on.  Is it this Comrade Hogarthy guy we're about to go after?  You'd think so, but we only heard about him two chapters ago, and he hasn't had an impact on the plot beyond being the face of Britain's communist government, which we haven't been given any reason to dislike beyond, y'know, them being dirty commies.

Well, maybe it doesn't matter who the specific villain is.  Maybe the lieutenant's heroic struggle is against a flawed and destructive system rather than an individual.  It's not like we can blame one guy for post-apocalyptic Europe.

Anyway, let's save Britain or whatever.  Once again, Fourth Fleet spends the night quietly sailing upriver, and has to burn one boat after it runs aground beyond rescue, but the next day they're a good distance from London.  They exchange fire with some forces near Richmond guarding a tidal lock, which is too valuable to risk damaging with artillery, so Tou-tou does this and Carstone does that and whoever Chipper is does something, and Hubbard doesn't even list casualties.  It's just a paragraph saying how Fourth Brigade kicked lots of ass and won another fight.  Thrilling.

The fleet passes through the lock and then destroys it, then drops anchors and waits as the rainy day continues.  Some more communists show up and get driven back, and the fleet continues around the riverbend toward Kingston.  The forces on the riverbank get the bright idea to cut the invaders off and rush on ahead, get dug in with barricades, requisition boats from the local farmers, and since the rain stops as darkness falls, they think "the stage was set for an ideal battle in their favor."  At seven that night they unload everything "into the black and churned the river expanse before Twickenham where the fleet had anchored."  The bad guys are so incompetent that they actually shoot at their own boats in the process of engaging the enemy - or rather, the river where they assume the enemy is.  Because once they get close enough to properly investigate, they find

The flotilla was gone!

It had not passed Teddington pound lock.

It had not made the shore.

They abandoned their leaky vessels in favor of firmer land and hastily began to rake the countryside and shores for any sign of the Fourth Brigade.

They found none.

This is just sad.

There's not even any mention of fog or anything to properly hide the flotilla from sight, it's just dark, and evidently the muzzle flashes from all those rifles or artillery pieces, explosions from shells or grenades, none of that briefly lit up the battlefield to reveal that the commies were shooting at an empty stretch of river.  And none of the soldiers had a flashlight or flare or a candle on their helmet that would reveal that their target isn't there.  Once again, Lefty has succeeded not due to his tactical genius, but because of the stupidity of his adversaries.

Fourth Brigade of course turned around and headed back downriver at full speed towards London, and reach the capital just before dawn.  The artillery boats take up positions both up- and downriver of the Tower of London, and of course they outrange whatever cannons are waiting for them.  Lefty takes 360 men ashore with him, and once the sun is up, the final battle begins.

First Swinburne engages the Tower garrison like he did two nights previous, and even though it's a repeat of that skirmish, "it was a startled garrison which tumbled from their bunks," not a blooded and wary garrison on guard after a recent battle with a hostile force.  The majority of the defenders are obliging enough to chase off these raiders until they're fully a mile from the tower, at which point the artillery ships open up on the fortress gates.  The outer portal goes down "as though Gian had counted its bolts and measured its thickness with exactness, he wasted not one shot too many upon it," then the rest of the fort is bombarded.  The lieutenant leads his forces inside, picking off the few resisters who try to shoot at them and throwing grenades through windows and doorways.  Lefty personally throws the sack of grenade that opens the door to the Outer Keep, and aside from a few casualties from snipers or a surprise machine gun, Fourth Brigade captures the Tower without much fuss, in all of twenty-three minutes.

Astoundingly, it's not an action sequence, the actual taking of the keep is just as dry and unexciting as all the other "action" of the past couple of chapters.  We're told who moved where and that they might have thrown grenades at some point, but not what it felt like to charge into that ancient keep, how the racket and clamor of machine guns firing outside its walls gave way to a sudden resentful silence as Lefty forced his way into that citadel with such an ominous history, how each gunshot and scream within its halls and chambers mixed with the echoes of past prisoners, how the gunsmoke and stench of blood combined with the dust and stone to create a suffocating miasma, or even how Lefty allowed himself a moment of vanity to exult that he's captured England's most famous castle.  For example.

But anyway, Lefty has captured the enemy headquarters.  Hooray.  Unfortunately Hogarthy's not there, an aide explains that he was leading the force that chased Fourth Fleet up the river, but Lefty's not upset and helps himself to some of the dictator's personal booze.  He more or less lets the garrison's sally force, which surrendered after the guns started bombarding the tower, run off and rejoin Hogarthy's host out to the west, then all the stuff in the boats is unloaded and settled into the Tower with the rest of the Brigade.  Everyone gets to take a rest, save for the scouts who go watch for signs of the enemy.  Lefty plays some more Solitaire.

And then there's a paragraph break, and the narration changes to something lofty and historical.

What happened to Hogarthy is history.  How he floundered eastward through the mud, in haste to contact the invaders before they could repair the gates and walls and so entrench themselves.  How he camped at dusk some three miles from Tower Hill, well aware that his troops, fagged out from days of stumbling along the river bank, must have rest.

I guess this is why Lefty didn't just take the Tower the two nights ago?  He wanted the other troops to be really tired, instead of just tired.  And he knew that the enemy was stupid enough to try to keep pace with him instead of sending word upriver and cutting him off.  'cause remember, we've only ever seen the shore forces assemble after Lefty's boats showed up, he hasn't come across a bunch of baddies in a prepared position, waiting for him.

The sortie which sucked Hogarthy out of that camp before he could even get his troops fed was led by Carstair, who battled back through the dusk to Tower Hill with every evidence of panicked flight.

It always helps when the bad guys have no sense of pattern recognition.

Hmm, maybe Lefty needed the bad guys to come at him from the west instead of the east, because he picks out this perfect spot to engage Hogarthy's forces in, a clear area just ripe for mortar fire surrounded by big buildings machine guns can set up in.  Naturally, Hogarthy leads his men right into it, falls under vicious fire, and his men "were so exhausted that they cared not whether they stayed, or died, or fled."  And then Lefty is able to lead a force to circle around them and attack from the direction they're trying to flee.

But like I said, there's never any outright explanation for why Lefty took the Tower in this chapter instead of a previous one.  So either the reader gets to feel clever after puzzling it out for themselves, or else they're stuck wondering at the hero's random and fickle approach to strategy.  It's kind of surprising that Hubbard, who usually has no problems insulting his reader's intelligence, is content to let the reader do all the heavy lifting in this instance.

Hogarthy was dug out of a swamp two days later and dragged into the Tower by an exuberant Bulger.

Why is the food guy the one who finds the communist leader and not one of the proper scouts?  Did he smell Hogarthy?  Does he sound like potatoes?

The town, however, had already paid its homage to the Lieutenant and the countryside all about was anxiously sending food to make peace with this fox of a conqueror.

It's either send this jerk food or wait for him to smoke out your homes and steal it, sadly.

"I've got Hogarthy below," said the excited Bulger.  "All the people we met said it was him!"

"Good," said the Lieutenant, glancing up from a pile of documents.  "Shoot him."

"Yessir," replied Bulger, speeding away.

And now we know for certain that Hogarthy can't be the book's bad guy - because he never actually meets the book's "good" guy.  He's just rather anticlimactically executed after leading his forces into ruin, with not even a show trial to pretend that the rule of law is still important.

But, uh, that's that.  The lieutenant has captured the Tower of London, thus securing his control over the entirety of England with less than four hundred soldiers.  The communist leader, who must be evil, has been murdered, and now Lefty can restore freedom and democracy to-

Oh, looks like he's setting up a junta.  Excuse me, "soldier government."  This should end well.


Back to Chapter VII

Forward to Chapter IX

Final Blackout - Chapter VII - Boats Move, People Shoot Guns

Another chapter on boats.  Guess Hubbard liked his ships; it feels like half the stories this blog has covered have either starred sailors, been set on the seas, or featured boating segments.  Mission Earth starred a Fleet commando and featured that wonderful "Voyage of Vengeance," Buckskin Brigades had all that canoeing across the American frontier, Under the Black Ensign is pretty self-explanatory, "Space Can" was on a space boat, Spy Killer starred a sailor-turned-"spy," and there's probably some that I'm forgetting.  Even in the next novel I plan on sporking, Hubbard can't resist taking a break from the fantasy and metaphysical nonsense to show off what he knows about rigging.

Just before sunrise, Weasel the Scout and Bulger the Cook Who Does a Lot of Scouting Too pull themselves out of the water to report to our hero.  After joking that Bulger finally took a bath and couldn't resist stealing enemy supplies while infiltrating their camp, Lefty gets down to business - he's not impressed when given word that there's four thousand troops assembled on the bank, since they're not Hogarthy's proper army but conscripted peasants handed a rifle.  But our hero is surprised to learn that the six field pieces the bad guys brought along won't be running out of ammunition anytime soon.  Since there's no infrastructure to make proper artillery shells these days, the commies have converted their cannons from breach-loaders to muzzle-loaders that can fire any sufficiently heavy debris as cannonballs.

Let's put a little sticker next to this paragraph, one of the few clever developments showing how these characters are adapting to a post-apocalyptic setting.

Oh yeah, we finally learn what happened to at least one ship out of the enemy fleet that attacked last chapter - it grounded on the riverbank and was converted into a barricade by the forces camped on the beach.  Anyway, Lefty concedes that the cannon are a serious threat, but explains how to spike the guns to disable them, though he doesn't give his infiltrators the go-ahead just yet.  His men are a bit confused that their hero is "too proud to fight this rabble," and don't like the idea of waiting for Hogarth's soldiers, but Lefty cuts off their objections.

"Thank you, Bulger."

"Aw, I didn't mean nothin', sir.  You know your business and if you say fly to the moon, we'll fly to the moon, sir.  You know that."

An interesting thing is that Bulger is utterly flabbergasted at the thought of a muzzle-loading cannon, and it's Lefty who recognizes how military technology is devolving.  So I wonder if Bulger knows that it's possible to get to the moon, and that humans have stood on its surface, or has even that incredible achievement been forgotten after decades of ceaseless and senseless aconflict?

Wait, no, this was written decades before the moon landing.  Never mind.

"The greater the force," said the Lieutenant, "the greater the odds, the greater the victory." He smiled at them. "Now get back to your boats."

Okay, yes, winning a battle when badly outnumbered will earn you a Heroic Victory and a little icon on the world map showing when and where it happened, but you still have to win the battle.  And Lefty's plan is to barely fight at all.

He orders the fleet to move two miles upriver under cover of darkness and fog, so in the morning the communist force has to pack up and reposition itself in hopes of engaging the enemy.  But before they can fully mobilize, Fourth Brigade's artillery boats break off and bombard the communist gun batteries, since the Brigade can make a good guess of where their targets are but the boats are moving targets hidden by more convenient fog.  The Brigade also lands some scouts who, before the next day dawns, report that there's now eight thousand men camped by the river, with even more guns.  So Lefty orders his ships to make an un-stealthy withdrawal, and actually takes fire this time, which sinks a "mosquito boat" and kills a sailor when a boiler explodes and cuts him in half, yeouch.

The fleet sails past Woolwich and Greenwich, taking out some shore batteries before the enemy guns have range on them, which seems a bit far-fetched but I guess the commies just suck that much.  There's mention of ruined landmarks like Shooters Hill and the East India Docks, but nothing detailed.  Come to think of it, this whole chapter is just an after-action report, not a proper action sequence or anything.  So I'm summarizing what's already a summary.  Ugh, this book is dragging.

When Fourth Fleet finally approaches London proper, they do so stealthily, and at nine that evening make an attack!  Well, more like a raid.  Swinburne's company lands and engages the Tower of London's garrison for a bit, then falls back to a prepared barricade under covering fire of Carstone's machine guns before getting back on the boats.  Lefty spends the whole engagement sitting in his boat playing solitaire, tracking the progress of the raid by the quantity and quality of gunfire, but of course will get all the credit for any successes.

Weasel shows up to share reconnaissance about London town - most of the city is aboveground and within the confines of the Old Roman Wall, population about thirty or forty thousand, and there was an artillery battery set up "where Big Ben used to be" but he spiked them all.  Then a scout from downriver reports that a bunch of enemy troops are struggling to hoof it to London.  Finally Swinburne returns to say that they did some good damage and only lost three men in return.  The old veteran also mentions that they could've taken the Tower that evening - if Lefty had deployed the Second Regiment as well, one group could have drawn out the Tower's garrison while the other captured the enemy headquarters.  But Lefty tells Swinburne to carry on and, as soon as his officer has left, hits the hay.  Rest assured, though, our hero has a plan that...

Hmm.  I just re-read the next chapter, where Lefty actually takes the Tower of London, but can't find much to explain why he has to do so then and not now.

In short, our hero is continuing to consistently outmaneuver his enemies, making opportunistic and devastating strikes against key targets, and even his own men can't guess at what his overall strategy is.  It helps that the bad guys are trying to keep pace with a fast-moving naval force with a bunch of infantry and artillery, and their guns don't have enough range to win a shoot-out with Lefty's artillery.  And of course Fourth Brigade's troops are simply superior to anyone they might end up fighting, and can reliably kill dozens of enemies while only losing one or two men of their own.

So, uh... please feign interest and join us next time, for the "exciting" confrontation between Lefty and this bad guy we only heard about last chapter, and who has yet to make an actual appearance in this story.


Back to Chapter VI

Forward to Chapter VIII

Final Blackout - Chapter VI - The Voyage Home (Abridged)

If you thought the timeskip from two chapters ago was bad, get a load of this.  We now fast-forward from the very beginning of winter to mid-November, and jump from northern France to the Thames River near Gravesend, where a fleet is advancing from the sea.

There were nearly fifty boats in all, boats which had nothing in common but their rigs.  Culled by fishermen from the harbors of the north coast of Rance, the vessels were ex-anything but fishermen.  Submarine chasers, admirals' barges, lifeboats, lighters, torpedo boats, motor-sailers and, in short, almost anything which would float and could be handled by two or three men.  Their superstructures bore no resemblance to the original architectural designs.  Without exception one or two masts rose from the deck of each to which was affixed a patchwork of rags and booms to make up the crudest kind of sails.

Uh huh.  I'm hesitant to describe any arrangement of masts on something as small as a lifeboat as a "superstructure."

Just as the boats' propulsion systems have been modified, so have the dingies themselves been outfitted with hillbilly armor, scrap metal and sandbags or even simple boards that convert the vessels from defenseless little rafts to unsinkable aquatic killing machines, several of which are supporting Fourth Brigade's artillery and heavy machine guns.  But the boats are still as silent as they are deadly, and are ghosting up the river towards their objective.  It helps that the river is covered in fog, but you can bet that if it wasn't, the lieutenant would have found a way to maintain stealth.  Maybe camouflage the fleet as a bunch of curious sea lions.

Oh yeah, and our hero is still abducting people, from "impressed" French sailors to English fishermen whose boats and food were seized along with their operators.  They're only civilians, though, and not worth raising a fuss about.

Lefty is in the lead boat, of course, listening to some guy counting how many fathoms to the bottom and trying to navigate based on five-year-old memories of the river and the habits of its fog.  And yet, despite the armada being led by our incredible master tactician, there's still a mishap when "a great cliff" suddenly looms out of the murk to force some hasty evasive maneuvers.  Now don't be thinking our protagonist is so incompetent that he nearly ran them aground, that would just be ridiculous.  No, this cliff is

A great battleship was here, solidly held up by mud.  It had burned to the water and its plates were twisted and gaping.  The turrets were all awry and half the guns had been blown away.  The masts were trailing overside, eaten by rust and still clutched by the tattered dead.  This had happened long ago and the name of the vessel was not decipherable.

Little bits like this are the highlights - which is to say, probably the only good parts - of the book.  They aren't characters gushing over how wonderful the hero is, or simple misdirection overcoming incompetent adversaries being portrayed as a masterstroke of military strategy.  They're just paragraphs that do a decent job of establishing the post-apocalyptic setting and describing the grim but compelling sights you might find in it.

Just as Lefty planned, the boats reach the collapsing ruins of Gravesend three hours after whenever this chapter started, just as the fog begins to lift.  They make it past Tilbury, whose famous Fort and docks are nearly vanished, before they're finally spotted by someone on the shore, but that's okay because the lieutenant planned for that to happen.  He orders his ships to drop anchor about a hundred yards from the shore, parallel to an open beach, and wait.

Soon about six hundred soldiers march through the surrounding marsh and take position on the beach, and an officer and his command squad step forward to hail Lefty's boats.  Of course he yells "Where from?" instead of "Who are you?" because that might force the author to come up with a name for his main character.

Lefty says they're out of France and identifies the fleet as "The Fourth Brigade, coming home!"  The officer commands them to turn back because they've got "order to annihilate you if you attempt to land," and I just can't see that.  Orders to 'engage,' maybe, even orders to 'terminate.'  But what kind of officer is so cartoonishly evil as to tell his men to utterly 'annihilate' an enemy?

A Hubbard Villain, that's who.

Lefty just grins at this threat, and asks for the motive behind it, so the officer reveals that General Victor has sent word that Fourth Brigade has mutinied.  Now, we might wonder how Victor did this, if the field HQ in France is no longer in radio communication with England proper and Fourth Brigade had a head start on getting home.  But remember that Malcolm, Xenu rest his soul, was able to move much faster on his own than Fourth Brigade does as a unit, and the force has only grown larger over the course of the book.  Plus we all know how much time Lefty likes to spend attacking neutral settlements and stuffing his backpacks full of crap.

Anyway, as soon as the officer finishes his explanation, Lefty tells the machine guns to cut the enemy emissaries down.  They do.  Pretty sure there's nothing in the rules of warfare about shooting people right after parley, right?

The machine guns are told to stop shooting once the offending officers are all perforated to satisfaction, so Fourth Brigade just watches as the enemy army frantically start digging foxholes in the sand and shooting at the boats.  But all the boats' occupants are down behind cover, so gradually the incoming fire peters out when the bad guys realize they aren't accomplishing anything.  After the baddies send runners to summon reinforcements, Lefty orders a brief flurry of shots at the shore, killing thirty-five and provoking another storm of ineffective gunfire.  Well, two guys from Fourth Brigade are wounded, but that's the extent of the damage.

Thrilling stuff.  I guess even the author realized that this one-sided farce of a battle isn't very compelling, because Hubbard glosses over the rest of the afternoon with the assurance that the lieutenant kept this up all day, having his men take occasional potshots at the enemy to encourage them to waste ammo.  No, the sheer volume of fire doesn't compromise some of the improvised armor on the boats.  No, the enemy never wises up and pulls back to better cover, instead the opposing force spends the afternoon entrenching itself in the sodden sand.  The only changes are that by nightfall the bad guys have caught on that they shouldn't throw away so many bullets, and Fourth Brigade actually loses a guy, a Frenchman who did the thing where his helmet stops a bullet, and he takes it off to boggle at it, and then another bullet zips through his unprotected skull.  Never be that guy, it's an undignified way to die.  Better to be the guy with the flamethrower whose fuel tank backpack gets hit and explodes, that's exciting. 

Lefty tells the brigade to be on the lookout for incoming boats from upriver, but otherwise is content to relax for the evening with a game of solitaire.  His men, though, are less at ease, and worry that the lieutenant's luck has finally run out.  After all, the enemy has been sending runners and reports all day long, so not only is it impossible to attempt a landing at their current location, but it's only a matter of time before the enemy assembles a force capable of crushing them once and for all.  What could they, a fleet of ships able to raise anchors and pass effortlessly up the river under the cover of fog to a more strategic landing site, do to avoid such a fate?

Like I said, it's not so much that the lieutenant is a military genius as it is that he's surrounded by idiots.

Carstair and Swinburne hop aboard Lefty's boat to express their concerns.

"Lieutenant," said Swinburne at last, "we have every confidence in you.  Your feats in getting these boats and the supplies for them, your additions to our artillery all speak for themselves.

No.  No they don't.  Hubbard, you don't get to shill your hero with 'feats' that happened offscreen over a timeskip.

But we believe that if we are to land we should do it on the opposite bank, where there is no force."

"Every confidence?" smiled the Lieutenant.  "Captain Swinburne, I may miss a trick or two in solitaire, but I never miss a trick in battle.

Let's just imagine what masterful tricks Lefty pulled out of his sleeve to win those great off-camera battles.  Maybe he captured a fort's worth of artillery after discovering the enemy forgot to lock their doors, and seized a fleet of boats after throwing a rock into some bushes in the opposite direction from the harbor, thus distracting the sentries long enough to grab the ships they were guarding.

I at least hope I don't.  Let them collect their forces and alarm the countryside.  This is one of those rare moments when we can relax.

This is after telling his men to post lookouts for enemy ships, mind you.

Our men have food and are happy.  We have good, dry beds.  We have just finished a most harrowing sea voyage in cockleshells.  Let us rest."

What did I just say, Hubbard?

Something almost exciting happens at two thirty in the morning, when some enemy ships do indeed try to come at them from upriver, only to get their teeth kicked in by Gian's mortars, some incendiary grenades, and the brigade's return fire.  The final score after a barely page-long battle: four minutes of combat, three Brigade losses, and eight prisoners taken from the few surviving enemy sailors.  I have no idea what happens to the bad guys' boats - there's mention of flames and shrapnel, but not of the boats actually sinking or anything, but if they're left to drift unmanned the author doesn't say, and the aimless boats don't crash into Fourth Brigade or force them to move.  Or maybe it should be Fourth Fleet right now.

At any rate, Lefty gets to question a prisoner, who gives them a good page of information.  The British Communist Party is still in control of the country, which is to say that it controls the army and the majority of England, and Comrade Hogarthy currently has the most power thanks to his force of six thousand men.  He's headquartered in the Tower of Freedom, previously the Tower of London, and "Most of it is still standing."  Hogarthy for whatever reason destroyed most of the country's artillery, but has some three-inch guns left, if not much ammunition for them.

Lefty is nice enough not to spill the prisoner's guts after he spills his guts, and lets him swim to safety if he passes on a message that Hogarthy is to surrender immediately or else Fourth Brigade will attack those men dug in on the shore.  Then our hero declares it's time for a celebratory drink, no doubt while his soldiers wonder what he's up to.

And that was Chapter VI.  Some shooting happened, but it all went the good guys' way and they barely lost anyone.  Our hero has the bad guys right where he wants them, even if it looks like his defeat is inevitable.  We're about two thirds of the way through the book, and Lefty has his ultimate objective in sight.  And there is absolutely no dramatic tension.  No excitement, no question whether or not anything can stop the heroic lieutenant, and nothing at stake.

Well, I guess the heroes' actions could decide the fate of England, but it's not like they're trying to overthrow a tyrannical government or anything.  We've seen no examples of the BCP's rule to make us hate them, and we haven't seen our heroes give a rat's ass about anyone not in a uniform.  So this is all... what, a revenge plot?  'Try to relieve me of my command, will you?'

Tune in next time for more guns on boats. 


Chapter V part II

Forward to Chapter VII

Final Blackout - Chapter V part II - Credit Where It's Not Due

The action continues, and it's just as excitingly one-sided as everything else we've seen before this point.  Sergeant Pollard is the acting commander of the brigade, and though "He sorely missed his lieutenant" he does a competent enough job of leading the others.  Carstone's machine guns work in turns to keep up constant suppressive fire, and Gian's artillery is able to knock down any steel doors that are dropped to slow their progress.  The only real obstacle is that regurgitant powder, but luckily its effect "had been slight and was wearing away."

Wait, didn't some in the brigade have gas masks when they were smoking out that civvie village?  And why wouldn't all of them have gas masks if there's been enough chemical warfare to discolor the local greenery?

Anyway, the only trouble Fourth Brigade is having is figuring out where to go - Pollard realizes that he's leading the men deeper underground, into the heart of the fortress, but resolves to just push through until they come out the other side.  He does wish "Oh, if the leftenant were only here to tell them!"  I'm just not sure what he wishes Lefty would tell them.  "Keep up the good work?"  "Turn around you idiot?"

There's a moment when they come to a halt because Pollard "sensed rather than heard or felt the machine gun which had hastily been thrown on a barricade to bar their way" around a turn up ahead, and good luck figuring that out.  Maybe all the radiation and artificial plagues have given some soldiers superpowers.  The enemy weapon doesn't even get a chance to fire, though, Gian wheels up one of his guns and bounces a round off the wall and around the corner, then Weasel's scouts finish off the hapless survivors.

They do take one prisoner, though, an orderly found in some otherwise-abandoned offices.

"Soldier," said Bulger, sticking his bayonet into the orderly's ribs and tickling him up a bit, "if you want to live, you'll lead us straight as a bullet to our leftenant."

"Y-y-you are the Fourth Brigade?"

Note that Bulger didn't have to specify which lieutenant he was looking for, and thus reveal that the main character's name is Yancy or something, which would utterly destroy the mystique around him and cause the reader to toss the book over their shoulder.  Thanks to General Victor's systematic removal of every low-ranking officer he comes across, Lefty would seem to be the only lieutenant in the entire fortress.  So the orderly knows who Bulger is asking about, and Lefty's secret identity remains secure.

Fourth Brigade follows their hostage, meeting no further resistance, and of course tries to straighten their uniforms when they are led to a particular door.

Pollard knocked with his pistol butt.

The lieutenant opened it.

Pollard gave one of his very rare salutes, though he forgot to take the gun out of his hand first. "Sergeant major Pollard, sir. Fourth Brigade all present and accounted for. Will... will you please take command?"

It was very hard, then, for the lieutenant to keep full control of his emotions.

So it's not actually the lieutenant who takes action against the corrupt general, it's his loyal soldiers who fight their way through the fortress and rescue our hero, all so Lefty can be the one to "lead" them even though they've been doing a fine job of leading themselves.  Because they just have to have an aloof upper-class (but not too upper-class) officer around to make things right.

I think this is why monarchy is such an enduring form of government, there's like some defect in humans that makes them need someone around to be better than them.

We cut then to General Victor and his lackeys, "Burrowed like a rat with a phobia against hawks" in the depths of the fortress, whereas a real leader would set up his command post at the very uppermost part of a bunker, just daring the bombs to hit him.  It takes an hour after giving the order to execute the renegade soldiers for word to come back that things aren't going well - the garrison troops report that they're missing their guns.  No, I don't think Fourth Brigade was stealing weapons last night and the author didn't tell us, presumably the base garrison thinks "I've misplaced my weapon" is a better excuse than "you idiots were stupid enough to let them keep their artillery and machine guns."

At any rate, that orderly Pollard held hostage eventually shows up and says the lieutenant is offering terms of surrender, and though Smythe is outraged - "Surrender!  By all that ever was holy!" - Victor is smart enough to submit, and so joins the garrison on the top of the bunker complex, where eighteen hundred men are waiting in the mud under the guns of less than two hundred grunts  And of course the lieutenant is there too.

"See here," said Smythe, beginning without preamble.  "This is mutiny, murder and desertion; a hellish plot!"

"A plot?" inquired the lieutenant innocently.

"You know very well what it is!" said Smythe.  "You cannot deny it.  You stocked your men up with food an brought them here.  You knew what effect that would have upon the garrison.  You knew that when you ordered your men to revolt there would be no hand to oppose them.  This is a vile trick!"

Guess it's a lose-lose for military leaders.  Either they feed their men and they get rebellious like Fourth Company, or they starve their soldiers and they get apathetic, like the garrison.

"Perhaps, Colonel Smythe, perhaps.  But you are wrong in saying that I ordered my men to revolt.  That was not necessary, you know."

Nor did Lefty have to give them any directions on the battlefield.  We might wonder why they even need him around.

Lefty admits that getting revenge on his superiors sounds tempting, but he's willing to settle for ammunition and other supplies, so once they help themselves to what's in the fortress Fourth Brigade will be on its way.

General Victor thrust Smythe aside.  "According to international law, sir, you are a brigand."

"If we must have law," said the lieutenant courteously, "then let it be military law, by which you are a fool.  Now please stand aside while we get on with this business."

I think even if you go by military law, Lefty is a mutineer.  Unless the argument is that Victor was planning on going rogue anyway, and you can't mutiny against another renegade, except Lefty isn't exactly planning on remaining loyal to the government in London after this, as we'll soon see.

Swinburne, Carstair, Pollard, Tou-tou and Thomas O'Thomas all looked wonderingly at the lieutenant.  They had no inkling of this as a deliberate scheme, but now they saw it clearly.  They saw it in terms of numbers and guns, and gasped at the realization that the lieutenant had captured the only existing fortress

His men did that you idiots.  Lefty sat in his room and felt sad while they did all the fighting.

in the countryside, garrisoned by sixteen hundred men,

Sixteen hundred malnourished men with no stomach for combat.

with not the loss of one in all his own command.

It helps that they were allowed to keep their machine guns and artillery with them and were crazy enough to use them in a cramped underground environment.  And again, their enemies were either too scared or too apathetic to fight back while our heroes were butchering them.

Their faces softened into gentle worship as they gazed upon their officer.

I can't physically shoot blood out of my eyes like a Texas horned lizard, but let me tell you, it's not for a lack of trying.

So Fourth Brigade raids the fortress for goodies, while Lefty vets all the garrison troops eager to join the unit that was remorselessly gunning down their buddies.  He turns down anyone in favor of soldiers' councils or without at least three years' experience, and makes sure everyone he recruits is physically capable of fighting.  By the next day he has 550 soldiers in Fourth Brigade, now organized into two regiments and an artillery company.  No, he doesn't promote himself to "the colonel" or "the major-general."  Those are high ranks, and therefore bad.

The lieutenant was very thorough.  Each man had a good pair of boots, a rainproof cape, a visored helmet, a semiautomatic rifle, a breastplate, three bandoleers of ammunition, a canteen, a bayonet, a sharp-sided spade, six grenades, a good overcoat, two uniforms of regulation British slate blue, and an adequate haversack.  The baggage carts were brimming with spare ammunition and condensed food.  The artillery unit now had eight pieces and sixty noncombatants to draw them.

Hubbard thought it was important, so here it is.  And man, who knows?  Was he trying to show off how much he knew about a military man's kit?  Is he feeling bitter about being under-equipped back in the Montana Army National Guard or Marine Corps Reserve and is showing people how to properly prepare a soldier for combat?

Also, the British army adopted a khaki color scheme in 1902, then switched to a camouflaged brown-and-green battledress in 1938.  I have no idea why Hubbard thought the British either wore blue uniforms or would adopt them in the near-ish future when the color is better associated with Prussian or French forces.

But off they go, Swinburne and Carstair now leading Fourth Brigade's First and Second Regiments, a motley collection of soldiers from all over Europe (except Germany and the Balkans), as well as Turks and a "Moor" or two, all marching to the tune of a bagpiper formerly of the Hellfire Highlanders.  And General Victor is actually sad to see them leave.

"It was wrong," said General Victor.  "There's reason, then, why a field officer should be treated well.

Yeah, it turns out that if you don't mistreat people, there's a reduced chance that they'll betray you.  I know, I know, it sounds crazy, but it's true!

Smythe, I would to Heaven we had kept him under our command."

Especially since your "army" was starving and this guy had a proven record of finding food and supplies.  Good grief these bad guys are stupid.

Actually, it's worse than that, they're just smart enough to realize how stupid they are, even though the plot still mandates that they shoot themselves in the foot.  Most Hubbard Villains are blissfully unaware of their own incompetence, but I almost feel sorry for General Victor.

"There's no use talking about it now," said Smythe bitterly.  "That outfit is headed for England!"

"You... you think so?" said the startled Victor.

"I'm certain.

I think Smythe cheated and read ahead.

"Come, we owe it to London to tell them of this revolt and of the man that led it.

London, home of the regime you guys helped into power, but in turn exiled you to darkest France?  The regime you were planning on ditching anyway so you could be dukes or whatever in post-apocalyptic continental Europe?  The regime you have no reason to be loyal to, or care about the fate of?

This debt will yet be paid."

Oh, I guess it's about revenge.  They're so mad they were stupid and antagonized the lieutenant that they're going to be even more stupid and side with their enemy to get back at him.


Back to Chapter V part I 

Forward to Chapter VI