by Holroyd, Tom
The Zombie War
Battle for Britain
Contents
Authors Note
WRITING ON THE WALL
First Contact
Intelligence Failure
Feral Youth
Other side of the Tracks
Senlac
First Responder
PANIC
CCTV operator
The Battle of The Mall
Safety at Sea
Senlac Phase 2
Continental divide
Axe to grind.
Rally to the Colours.
Flight to safety.
CONSOLIDATION
Resources
Roundheads and Cavaliers
Militia
Settlement
Islands
Supply lines
RESTORATION
Prepare to Move
Battle of Carlisle
On the move
North to South
London and beyond
Silent war
BRITANNIA ASCENDANT
Post Victory Hangover
Foothold
Commonwealth
Authors Note
It had never been my intention to write a book about the Zombie War. In the years of peace that followed the darkest period in human history, a time when the light of civilisation was in danger of being extinguished by the creatures that even today defy explanation and understanding, I felt it was somehow undignified and demeaning to be telling stories of those that had died.
My moment of epiphany came when I was covering the Olsen Review that took place some five years after the end of the war. At the time, I was a journalist for a well-known broadsheet newspaper and reported on many of the key events during and after the war. During the inquest one piece of information caught my attention. A sociologist had stated in her report, that in another thirty years’ time many of the Zombie War generation, those that had been there at the start of the conflict, would be dead. My first reaction was of course one of concern for my own longevity. However, the more I thought about it the more I realised that importance of recording the survivor’s tales for posterity.
I approached my editor with the idea of doing a series of human interest pieces to tell those stories and thankfully she allowed me a limited run in the Sunday edition. They were a great success, with people clamouring for more. It seemed that the stories had ignited a fire in the people of Britain to know more of others’ experiences.
I was approached by the National Archive and commissioned to construct a series of survivor’s accounts to be recorded for posterity. Armed with funding, an assistant to write up the interviews and a Royal Writ to go where I please and talk to who I wished, I set off on a long and emotional journey. It took me three years but the product was many thousands of interviews written and stored in the National Archive in London and all of it open to the public.
While I was understandably proud of my work I felt that it was still somewhat impersonal and that while it was free to all to view it was not practical for many people to travel to London. There were already numerous biographies, official histories, magazine articles and documentaries in the public domain telling different aspects of the war and there is of course the government’s Olsen Review which had sought out the cold hard facts. To me there was nothing that filled the gap, no overarching manuscript to bring these great stories of individual struggle together into a coherent tale.
It is my hope that this book can help to fill that gap and contribute to keeping these fascinating stories alive. Human history is after all the stories of people and their actions. Without the personal aspect then history loses its context and I feel that the history of Britain would be lessened without them.
The Zombie War is without a doubt the most devastating and at the same time important event in human history. In my mind, it is the first truly global war that has affected every single corner of this planet and every single person living on it. No war has brought about the profound political, social, economic, environmental and psychological changes that this one has. Countries have changed shape, political direction and religion. Some have been weakened and some have come out stronger.
Britain has been irrevocably changed in the past twenty years. In some ways, the country is a better and stronger place but in others we have been weakened almost to the point of breaking. Life expectancy and the standard of living are a shadow of their pre-war levels but Britons are a stronger, more unified people with a more focused understanding of our place in the world. To say the war has made the country a better place would be an insult to all those that have died but it has brought people together in the way a common threat always does. It would not be unfair to say that the sun set on the empire many years before the war, even if it took a long time for many people to realise it. But in the darkness of the war Britain rediscovered its self worth and strove to create a better, fairer and more equal world that will hopefully ensure peace for many generations.
It is my ardent hope that this book stands as a testament to those who lived and died through the many years of struggle. My heartfelt thanks to all those who consented to be interviewed and my apologies to those whose stories did not make it into this edition. Special thanks are due to the curator of the National Archives who made this journey possible in the first place.
Tom Holroyd
WRITING ON THE WALL
First Contact
Westminster, London
Mike Hodgson is not the stereotypical SAS soldier depicted in films, books and television. At first glance, one could almost pass over the slightly built, unassuming man sitting quietly at the corner table of a London pub. Mike actually contacted me for this interview, having heard that I was interviewing soldiers who had served in Afghanistan during the first phases of the war.
I was a career soldier. I joined the Army at 17 to get away from a shit life in a London council estate and signed on with the Parachute Regiment. It was a quiet time for the Army as this was before Iraq and Afghanistan properly kicked off, all we really had was Northern Ireland tours and the Balkans. I had joined for some action so after three years of service I decided to give Selection a go.
When people think of the SAS they think of steely eyed dealers of death swinging through windows and killing the bad guys. Muscled supermen who deal death to the King’s enemies. It’s all a load of shit cooked up by the media, TV programs and all the ex-Regiment lads who write crappy novels that give away all our tactics for a pile of cash. Can’t really say as I blame them though; given the amount of money thrown at some mates of mine over the years.
The truth is that most people wouldn’t recognise someone from the SAS if they were stood next to them. We are all just ordinary blokes who have been through some extraordinary things and that’s what Selection identifies and picks out in people. Yeah, it’s physically demanding but it is the mental side that gets you. Walking mile after mile in shit Welsh weather, over what seem like never ending hills with no end in sight, that’s what breaks people and that’s what the Regiment look for in its soldiers. It is the ability to keep going no matter what, to look at that hill and say “Fuck you! You’re not going to beat me”. It was this mental robustness that built the legend and made us so well placed to carry out the job we did in the war.
Can you tell me about Afghanistan?
The Regiment was really in their element there.
We had done some good work in Iraq targeting the insurgent hierarchy and the bomb makers and helped bring things to a much faster conclusion but it was in Afghanistan where we really came into our own. Our main role was as a rapid strike force and we were very, very busy. A bit
of Intelligence would come in that some high value target was crossing the border from Pakistan and would be at some location at a certain time. We would head out and raid the place to either kill or capture the target.
I just want to be clear though; we always went out with the intent to capture and would only kill if the bastard wouldn’t play nicely. We weren’t like some units that would just drop into a village and brass the place up looking for one man. It was always quick, quiet and hopefully blood free.
One day we get a call from the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) Int Cell in Kabul. A source in Pakistan had told them a senior member of the insurgency was crossing the border and would be staying in a village near Peshawar. There were no American Special Forces units available and could we go and have a crack at him? Of course, the boys had been getting a bit restless by then. The vast majority of British troops had pulled out along with over half the Americans and things had been fairly quiet with the Afghans sorting out their own problems. The only thing going on was the increased reports of refugee traffic coming across the border from China and India but even that was only worthy of a small sentence in the nightly Int brief.
Anyway, the Boss jumped at the chance for a bit of work.
Twelve of us jumped onto a C-130 and shot off North. The plan was for a simple night raid, usual format; parachute out near the village, patrol in, raid the target house, secure the package, get picked up by the helicopters and back in time for breakfast. We had done it a thousand times before and had no reason to doubt this time would be different.
It was about half an hour’s flight from Kabul to the target village, a shitty little place with no name, it wasn’t even marked on most maps and the only way we found it was through satellite photos. It was a tiny hamlet with twenty to thirty houses that sat in an east – west running valley. All the Int pointed to it being a traditional route for people smuggling, drugs and gun running over the mountains.
We landed about 2 km to the east of the village, stashed the ‘chutes and began our patrol in. As soon as we hit the main track running into the village we knew something wasn’t right. We started to come across abandoned vehicles, some with smashed windows. Blood stains were on the ground and around the doors and there was the odd bullet casing scattered on the ground. There was a flat bed truck stuck in a drainage ditch by the side of the road. It had one of those raised boxes on the back and there were these holes punched in the side like someone had been keeping an animal in there. The doors of the box were hanging off the hinges and there was fresh blood on the ground around it. Our first thought was that some dumb bastard had been smuggling a tiger or something across the border and it must have gotten free and run rampant before fucking off.
We cast around, looking for whatever ground sign we could through the Night Vision Goggles and soon came across these strange tracks that looked human but had a weird dragging gait like the person was lame. The tracks, about five sets, headed off in the direction of the village. We cracked on, definitely starting to get a little bit spooked by now, and got within 500m of the village. It was at this point that one of the lads commented over the net that there we no dogs barking. Afghans would always tether dogs in a ring around a village to act as early warning but there was nothing. There was a slight rise in front of us, so we all went to ground and crawled forward till we could see the village.
It was a fucking mess, doors smashed off their hinges, blood splashed up the walls and pooled on the floor. There were bodies on the ground and we could see bullet holes pock marking the walls and doors. Nothing was moving.
The Boss gave us the order to move forward. We picked ourselves up and started to patrol carefully forward over the field towards the first compound. Pretty much as soon as I got up I was back on may face again as I tripped over something. I had found out what had happened to the guard dogs. They had been ripped apart and half eaten.
As we got closer to the compound we found the first body, a man, again ripped apart. It was obvious from the way he was facing, the rusty AK by his side and pile of shell casings at his feet that he had been firing at something coming down the track from the direction of the abandoned vehicles.
We guessed that a group of people, maybe five had come down the track towards the first compound and been smelt by the dog, the dog had gone ape-shit and woken its master. The dog then got torn apart before the man had come out and started shooting. He had evidently hit naff all and then been killed himself.
All this was surmised very quickly and quietly before the Boss decided we would continue with the original mission and try and grab our target. We moved off very slowly and quietly keeping one eye on the tracks and one on the road ahead. As we passed each compound the tracks would move straight toward the door and then into the compound. In the courtyards, all we could see was blood, torn up bodies and shattered doors.
We reached the target compound and found the door hanging off the hinges; the courtyard looked like a fucking slaughter house. I’ve never seen or smelt anything like it. Our target had evidently overnighted here and brought a large bodyguard with him, fuck all good it did him though. There were ten or twelve men scattered around the courtyard and I do mean scattered, they had all been facing the door and they were all in pieces. The compound wall around the door looked like it had been used for target practice and there were droplets of this brownish goo scattered around the door way and all over the ground. We moved through the courtyard and started in amongst the bodies looking for our target. Most of them had been torn apart and partly eaten but there were two that were whole except for having their heads blown off. It looked as if these were our mystery attackers as they were riddled with bullets and were facing towards the bodyguards.
We fanned out to secure the compound with one team clearing the buildings. I watched a mate of mine duck into a door way and then pile back out again vomiting. I didn’t see what he did, as I was guarding the door to the courtyard but heard from him later that he had found the target, or what was left of him. It seems that he had locked himself in the storeroom and then shot himself in the head. Something or as was becoming more and more possible, someone, had then broken in and partially eaten him.
I should have been looking outwards for any signs of trouble, should have been checking my arcs but I was more interested in seeing what was going on behind me. So fucking unprofessional!
Anyway, I heard a low moan and this shuffling sound behind me. I spun round and came face to face with one of the attackers, fucking nearly shat myself.
Have you ever seen a Ghoul through a night sight? There is something about the eyes after they turn, they get glazed over and all scratched up because they don’t blink. It gives them that dead, grey look but it also reflects the moon light. It also has the wonderful side effect of making it seem like their eyes glow in the dark. If ever you need a cure for constipation try that.
There were three of them about five meters away. They had just come around the corner of the next compound along and were heading straight for me. I yelled for the Boss and backed through the door which would force them to come at us one at a time. The Boss came running and looked through the door, even in the dark I could see his face drain of colour. He told us all to get as far back as possible as he wanted to try something.
Turns out the Boss was a big fan of horror movies, loved the old George A. Romero zombie flicks. He told me later he had had this nagging suspicion in the back of his mind all night but had dismissed it because it just couldn’t be real. Now here it was shuffling and moaning towards us.
The Boss moved back from the door as the first one pushed through and raised his weapon. He fired off two shots straight into the heart. Nothing, it just took the hits and kept coming. He then raised his point of aim and shot it point blank in the head. The thing dropped like a sack of shit and didn’t even twitch. He turned and trotted back to us, by then we had formed a firing line against the far wall of the compound and he told two of the lads to s
hoot them in the head. They let rip and the bastards dropped.
I think at that point one of the younger lad let loose with a “What the fuck!”. The Boss was on the radio to Command trying to get them to understand what had happened and I don’t think it was going well. He was yelling into the mike “Yes, fucking zombies, living dead, all that shit”. He must have gotten through to someone who knew what we were talking about as we were told to stay put and secure the area. We were also told to make sure that all the corpses were properly dead. We were all a bit surprised by that last order, until the Boss told us that in the movies people bitten by zombies can come back to life and needed to be shot in the head to stay dead. He ordered us to “secure” the village.
It was a pretty shitty half hour as we went from room to room and compound to compound slotting these corpses between the eyes. Some of them were even starting to re-animate by then. I tell you, nothing gets your heart pumping like looking down on a corpse preparing to pull the trigger when it suddenly opens its eyes and looks back.
By the time we had gotten back to the main compound the Boss had a G tied up, gagged and was sitting on its back as it squirmed underneath him. “Help” arrived pretty soon after that. Four Black Hawks and a Chinook landed outside the village and unloaded what looked like extras from a bio-hazard movie. They took control and hustled us onto a waiting Black Hawk. The last thing we saw as we headed off was the bound zombie being strapped to a medical gurney and carried onto the Chinook, behind us the village burned as they “sanitised” the area.