Shadows of the Dark Eagle

Early July 1940:
With the fall of France, a victorious German Army stands along the coastline facing the English Channel, the beleaguered British counting the cost of losing most of their military equipment at Dunkirk, across northern France and Belgium as the allied nations fell or capitulated.

As the last of these British and French soldiers were evacuated by brave determined small boat owners and the Royal Navy, government ministers realise in horror that there are only six anti-tank guns in the whole of England, a drastic shortage of rifles and uniforms, lorries, tanks, armoured cars and aircraft.

338,226 French and British soldiers were evacuated from Dunkirk, scattered other pockets from coastal ports and beaches all along the French northern shores were also lifted to safety. Without these men as deterrent, Britain would have surely fallen immediately and frantic arguments continued in the House of Commons to make peace with Germany.

Most of the evacuated troops were demoralised or wounded, the government stunned that so many had escaped as the attacking German Wehrmacht simply halted their advance for a couple of days, seemingly mesmerised by their successful and devastating offensive. Little did they know that Adolf Hitler had become increasingly nervous at his thinly reinforced forward forces, unaware that capturing the majority of the British Army was within his grasp until many were escaping across the channel, the assurances of Goering at the time that his Luftwaffe would destroy the stubborn pocket of resistance proving ineffective.

Rumours and whispers spread through the English population and German Army that the war in the west was perhaps over. Conspiracy theories were rife...had the Wehrmacht stopped to even deliberately permit the British and French soldiers to escape...was this even the prelude to a grand alliance between the British Empire and the German Reich?

But the rumours were false, Winston Churchill had no intention of relenting on his pledges to defeat the Nazis...the British 'bulldog' was not for compromise against such an evil as Adolf Hitler. Even the Germans could not believe it...surely the stubborn British could see reason, they were a defeated nation in all but occupancy.

Within just a few days, the Royal Air Force has retreated from dogfights over the channel and lower North Sea against overwhelming odds with the loss of over fifty valuable fighters and more importantly...experienced pilots...mostly picked up by German vessels.

Further days slip by...nervousness and dread rising, a date...July the sixteenth approaching as coastal British soldiers and Home Guard volunteers stared warily through binoculars across the channel, their collective dread rising for what was to come.

They would not have to wait long...the skies were darkening ominously on the night of the fifteenth...a storm was about to rise over the channel.

With spies, resistance fighters and steamy romance on both sides of the channel, the RAF will endeavour to protect British skies in a desperate bid to deter or stop the German Luftwaffe.

This fictional story interweaves with the desperate struggle for Western Europe in the warm summer of 1940, albeit with a small number of changes.

Designed to complement the author's popular Bloodied Wehrmacht series, new characters will join some of the existing younger soldiers in Britain's darkest hour.
About the Author: As a boy, I used to write reports of the local football matches in my home town in northern Scotland, my favourite stories to write at the time being adventure and war and how the human condition adapts to the pressures of fate and unpredictability. Fascinated by history, I used to consume books at a frantic rate, reading personal accounts and historical works across all ages and becoming frustrated upon perusing articles that would compromise fact for common belief or to embellish a tale. My parents had always encouraged me to follow my interest, and this continued with my father occasionally enquiring if I had written anything, something I regret I had not done at the time. Although the pressures of buying property, running a business and having a career allowed me to develop plots and devise potential ideas for books, tales, twists of fate, etc. this was usually accomplished whilst sitting at traffic lights, awaking from a dream, waiting in a bar or the bane of my life, rush hour traffic. I did not realise at the time I was continually formulating stories in my mind, it was just an entertaining pastime to prevent boredom with the initial extracts of imagination then added to over time and usually when passing the same place. On long journeys, I would mentally start out with a plot and character, allowing that to grow and flourish in my mind...quite a useful diversion on say an eight hour car journey...by the time I reached the destination, a whole set of characters and actions had been formulated, sometimes even with terrain and weather. I would then write these whims down, unaware my sub-conscious seemed to be storing the colourful adventure, the key being the location I was at or even emotional state. A couple of years ago, my father unfortunately passed away and it was on the train to assist in the arrangements for the funeral that I considered what my father had encouraged me to do, the things he had been proud of that I had perhaps let slip. All the plots and stories began to pour back as I sat staring out into the French countryside, the silly twists that life throws at us, comical endings to situations and the 'itch I could never scratch', understanding fate's choices and the luck in life. I determined at that point that I would finally achieve what I had always dreamed of and write. At the end of the journey with the train pulling into Bezier...I had completed the first chapter of the first book, Bloody Iced Bullet.