For the twentieth night in succession, Private Jonny Smith sat looking through the small crack-like window of his bunker. The rain poured down, the cold frosted his breath and his stomach grumbled like the distant sound of the German bombers.
"This is unbearable!" he said to Jimmy, busy cleaning his gun, "it's meant to be April, but it's so cold, I'm half-starved and there is no way I'll be home for Christmas."
"It's all part of the war effort," answered Jimmy. "You can't be selfish at times like this."
"But how long are we meant to go on like this?"
"Like what?"
"Like this. Look at these . . . conditions!"
"What conditions?" asked Jimmy, lighting a cigarette. Smith stood back looking Jimmy up and down, aghast at the state his fellow solider had been reduced to. He remembered Jimmy when the war broke out, a tall, handsome man of strong build and healthy demeanour, who had subsequently been reduced to a skinny, pale-faced individual, the very spark of life nearly extinguished.
"Yeah, you're right," quipped Smith, not wanting to depress Jimmy. "What conditions?"
Removing himself to the rear of the bunker, he made a cup of tea and fiddled with the wireless, one of the few luxuries he had left in life. The wireless was permanently fixed to the BBC and he usually listened with great interest to the latest reports, but that night he boldly moved the dial the length and breadth of the AM wavelength, hearing an assorted crackle of English, French and German voices. Though strictly forbidden, he tuned in to a German station, much to the surprise of Jimmy, who looked on fearfully.
"I speak German," said Smith. "Translators can listen to whatever they want." Jimmy, unsure of this point of military law, returned his gaze to the rumble of the night-time sky, distancing himself from this nefarious activity.
"The conditions are unbearable," yelled a German down the wireless. "We are starving, we are cold, and we won't see our loved ones forever!"
In shock, Smith rattled his head, and with a sense of overwhelming guilt he lost his concentration to the sound of this angry German.
"It is not fair that we have to work in these conditions! And if they won't change them, we will have to change them ourselves!" The crowd cheered, the wireless nearly shattered from the strain of feedback. Smith turned off the radio, his heart pounding as these illicit thoughts raced through his mind.
The following night he scanned the sky with new enthusiasm as he reflected on the passionate voice of the German broadcast, and when an enemy bomber hovered overhead he couldn't help but think that perhaps this evil foe was more like himself than he liked to admit. Naturally, he kept these thoughts to himself for fear of dispiriting Jimmy but when free he quickly tuned back in to the German station. This time, however, his heart beat even faster than the night before.
"We are Germans! We are not rats!" the man yelled. "If this goes on like this, we will be forced to do one thing and one thing only - go on strike!" The crowd was uproarious and Smith, shaking with excitement, quickly turned off the wireless.
"So what was the Hun blabbering about tonight?" asked Jimmy.
"Nothing really," said Smith, downing the remains of his tea. Later on, despite the crippling exhaustion he felt, he could not sleep a wink as he replayed the German broadcast over and over again in his mind. "The Germans," he thought to himself, "they really are a well-organised and intelligent bunch. Nobody on these islands could come up with that idea! Yes, nobody . . . except . . . except me." It was at that point, lying in his sodden bed, that the star-like vision of his destiny shone before him.
The offices of the Army Observer were a small, cramped affair with a couple of desks and an old printing press. Its editor, Michael Longshore, looked nervously at the article submitted by Private Jonny Smith, General Secretary of the newly created British Order of Military Battalions Union (B.O.M.B.U.)
"But I have never heard of this organisation before," said Longshore.
"It's our new union," replied Smith.
"But how can we have a union! It's a war."
"Workers, no matter what they are working for, must be represented and treated well."
"But what about the Germans? They read all our papers and if they see this it will be like giving them the red carpet to blow us away."
"Don't worry about the Germans," Smith said enigmatically. "I've dealt with them."
"You've talked to them? The enemy?"
"Yes, but they're not the real enemy, they're just workers like ourselves. The real enemy are the Lords - The War Lords."
Longshore was undoubtedly inspired by Smith's conviction and agreed to run a story about B.O.M.B.U., but he insisted that it would only be a small piece on page seven beside the horoscopes - as they had become a little dreary since the war started - and not on the front page. Despite being a little disappointed, Smith was happy with Longshore's understanding of the newsworthiness of B.O.M.B.U. and felt that this year could be the turning point of the war: 1941 - Year Zero.
"You've really gone and done it now," quipped Jimmy back in the bunker. "The officers have been looking for you all morning."
"They have?" said Smith, excited at the prospect of negotiation.
"The word is that you'll be in jail before the week is out. You may even be hanged for treason." Hanged for the cause, thought Smith with relish, but before he got too excited with this vision of martyrdom, two members of the military police arrived in the bunker.
"Private Smith?" one of them asked. Jimmy looked anxiously at Smith, but to little avail.
"Are you Private Smith?" the policeman asked again.
"No," replied Smith. By this stage Jimmy was sweating for fear of being hauled off himself and suddenly cried out: "Yes he is."
"No, I'm not," replied Smith.
"This is not a pantomime," said the other policeman. "Are you or are you not Private Smith?"
"I believe you have the wrong man. I am in fact Comrade Smith," he replied heroically.
General Mitchell was less than impressed with the article in the Army Observer; in fact, he was livid and summoned Smith immediately.
"Do you like the army?" General Mitchell asked Smith as he tucked into his lunch.
"Yes Sir, I do."
"Then why do you insist on putting these ideas in the minds of my men?"
"Because I feel, with no disrespect to yourself, that the soldiers should not only fight the enemy but also for better conditions as well."
"Better conditions! This is a war!" shouted General Mitchell as he sprinkled salt upon his succulent sirloin steak.
"I understand the situation, Sir, but the soldiers still need better conditions. They are hungry, cold, tired and dirty."
General Mitchell gulped down a mouthful of brandy and exclaimed: "But this is a war, what do you expect?"
"Dignity."
"Dignity! My God! I was in Loos twenty years ago saving this country and you want dignity. Kitchener would be turning in his grave." He laughed aloud, lit a cigar and said ominously: "Another article like that and you'll be hanged for high treason."
Despite the rebuke from General Mitchell, Smith immediately got down to work. Via Morse code, he contacted Gunter Heinz, General Secretary of the Wehrmacht Association of Regiments Union (W.A.R.) and explained his position. Heinz, a regular reader of the Army Observer, was familiar with Smith's views and had written a similar piece in a German paper. When he received the Morse code, he became ecstatic and convened a meeting with Smith. Once the arrangements were finalised, Smith departed for the Army Observer and was met by a jubilant Longshore.
"We completely sold out of the last edition!" he announced. "I do hope you are here with another article."
"I am," said Smith. "A very big one."
Longshore was thrilled with the news as he had already set a photograph of Smith to accompany his forthcoming articles. Due to the success of the last piece, he envisioned a front page editorial each week by Smith and a series of photo profiles of him - in the bunker, reading a book, talking with soldiers, listening to the wireless, fly on the wall stuff - in the main body of the paper. Smith, Longshore had decided, was a star and the Army Observer was the galaxy he belonged to. Nevertheless, when Longshore realised the content of the latest polemic, his mind became torn between the reams of newsprint he would sell and the consequences of Smith's Call To Disarm. After a hot-headed debate, Smith convinced Longshore that you can't libel the enemy and that he could stand over every word he had written.
It was an unusual sight to see Gunter Heinz, General Secretary of W.A.R., being escorted off a Royal Air Force plane as an honoured guest and not a prisoner of war, and being met by a delighted Smith while the Whitechapel Army Band played the Internationale on the airstrip. Inside the largest hangar, a stage draped in the insignia of B.O.M.B.U and W.A.R. awaited the respective speakers as the crowd - comprising men, women and children - sang songs and smoked copious amounts of tobacco. As Smith took to the stage, his name household, his face as famous as the War Lords themselves, the audience went ecstatic and chanted "Smith, Smith" until they lost their breath.
"My friends," spoke Smith calmly. "I give you Gunter Heinz."
Heinz, though well-versed in mass hysteria, was rather taken aback by the enthusiasm shown by the seething crowd and blushed as he fumbled with a speech he had prepared hundreds of feet above the English channel.
"This is a most extraordinary event, the war has ground to a halt," he said in perfect English but with a heavy Bavarian slant. "We have brought the War Lords to their knees. The Fⁿhrer is in analysis, he even went to Vienna for a session with Sigmund Freud and cried on realising that Freud had fled to London." The crowd went wild at this anecdote and it took Heinz a few minutes to quiet them down. "But don't thank me," Heinz continued. "You have only one person to thank and that is you . . . you . . . you," he said, pointing out individual people in the crowd, some of whom fainted when his Germanic finger picked them out.
"People - I give you Gunter Heinz," said Smith, returning to the podium, "and tomorrow we will start our negotiations with the War Lords for a better quality war."
Smith and Heinz sat at one end of a large table, Churchill, Stalin and Hitler at the other. The wireless was on in the background, a man with a BBC voice reporting from Dunkirk: "A most extraordinary series of events have occurred whereby the evacuation has been put on hold and now the British and German soldiers are organising social events in this coastal town. Rumour has it that they may even put on a film festival or an opera gala."
"This is ridiculous!" exclaimed Churchill. "What are our soldiers up to?"
"I expected more from our boys," replied Hitler.
"As for the Red Army," interjected Stalin, "they have invited the Japanese to stroll through Manchuria into Russia, but are they manning their guns? No, they have set their tables for unlimited teriyaki and tempura prawns!"
The three War Lords turned their attention to Smith and Heinz. "You have succeeded in bringing the war to a halt. What are your demands to get things moving?" asked Churchill.
"We have outlined all our requests in this working document," explained Smith as he passed a freshly printed publication around. "This is our Programme for Perpetual Fighting (P.P.F.), and we will only operate under these conditions."
"Good God!" exclaimed Churchill minutes later. "Do you really think that you can have a 35-hour week, every second weekend off, overtime paid at 1.5 times the hourly rate, paternity leave and stock options!"
"What's wrong with stock options?" inquired Heinz.
"It's impractical," answered Hitler.
"But we want some reward from the profits of war," said Heinz. "It is not fair that the soldiers do not get financially rewarded for risking their lives."
But the War Lords were unconvinced. "The only way you can have stock options is if you link it with productivity," argued Churchill.
Productivity was a delicate issue for Smith and Heinz, and they knew that their soldiers were not likely to agree. Over the last couple of weeks, the idea of league tables for individual battalions had been rejected on numerous occasions.
"I have no problem if the Death's Head regiment gets productivity-related pay increases as they are excellent, but there are other battalions who aren't as productive and therefore should not get as much of an increase," argued Hitler.
"I agree," said Churchill. "How can I give the soldiers in Dunkirk a pay rise when they have lost the battle?"
"And the war," joked Hitler.
"But I will give the Air Force an increase, as never have I got so much from so few in terms of productivity," explained Churchill.
"This is unfair," replied Smith. "Soldiers do a lot of extra work which is not reflected in their basic duty of killing people. They supervise the towns which they occupy and they often lead other men on reconnaissance trips which may not yield results in the short term, but certainly do in the long term . . ."
And so the negotiations carried on in this fashion for months, but such was the solidarity between Smith and Heinz and the soldiers they represented that they received unequivocal support from all quarters with virtually no opposition to the strike. After a couple of months, in September 1941, Hitler exploded during one of the meetings and shouted: "I should bloody well be in the Urals by now, but my men are pussy-footing around eastern Europe!" This remark upset Stalin greatly and he threatened to walk out of the negotiations, but Churchill advised him that talking was the only way of getting the war back on track.
Every evening, TV and wireless stations eagerly waited outside the offices of B.O.M.B.U., and Smith and Heinz would answer questions regarding the strike.
"When do you think you'll get your men back to work?" asked a reporter.
"We would love to go back as soon as possible," answered Smith.
"Of course," added Heinz. "We are professionals and we would love to be back doing what we are best at, killing as many British soldiers as possible."
Smith was nodding his head in agreement. "Exactly. Our members miss the battlefields, the smell of grapeshot, but we are waiting for our demands to be met."
"Do you think you'll get the 30 per cent?" asked another reporter.
"Our members won't sign up to anything less," Smith adamantly replied.
After six months, a breakaway group of soldiers formed their own union, as they longed to be back at work, and negotiated a lesser deal with the War Lords. This led to an unusual situation of sporadic fighting along the eastern front; parts of the Ukraine were devastated by the Germans, who killed thousands, but further north towards Russia, the Germans, the Red Army and the locals were busy harvesting the land together and, with Teutonic zeal, the Germans even increased the efficiency of the sickle and scythe ten-fold, much to the delight of the Russian peasantry. When Christmas came, so enamoured were the Russians with their German visitors, an "Adopt a Nazi" scheme was encouraged and thousands of German soldiers spent their Yuletide in the comfort of Russian cottages enjoying a smorgasbord of borscht, dumplings and bread. But not in Stalingrad. The breakaway union had responded so enthusiastically to their improved productivity deal that the city was in ruins, millions were dead and in certain neighbourhoods soldiers on both sides had resorted to cannibalism.
All strikes, no matter how bitter, eventually end and after a year the War Lords signed up to the PPF agreement. The beleaguered War Lords had no option but to agree - they had tried everything and even attempted to hire in temporary and freelance staff from Greenland, but once those soldiers saw the millions of strikers manning the picket lines on the eastern front, they refused to cross it and downed their guns in support. When the breakaway union representing the Japanese air force bombed Pearl Harbour and America joined the war, Roosevelt, whose own air force was on strike, sacked the entire force and airport staff out of desperation, but this decision proved pointless and was hotly contested by the air force's union representative, Captain Ronald Reagan. When Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt and Hitler gave in to Smith and Heinz, in a famous incident Hitler threw a blank Bundesbank cheque across the table and said: "Please, just fill it in."
The soldiers became extremely comfortable with their new conditions and, while killing did increase, because the working week had been shortened to 35 hours, the death toll was down on the previous year but only statistically. In 1959, when the war was in its twentieth year, Elvis famously joined the US Army and fought in the Pacific Ocean. With the new working conditions and stock options, the soldiers happily fought until an armistice was signed in 1965 as the western and eastern powers declared bankruptcy. America thought it had won the war when it bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the crew of the 'Enola Gay' would not accept the redundancy offer so they carried on working and bombed Kobe and Tokyo as well.
Smith passed away six years after the war ended and his body was buried beside a monument dedicated to the 170 million soldiers who gave their lives in the second World War, gloriously dubbed The Workers' War. Thousands of people visit his grave every day and pay their respects to Jonny Smith or, as those close to him used to call him, Comrade Smith.
(c) Mark Collins2001
Mark Collins was born in 1972. He is half-Irish and half-Hungarian. He studied philosophy at TCD and, since graduation, has worked in publishing, Internet design and freelance journalism. He edited and published the Temple Bar Review from 1996 to 1998. This is the first short story he has published. He lives and works in Dublin.