The Great Martian War 1913 - 1917 Page #3

Herons and Spiders are

holding their line,

repulsing every Allied attack.

A mass of human dead

wrapped in the wreckage of war

litters the battlefield.

But as the sun sets,

the horror rises.

A third alien war machine

crawls out into the

gloom of no man's land,

and begins its work.

It was the threat

of what these machines

were doing during

the hours of darkness

that occupied the thought

of so many of the men.

Not one of us can sleep

not when those fiends ar

moving beyond the wire.

The mere thought of them

of what they're doing

to our dead and wounded,

fills every living

man with dread.

The men called them lice

and there were thousands

and thousands,

and thousands of them.

We could hear the

noise from the lice

coming behind us and cleaning

the ditches for their harvest.

The men at the front believed

the vile purpose of the

night-prowling herds of lice

is to harvest the dead.

Dawn breaks -

The lice retreat

like a black tide.

And everything is gone!

Every shell,

every last shard of battle,

and every one of our dead

My fallen brothers are taken.

Their bodies stolen.

For food?

For fuel?

We hardly dare imagine why

but this is why those

devils are here.

They came for us.

Back at the home front,

entire streets begin receiving

telegrams from the war office

informing them their men

are missing in action.

These missing men become

known as "the vanished"..

It was the first telegram

I'd ever seen.

It said there'd been a battle,

and that he was missing.

That was it.

Oh, my poor mum,

they might just as well

have taken her, too.

'Vanished' is what he was

By now, Gus Lafonde has been

on the front line

for three months.

His duty is to scout

the enemy lines.

But his passion for his

Anishinaabe heritage

pushes him much further

than mere duty.

Unlike his comrades,

Gus ventures behind

the enemy lines,

and into the monstrous

alien camp itself.

Here, he begins to count coup.

In Anishinaabe culture,

a warrior could

prove his courage

by the form of counting coup,

and it was a way

to defeat the enemy

without actually killing them.

The highest form

of counting coup

was to sneak

into the enemy's camp

and to steal something

without being harmed,

without being noticed.

And that's what

Gus began to do.

Gus's ghostlike

scouting behind the alien lines

puts him into frighteningly

close contact

with the Martian army.

For him, each coup is a window

on the aliens' secrets.

This ledger book

is how Gus counted his coup.

There's a sketch of the exact

coup that he had taken -

it's all documented -

it's absolutely amazing.

From this collection of

curious alien markings

and artifacts,

Gus is constructing a key -

a key that Lawrence Hart is now

using to crack the Martian code.

As Christmas 1913 approaches,

the war's influence is being

felt around the world.

In the United States,

although President Wilson

is resisting

committing forces to the front,

American business is eagerly

supplying munitions

and machinery.

Never were the transatlantic

shipping lanes so busy -

a marked contrast to affairs

on the Martian Front.

By December 1913,

all activity on the line

has come to a complete stop -

both Allied and alien.

Their earthwork systems

had gone completely silent,

and everything remained that

way until Christmas night.

It was a rumble.

I felt the mood

change all around me.

We saw a light,

a flashing light,

and it's just like

it says in the song -

"Like a diamond in the sky."

This was the Christmas

star of 1913.

All along the lines,

scores of these objects

begin to be seen,

and then later that nigh

there are tidal disturbances.

There's flooding

in coastal areas.

And then three days later

something much,

much worse happened.

The war has

moved beneath the sea.

The Christmas lights

were colossal machines

launched from deep within

Martian-occupied Europe.

Now moving freely through

the shipping lanes,

these submarine monsters

begin to starve the Allies of

their most vital supplies -

a crippling,

potentially fatal blow.

Throughout 1914,

the savage conflict rages

Desperate refugees flee

the shattered cities.

Victories are

bought at huge cost,

then stolen back within days.

Other than terrible losses,

we'd achieved next to nothing.

And slowly but surely,

the notion of a swift

victory had died.

The sea war intensifies.

The July 1914 sinking of an

American passenger liner

openly divides public

opinion in the United States.

President Wilson remains adamant

that while the Americas

are free of Martians,

US troops stay home.

But former president

Teddy Roosevelt

demands "action this day.

Roosevelt gets th

permission of Congress

to raise a volunteer force to

fight on the Martian Front.

But Wilson use

his presidential powers

to stop the troops shipping out.

Now Roosevelt is enraged

He travels the country

to drum up support...

It works...

Two weeks later,

the presidential

veto is withdrawn

and a small volunteer

force, "the Frontiersmen,

sails for Europe.

And Roosevelt waves

them off from New York harbour.

I didn't see him.

He didn't see him.

I saw him.

And yeah, he waved us off,

and it was really gung-ho.

I mean this was, you know,

images of San Juan Hill

all over again.

Yeah, bully for him.

Yeah. So we imagined,

as we left on the boat, we thought, "Boy,

this is going to be a great adventure.

We're going to go over there, and

beat the hell out of these guys,

and come home heroes."

Heroes -

and it didn't quite

work out that way.

But we were eager -

eager to go.

In autumn 1914,

corporal Gus Lafonde finally

pushes his luck too far

and is severely injured.

Lawrence Hart believes an entry

Gus made in his notebook

while recovering

shows he had spotted

a Martian strategy

Allied command had missed

Here it is -

here's what he wrote -

"Ki gii baadenmigoome

mi shaa miigaadying."

That's Anishinaabamowen.

The phrase that

Corporal LaFonde

wrote in his diary describes

a type of battle strategy.

Now, in fencing,

we call it a faint -

it's a false attack,

or it could be a false retreat -

and it's to make the

enemy act the way

you want the enemy to act -

to deliberately look weak

or to even seem to lose,

in order to gain a later

more important victory.

Gus Lafonde has worked

out what no Allied general had -

that the Martians

were deliberately

losing battles in 1914

to entice the Allies

into ever larger

offensive campaigns.

These so-called experts

that held the lives of

millions in their hands

didn't have a clue.

Why is it vital to

acknowledge this?

Because of what they

decided to do next.

By 1915,

the Chiefs of Staff

were under huge pressure

to deliver a definitive victory.

At this point,

their only strategic

advantage was manpower,

and so they planned

to make fuller use

of that than ever before

The Allies plan -

a simultaneous attack along

the entire Martian line.

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