The Zombie War: Battle for Britain

by Holroyd, Tom

  Why was it not possible?

  Well the plan in outline was to physically divide the country into sectors and then clear them inch by inch if we needed to. In order to do that the idea was to build blocking walls using the motorways as a guide. The problem was that we needed a hell of a lot of concrete walls to do it and we had nowhere near enough. I know everyone who was involved in the plan likes to give the Royal Engineers grief, say that we were like car mechanics sucking their teeth and saying “Oh, going to be expensive” but if it wasn’t for the Ministry of Resources then I guarantee you that the plan would have never gotten out of the Prince Regent's office.

  As it was the Ministry pulled it out of the bag, Christ knows how but they found workers from somewhere, opened up three more concrete factories and worked their arses off to produce enough T-walls for us to start the first phase.

  How did the actual building happen?

  Thankfully we had already had a pretty good trial run when we did Op Euston and moved the Northern Defensive line from the Antonine Wall to along the A69. In that Op we had waited till the middle of winter, basically when the snows were at their heaviest and all the infected were frozen solid and then started building the wall outwards from three different points. The first team started at Newcastle and were by far and away the fastest as they had all their wall sections coming in by sea. The second team started at Carlisle and were almost as fast being supplied down the M6. My team were in the middle near Hexham and had to be supplied down the A68.

  It was bloody hard going but by the time the first snows had started to melt and the Gs were twitching we had it finished; a great big bloody wall right across northern England to stop any of the moaning bastards from moving north. All of us Engineers legged it back behind the Antonine as soon as possible and left the poor infantry to sweep the land clear ready for the settlers and farmers coming up behind.

  The Restoration was basically a carbon copy of the Euston plan. Build a wall in winter to section off part of the country and then let the infantry clear it. It was simple and effective as it meant that we weren't trying to fight the whole island at the same time. It got a lot easier as well once the country got into the swing of things. The civis would spend all spring and summer producing T-walls and then moving them either by sea, rail, road and even canals, to drop off sites ready for the winter build. By the time the troops hit London the whole thing was running like clockwork.

  However as far as I am concerned the real genius of the plan was the contingency it put in place for the future.

  What do you mean?

  If you look at the detail of the plan it calls for the country to be divided up into manageable chunks, each sector would be further divided up by the fortified motorways that crossed that sector. All of this meant that in reality the whole of the country was divided up into very small areas that could be isolated from one another should an outbreak ever occur again in the future.

  By implementing this plan Command had essentially put in place a nationwide redundancy to ensure that a national outbreak never happens again. If you look at it before the war there was no physical way of stopping a G from London walking all the way to Scotland; now it would walk straight into the M25 wall, or have been destroyed by the motorway patrol before it even got close.

  It’s the reason we spend millions of pounds today on things like urban defences, fortified motorways, hardened railways and all the troops and Militias to defend them. It’s all in the name of redundancy, to seal off an infected area to prevent it contaminating the rest of the country.

  I’m sure that in a few years we will all get lazy and complacent again and some politician or lobby group will start moaning about how expensive the defences are or how they are breaching people’s rights to move freely and demand they be removed but until then I for one am glad they are there. The whole bloody war started because we weren’t prepared for it and because no one saw the writing on the wall. Of course, the walls do help to keep me and several thousand people in a job.

  North to South

  Jock and I have retired to his living room and are currently enjoying some of the locally brewed whisky. Sadly, while it is not as good as any pre-war vintage it certainly has a kick and would I imagine keep a man warm on a cold South Atlantic night.

  After Carlisle, my platoon and I were rotated back to the Scots Guards and from there it was just non-stop for a month. It was like walking into a mad house, people were running around all over the place, kit was being issued, lads and lasses were training on the ranges all that sort of stuff. I had expected to come back to a hero’s welcome and not to have to pay for a drink for ages but all we got was “Alright mate, where you been then”. It turns out that everyone had been shown the drone footage of the battle and had been fully briefed on the tactics. Now everyone was just in full on war mode and didn’t have time to swing the lantern. Kind of took the wind out of my sails.

  I found out from one of my mates that while we had been away prepping for Carlisle everyone else was doing the same thing. I guess the idea was that if the battle went well then the Army could just roll straight over the start line and get on with it and if it went badly then I guess Command would have chalked it up to experience and come up with a new plan. As it was the battle had been a great success and we had been given a month to get ourselves prepped and ready to go on the offensive.

  I can’t tell you how different the Army that crossed the Wall was to the one that I joined four years before. I really was an army of the people. Before the War there were all sorts of criteria for joining, things like there were no women in the infantry or cavalry, you had to be a certain age or a certain fitness level. There was none of that now, if you could walk twenty miles in a day, fight a battle at the end of it and shoot straight then you were in. Of course everyone who was still alive had to have fought to stay that way which gave us a pretty good recruiting pool to draw from. In my unit I had men and women from all former walks of life; I had one guy who had been a millionaire music mogul, another girl who had been a “celebrity” on one of those reality TV shows. I guess it was one of the things about the war, it brought everyone down to the same level, almost like resetting society and everyone had to earn their place from the bottom up. All of our tactics had changed from the conventional war fighting to the stuff we trialled at Carlisle.

  All of our equipment had changed to. No more heavy as hell body armour or helmets. No more camouflage combat dress, after all there was no point trying to hide from the Gs, we wanted them to see us and come straight for us. Instead the Ministry of Resources had produced a new uniform for us.

  It was actually pretty good considering it had been manufactured on the cheap from whatever the Government could lay its hands on, the main part was a two piece combat uniform; navy blue trousers that had these clever little insert slips on the knees and shins where you could put padding and bite plates if the situation required it and the now famous Red Coat.

  It was a surprisingly good bit of kit, the guys who had designed it had clearly been reading up on their history as it was a dead ringer for the ones that soldiers wore at Waterloo. It was a deep scarlet red, and was thick enough to keep you warm but not so much that you melted on a long march, it was pretty comfortable and had the same insert pockets at the trousers. The ones on the forearms were pretty clever as they were strong enough to use as a shield from a zombie bite. There were a couple of times on the march when those things saved my life, gave me enough time to jam my arm in a Gs gob and then smash its brains out with the cutlass. Most of the historians today reckon that the reason they chose to give us red coats was because of the historical significance, fighting for Britain that sort of thing. I guess that was part of it but the Army will tell you it is because red is easily identifiable on the battlefield which meant you always knew where your mates were, it also meant that white rank stripes showed up nicely on your arm. Of course the other reason is that red dye is also cheap and easy to produce. It is kind
of comforting to know that some things really don't change; the Army is always supplied by the lowest bidder.

  The best bit were the boots though, everyone had a pair of really solid and sturdy boots, I guess they knew that we would be walking the whole way so they spared no expense. They were comfortable and sturdy enough to stop a G taking a chunk out of your ankle. The rest of the kit was pretty simple, a black cloth cap for summers and a thick woollen one for winter, a heavy wool great coat for when it got really cold, a webbing belt with ammunition pouches and a water bottle and a rucksack for everything else. Our weapons were pretty standard as well, a cutlass and rifle for everyone, no machine guns, mortars or anything like that, just the standard infantry equipment regardless of rank or role.

  What rifle did you use?

  We still had pretty much the same weapon that we had before the war, the old SA80. Don't believe all that shit in the press from years ago about it being an unreliable weapon it was brilliant. Sure the old A1 was crappy and cheaply made, constantly jammed all that sort of stuff, but the A2 was a dream. If you want your weapon redesigned and fixed get a German engineer to do it and that is exactly what they did in the 90s. The version we had now was the A3, it was lighter, more robust and much more flexible. They had removed the fire selector so you could only fire on single shot, and the barrel had been made about three inches longer so you could get another hundred meters of range. They had kept the old fore grips from Afghanistan so that you could either hold the down-grip or flick out the collapsible bi-pod for a really stable shot. The fore grip also had this clever little bayonet that would telescope out if you needed it, truth be told it was pretty useless as you had to be pretty lucky to stick a zombie through the eye, it was much easier to shoot it in the face if it was that close or use your cutlass. The sight was pretty sweet too; it gave you a 4x magnification and allowed you to pull off headshots at 300m or allowed you to look over the sight if you were fighting in close quarters like a building or something. There were the ancillaries like the torch and laser dot, they were great when we started to clear buildings as you could use the laser to get snap head shots at pretty close ranges.

  I love that rifle, it was reliable and solid in all the years I used it I never had one jam or misfire. I guess the old phrase of “if you look after your rifle it looks after you” is true.

  How does it compare to the rifle the Americans used?

  Look if you want to kill two hours between a couple of soldiers then ask them to compare guns. If you’re asking which is better, I can’t really say; the Yanks like to say that theirs is a custom made rifle which took the best designs from around the world but I say if it ain't broke then don't fix it. The SA 80 was a good rifle and was made better with limited resources plus we didn't have to change the ammunition around. Sure the .22 PIE round was great for killing zombies but look at all the work the Americans are having to do now to re-tool their rifle to fire 5.56 now that it looks like we are back to good old human on human fighting.

  So when did you get the order to move?

  It was the beginning of May and we were moved to our start line at one of the gates in the north wall. The guys on the wall had spent all winter clearing a front about five miles deep so that we would not have to fight our way clear. The Engineers had spent all that time building the next wall along a line from the coast near Preston, to the outskirts of Manchester, to Leeds and then to the coast at Hull and all the fortified motorways in between.

  When the order finally came to go, it was a real “hurry up and wait” situation. It took almost a week for the entire Army to get in line, there was lots of marching to our positions in the line and then waiting for other units to take their position, then for Command to check that everything was perfect, lots and lots of waiting. It’s the worst part of any operation, it gives you time to think about all the shit that might happen, could happen, every single possible way things could go wrong. You can always tell the young and inexperienced ones from the veterans when you are waiting. The young ones fret and fidget, check their gear and weapons over and over. The veterans, they sleep because they know that you might as well sleep when you can, because once we start we are not stopping till winter.

  So there we were, the entire army sitting in a line, two deep, that must have stretched from coast to coast. Two meters between each man and their neighbour and the Platoon Sergeants and Platoon Commanders patrolling the line to the rear and to the front. That was the great thing about the British Army, the officers always led from the front. Didn't matter if they were a young Lieutenant or a Colonel, they would always walk at the front of their men and be the first one to face the enemy. It led to a very high attrition rate, mainly through stress but it gave the soldiers behind them confidence and always steadied the line. Of course it helped having a big, scary sergeant behind you to stop anyone running away.

  Finally, the order to march came; we kicked everyone onto their feet and then the officers started forward and the line followed. It was surreal, like watching one of those police searches, where they are looking for evidence. We walked at a steady, energy conserving pace that could cover about twenty miles a day, every now and then there would be a shout from one of the sergeants to dress the line, speed up or slow down but after a while most of us gave up. As long as you could see your neighbour then no G was going to get past.

  The first few miles were easy as it had already been cleared but then we started to see the Gs, in ones and twos at first but in bigger and bigger groups as we got closer to urban areas.

  How did you deal with them?

  The lone Gs or the ones in small groups were easy. The line never stopped; not for bad weather, fog or rain, only at night, so we pretty much steamed straight over them. As soon as we saw them either the guys who were scouting ahead would take them out or if there were too many, an appropriate sized response would stop and deal with them. Once they were done they would mark the bodies with a small red flag so that the “Battlefield Sanitation” teams could burn them. We called them the BS teams as it was such a bullshit job but I am glad they did it, I really didn't want to. After they were done the guys would re-join the line and crack on.

  It was pretty easy at first. The ground was pretty open but then we started to hit more and more towns and cities and things got more interesting. Villages were pretty simple things to deal with; whichever part of the line got to them first would stop and surround it while the place was taken by one of the Battalions in reserve. Then we would go in and clear it house by house. It was slow, tiring and frankly scary work as you never knew when a G was going to jump you. I'm making it sound like it was a big surprise whenever we came across a town but the truth is that we always knew what was coming and what the plan was. Command had their UAVs up ahead of the line mapping the ground and giving them time to plan how many soldiers would be required for each site.

  My Battalion had it pretty easy as we were clearing a section that ran through the centre of the country between A1 and M6 fortifications, it was pretty sparse open country with lots of desolate farms and small villages and town. It was nowhere near as populated as the coastal strips so it took us a lot less time to reach the M62. By Mid-summer we were on the outskirts of Leeds and that was when things got interesting.

  We didn't have enough troops to just march straight through the whole area and it was not like we could surround the city as no modern city has a recognisable edge, there was just a spread of houses, shops and industrial estates surrounding them and often spread into another cities border. Instead we pretty much rolled out the tactics from Ireland and Carlisle. Each Battalion came together for the first time in three months and dug in on the outskirts of the city, we had to do it fast as we were close enough to the city for any Gs nearby to see us and touch off a chain swarm. We dug in fast and within a few hours had a marching camp built and the surveillance balloon up. Then we waited for the other Battalions to dig in and for everyone to be ready. Finally, we got the word and stepped u
p to the wall, at the same time the bands started up and we could hear the bass drums rolling across the hills from us and the other positions nearby.

  Evidently the Gs heard it too and we started to see them emerging from the city, first in ones and twos but then in greater and greater numbers. Pretty soon there was a flood of Gs heading straight for us. After that it was just business as usual as we cut them down, row after row of them. It was pretty easy going at first and I remember thinking that it would be like Carlisle and be over in a few hours but after four hours with no let-up I started to get a bit concerned. After eight hours I was bricking it, certain we would be over run or run out of ammunition but I didn't need to worry, it seems Command had planned for this and we had more than enough ammo and men to fire it.

  Thank God for the other positions, they took a lot of the heat off us. Without them we would have been overrun for sure. Twelve hours later it was over, the last few Gs were dealt with and we could finally have a rest. It took a week for the BS boys to clear their way through to us but in that time we had rested and were ready to go. Then it was into the city, a building by building, house by house and room by room search. Thankfully most of the Gs had been pulled out by the music but there were still those who had been trapped in homes or offices and it was those buggers we had to clear out. Problem was those weren't the only thing we had to deal with, there were lots of ways to get killed in those cities without getting bitten.