October
1793: The French border.
Dunkirk
was a disaster for the Duke of York’s army. The French, sensing victory before
the winter, launch attacks along the length of the border. Menen is captured
and the French now hold the whip hand. Nieuport and Ostend are threatened, and
Sebastian Krombach finds himself involved in a desperate plan to stop the Black
Lions as they spearhead the French advance. Werner Brandt and the men of 2nd
Battalion race to Menen to counterattack and rescue Erich von Bomm and the
Grenadiers, whilst von Bomm struggles to save himself from his infatuation with
a mysterious French vivandière.
Meanwhile,
dark and brooding, the citadel of Lille dominates the border. The Queen of the
Citadels have never been captured by force. The allies must now keep Menen,
which guards Flanders, and seize Lille to open the road to Paris. All of this
must be done under the watchful eyes of a spy in the Austrian camp. Juliette of
Marboré is fighting her own secret war to free Julian Beauvais, languishing in
the Conciergerie prison, and waiting for his appointment with the guillotine,
as the Terror rages in Paris.
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Dominic Fielder
I once played rugby with £50,000 in cash! I knew my career in banking would be a struggle, counting other people’s money was never much fun. When I had made it to the dizzying heights of a ‘cashpoint clerk’ involved with loading the cashpoint machine of the weekend, one of the regular tasks was to double-check the pre-sealed banknotes, before the cash hoppers were loaded. I’m not sure how the rugby match started but £50000, which was a cuboid about 8 inches by 8 inches and about two feet long, was soon being tossed around the back room of the bank. There were only two problems with this.
One: I had already signed for the money so at this point, I am solely and wholly responsible for its safekeeping.
Two: it was my lateral pass that ended up wedged in the bank manager’s midriff. I can’t begin to tell you of the coals I was hauled over.
I can look back at it now and laugh…I hope!
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Before the rugby incident, I had been given a new leather bag, a single zip style affair, enough to hold some sandwiches and make me feel vaguely important. At the end of each day, the staff would trudge wearily from work, up the hill towards their cars. On this day, I’d left earlier than most and was so pleased that my colleagues thought so much of me as they waved vigorously as I drove past, radio blasting, sunglasses on…the epitome of cool.
The next day, when I arrived for work, the epitome of cool was faced with my leather case, looking a bit battered at the edges and slightly down at heel. I had driven past my colleagues with my shiny case on the roof of my car. After that, and several other incidents, I was transferred to another branch, and eventually another career.
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I once got stuck in a lift with a Vulcan. My other career took me to some very strange places. Being involved in the world of selling comics was a bit of an unusual sidestep and one of the offshoots of that was selling various wares at Star Trek conventions. At one of our first convention forays, I wheeled a truck full of stock into the lift. Just as I was about to press the ‘close door’ button, a yellow Next Generation uniform-wearing Trek fan sidled in. That was fine with me, we were headed in the same direction after all. He pressed the button for the floor of the convention centre and after various clunking noises, the lift started to rise. About three floors from our destination, it came to a sudden halt. This soon became a prolonged halt and then it was pretty obvious that we were stuck.
Not wanting to appear too worried about the situation, I made some small talk about the unusual badge that my Vulcan companion was wearing, a sort of Next Generation/Romulan fusion. He began with the words, “I am from the future…” We were stuck in the lift for around half an hour whilst the problem was resolved. It is still the longest half an hour of my life.
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We once took a family coach holiday to Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam. It was my mum and dad, my uncle, my two brothers, aged 12 and 7
and me, 17 and vaguely awkward. I’d yet to become the epitome of cool, with the
leather case. One of the ‘lowlights’ of the tour was a visit to the Amsterdam
Red Light District. Therapy and time have blocked out most of that amble but
its fair to say, that for a 17-year-old male surrounded by the coach-going
punters, mostly septuagenarian and octogenarian women, it was the longest half
an hour of my life, until the Vulcan and the lift. Eternity may look a little
like a broken lift, filled with coach travelling women from the Next
Generation/Romulan alternate universe. But I’m hoping that it doesn’t.
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I once found a cow’s leg on a kitchen table. I say found, I opened the door and there it was…the hind leg of a cow, slowly being turned into very thick steaks. Some scene-setting may be needed. Between the terminal career in banking and the world of Star Trek conventions, I spent a year working in Australia. One of those jobs was on a fruit farm. There are too many fruit farm stories to tell but to give you a flavour of the place, we worked in the fields twelve hours a day picking capsicums (peppers). These were put into a boom on either side of a tractor and packed by a crew on the tractor. At the back of the tractor was a small first aid box. The first aid box contained nothing medical at all. It did however always contain four beers in ice. The logic was simple. The farm was in the Northern Territories where ten of Australia’s deadliest snake species are found. Occasionally snakes will coil up in a capsicum plant and bask. Disturbing one isn’t a great idea. Some venoms are so deadly that without the correct anti-venom you might be dead within half an hour. The hospital was an hour’s drive away. Farm logic was that it was best to have a cold beer whilst you waited for the inevitable.
Back to the cow’s leg…the farm also
grew melons, and the smell of these ripening was some sort of aphrodisiac to
the cattle on the neighbouring farm. One day, three cattle broke through the
fence, and after efforts to shoo them back failed, one of the farmhands shot
them, to protect thousands of dollars of crops. For the next three days, all we
smelled whilst we worked were rotting carcasses.
It was pretty grim!
But the one positive was that we were involved in eating some of the evidence!
After a very long shift, we arrived back to the communal kitchen shed to find a Filipino cook calmly slicing the largest steaks I have ever seen (and am ever likely to see) from a cow’s leg with hoof and fur still very much attached. Of course, at that point, I have no concept of the need to hang meat to let it cure. When it finally cooked it was the rubberiest meat I have ever eaten. It was the longest half hour of steak sandwich of my life, but with a cold beer in hand, there are worse ways of ending the working day!
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Dominic Fielder has had careers in retail and the private education sector and is currently working as a secondary school Maths teacher. He has a First-class honours degree in history and a lifetime’s interest in the hobby of wargaming. The King's Germans series is a project that grew out of this passion He currently juggles writing and research around a crowded work and family life.
Whilst self-published he is very grateful for an excellent support team. The Black Lions of Flanders (set in 1793) is the first in the King's Germans' series, which will follow an array of characters through to the final book in Waterloo. He lives just outside of Tavistock on the edge of Dartmoor. where he enjoys walking on the moors and the occasional horse-riding excursion as both writing inspiration and relaxation.
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