World on Fire

By W. D. Laremore

New York City, 1974. Jameson Dodge has long resented the Nazi occupation of his homeland in former United States territory. Now that his time machine is complete, he will enlist an historian and a resistance fighter to save billions from oppression and death. Together, they will go back in time to stop the Nazi forces from overrunning the homelands of freedom-loving peoples.

Nottingham, England, 1944. Johnny Dodge, his American servicemen buddies, and their English girlfriends enjoy every moment they can in spite of dreadful anticipation of the perilous imminent Allied invasion of France. When the tide of war suddenly turns against their fortune, their mission to save the world becomes a mission to save themselves and, unbeknownst to them, the key to humanitys salvation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Jun 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781490760643

W. D. Laremore

W. D. Laremore, based in Upstate New York, earned his Bachelor of Arts in History from the State University of New York at Albany, his adolescent education social studies certification at The College of Saint Rose, and his Master of Arts in British and American History from the University of Nottingham in England. Mr. Laremore has previously published contributions to the Smithsonian’s One Day in History: December 7, 1941 encyclopedia (New York: Harper Collins Publishing / Golson Books Ltd., 2006). A long-held passion for all forms of writing has finally culminated in the publication of Mr. Laremore’s first book, The Gearing Incident.

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Copyright 2015 W. D. Laremore.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN:

978-1-4907-6062-9 (sc)

ISBN:

978-1-4907-6063-6 (hc)

ISBN:

978-1-4907-6064-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015942690

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Prologue Capitulation Day

Chapter 1 It Began With A Tryst

Chapter 2 Soon

Chapter 3 English Roses

Chapter 4 Mission At Hand

Chapter 5 Him

Chapter 6 Betrayal

Chapter 7 Enter Wild Bill

Chapter 8 Change of Plans

Chapter 9 His Majesty’s Pride

Chapter 10 The Secret Jew

Chapter 11 Night Of Promise

Chapter 12 Old Girlfriends

Chapter 13 Special Friends

Chapter 14 The Long Look Back

Chapter 15 To Look Inviting

Chapter 16 Past Tense

Chapter 17 The Palais de Danse

Chapter 18 Wrong Turn

Chapter 19 Holiday’s End

Chapter 20 Patients

Chapter 21 German Rain

Chapter 22 In The Balance

Chapter 23 Those Who Stand

Chapter 24 On A Wing And A Prayer

Chapter 25 Britain is Lost

Chapter 26 Welcome to the Angloreich

Chapter 27 Digging In

Chapter 28 The Last Huzzah

Chapter 29 Point of Departure

Chapter 30 Heroes’ Awakening

Chapter 31 A Time to Drink

Chapter 32 Plan B

Chapter 33 Forefathers

Chapter 34 Finding Auntie Katie

Chapter 35 Destinies Collide

Chapter 36 Heroes Assemble

Chapter 37 Temptress By Starlight

Chapter 38 Seed of Victory

Chapter 39 Her Smile

Chapter 40 Closing In

Chapter 41 Evil’s Herald

Chapter 42 The Maquis

Chapter 43 Lost In Shadows

Chapter 44 Discovered

For Elizabeth

My First Lady and Editor-in-Chief

In Memory of Grandma Shirley

You were always there for us;

Now God, and our family who has passed,

Are there for you.

INTRODUCTION

L ike any good writing, this work’s purpose is to entertain through imaginative journey as well as provoke insightful intellectual stimulation that the reader finds meaning in. This novel is the result of three things: 1. The synthesis of stories and historical understanding while conducting the research for, and writing of, my Master of Arts dissertation, 2. My personal fascination with time travel and its consequences which, I know from its success as a genre in popular culture, is a shared interest with anyone who will enjoy this book, and 3. My love of, and homesickness for, my home away from home which is the Lenton-Nottingham-Beeston region of Eng land.

Gratitude and appreciation are owed to my parents who always encouraged me to pursue and develop my talents and interests, my supportive girlfriend who accepted the time away from her that this labor of love took, my close friends and fans whose expressed enjoyment of my first novel, The Gearing Incident, encouraged my continued writing, and my kickstarter crowdfunding backers whose contributions made the publication of this book possible and who are listed in the acknowledgements at the end of this book. I would also like to extend thanks to the good people of Nottinghamshire who not only helped me with my research, but were the kind and inviting people that made Nottingham feel like a second home. In doling out my thanks and appreciation, I would also like to acknowledge the helpful staff of archives and libraries across the United states and United Kingdom. Thank you to anyone else I missed in this paragraph that made this work possible. Finally, thank you, my newest reader, for choosing this book to immerse yourself in.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Although much of the story is based on the author’s personal experiences as an American living in Britain, and his extensive historical research, no actual person, place, event, or thing is intended to be accurately represented in this work. A selected bibliography and acknowledgements will follow at the end of this work for those interested in further reading. I hope you enjoy reading World On Fire as much as I enjoyed writing it for you.

W.D. Laremore

May 2015

PROLOGUE

CAPITULATION DAY

To Whomever Finds This:

I f you have found this letter, I am likely to have already perished. I am writing to you on September 28, 1974—a date which I hope will be meaningless to you, unless of course it is your birthday. For me, and the one billion people left in America at this time, today is known as Capitulation Day. Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the day that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was compelled to sign the Treaty of Paris which ceded much of New England and the American south to Nazi Germany. Since that day, the Nazis have consolidated their power and control in the former American coastal states from Maine to Georgia and have been lately testing the boundaries of the neutral zone dividing Nazi America from what is left of the United States of Ame rica.

Those of us left behind the fifty-foot walls topped with razor wire and guard towers in Nazi America face a nightmarish reality characterized by brown shirt death squads targeting minorities and dissidents, concentration camps to hold prisoners and forced laborers, citizenry registration, and extremely curbed rights. Firearms have been confiscated, school curriculums are dictated by the state, the media is strictly censored and free speech is curtailed. Even if we wanted to fight, we would have nothing to fight with, no idea what is really going on, and no way to organize and speak out. Freedom and hope no longer exist here. As a younger man, I hated Roosevelt and the United States government for abandoning us. Now that I am educated and more mature, I understand that after the destruction of Savannah and Bangor, Roosevelt had no choice but to sign the Treaty of Paris before the Luftwaffe dropped another atom bomb on an American city.

All of that is behind us now. I hope, and indeed I pray, that this version of events sounds unfamiliar to you because if it does, it means my mission was a success. I have designed and developed a time machine which intertwines my destiny with our past and the future of humanity. If my mission is a success, this letter will surely be discarded as the mad ravings of a lunatic scientist, or better yet, a mediocre hoax. If my mission is a failure, however, then with my last breath I say: Fight On.

Most Sincerely,

Jameson Dodge

Serial # 2511101-47265

Labor Camp 213

Albany, New York

CHAPTER 1

IT BEGAN WITH A TRYST

Nottingham, England

May 14, 1944

H igh Street in Nottingham’s Market Square during blackout felt desolate in spite of all the buildings, lit only by the moon and the many stars above. Wiser men would know better than to wander through this part of town alone and by night, but even watered down whiskey makes people braver than they sometimes should be. Tonight, Johnny Dodge was that man wandering down High Street, stumbling and blind drunk, past the butcher shop with meat hooks hanging from the overhang of the second floor. He wore his Class A uniform, and his shiny shoes were scuffed from tripping over the cobblestones of the streets in the English city.

Johnny Dodge was one of three million servicemen from the United States armed forces being hosted by The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Like most other men his age and in his circumstances, he knew he should be back at camp resting for morning calisthenics or whatever training program they would be put through next, but the problem was that Johnny knew—as did the three million men like him—that any day now they would be shipped off to France where they would face certain danger and probably death. If how one dies is at least as important as how one lives, well then one might as well live a life just as meaningful as the cause they die for.

Johnny Dodge’s Class A uniform was stained and ruffled from an accidental collision with a smelly tommy that spilled piss-warm bitter on him before they knocked each other down. The vague memory of a solid left hook filtered through Johnny’s brain as his jaw ached and he recalled how the evening got out of hand before he stormed out of The Bell Inn. Boy, that tommy could hit alright!

Like all the towns and cities across Britain, Nottingham was pitch black except for the moonlight due to the blackout in effect from sundown to sun-up. Though the German air force, the Luftwaffe, had not bombed England in three or four years, the threat remained. Because of the blackout, the stark contrast of flashlights shining down on ladies’ shoes was quite evident all around the market square as Johnny stumbled on a rough course for the front of the Council House. Across the market square, in the alcoves where shop doors were, flashlights flickered on in the shadows. Johnny grinned and meandered toward the closest woman.

Tell me something, Johnny asked as he pointed into the darkness at the source of the light. Why do you limeys call flashlights ‘torches’ when flashlights have light bulbs and no fire on the end?

Because, came a woman’s sultry voice with a high class, almost sarcastic, accent from the darkness. You’re in England, and here, we speak English.

Johnny stood up straight and chuckled. Well, I don’t like your answer…and I don’t like you.

A hand sprung from the shadows where the voice had come from, grabbing Johnny by the collar, and he was dragged from the street into the waiting arms of a woman with soft hair who kissed him passionately. She reached down and felt him up.

"You may not like my answer, Yank, but I can tell that you do like me," she said with her smile apparent in her voice.

He shrugged and slurred his speech. You’re a smarter girl than I am.

The woman giggled again as she unzipped his pants. "You’re not a girl, silly boy!"

You know what I mean, he said as he dug into his pockets and pulled out two handfuls of British coins. Here. As he handed the coins over to her, they spilled out of her hands and clinked to the ground. He heard some shuffling and more clinking, he leaned down closer to her, and then he felt her breath on his neck. Her perfume was familiar, but the way she touched him was new and exciting. She was short, probably younger than him, and although she took the lead, she fumbled as if she hadn’t had much experience with what was about to happen. It reminded him of his first time, which in turn added to her allure and spurred on his own arousal.

The lady of negotiable virtue and the not-so-innocent soldier were unaware of the wrinkled hand that held open a blackout curtain in the darkened window overlooking the street from the flat above the butcher’s shop. The wrinkled hand pulled the blackout curtain closed, stopping the moon from lighting up a sliver of the wood plank floor. A match was struck in the darkness, and moved to a candle. In the soft yellow glow of that single candle, an elderly woman sat at her desk and pulled an old quill pen from the inkpot and began writing.

Several moments passed by and the old woman could hear hollering out in the street again. She sighed in exasperation and turned her gaze to her porcelain teapot, still carrying the scent of Darjeeling. Hand painted on the side of the teapot was a portrait of Horatio Nelson, the hero of Trafalgar. On the other side was a hand painted depiction of the triple-masted warship, H.M.S. Victory, with all three decks of cannons firing. Beneath the curved spout was another hand painted scene depicting a well-dressed and properly groomed Englishman accepting a gift from a smiling tribal chief in the West Indies. The wrinkled hands carefully hefted and tilted the empty teapot in the candle light. The bottom was inscribed by the maker, By Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen and Empress Victoria, Mammet and Beckwyth Manufacturers of Fine China, 1817 and with exception to the tiniest chip off the ornate handle, the heirloom was in perfect condition. The teapot, old and beautiful like England, was a symbol of a great nation brimming with rich history and shining majesty that in wartime faced the perils of moral decay.

The old woman set the teapot down on the desk and finished what she was writing. The old woman blew out the candle with a sudden huff. The old woman sidestepped once to the edge of her bed and let herself fall onto the mattress. Before long, the wooden candle holder beside her bed, being uneven at the base bottom, jarred with the vibration coursing through the flat. The soft moans wafted through the thin walls and lingered in the air even through the pillows she held to her ears. The moans occasionally morphed into high-pitched whimpers accompanied by a steady thumping. The old woman rolled her eyes and threw her pillows across the room in exasperation.

Beside her in bed, an old man sat bolt upright and hollered: Good god, woman! What is all the fuss?

The old man wasn’t just any old man. This old man was Corporal Neville Percy Mountbatten Maltby III originally of Beeston, Nottinghamshire and he was partial to tea, horses, the Anglican Church, and cricket but not at all inviting toward fish, house cats, the Germans, or undue noise—when he heard it, that is. Highly decorated for his heroic action in the trenches of France in 1916, he was for a short time a national legend, and still very much a well regarded local hero. Had he not been caught in the stables with the General’s daughter in 1924, Corporal Maltby might be at the front where he belonged: Leading his men. But, instead he secured the command of the Home Guard for the East and West Midlands of England back in 1939.

It’s the bloody Yanks again, Neville, the old woman said. They’re off havin’ a jolly at my sleep’s expense, aren’t they…

Honestly, Edith, you mustn’t be so critical. Those Yanks will help us win the war once and for all against Jerry! Neville said. Let them play. Let them be jolly. It may be the last chance they get.

The old man flopped back down in the bed and the old woman settled in beside him.

I want to go back to our cottage in the Cotswolds, she said. It’s quiet and clean there.

We need to be here for the Home Guard my dearie, he replied sleepily. There are matters of far greater importance at hand than whatever goes bump in the night.

She sighed and rolled over. The soft vibration and the muffled moaning from outside continued. In the distance she heard more shouting like coyotes in the desert night.

CHAPTER 2

SOON

Albany, New York

September 29, 1974

T he Albany, New York in 1974 that was known to Jameson Dodge was a center for Nazi control in the areas north of Westchester County. The streets were patrolled by local resident collaborators who were supervised by members of the 357 th SS Panzer division. These collaborators drove around in captured American tanks and other assorted army vehicles tirelessly policing the local population, weeding out any opposition, and hunting down anyone that they deemed undesir able.

Jameson Dodge finished writing his Capitulation Day letter and looked down out the window of his apartment at the Nazi parade making its way along State Street. Row after row of helmeted men in brown uniforms with red arm bands displaying a black swastika inside a white circle marched down State Street past what was once the capitol building of New York State. The people of Albany, New York watched the parade with sullen faces. Children waved little flags with red, white, and blue stripes and a Nazi cross in the upper corner where the stars used to be on the American flag. On the lawn of the capitol building, now housing the offices of the puppet governor Rudolph Zuckermann, was Zuckermann himself, his wife Heidi known to all who hated her—because no one adored her—as simply the Baroness, seven decorated German veterans of the battle of Catskill, and the very elderly Vice