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Great Martian w*r, The 1913 - 1917 (2013)

Posted: 04/17/23 19:05
by bunniefuu
these fields

were the bloody arena

for the most terrible

conflict in human history

In 1913, an alien

invasion shook the world

and hurled it into an

unimaginable future.

The next four years

of ferocious combat

has forever marked this ground

as the land of the vanished.

We were fighting monsters.

There was life

beyond our planet.

It went completely

against everything

I'd been raised to believe.

I'm standing feet away

from this huge dome,

the cockpit sticking out of the

earth like a half-closed eye.

No one had fought a w*r

remotely like this one before.

An entire

generation of young men,

all of them vanished.

I'll never stop hating

them for what they did.

2013 is the hundredth

anniversary of the outbreak

of the Great Martian w*r -

a conflict unequalled

in devastation

and often mired in controversy.

But the lost legacy

of a forgotten hero,

unearthed only last year

might just ignite the

biggest controversy of all.

My great grandfather,

he died about nine years

before I was even born.

He was Anishinaabe man,

traditional man,

and he kept to himself,

so I never really knew

much about him at all.

Lafonde's great grandfather Gus

was a First Nations

Canadian soldier.

His youth was spent fighting

on the Martian front line.

His final years were spent

in this remote cabin.

The things that

are inside of that cabin

have been there for years

It changes everything -

everything we know

about the w*r,

and everything that we

know about the enemy.

What Kim found in

her great grandfather's cabin

may shed light on a dark warning

from our alien invaders.

And for this man,

it's both a blessing

and a curse.

Historian Lawrence Hart

has spent his entire career

attempting to decipher

the alien texts

recovered after the w*r

the so called 'Martian code'.

He believes Gus Lafonde'

obsessive study

has cracked the code

and finally given a voice

to the alien invaders.

I have been intrigued

by the mysteries of this

impenetrable alien text.

And though a lot of

people have tried,

no one has been able to break

what they call the Martian code.

For Hart,

the revelations hidden

within the Martian texts

cast the invasion in

a shocking new light.

They confirm a threat

he has long suspected.

On its 100th anniversary

we expose the truth behind

the Great Martian w*r.

We finished it.

We k*lled the b*stards..

But I don't know.

When I close my eyes...

I don't feel it's all over.

Here is where it all began -

London's Herne Hill observatory.

Through this telescope,

on the night of the

24th of June 1913,

astronomers observe a

mysterious speck of light

close to the planet

Mars and moving fast...

towards earth.

Two days later,

the world would change forever.

An enormous shockwave,

emanating from a

single blast point,

is felt all across Europe

w*r historian and broadcaster

Duncan Mitchell Myers

takes up the story.

It soon became apparent

where the shock had been

most strongly felt...

in the Bohemian Forest.

This forest at

the centre of the blast

is deep within

the German Empire.

Relations between Germany

and its European neighbours

have been tense for many years,

and with the observations from

Herne Hill going unreported,

everyone jumps to a very

dangerous conclusion.

This looks like the beginning

of the rush to w*r

that everybody's been expecting.

The Kaiser angrily

denies German responsibility.

He orders his troops

into the Bohemian Forest

to uncover the truth.

The men enter the

area on July the 3rd.

They never return.

No one in Europe

knew what happened

to the expeditionary party,

and no one knew that

in the heart of Europe,

this was created -

an eight mile wide

impact crater.

No one knew until the

morning of July the 9th,

when a telegram was received

in all the capital

cities of the world,

and it was from Berlin.

His Majesty the Emperor,

in the name of God,

the Fatherland,

and the German people,

begs the assistance of

his brother nations.

Germany is under attack by

assailants not of this earth.

A ten year old,

to find out that

monsters are for real,

that they come from

somewhere up there,

or somewhere in the dark...

You don't feel safe ever again.

Most of all was the fear

that more would come for us,

and do here what

they did in Germany.

We woke up with that

thought everyday.

Within days,

there is carnage across Germany.

It was totally unstoppable.

With frightening ease,

one by one the

great cities fell.

The name that most

endures is Munich,

which was the first to be hit.

Munich was home to

14 year old Arnold Tckelt.

He and his brother Bernie were

among the first civilians

to endure the full horror

of an alien attack.

Daylight came,

I got out of the rubble,

and there was no dead bodies,

nothing to see.

And my brother was nowhere.

Vanished.

Within four days,

civil society in Germany

has essentially collapsed

The alien invasion shows no

sign at all of slowing down,

and people in other

European countries

realized that they have to act,

and fast.

With Germany ravaged,

and her entire army missing -

presumed dead -

Britain helps forge

a grand alliance

between the surviving

nations of Europe.

On July the 20th,

speaking for all the Allies,

King George the Fifth

declares the world is at w*r,

and calls for all able-bodied

men of planet Earth to enlist.

The call is answered -

Britain and its

colonies lead the way.

Among the recruits from afar

is bombardier Hughie Logan,

of Calgary, Canada.

For Hughie,

going to w*r will mean

parting from his new bride,

Clara.

We started going together

when we were 15.

We got married at 18 -

the same year they came.

And I shipped out for Europe.

The troops shipped from Halifax.

I made her two promises

before I left.

First promise -

two girls, one boy.

That's what we were gonna have.

And the second promise wa

I'd write to her as

often as I could.

So that's what I did.

For Hughie and the thousands

of volunteers like him,

there is hope and determination.

But for those left behind

it's a different story.

He was my dad,

and I didn't want him to go.

I was hanging onto

his leg 'cause I knew,

I absolutely knew,

that the monster would

come for him, too.

They had to pull me

off him in the end,

one finger at a time.

And now I can't even

remember his face.

It's a month since impact

and humanity is mobilizing.

Little is known of the origins

of the alien invaders,

but as the speck of light

that signalled their approach

was first seen beside

the red planet,

the enemy gets a name...

The Great w*r against th

"Martians" has begun.

It is four weeks since

impact in the Bohemian Forest.

An alien invasion force has

annihilated much of Germany

and is pushing across Europe.

Halting the Martian advance

is the Allies' immediate goal.

In London,

50 feet below the

Palace of Westminster,

a command centre is established

and plans swiftly laid.

The chief curator of

the Martian w*r Museum

and these preserved w*r rooms

is Alexandra Banham.

As the alien force

crossed the German border

into France,

it was right here

in front of this map

that the joint chiefs of staff

ordered the tiny British

Expeditionary Force

and the French

standing army forwards

to hold the line here

along the western banks

of the Moselle River.

Among those awaiting

the terror of the alien attack

is a young English

stretcher bearer -

William Payne.

His diary contains some of

the earliest description

from the Martian battlefront.

It is a complete,

personal account

of the entire w*r,

and it is undoubtedly one of

the most important artifacts

in this museum's possession.

You can see that the dat

is August the 2nd, 1913.

Dawn.

Through the mist,

towering shapes emerged

not creatures, but machines.

I whispered to God for mercy,

and in response,

our a*tillery exploded to life.

Within moments of this

opening Allied barrage,

the alien army responds.

We cannot hold them.

Our lines are torn to pieces.

Our g*ns are useless.

Hell was not beneath us

it has fallen from the sky.

We must fall back.

The soldiers give these giant

fighting machines a name

Herons.

There were two component

to these machines

that became immediately

apparent to the Allies -

Firstly, they were entirely

protected by an energy shield.

This was the first

introduction that we had

had to the many uses of

dark energy particles.

The second was a slow firing,

immensely destructive

energy cannon.

It was used to

destroy defences,

to cause chaos,

but mainly to flush men

out into open view.

Each Heron is

shrouded in a toxic cloud

Combat troops are soon

issued with gas masks,

but civilians must make d

with crude,

home-made versions.

For frontline soldiers

like Jock Donnelly,

protection came at a price.

Well, you can't see a thing.

And you can't talk to anybody -

it's just you.

You're sitting

alongside 50 other guys,

but you're alone.

There's nobody.

At the feet

of the lumbering Herons

are battalions of

smaller machines -

their attack dogs.

They rampage the b*ttlefield

by the thousands.

Fast and merciless

k*lling machines,

these bring death

at close quarters.

This was their

infantry division,

and they were quickly

named the Iron Spiders.

And they were wielding

a w*apon from here -

you can see it reconstructed -

that was like nothing

that had ever been seen.

These were the

"ribbons of death".

They snare us, entwine us

s*ab us, skewer us,

strangle us,

tear us in half still alive.

The worst were the night raids.

The Spiders would sneak across

the no man's land

and hover over us,

and the ribbons would descend.

I knew we couldn't move,

because any movement

would be certain death

when the Spiders are around.

They were ripping

the Allies to pieces,

whole cavalry battalions

were tossed aside.

The very front itself was in

a chaotic fighting retreat

right across France.

On the 19th of August,

General Sir John French

wires Downing Street,

and he tells them that the

alien force cannot be stopped,

that Paris will fall,

the continent is lost,

and the only thing

Britain can do

is prepare for

imminent invasion.

That same day,

Europe is given one last hope.

An unexpected messenger

arrives at

Allied Field Headquarters

His news may be

the saving of Paris

and perhaps the entire w*r.

He is a corporal in the

army believed destroyed

in the first week of the w*r.

His communique states,

"Though the

Fatherland has fallen,

the German Army has not,

and we are on our way".

It is signed by

Count Paul von Hindenburg

So he issues an

absolutely unprecedented

Mobilization Order directed

at every living German,

telling them that they

must make their way

as fast as possible -

"blitzartig" -

lightning fast

is the word he uses -

through Belgium,

south towards Paris,

to sweep in and reinforce

the increasingly

desperate Allied line.

Germans head for

France in huge numbers.

Among them is young

Arnold Tockelt,

who had survived Munich

and now craved revenge.

And we marched and marched

until we finally reached

the Belgium border

and we received an embrace from

there I will never forget.

They gave us flowers...

They looked after the wounded,

and fed the hungry,

and the Belgian men joined us

and became our brothers.

Over the next few days,

wave after wave of German

troops join the Allied line,

and by August 29th,

the alien army

had come to a standstill

and a communique

arrives upstairs

stating that the

attack had been halted.

The Germans had saved the day

with the now famous

"Hindenburg manoeuvre".

A plan originally

conceived years before

by Count von Schlieffen

to conquer France,

rather than save it!

It's one of the most

audacious manoeuvres

in the whole of

military history.

Now that the

alien advance is stopped

the Allies regroup and prepare

to go on the offensive.

The offensive actions

of the autumn of 1913

were aggressive,

large-scale a*tillery barrages,

followed by

mass infantry assaults -

what the Allies were trying to

do was outflank the alien army,

and of course press home

the advantage in numbers

There was a real belief here

that, at this point,

victory could be

achieved by Christmas.

Waves of new

recruits are arriving daily.

Among them is a minister'

daughter from South Wales

Nerys Vaughn.

Her post-w*r account of

life at the Martian Front

"Anthem for the Vanished,

would come to embody the

fate of a generation.

How did it

feel, heading for w*r?

Well, it wasn't a

single emotion -

it was the most

tantalizing cocktail -

excitement, fear, hope,

dread, longing, calm,

but together they created the

most powerful feeling of all.

For the first time,

I felt my life had meaning.

Another young volunteer

was also

disembarking in France.

He was corporal Gus Lafonde,

of the Canadian

Expeditionary Force,

a First Nations soldier proud

of his Anishinaabe heritage

and eager to serve.

Gus's w*r would turn boy to man.

He drew on legends from

his warrior ancestors

to try and comprehend

the unimaginable horrors he saw.

This takes him deep

into enemy territory -

uncovering dark secrets

of the Martians.

A lone voice

lost in the horror.

Yeah, exactly,

that's exactly who he was

Over two months,

hundreds of thousands

of enlisted troops arrive

hoping for victory by Christmas.

But hope soon turns to hell.

Not one of the offensive

of the autumn of

1913 was successful.

Every attack was repulsed

And the Allied casualty list

just got bigger and bigger,

along with something else -

the battlefront itself is

now of an unprecedented size.

And it was growing,

and growing, and growing.

It's about to get worse.

Out in the dark,

the Allies encounter a third

type of alien machine,

and confront the grisly mystery

of their 'vanished' comrades.

By early December,

the vast Martian Front

slices Europe in two.

Herons and Spiders are

holding their line,

repulsing every Allied attack.

A mass of human dead

wrapped in the wreckage of w*r

litters the b*ttlefield.

But as the sun sets,

the horror rises.

A third alien w*r 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 w*r 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 k*lling 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 w*r'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 w*r 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 w*r 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.

The aim was to stretch

the alien army's resource

past breaking point,

and then to decisively penetrate

and then overrun

the enemy defences.

With this great push,

looming aerial reconnaissance

units and French spotters

deliver disturbing

news to their masters -

legions of Martian

reinforcements

are moving towards France

The success of an

all out offensive

is now in grave doubt.

The Allied command

is in a difficult situation,

but to do nothing,

and just let the alien

reinforcements arrive,

well, that would

have been madness.

They had to make a decision

- they had to act quickly.

A controversia decision is made

to bring forward the

push by one month.

The w*r at sea

had already compromised

their ability to move troops,

and equipment they

deemed necessary.

And now they wanted to move

the attack from June to May -

Total, utter folly.

And so the

push is launched early -

I believe you were on

the front line itself

that first day?

Yes, with the 4th

Newfoundland Regiment.

We were expecting casualties,

of course,

but that day,

endless waves of men

went out over the top.

I've never been so

frightened in my life.

My heart just jumped

right out of my body.

These were horrible,

horrible, horrible things

And you were scared

to death to think

that they were going to get you

and tear you to ribbons.

They had no rules at all

We saw almost nothing,

but we could hear it

all while we waited -

the g*ns, the shells,

the deafening machines.

But through all that noise,

we could still hear the screams,

and we just stood there,

waiting.

But nobody came back.

Not a single wounded man

for me to help.

Did you know that

on that first day,

over 850,000 men went out

into those fields,

and at the end of

the day they were all gone?

After three weeks,

the High Command calls

the push to a halt.

In that time

3 million men had vanished.

They had no

idea how their actions

were actually aiding and

abetting the aliens.

They had no perception

of what Corporal

Lafonde had realized.

They had no clue.

The terrible news of the push

reached Gus in hospital.

As the scale of the

disaster became clear,

the normally analytical

pages of his notebooks

are scrawled with sketches

of an all-consuming monster.

The creature he drew is from

Anishinaabe mythology -

a wendigo.

This is a wendigo,

and its sole purpose is to

take as much as it can -

and it will stop at nothing.

For the wendigo,

the bigger it gets,

the more it wants to eat

Lawrence Hart believes

that Gus's wendigo

sketches are further proof

he had deduced the

central Martian tactic -

that they were relying

on Allied command

to make mass att*cks,

with the lice deployed to

harvest and directly fee

the alien w*r machine.

What if the formation

of this enormous Front

was part of their grand scheme?

What if it was the surest way

to get exactly what they wanted?

The abject failure of the push,

and the relentless consumption

of men and resources,

had cast doubts upon

the Allies' leadership.

The government back in

Britain is finished.

They were in an

impossible situation.

No one had ever fought a w*r

remotely like this one before.

Something had to change.

The catastroph of spring 1915

forces a change of

government back in Britain.

Younger, more progressive

minds demand a fresh approach.

To address the technological

imbalance between the two sides,

a new goal emerged -

to lay hands on

alien technology,

and then to harness it

and to turn it back

against the enemy.

But that was easier

said than done.

Capture a Heron.

That was the plan.

At St. Jans Cappell,

on the French-Belgian border,

tunnels are dug in secret all

the way under the Martian line.

Crammed with

tons of expl*sives,

the blast is

designed to take down

one of the Martians'

ultimate k*lling machines.

This mission impossible would

hinge on an elite force

of 3,000 men racing in to

salvage the downed Heron

before Spiders arrive.

Hughie Logan was

one of those men.

Oh, it was an honour

to be selected.

No doubt about that,

a great honour -

And it was absolutely

terrifying.

We were scared to death.

They hope to destroy

a 5-mile section of the alien

line in a single blast.

On the 1st of July 1916,

at exactly 7:00 AM,

the dawn silence is shattered.

The blast just knocked

the wind right out of you

They said they could fee

it all the way in London

At least one Heron is down.

But could it be

successfully retrieved?

3,000 men will have to

go tearing across 400 yards

of blasted,

shattered fields of mud.

I pulled myself up,

grabbed the sides

of the ladder,

climbed up and

over the parapet.

Where the ridge had been

there was this

enormous cloud of dust

expanding across no man's land,

and a single mass of men was

running straight into it.

And when the two came together,

the men were gone, engulfed.

We're moving forward,

and then a shape appeared

and then another one.

And up ahead,

there's guys' voices shouting,

"We got two of them!

We got two in the blast.

I can't believe it.

I can't believe what we've done.

I'm standing feet away

from this huge dome,

the cockpit sticking out of the

earth like a half-closed eye,

but then I see something moving,

something moving

fast towards us,

coming straight at us.

Spiders.

There are two of them,

and then there was four,

and then three more came

and seven of them, right

And then I'm thinking,

"Jeeze. It's all over."

With the Herons down,

the Spiders have

lost their masters.

And the w*r takes

an unexpected turn.

There was no attack -

then one of them

starts moving slowly,

and the ribbon starts

moving and spiraling up.

All of them are doing

the exact same thing.

And they just stayed

that way the whole time.

Then we realize it's

a gesture of surrender.

They've surrendered.

I looked and I saw coming

out of the dust cloud

the two Heron cockpits carried

by those seven machines.

The surrendered

Spiders are helping the Allies.

They are carrying

the Heron cockpits

back to the Allied line.

Dear Clara,

remember that race

I wrote you about?

Well, I got the gold Bluebell -

in fact we all did.

We won more than we

ever hoped to.

News of the

triumph quickly spreads.

And when the captured

Heron cockpit is opened,

at last the people of Earth

know the face of their enemy.

Those stupid newspapers...

they said that we

should be less scared

now we know they're

no bigger than us.

Well I think they're wrong!

Almost disregarded alongside

the creature in the

Heron cockpit

are the first of

many alien texts.

They are sent to

the code breakers,

as all attention turns

to the unopened Spiders.

Transported to Roundway Down

Experimental Station in Britain,

scientists and soldiers prepare

for their first encounter

with a live alien.

Of course there

was no encounter -

For the soldiers positioned

here directly underneath,

they were the first

to see clearly that,

unlike the Heron cockpits

there was no pilot inside

In fact, there was nothin

discernibly living at all

This unexpected

mystery is followed

by the gravest of discoveries -

one that would finally reveal

the fate of the vanished,

and damn the

High Command's entire w*r plan.

It begins when Roundway Down

deduces the composition

of the alien machines.

This piece is a piece

of Heron cockpit,

and these pieces -

from two of

the seven surrendered Spiders -

They're all made from

metals and alloys

which are abundant on earth -

iron, steel, lead,

copper, tin.

In other words,

Roundway Down realized

that the majority of

the alien w*r machines

had been built after

they had arrived.

And that was when

the activities

of the Martian lice

on no man's land

began to make a

dreadful new sense.

The long-held

belief that the lice

are harvesting the

bodies of the dead

is silenced by

a shocking truth.

In fact, all along,

there had been something of far

greater worth to the aliens -

the thousands of tonnes

of shells and b*ll*ts

and materials of warfare

that we had been depositing

on the fields of the

Front every single day.

The aliens build

their k*lling machines

with metals carried into

battle by the Allies.

Well, every shell I ever fired

only ever made them stronger.

With this realization,

the true fate of the millions

of missing soldiers -

"the vanished" -

was finally understood.

Here's the truth -

and the truth is much worse

than the rumours about th

human rendering factories

and the alien food stores

and that's this -

They were still there

out in those fields -

crushed, eviscerated,

ground into the mud.

All the while the lice

were swarming around

and they were foraging for

what they truly valued -

and that was the lead,

the metal,

the steel to make even bigger

and greater machines of w*r.

And then we learnt

what really happened.

They weren't taken away

by the Martians at all!

They were still there,

in that mud.

They were crushed

and churned up!

And all they wanted

was the metal!

I'll never stop hating

them for what they did.

These corridors under

the Combined Allied

Commission for the Vanished

bear mute witness to the

sheer numbers who died.

Look in each of these boxes -

34 files -

each file is a human life

lost in the w*r,

and there are

27 miles of corridors.

This is the

lowest moment of the w*r

Humanity is staring

into the abyss,

but Roundway Down

are about to discover

an alien secret that could

turn the tide of the w*r...

Across Europe,

the mood is dark.

But at Roundway Down,

there is a breakthrough.

In analyzing the

surrendered Spiders,

the element that

enables and powers them

is examined in detail.

To the perplexed scientists,

it's nothing short of a wonder.

This liquid

element which powers

all movement and weaponry

in the Martian machines

is like nothing

previously observed.

An organic metal capable

of self-replication

and what we can only

term as awareness.

As we investigate it responds

and appears to work with us.

Though impossible to classify,

we have given it a name

victicite.

The discovery is a lifeline.

The order immediately goes out

to turn the wonder

material victicite

back against the aliens.

There were profound

philosophical questions

to be asked about victicite -

its nature,

its properties -

but all that was

left by the wayside.

Why?

Progress was being made!

A first wave of

victicite-based w*r machines

are soon rolling

off the assembly line -

including an all terrain

fighting vehicle

called a landship.

They are swiftly tested,

made front line ready,

and in October 1916, deployed.

Prematurely, as it turned out.

At Douchey, les Mines,

we were hasty,

and it ended in failure.

But it was an

encouraging failure.

We had successfully engaged

the alien for a while

and it was his overwhelming

superiority in numbers

and really bad

b*ttlefield conditions

that proved too much.

So there was ground

here for real optimism.

Faced with weapons

made using their

own technology,

the Martian strategy shifts.

All along the Front,

att*cks intensify.

The aliens are no

longer nurturing w*r.

They're going for

outright victory.

Then, on November the 5th

Allied command's worst

fears are realized.

Near the

northern tip of the line

in the Netherlands,

a single Heron breaks

through to the Channel ports.

This is the stuff

of nightmares -

After three years,

the moment everyone

in Great Britain

has been dreading has arrived.

Well, there is chaos

here in Command Centre.

It's low tide in the Thames,

so the navy can't give chase,

and the small force that

was originally assigned

to protect the

British mainland,

the Home Air Defence Squadron,

it was critically depleted.

There are just two pilots

within striking

distance of London,

testing new

victicite-based weaponry

British aces Edwin Sinclair

and Gregory West.

They are immediately scrambled.

As the invader advances

up the Thames estuary,

warnings spread

throughout London,

and anti-alien batteries in

Regent's park take up position.

Now most people flee

westward, away from the danger,

but thousands of people,

with no conception of

the danger they're in,

choose to line the embankment.

The police are

issued with r*fles.

But as they attempt to

drive the crowd back,

a silence suddenly falls as

a shape heaves into view.

And there it is.

Do I run?

Do I hell!

I run straight at it!

The new

weaponry stalls the Heron

but it's not enough.

And it's here that it fires

a single shot at

Sinclair's plane,

and as we all know,

the shot misses and

strikes Big Ben.

But help is on the way..

A third aircraft is coming in.

It has followed the

path of the Heron

all the way from

the Dutch coast.

In the cockpit is a young

Hungarian aristocrat,

Count Laslo Andrazovski,

and he is about to become the

most famous man in Europe.

I saw him give the signal

to the other two,

and they came in behind him,

and he leads 'em straight

down to the bastard.

Gotcha!

The expertly coordinated fir

had broken through

the Heron's shield.

Count Lazslo's first

visit to London

would become

the stuff of legend.

And as for the brief footage

of the falling Heron,

that would be replayed

again and again

throughout the entire world.

It was of immense value

for public morale.

Of greatest importance,

of course,

was what happened

in the aftermath.

The London

crowd, baying for blood,

descends on the fallen Heron.

Then we are runnin'

onto the bridge,

and there's fire and all

sorts falling on top of us,

but we don't care,

'cos we're so busy

tearing at the cockpit.

And I want to do it, too

because I want the same

as they want,

I want to be

the one that finds him

and rips him out

of the wreckage!

Then there's a surprise.

I see him and he's alive!

Wriggling like an eel on a hook

and then he sees me

and he's scared.

I know he's scared of me

And then the police come

racing through on their horses

and we're all forced

back on the bridge.

The mounted

police clear the crowds

and escort the living alien as

it is rushed to Roundway Down.

But within minutes

of its arrival,

the Martian pilot is dead

Any initial disappointment

vanishes during the post-mortem,

because here Roundway Dow

make their key discovery

of the entire w*r,

and it's immediately

classified "Most Secret"

The autopsy

reveals the alien died

from infection by an animal

virus called glanders.

It was caught through contact

with the police horses.

Now at Roundway Down,

the race is on to

replicate the virus

and create a super w*apon

The code name of the

w*apon is Trojan Horse.

It couldn't come soon enough.

After three

years of crippling w*r,

the Allies have found a

virus lethal to the aliens.

But the Martian att*cks are

intensifying on land and sea.

The troops at the front cannot

hold them off much longer.

They seemed indestructible.

I remember one of them -

There was this guy next to you,

and then this foot comes

down and crushes this guy

like leaves on the sole

of your boots.

I mean, how do you fight

something like that?

We needed something,

and we needed it fast.

As the line continues to fray,

the Aerial

Reconnaissance Division

sights large numbers of

alien machines moving west.

There is no time to lose

In January 1917,

a solemn report is delivered

to the Allied leadership.

It is wit

the heaviest of hearts

we must conclude within

the next six months

the total breakdown

of our defensive line

on the Martian Front

is a certainty.

Just nine days

after this statement

predicts the fall of Europe,

three American naval

destroyers returning to New York

are sunk off

the gulf of Mexico.

You do know there

weren't any actual

sightings of alien machines -

just distress signals

and garbled messages

about coming under attack

Allied U-boats did have

a range of 5,000 miles -

more than enough

to be in those waters.

Look, I'm not saying the

were in those waters.

All I'm saying is that

they could have been

in those waters.

Aliens or Allies,

the debate still simmers as to

who was behind the att*cks.

What is certain is hysteria

took hold on American streets.

Roosevelt's pro-w*r supporters

besieged the White House.

Wilson has become

the lamest of

presidential ducks.

This can come to

only one conclusion,

and it's an unprecedented one.

Woodrow Wilson resigns,

Roosevelt is sworn

in as US president,

and on the 17th

of February 1917,

America finally enters th

w*r against the Martians

Within months,

the volunteer "Frontiersmen",

now hardened veterans,

see their conscripted American

countrymen arriving in France,

at the rate of

12,000 men a day...

That was a good thing.

They were finally coming

Yeah, nice to see them.

Mazel tov!

What took you so long?

You know,

I'm serious -

I mean, what took them so long?

We'd been in this thing

for three years already.

With this massive injection

of troops from the States

Allied command prepares

for the end game.

The Allies are

playing all their cards here.

This is it now.

This is all or nothing.

Immediately after

the Westminster alien's

death from infection,

Roundway Down begins

mass-producing

the glanders virus.

They must now deliver

the w*apon to the enemy.

The risks to humans

are uncertain,

but for High Command,

there is no alternative

to biological warfare

on the Martian Front.

In the summer of 1917,

rumours of an Allied secret

w*apon are spreading fast,

infecting the men with hope.

It hardly seems possible

but I feel it like

a fire inside me.

After four years of losses -

four years of blood, of agony,

of endless m*rder -

we can win.

They had developed

a secret w*apon.

So you know, alright -

bring it on.

We're ready to go.

No one knew what it was,

but we believed that

it could help us win.

The days tick by,

and the alien army

continues to reinforce.

Roundway Down are struggling

to mass-produce the virus.

With no sign of a new w*apon

at the Front, hope fades.

Each day there were a million

Spiders creeping closer,

and then every day we're saying,

"Okay, where's the w*apon?"

They were only

50, 40, 30 miles away,

and still nothing.

And then we were told

that we were going into

battle in three days,

and now there was

no feeling at all,

'cause we knew nothing's

coming to save us.

Nothing.

It was a terrible realization.

There was no answer -

just disillusionment.

That's all -

utter disillusionment.

Desertions were occurring

up and down the Allied Front,

as well as several mutinies

which had to be

forcibly put down.

I had it. I left.

I knew this was my last time,

I would not survive.

I had this feeling

that my time was up.

I was a soldier for four years,

and yet from now and forever,

I'll be a deserter.

Only the elite few know

Operation Trojan Horse

is finally ready,

but its success is dependent

on a mass as*ault.

It's vital the

troops are rallied.

Field marshal Sir Douglas Haig

issues a

special order of the day

Many amongst us are tired.

To those, I say hold firm.

Ultimate victory is

within our grasp.

With our backs to the wall,

and believing in the justice

of our cause,

each one of us must

fight on to the end.

The safety of our homes and

the freedom of mankind alike

depend upon the conduct

of each one of us

at this critical moment.

Haig's words hit the mark

The line rallied.

Order seemed to restore itself -

even though very few

remained in any doubt

as to their probable fate

The night

before the last offensive

William Payne leaves his

diary in a field hospital

The final entry is addressed

to the young nurse

he had long admired.

You bestow a million kindnesses

upon men you know not

and never see again.

Perform one more for another -

keep this safe

as if it were my heart.

At 7:00 AM

the following day,

the largest military offensive

in human history begins.

The secret w*apon is ready,

and the means to

carry the infection

to the aliens is in place

Great herds of glanders-infected

horses are waiting,

massed in vast pens

along a 50-mile line.

These unwitting weapons

of mass destruction

are tended by

volunteer wardens...

like Hughie Logan.

I'd never seen so many

horses all together -

nobody had.

And that was just our station.

Success requires an

attack to draw the Martians in,

followed by a surprise retreat,

which will lure the alien

towards the horse pens.

The entire attack is focused

on one 50-mile section.

This is the greatest

concentration

of troops ever seen.

The entire army is throw

against the alien legion

The results are predictable.

The Allies take

horrendous casualties,

barely holding the line.

Then the order goes up

to pull the trigger

on the secret w*apon.

They suddenly turn

and begin a full retreat

The Martians give chase,

annihilating everything and

everyone in their path.

This has become a rout.

And it is exactly

what High Command

had hoped for.

The triumphant aliens,

charging after the

retreating troops,

are heading right where

the Allies want them.

The whistles sound and th

wardens open the gates,

sending thousands

of infected horses

stampeding through the

ranks of retreating soldiers

towards the Martians.

We had to drive the horse

back towards the line.

We lined up at

the back of the pen

and we shouted at them,

screamed at them, hit them.

And I was glad I was

wearing my gas mask,

because I didn't

want them to see me.

And once they panic,

they'll all go in a herd

even the old cart horses

They'll get the scent

in their nostrils,

and they'll follow, too,

and that's what happened

Bang!

Away they went at full gallop,

right into that fury, that hell.

The infected

horses are engulfed

by the alien advance.

To the soldiers on the ground,

this action seems both

horrific and futile.

The alien force resumes

its pounding action

towards the coast,

without any clue that the fatal

blow has already been struck.

And that the day and indeed the

entire w*r are finally ours.

Operation Trojan

Horse has delivered.

The invading army never

reached the coast.

Within days and within hours,

the Herons come to a

complete standstill.

In each of the cockpits,

the lone pilot is rapidly dying.

The symptoms are

always the same -

frothing at the mouth,

grossly swollen

respiratory tract,

and in their single lung,

a fatal accumulation of fluid.

Simply put, they drowned

Two day later,

the Allies proclaim

victory around the world

Victory, but a victory

won on the hardest terms.

Two million were lost.

Now, let me be quite

clear about that -

that's two million that Allied

command were willing to lose.

It was an immense price,

but it was the price

that was necessary

in order to induce the deep

systemic infection of the alien

that was needed for us to win.

In the immediate

aftermath of the w*r,

the infected horses and

millions of refugees

struggled to survive in the

ruins that was once Europe.

In the squalor,

the glanders virus spreads.

As it does, it mutates,

and soon becomes

an airborne contagion

that easily infects the

mass of susceptible humans.

Over the next five years

the death toll

from "Martian flu"

would reach 100 million.

One casualty is

young Clara Logan.

She died in 1920.

It was nearly the end of it.

She was one of

the last it took.

She was 23.

Was it me?

Was I one of the guys

that brought it back?

Maybe.

I didn't know.

I still don't know.

All I knew was...

she was gone.

As Europe begins

to put itself back together,

the Martian nest sites reveal

their immense

stockpiles of victicite.

The contents of

the alien nest sites

were the biggest,

and most valuable

prize of all waiting for us.

Vast quantities of victicite

presented humankind

with enormous possibilities.

The products of victicite

become a vital part of

the modern world.

This organic metal,

with its ability to

perceive and respond,

opens up a

technological gold rush.

I'm constantly surprised

at the number of our visitors

who just don't seem to realize

how many aspects of modern life

can be traced right back

to the Martian w*r -

So many advancements

that we've made

in telecommunications,

in science and engineering,

and in medicine -

even in travel.

They can be traced right

back to this time, to them.

Kim Lafonde

has grown up in a world

that has prospered through the

widespread use of victicite.

But the key to the

Martian code she uncovered

in her great grandfather's cabin

is set to question the

benefits of this progress

Kim may have lifted

the lid on a warning -

the invasion is not over.

My family, at some point,

we forgot my great grandfather.

I was born nine

years after he died,

and 21 years later,

I came here and

opened up that trunk.

The things that he

learned about the w*r,

those things survived.

They remain in this book

and they were here

for me to find.

In his study

of these notebooks,

the historian

Lawrence Hart believes

that Gus's Anishinaabe heritage

granted him a unique

perspective

on the alien symbols,

and led directly to the

cracking of the Martian code.

Hart has completed the work,

and applied it to the

collected alien texts.

To his surprise,

many appear to be very

personal writings,

even laments.

These are not unlike our letters

and diaries written by our own.

Now, this symbol here

is the most common symbol

translated in the texts.

We find it over and

over and over again.

And the nearest word

I can translate is this

But most extraordinary

is the text recovered fro

the Westminster Heron.

Hart is convinced it wasn't

trying to obliterate London,

but offer a warning.

These are some

of the key symbols

that make up the text.

Now this first row here

the alien describes himself

as a warrior that

represents all warriors.

Now here, he says that

he has been deceived,

like we will be deceived

Hart believes

that the deception

described by the Westminster

alien is that their race

was itself once invaded,

and infected by a parasite -

the same parasite that drove

them to invade Earth in 1913 -

to infect us.

The text goes

on to recount how,

a long time ago

in their history,

their planet was invaded

by an alien species

whose technology was powered

by this symbol here -

a thriving metal

that feeds on life.

The strange metal material

described in this translation

Hart believes is victicite.

Victicite has long

been recognized

as a form of life

in its own right.

So ask yourself this -

What is a form of life

that takes possession

of another species,

that modifies its host behaviour

to dispense itself in

even greater numbers?

What else if not a parasite?

But that is precisely

what victicite is.

If Lawrence Hart is right

and the aliens were

infected carriers

forced to spread the parasitic

victicite across the galaxy,

then what next for us?

Now it's our turn to stand

at the gateway to the stars.

It's our turn to reach

out to the void of space

and our turn to carry and spread

the parasite yet further.

How can you win a w*r, when

with every blow you land,

you're only making

the enemy stronger?

This one was for

the last offensive.

It's says "bravery",

but I say it was crazy -

because I'd have to

be crazy to go back.

We just volunteered!

And do you know the

first thing we learned

when we were in the army?

Never volunteer for anything.

Two girls, one boy.

That's what we're gonna have.

My whole life since then...

I've been waiting for

them to come back...

But I don't know...

I don't believe they ever left.