Andrew McGregor

Shadows of the Dark Eagle Andrew McGregor

Early July 1940:
With the fall of France, a victorious German Army stands along the coastline facing the English Channel, the beleaguered British counting the cost of losing most of their military equipment at Dunkirk, across northern France and Belgium as the allied nations fell or capitulated. As the last of these British and French soldiers were evacuated by brave determined small boat owners and the Royal Navy, government ministers realise in horror that there are only six anti-tank guns in the whole of England, a drastic shortage of rifles and uniforms, lorries, tanks, armoured cars and aircraft. 338,226 French and British soldiers were evacuated from Dunkirk, scattered other pockets from coastal ports and beaches all along the French northern shores were also lifted to safety. Without these men as deterrent, Britain would have surely fallen immediately and frantic arguments continued in the House of Commons to make peace with Germany. Most of the evacuated troops were demoralised or wounded, the government stunned that so many had escaped as the attacking German Wehrmacht simply halted their advance for a couple of days, seemingly mesmerised by their successful and devastating offensive. Little did they know that Adolf Hitler had become increasingly nervous at his thinly reinforced forward forces, unaware that capturing the majority of the British Army was within his grasp until many were escaping across the channel, the assurances of Goering at the time that his Luftwaffe would destroy the stubborn pocket of resistance proving ineffective. Rumours and whispers spread through the English population and German Army that the war in the west was perhaps over. Conspiracy theories were rife...had the Wehrmacht stopped to even deliberately permit the British and French soldiers to escape...was this even the prelude to a grand alliance between the British Empire and the German Reich? But the rumours were false, Winston Churchill had no intention of relenting on his pledges to defeat the Nazis...the British 'bulldog' was not for compromise against such an evil as Adolf Hitler. Even the Germans could not believe it...surely the stubborn British could see reason, they were a defeated nation in all but occupancy. Within just a few days, the Royal Air Force has retreated from dogfights over the channel and lower North Sea against overwhelming odds with the loss of over fifty valuable fighters and more importantly...experienced pilots...mostly picked up by German vessels. Further days slip by...nervousness and dread rising, a date... July the sixteenth approaching as coastal British soldiers and Home Guard volunteers stared warily through binoculars across the channel, their collective dread rising for what was to come. They would not have to wait long...the skies were darkening ominously on the night of the fifteenth...a storm was about to rise over the channel. With spies, resistance fighters and steamy romance on both sides of the channel, the RAF will endeavour to protect British skies in a desperate bid to deter or stop the German Luftwaffe. This fictional story interweaves with the desperate struggle for Western Europe in the warm summer of 1940, albeit with a small number of changes. Designed to complement the author's popular Bloodied Wehrmacht series, new characters will join some of the existing younger soldiers in Britain's darkest hour.