The Home Front in Arransia, 1942-49

Given that the Great War was not one of the most glorious episodes in Arransia’s history, many Brunswickians would expect the Arransians to keep rather quiet about it. However, nothing is further from the truth. The Arransians celebrate (some would say excessively) their limited military successes – particularly those of the navy and the strategic bomber force – and also enjoy playing out a variety of “what if?” scenarios. They also like to point out that they achieved considerable feats of resourcefulness and improvisation on the home front which made it far more difficult than the Brunswickians had envisaged to place an economic squeeze on them, and stood them in good stead for the post-war era when they achieved an impressive economic recovery.

Food

Before the war, Arransia imported over a third of her food supplies, principally grain, sugar and fruit but to some extent meat as well. However, she was also a major exporter of barley, and by turning over areas of barley cultivation to wheat and livestock the dependence on imports was reduced. The Mayonnaise and Arransian governments made a major strategic error in attempting to maintain trade with their colonies on the other side of the Western Ocean during the early part of the war, which until 1946 kept up some supplies of tropical fruit and sugar cane, but at the cost of severe depletion of their naval forces.

After 1946 Arransians had to do without bananas, and there was a severe sugar shortage, which was only partly offset by sugar beet planting. Arransia is in fact a far more fertile country than often given credit for, with plenty of good soil and ideal weather conditions for growing temperate crops. There was never any shortage of meat, although people had to put up with poorer cuts and towards the end of the war there were some distribution problems. In general, rationing was not imposed, as the government felt this would represent a guarantee of supply that they might not be able to fulfil. However, the government did exercise close control over distribution. This contrasts with Brunswick, where a very efficient rationing system made the country better fed than it had been pre-war. In late 1948 Arransia started to ration butter, eggs and canned fish, but it never went further than that.

Deep-sea fishing continued, although the trawlers did not go as far as pre-war and kept well clear of Brunswickian waters. In general, the Brunswickians left Arransian fishing vessels alone. The cessation of fish exports compensated for the reduced catches.

Arransia continued to import about a third of her grain requirements from Mayenne, and in the autumn of 1948 it was felt to have been a major achievement to convoy the annual grain harvest across the Sleeve with minimal losses. However, fearing this would be more difficult in 1949, the government instructed farmers to move the boundary between wheat and barley production about 15-20 miles north. In the event, this was not needed, and left Arransia with a lot of sub-standard grain, and a shortage of barley which had to be made up with inferior foreign imports. This resulted in beer brewed in the winter and spring of 1949-50 being of distinctly poor quality, and even nowadays you will often hear someone in an Arransian pub, on getting a bad glass of beer, to say “this tastes like a fortyniner”.

Beer production was seen as essential to domestic morale and, while distilling was cut back, the government were careful to maintain supplies to the brewing industry. Unlike in Brunswick, beer strengths were not reduced, and in the winter of 1948-49 the strength was allegedly increased in an attempt to allay the erosion of morale.

Apart from some brief shortages in and around Danby in January and February 1949, due to disruption of the railways, no Arransians ever really went hungry during the war. Indeed, in the summer of 1949, when Brunswickian air force squadrons arrived in eastern Arransia to provide air defence, they were surprised to be offered steaks and legs of lamb by what they had been led to believe was a half-starved local population.

Energy

It is well known that Arransia has very large reserves of coal, to the extent that the country is sometimes said to be “built on coal”. This meant that energy as such was never in short supply. In the years following the Great Depression, there had been little new investment in coal mining, and the industry had been bedevilled by maverick strikes, but the decline in both exports and domestic demand had meant there was never a shortfall. Once war was declared it was important to increase coal production, and this was done very effectively by the Ministry of War Production, with the senior civil servant in charge of coal being Geoffrey Ingham who later went on to be Prime Minister. In return for better and more regular wages, the number of strikes greatly declined and coal production increased in every year from 1943 to 1947, with only a slight fall in 1948. Even in 1948, over 400,000 tons of coal was exported to Mayenne. 1947 was in fact the record year for coal production between 1929 and 1992.

The fact that the coal mines were usually very close to miners’ cottages made bombing them difficult, and in fact no Arransian pit was permanently put out of action by bombing during the war, although some in South Holburn were captured in 1948. Distribution was more of a problem, as Arransia did not at this stage have a full electricity grid, and coal for power stations in Danby and the south of the country had to be transported by coastal shipping – which became increasingly difficult – rail and canal. The severing of the main railway line between Petersburgh and Stainton in December 1948 led to rota power cuts in the Danby area during January and February 1949, and offices restricted to opening during daylight hours. However, increased use of the canal network made good the shortfalls and a reasonably constant supply was restored by mid-March.

Although coal gas was (and still is) produced and supplied in the Stainton and Hebburn areas, most Arransian households relied on coal for heating. Supplies were in general kept up well, and in the winter of 1948-49 in some areas domestic coal was given priority over that for power stations. Progress on extending the use of smokeless fuel was shelved, and by the end of the war the quality of domestic coal had deteriorated. Patrick Scullion recorded in his autobiography that when he returned to Danby in 1949 after six years’ absence he was struck by both the crowd of coal barges on the Esk and how much more smoky the city had become.

Oil supplies were a different matter. Although Arransia still had basically a coal-based economy, by 1942 it had almost 300,000 private cars on the road, and 50,000 buses and commercial vehicles, not to mention a growing petrochemical industry. Most oil was imported from sources either controlled by Brunswick or quickly cut off by blockade. This meant that everything had to come from Mayenne, and while oil supplies never entirely dried up, from the beginning of the war it was always in short supply. Fuel rationing was never introduced, as the government could not guarantee supply, but by 1947 private motoring had become very difficult and expensive. Ironically, some government officials going about their business in cars were pelted with rotten fruit by people who believed they were “toffs”, and so government vehicles had to carry the national flag on the side. In early 1949 there was a major operation to confiscate hoarded fuel which unearthed a surprising amount in the homes of the aristocracy. However, pointedly, when the Arransian ministers travelled to Brunswick for peace negotiations in April 1949, they were taken to Sabden by train and then onwards to the border in a convoy of limousines escorted by armoured cars and motorcycle outriders.

Extensive research was done on converting coal to oil, and by mid-1948 a prototype plant was in operation in Kilburn, but the costs were high and the resulting product only really suitable for use in low-revving marine and power generation diesel engines.

Land Transport

Apart from some electrified suburban lines in the Danby area and the Stainton “loop line”, all of Arransia’s railways in 1942 were steam-worked. There were over 3,000 locomotives of over 120 different types, but fewer than 400 had been built in the past ten years, and around 1,000 dated back to the previous century. After the nationalisation of the railways, an attempt had been made to develop new standard designs, but these had only been built in small numbers, and in any case were felt to be too expensive and complex for quick production in wartime.

The railway authorities moved quickly to put the network on a war footing, slashing long-distance passenger trains and imposing a general 50 mph speed limit, mainly in the interests of cutting down on maintenance. This was further reduced to 40 mph in November 1946. As standard wartime designs they selected 0-6-0 tender and tank locomotives of classes J22 and J27, which had originated on the Northern Counties Railway in the 1900s. Although old designs, these were simple, robust and reliable, and with superheaters and modern valves had a reasonable turn of speed. In all, 193 J22s and 66 J27s were built, and a handful of each are still in operation on the modern-day system.

The railways were very much focused on goods transport, and passenger travel was greatly curtailed. Many older Arransians have abiding memories of slow, interminable journeys on grubby, overcrowded trains to visit relatives or to return home on leave from the forces. A further burden was placed on the network by the reduction in coastal shipping, which after 1946 had virtually stopped south of Kelthorpe as it was too vulnerable to Brunswickian air and submarine attack. Despite this, the system coped incredibly well, and until the severance of the main line in late 1948 there were no significant distribution failures. Several marshalling yards were extended and a primitive computer system was even developed to control wagon movements, which is the ultimate ancestor of ANR’s current world-renowned wagonload control system.

The dominance of the railways, canals and coastal shipping meant that long-distance road haulage was in its infancy in Arransia. Although a number of new roads had been built in the 1930s, the objective had been primarily to relieve city-centre congestion rather than to encourage lorry traffic. Obviously, the role of road haulage was quickly concentrated on local distribution to and from railheads. A handful of new roads were built, mainly for military purposes. The Petersburgh Bypass, already under construction, was completed in 1944 as a basic single-carriageway road open only to military vehicles and lorries, and the Kirkby Thore bypass was opened in 1946 to a similar standard, but without any restrictions on usage. Ironically, by this time the Navy had effectively been bombed out of their main base at Beadnell and so it proved of limited value at the time.

Intermittent supplies of petrol and diesel led more and more transport firms to dig out old coal-fired steam lorries and traction engines that had been retired from active service. A few had still been in use, but by 1942 were generally confined to short-distance haulage of things like boilers in the industrial districts. In 1945 limited production of traction engines and steam lorries restarted, and in 1947 a brand-new design of steam lorry was introduced, capable of loading to the then maximum legal weight of 22 tons and running at 20 mph which was at the time the speed limit for lorries over 6 tons. These were probably the most sophisticated steam lorries ever built anywhere in the world. During the war, about 150 new traction engines and 600 steam lorries were built. After the war, when diesel fuel again became easily available, they rapidly fell out of use, although a few remained in service in the coalfield districts and within collieries. The handful that survive as preserved specimens are very highly prized.

The shortage of road fuel led to an increase in the use of horses in the latter part of the war, especially for local deliveries. In fact, many local brewers and coal merchants in particular had still been using horses before the war. However, it is obviously impossible to breed a lot of horses quickly and so the effect was not as marked as might be expected. Hauliers using horses had to be careful not to incur the wrath of the Equine Defence League, and a study of the letter columns of local newspapers from 1948 and 1949 often gives the impression that the welfare of horses was more important than the progress of the war.

What long-distance coach services there were in 1942 were quickly withdrawn, and the shortage of fuel rapidly led to local bus services being cut back too. By the later years of the war, bus services were generally restricted to rush hours only, in contrast to the larger towns and cities with electric trams, which still enjoyed regular services from 6 am to 11 pm. In general, the towns without trams were small enough for most journeys to be walkable, so this did not result in too great a reduction in mobility. Before the war, a few towns had planned to replace trams with buses, but these plans were obviously cancelled, and indeed the experience of the war was a major factor in the retention of tram networks after the war. In fact, there were a few tramway extensions, mostly notably in Petersburgh and Laithby which were centres of armaments manufacture. A handful of steam buses were produced but they never really found favour.

As a generally hilly country, Arransia had never really taken to cycling, but there was a large rise in the production and use of cycles during the war – many of which were promptly replaced by cheap, basic motorcycles as soon as civilian production restarted.

Imports

After the Mayonnaise naval debacle of 1946, trade between Arransia and Mayenne was increasingly concentrated on the north-eastern ports of Barcaldine, Marske and Lemingore, and the Mayonnaise port of St Valéry-les-Rochers, which was about 240 miles distant across the northern part of the Sleeve. St Valéry is even today a notoriously grim place that is arguably less savoury than any port in Arransia and is often nicknamed “la petite Arranse”.

A naval squadron was organised to escort the convoys under the command of the Arransian Vice-Admiral James Thomson (1894-1989), comprising the Arransian cruisers Wildcat and Dolphin, and the Mayonnaise cruisers Duc de Flers and Merveille, along with a destroyer force. This proved a successful example of Arransian command of joint naval forces, as controversially advocated by Admiral of the Fleet David Baxter, and throughout 1947 and most of 1948 Thomson was able to keep trade flowing and beat off any Brunswickian attacks. Although a stern man of distinctly right-wing views, Thomson is widely regarded as the finest Arransian sea admiral of the modern era and served as commander of the surface fleet from 1955 to 1961.

After the Wildcat was sunk in December 1948 Thomson transferred his flag to the Duc de Flers, and carried on, albeit under increasingly difficult circumstances with growing Brunswickian air and submarine attacks. Nevertheless, there are famous pictures of the Duc de Flers and the Dolphin in the Till estuary at Lemingore in April 1949 having successfully escorted two large bulk carriers loaded with iron ore into the port.

During 1949, the Arransians increasingly concentrated their trade on the port of Barcaldine, where the proximity of the quays to the historic city walls made the Brunswickians very reluctant to launch air attacks. Indeed, from January to April 1949, Barcaldine handled more tonnage than any other Arransian port. In February 1949 the Brunswickians carried out a heavy air raid on Lemingore which severely damaged the fish docks and neighbouring residential areas, killing over 400 people, but left the main port facilities unscathed. In terms of loss of civilian life this was the worst Brunswickian air raid on Arransia during the war.

Difficulties of cargo handling at Barcaldine in particular, but also to some extent at Marske and Lemingore, and a desire to make it less obvious to Brunswickian reconnaissance aircraft what was being carried, led the Arransians to institute a primitive system of containerisation, allowing goods to be taken inland by rail for unpacking and further distribution. At first this was done using large wooden crates, but by late 1948 proper steel containers were being used, and in March 1949 a pair of fast 1,200-ton coasters were delivered that were specially designed to carry these in standard sizes. Ironically, after the war, the unionised dock workers at the major ports put a stop to this, and Arransian shipowners suffered from being slow to adopt containerisation in the 1960s and 1970s.

Arransia still had the large, 25-knot liner Queen of the Ocean which was fast enough to make the crossing to Mayenne during the hours of darkness, and Mayenne had the even larger, 30-knot Fleur-de-Lys. However, the size of these ships obviously made them tempting targets and they were only used intermittently as troopships. There was also nowhere on the east coast of Arransia between Beadnell and Elswick where they could dock, although they could anchor in the Till estuary and the Embo Firth. After being used to return troops to Mayenne in late 1948, the Queen of the Ocean was laid up in the Skelwick Firth where she was effectively immune from air attack.

The enclave of St Cuthbert on the north coast of Denhulme was well supplied with food and everyday supplies through neutral Denhulme, but unfortunately it was not so easy to transport these to the home country across Chelsea Bay by sea or air. The Mayonnaise had a pair of very fast naval minelayers which were used successfully to carry arms into St Cuthbert, but obviously their capacity was limited.

Civil aviation was only in its infancy in 1942 and all civilian passenger flights were immediately halted. Aerodromes were also very vulnerable to air attack. However, it was still possible to use flying boats from lakes and estuaries, and throughout the war certain high value items such as ball bearings and precision tooling were airlifted out of Arransia by large Mayonnaise flying boats operating from Dunsmere and the Embo Firth. When the Arransian leaders flew to Mayenne they would usually travel by flying boat from Dunsmere, landing spectacularly on the Grand Étang very close to the centre of the capital, St Denis. Apart from one occasion in 1942 the Mayonnaise leadership never visited Arransia after the start of the war. Some paved aerodromes were kept in operation throughout the war – it was easy to bomb them, but relatively easy to patch them up, too – but tended to be used exclusively for military purposes.

Smuggling

Arransia has a long, straggling border with Brunswick, much of it running through remote, sparsely-populated country, so it is hardly surprising that a considerable amount of smuggling took place. The two countries had rather different objectives in border control – Brunswick wanted to keep open the possibility of invasion, but to discourage smuggling, whereas Arransia wanted the opposite. This meant that the Brunswickians blocked virtually all the roads with concrete blocks or earth banks, while the Arransians built an elaborate barrier of tank traps, trenches and barbed wire across the Regina Gap. However, much of the open country remained without a barrier and the amount of trade that continued was embarrassing to both governments.

Typically, the Arransians were looking to obtain petrol and better quality tobacco than they could get at home, and could offer whisky and cider in return, plus a variety of other products. Particularly in Marchwood and Hanwold, some farmers continued the mutual grazing arrangements that had applied pre-war. Throughout the war, Brunswickian farmers continued to turn up with livestock at Gautby Market, in the extreme south-west of Marchwood, and Arransian border patrols were happy to tolerate it. During 1949, it is estimated that about a fifth of total Arransian petrol imports were smuggled from Brunswick.

In early 1949, sensing that the end of the war was approaching, many Brunswickian spivs were happy to sell black-market petrol to the Arransians on credit, and indeed with few exceptions were paid what they were owed after the Armistice and did well out of it. In general, smuggling was much more common on the borders of Marchwood, Hanwold and Holburn than to the north in Teviot. After the war, this led to various unhelpful accusations of lack of patriotism being bandied about, which Patrick Scullion, as a Marchwood man, and an undeniable Arransian patriot of the first order, was keen to defuse.

In the mid-fifties, Major Andrew Jodrell, a retired Arransian army officer from the Marchwood Hussars, wrote some humorous memoirs in which he described his cavalry troop on border patrol happily fraternising with their Brunswickian counterparts, sharing a smoke and a coffee, and exchanging whisky and cider for cigarettes and drums of petrol. This met with much disapproval, particularly in Brunswick, but the fact he was basically telling the truth was never disproved. In the early 70s this was made into a Dad’s Army style TV comedy series which proved very popular, although again this did not go down too well in official circles in Brunswick.

Production

Arguably the greatest Arransian war hero is not Patrick Scullion or Roger Lawson, but Edward Cunningham (1894-1970), who was Minister of War Production throughout the conflict. He revolutionised Arransian industry and made it more productive than it had ever been before, although it was not always possible to make full use of this. Cunningham’s son Alan (b 1918) had by 1949 become the operational commander of Arransia’s strategic bomber force and led the famous raid on Elko in April 1949, for which he eventually received the Margaret Cross. He later became commander of Arransia’s B-39 bomber force and then C-in-C of the RNAS. He is still often asked to comment on Arransian military affairs.

Although Arransia had recovered from the depression of the early 1930s, she had still not regained the prosperity of 1929, and there was a lot of hidden unemployment and overcapacity in industry. This left a lot of slack to be taken up, and this was done extremely effectively. Factories were converted to produce military supplies, and there was never any shortage of rifles, machine guns, bullets, shells and bombs. A production line was even set up to manufacture tanks, which were stockpiled and then used in the 1948 invasion of Brunswick, although, with a lack of thorough testing, they proved disappointingly unreliable. The Arransians transferred their expertise in mining explosives into bomb-making technology, and the Brunswickians reckoned that, pound for pound, Arransian bombs were much more effective than their own. In fact, after the Armistice, one of the first things the Brunswickians did was to get the Ordnance factory at Laithby working round the clock making bombs for their own air force.

Before the war, Arransian manufacturing had generally been regarded as dependable but unimaginative and seldom at the forefront of technology. However, the Mayonnaise, deprived of imports of precision machinery and speciality chemicals from neutral Colmar, increasingly turned to Arransia as a substitute supplier. The typical response from Arransian industrialists was a scratch of the head and a mumbled "well, we'll give it a go" but, in the vast majority of cases, they proved successful and this paved the way for Arransia's growing reputation in the post-war world as a manufacturer of high-tech engineering products and advanced chemicals.

In April 1943, the Brunswickians carried out a heavy air raid on the port area of Ormsby in Marchwood. This in itself was a legitimate target, but close by was an area of old, dense working-class housing known as The Eyes which could well be described as a “half-timbered slum”. The air raid started fires which virtually destroyed this neighbourhood, and over 250 people lost their lives. Obviously the Arransians were keen to portray this as an atrocity, and it lost Brunswick much support amongst neutrals. It also made the Brunswickian air force much more circumspect about attacking targets in Arransia near to areas of civilian population, something which Cunningham shamelessly exploited in the location of production facilities.

Brunswick typically had large factories much more separated from residential areas, which made them easier targets for Arransian and Mayonnaise air raids. However, such raids were always difficult and could not be carried out on anything more than a sporadic basis. In February 1947 140 Arransian and Mayonnaise bombers attacked major government buildings in Aubourg, the single heaviest raid on Brunswick during the war, but they did little damage and also killed over 100 civilians, thus totally exhausting Arransia’s stock of moral capital. Arransian bombing – which was usually pressed home very bravely – inflicted a number of embarrassing reverses on Brunswick, but never made any serious difference to her productive capacity.

In the early part of the war, the Brunswickians concentrated on attempting to attack Arransian production facilities from the air, generally with very limited success, as they were hamstrung by the need to avoid residential areas. However, this did deter the Arransians from building large new factories on greenfield sites, and in particular made it impossible for them to manufacture aircraft. In fact, in 1947, Arransia achieved record production figures in most industries, and her highest level of GDP since 1929. However, in the latter part of the war, the Brunswickians concentrated more on attacking Arransia’s airfields and seaborne trade, and it was this that brought slow economic strangulation. Production fell back not because of the destruction of factories, but because of the shortage of raw materials. The blast furnaces of the giant steelworks at Holborough worked for 47 weeks in 1947, but only 32 in 1948 and only four weeks out of the first 13 in 1949, with obvious knock-on effects for any manufacturing process dependent on steel. Arransia had exhausted her limited reserves of iron ore by the end of 1945 and after that was entirely dependent on imports. Even if Arransia could manufacture armaments, it was becoming increasingly difficult to ship them back to Mayenne, and by early 1949 the Mayonnaise leaders privately estimated that the effort involved in keeping up trade with Arransia was more than the benefit gained.

Arransia had extensive forests which produced a lot of timber, but before the war, Arransia had been mainly dependent on Skania for imports of wood pulp for paper-making. Trade with Skania never entirely dried up, but wood pulp had to take a low priority, and methods of recycling used paper were investigated. By 1949 most of Arransian newsprint and toilet paper was recycled, albeit often of poor quality. The rough, yellowing character of newspapers from that era is particularly noticeable, and people complained they made poor toilet paper! However, this led to much post-war business, and Arransia is now a world leader in recycled paper technology.

In peacetime Arransia had been renowned for her shipbuilding industry, and indeed in 1941, the last full year of peace, had built 40% of the merchant shipping tonnage that Brunswick had. However, this was severely curtailed by the war. The large shipyards at Ince and Howick had to be mothballed as the rivers on which they stood reached the sea very close to the Brunswickian border and thus it would be very difficult to bring any completed ships into service. Caird’s shipyard at Elswick was on a stand-alone site south of the town, and was effectively put out of action by Brunswickian bombing by the end of 1943, including, to the immense chagrin of the Arransians, the battleship Queen Margaret and aircraft carrier Wyvern that were under construction there.

The two shipyards further up the Tean, McLaughlin & Read at Hebburn and Grimshaw’s at Gosforth, were much more intertwined with their respective towns, and continued in operation for longer, but even these were put out of commission by early 1947, making Hebburn, in peace time Arransia’s maritime heart, something of a ghost town. Nevertheless, shipbuilding continued in small yards in the east coast ports such as Bouth, Lemingore and Wrangle, and small submarines, sloops and patrol boats were built as well as merchant vessels. Even in 1948, Arransian shipyards completed 43 merchant vessels above 250 tons, although the average size was still under 1,000 tons. As speed was more important than operating costs, most of these were unusually fast coal-burners, which were of limited use in peace time. Many were converted for use as island ferries in foreign countries, in which guise one or two (all long since converted to diesel power) are still in existence. One of this type, the 800-ton SS Lady Catriona, built by Ravenscroft’s of Bouth in 1948, was for many years used as the supply ship for Craig Holm and is now preserved in much like her original form in the Sinclair Basin at Barcaldine.

The mothballing of two major shipyards obviously put them in a strong post-war position. Indeed, upon hearing of the Armistice, the chairman of Goodson’s shipyard at Ince, which had a speciality in refrigerated cargo ships, immediately went down to the border to get the telephone line reconnected, and the following day was on the phone to potential customers offering them early delivery slots.

It is probably fair to say that, if Arransia had been situated on the far side of Mayenne from Brunswick, and thus better protected from air attack and able to trade across a land border, her production facilities would have been able to operate without hindrance and could well have made a major difference to the outcome of the war.

Manpower

It is often bandied about that Arransia never had conscription during the Great War, which is strictly true, but in fact the Labour Regulation Act of 1942, which required men to opt out of military service rather than volunteer for it, had much the same effect. All married men under 35 and single men under 45 were given the options of either volunteering for military service, saying they would prefer to remain in a civilian job, but would serve in the forces if required, or saying they were unwilling to undertake military service at all. Most people quickly realised that the third option was no easy way out, as you were likely then to be required to serve as a medical orderly or on a civil engineering labour gang in battle zones. However, many people with genuine religious pacifist convictions did just that and played a very valuable role. A small number of diehards made martyrs of themselves and were imprisoned, but the offence of “Failing to comply with a direction under the Labour Regulation Act” was not a very glamorous one, and in general the couple of thousand refuseniks were ignored so long as they actually had a job.

The Navy, and the two air services, were able to meet all their requirements from genuine volunteers, which greatly benefited their effectiveness, even though the risk of losing your life was much greater here than in the Army. Toward the end of the war, with about three quarters of its warships sunk, the Navy had more volunteers than it was able to use, and they had to be diverted into other areas. The situation in the Army, which accounted for two-thirds of service personnel, was much more patchy. Some of the older-established tank regiments (which had originally been cavalry regiments) were of high calibre, but Arransians had never liked being “poor bloody infantry” and very often local labour committees, dominated by businessmen and trade unionists, would allow the better quality men to continue in civilian occupations, and send the wasters and troublemakers into the army.

Certainly the Mayonnaise high command were reluctant to use Arransian infantry regiments in the front line and typically kept them on guard duties, whereas the 2nd Armoured Division, comprised of the Edirn and Marchwood Dragoon Guards regiments, was considered an élite force. In early 1949, soldiers of the Stainland Light Infantry Regiment mutinied when ordered to serve in Mayenne, and the high command effectively gave in to their wishes. At the end of the war, Arransia had about 320,000 men in the armed services, of whom 200,000 were in the Army, slightly more than half of them at home. Repatriation of those in Mayenne was, as mentioned elsewhere, a difficult and messy business.

While efforts were made to allow those remaining in civilian jobs to work in their area of choice, inevitably some had to be ordered to do particular jobs, especially in the coal mines and armament factories. Despite requests from the Mayonnaise government, the Arransians never agreed to make civilian workers transfer to Mayonnaise factories, although a fair number did as volunteers, tempted by high rates of pay, especially in the aircraft industry. In particular, with Arransia’s main shipyards either unusable due to blockade, or put out of action by bombing, a lot of shipyard workers did go to Mayenne, although it was mid-1948 before a proper shipyard run on Arransian lines came into operation, by which time it was really too late. Arransia never made any attempt to direct female labour, although there was a rise in female employment and local labour boards in some areas did allocate jobs to unmarried women on a voluntary basis. From 1947 onwards all prisoners (excluding those convicted of serious violence and sexual crimes) were allowed to be released after serving a maximum of two years, provided jobs had been identified that they could go to.

In 1949 there was some controversy when workers were ordered to join the housebuilding and furniture-making trades, which in retrospect seems an obvious preparation for the post-war world. Questions were asked in Parliament, but met with the usual civil service obfuscation that an accurate survey had been taken of labour requirements, and workers were allocated to meet these requirements. In private, ministers admitted that keeping a large standing army, suffering from low morale, kicking their heels on home soil, did not provide an effective defence and was a drain on resources. It was far better to get men to do something useful.

In retrospect it appears that the Arransian labour regulation system served the needs of industry much more than those of the armed forces, and also gave rise to many – often justified – complaints about its operation being arbitrary and unfair, and open to people in the know working the system. It may well have been preferable to have a formal, above-board conscription system with exemptions for workers in key industries, as applied in Brunswick and Mayenne.

Media

Arransia had no television, so information given to the public was restricted to radio, newspapers and cinema newsreels. For many years after the war it was assumed that Ormond’s government had routinely misled the general population about the progress of the war, but extensive research through the newly-opened government archives in the 1980s established that in fact the government had been extremely scrupulous about telling the truth, certainly more so than their counterparts in either Brunswick or Mayenne. No significant Arransian or Mayonnaise setback had been covered up. However, inevitably, success received far more coverage than failures, and the whole coverage of the war had a lack of context which made it impossible for the man in the street to form an overall picture of how the conflict was going.

Before the war, Arransia had a single national radio channel run by the Arransian Radio Corporation, with an anodyne mix of speech and music. In 1942 this was supplanted by the “Forces Channel”, which featured a lighter mix of programming including more emphasis on the popular dance music of the day. This proved very popular and allowed the development of a more informal approach to radio broadcasting, although listening to programmes in retrospect the crude anti-Brunswickian tone is often difficult to stomach. The war also saw two successive heads of the ARC sacked for taking too independent a line. In fact the third, Abigail Ollerenshaw (1903-2001) was just as independent, but the government dared not sack her. News broadcasts on Arransian radio tended to be fairly terse, but it is to their credit that all of the major warship losses of the war were repeated in bulletins for a full twenty-four hours.

Listening to Brunswickian radio broadcasts became an offence during the war, but large numbers of people continued to do so. The Brunswickian “Arransian Channel” proved something of a flop as in the early years of the war they often made exaggerated claims about Brunswickian successes that were later shown to be incorrect. However, many Arransians tuned to the news on BR1, the main Brunswickian station, for an alternative, and probably more informative, view.

Around half of households took a newspaper, but Arransian newspapers (even more then than now) were notoriously parochial and dry. There was nothing resembling a national press. Indeed, a number of the papers that are now dailies were in 1942 produced on a bi-weekly basis, usually on Tuesdays and Fridays. During the war, paper shortages led many that previously had published daily to adopt this model, so by 1948 only the big cities had daily newspapers. The government had asked the newspapers to be honest, but not to rock the boat, and virtually all editors complied. Looking back at newspapers from 1947 and 1948 it is striking how “news from the front line” tends to occupy a few paragraphs in Column 8, while local livestock prices and court cases for burglary are far more prominent.

However, it must be noted that only three days after the Armistice, the Journal, the major up-market Danby newspaper, printed a coruscating full-page editorial entitled “The Conduct of the War” which put the events of the past six years into context and attacked both the government and the often short-sighted planning of the armed forces. It is believed that Hector Wolfenden personally approved this.

The cinema was extremely popular in Arransia, with the average adult making two visits per week, and cinema newsreels were probably the major source of information for the general public. They were wholly controlled by the government and almost always of a highly optimistic tone, but very often concentrated on aspects of the war effort away from the front lines and were surprisingly artistic in nature. From late 1946 onwards the chief director was Leif Thorgersson (1917-96), someone of Skanian ancestry who went on after the war to be a major director of Arransian films. The commentaries often seem far more jingoistic than the camerawork.

The last newsreel that was distributed showed the successful import of 15,000 tons of iron ore into Lemingore, and its transfer by rail to the steelworks at Holborough, and also the introduction of new Mayonnaise jet fighters to an airbase near Lemingore – which in fact gave Brunswickian bombers a severe mauling during April 1949. It didn’t give any hint of the imminent armistice. The very final wartime newsreel, showing the Arransian bomber force proudly returning after their successful raid on the petrochemical complex at Elko, was never shown, and indeed as part of the ceasefire agreement this was not made public in Arransia for two years. When it was released, in 1951, it led to a strong wave of patriotic fervour and Captain Alan Cunningham, the commander of the raid, was lionised.

After the missing week, the first peacetime newsreel showed HMS Dolphin returning to port in Golsingby, and the smiling faces of Captain Donald MacDonald and Vice-Admiral James Thomson, the former happily holding the ship’s cat. “Everything is shipshape and ready to fight again tomorrow if need be” crowed the newsreel. MacDonald, knowing his ship was direly in need of major dockyard overhaul, was incensed, and wrote to the newspapers to make his point. Arguably this was more dishonest than any wartime newsreel.

Before the war, Brunswickian and Acadian films had accounted for more than 75% of presentations in Arransian cinemas. The war clearly cut this off, but subtitled Mayonnaise films (often conveying unfathomable philosophical concepts) and the products of the Arransian film industry were not a good substitute. Eventually, the Brunswickians realised that allowing Arransians to watch Brunswickian films might undermine morale, especially if the films were adapted to show as much luxury on the home front as possible. The Arransians eventually got wise to this and started editing the films to their own advantage. Brunswickian war films tended to portray the Mayonnaise as scheming and unscrupulous but ultimately cowardly, and the Arransians as thick, boozy sidekicks, which makes most of them unwatchable today. The Arransians made some war films, but their realism was inevitably limited. They also made some “kitchen-sink” dramas about families with menfolk serving in the forces, which in retrospect were very honest and some of the best things produced by Arransian film units.

Morale

It is sometimes unkindly said that “give an Arransian a hammer, and he’ll hammer away all day without asking why”. Certainly it is in the national character to concentrate on the immediate rather than looking at the bigger picture, and Arransians also tend to have a sceptical nature with a self-deprecating sense of humour. This meant that through most of the war, civilian morale was never a problem, most people taking the view that they had started the thing and so needed to grit their teeth and see it through. The lack of a coherent picture of the overall progress of the war also helped matters. Hector Wolfenden’s sharp criticism of the objectives of the war in late 1946 was not really echoed in popular sentiment, and indeed many grass-roots Labour Party activists criticised him for rocking the boat.

Morale started to falter when the joint Mayonnaise/Arransian invasion of Brunswick was beaten back within six weeks in September and October 1948. This was only ever intended as a raid in force to attempt to persuade the Brunswickians to make a status quo peace, but was unwisely portrayed by the newsreels as a full-scale invasion with Aubourg the objective, showing grinning Mayonnaise tank crews with banners reading “Allez à Aubourg!”. When the Arransian 3rd Armoured Division were fighting tooth and nail to defend Whitcastle six weeks later it was rather obvious the project had not succeeded.

The final straw in terms of civilian morale came in one week in early December 1948, when the main line railway between Petersburgh and Stainton was decisively severed by Brunswickian bombing, and the cruiser HMS Wildcat, the sister of HMS Badger, which had been engaged on convoy duty between Mayenne and Arransia, was sunk by Brunswickian air attack. These two events underlined the unpromising situation in which Arransia found herself, and led to a spreading mood of fatalism. It became generally accepted that a Brunswickian invasion was likely before too long, and the best thing to do would be just to let them sort out the mess. Although some industries continued to function effectively there was a noticeable slackening of national effort in the early months of 1949.

This was articulated by the comedian Harry Moffat (1904-53) who began to slip cynical references to the war into an otherwise conventional act. “I’ve heard that the Mayonnaise have won another great victory. Good luck to ‘em! Funny how they won another great victory a month ago twenty miles further south…” For a while he played to packed houses, until in mid-April 1949 he was arrested and charged with sedition. The case was dropped after the Armistice, but he had great difficulty in finding work afterwards and died four years later a penniless alcoholic. In the 1990s one of the new generation of Arransian comedians produced a tribute show to Moffat that showed him to have been ahead of his time in many ways.

The Peace

Historians have often questioned why the Brunswickian army, having defeated the Mayonnaise and Arransians and seized South Holburn, did not go on in Autumn 1948 to conquer the rest of Arransia. The reason is that the Brunswickian leaders knew very well that to occupy a recalcitrant Arransia, with most of her naval and air forces in Mayenne along with a government in exile, would overall worsen Brunswick’s situation in the war. Their objective after this was to get the Arransian leadership to agree to the best peace possible while keeping control of the country – having to divert troops to occupy Arransia would not help the Brunswickian war effort.

The usual Arransian view of Charles Ormond is that he was a pompous, jingoistic ass who kept Arransia in the war until forcibly talked out of it by a group of rebellious ministers. There is some truth in this, but it ignores the fact that he was the popular and respected leader of Arransia for thirteen years, and he was no fool. He was well aware after the failure of the invasion of Brunswick that Arransia’s interests would be best served by concluding a separate peace.

There were actually a series of contacts between Danby and Aubourg from November 1948 to April 1949, before the Arransians eventually agreed to negotiations, generally carried out through the two countries’ respective Skanian embassies. In November 1948, the Arransians proposed a status quo peace, and neutrality in the war between Brunswick and Mayenne, plus Brunswick making good some of Arransia’s warship losses. Not surprisingly, this did not find favour. The following January, Brunswick proposed a peace that involved stripping Arransia of her colonies, and reducing her armed forces to a fishery protection and border control role, with several Brunswickian sovereign bases. Again, unsurprisingly, the Arransians rejected this out of hand, taking the view that if Brunswick wanted that outcome they would need to conquer Arransia to obtain it.

What the cabal of ministers did persuade Ormond to accept was that negotiating with Brunswick without preconditions was likely to yield a better outcome than any other option – which indeed proved to be the case. Michael Hancock – the far-sighted Brunswickian President – had recognised that to bring Arransia onside as an ally would greatly benefit Brunswick’s strategic situation, and therefore, while he wanted to extract concessions from Arransia, did not wish to make her really suffer. This laid the groundwork for a successful peace treaty between the two countries that helped both of them in the post-war world. If Arransia had waited until the Brunswickians exploded the nuclear bomb over Mayenne, they would have had no option but to order an unconditional ceasefire and in effect allow Brunswick to dictate terms.

Return to Home Page