Endless Mission III

This is a fictional plot, set in the period between the WWI and the WWII, as the third part to the espionage drama “Endless Mission” Trilogy.

The Unknown Warriors

The Unknown Warriors is based on a true story set in the beauty and tragedy of Europe in the years just before the Second World War. Abrienda de Soza, inheritor of a fortune stolen from the coffers of Imperial Russia during the last days of the Russian Civil War, fights to keep her country out of the hands of both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia and preserve a culture threatened by both through any means possible. Nika Molnar, an agent working for Hungarian Intelligence’s Special Unit, seeks to exact vengeance on the man who murdered her father when she was a child. Impeccably researched, The Unknown Warriors captures the feel and nuance of a world soon to be destroyed forever—a uniquely told and deeply compelling story of war, intrigue and betrayal, but also of love and sacrifice played out against the backdrop of a world heading inexorably towards war.

The title is taken from a speech by Winston Churchill. “This is a War of Unknown Warriors, but let all strive without failing in faith or duty…”

Sipho's War

1916. Europe is in the grip of a deadly war, the Battle of the Somme spewing grotesquely mutilated bodies. Into this mayhem come 57 Swazi men from a British Protectorate in southern Africa, most of whom have never worn shoes or seen motorised vehicles.

The biting cold chews at digits used to the heat of an African sun but they are brave these men, they do what they came to do with stoic resilience.

Sipho Vilakazi is the son of a teacher and a nurse, who longs to escape the confines of his mountain village – volunteering for this war is an answer to his prayers. Until a sworn enemy of his family also signs up.

Thembi, the love of his life, is furious that he should leave without her. ‘I will return,’ he says confidently, ‘with enough money to pay the bride price for you.’

For Sipho, his friend Vusi, and Mandla, the headman’s son, their time in Europe awakens a desire to know and understand more of the ways of this world to help their nation progress.

As their time in Europe draws to an end, they are infused with new energy when they are moved to Le Havre and the ships that will take them home. But their return is delayed and one afternoon tragedy strikes.

The shadow that settles over the group reaches beyond the boundaries of Europe, over sea and land, to the tiny village on the slopes of the mountain they call Ngwenya.

Deck of Cards

Two best friends believe they are set for the quiet life in rural Norfolk when war breaks out in 1914, and their lives are uprooted when they find themselves heading for war-torn France.

The French fields of war leave the two young men fighting for more than just their lives when a chance encounter tests their friendship as well as their will to survive through the harshest of conditions.

Together, with their band of comrades they meet along the way, they must fight back against the most fearsome brutalities and atrocities man has ever committed if they stand any chance of stepping foot on home soil again.

The ferocious battles and wounds of war force them on different paths, but will their lifelong friendship be strong enough to keep them alive?

Rebellion

Claudius’s invasion of Britannia was achieved almost unopposed. The few pockets of credible resistance were ruthlessly crushed by the machine that was the Roman army. What followed was a tense but relatively peaceful co-existence, even some merging of cultures.

That peaceful life was shattered by greed and oppression, when the new Emperor, Nero, forces a change in hierarchy in the province. Paulinus, a brutal Governor, and Catus, the mercilessly greedy Procurator, badly misjudged the mood of the Britons. A misjudgement that led to something that had never happened before: a uniting of the Britannic tribes. Theft of inheritance, a viciously humiliating beating of Queen Boudica, and the rape of her daughters sets in motion a rebellion that grows into an unstoppable, often uncontrollable army.

Weyland, a Briton and the son of a blacksmith, who as a boy was trained by a Roman soldier to fight as a Roman, becomes an unlikely player in Boudica’s plans to draw the Governor into fulfilling his pledge to eradicate the Druids. Now, with the majority of the Roman army in the west of the country, Boudica sets about gathering together an overwhelming horde, hell-bent on revenge for years of occupation. There can be only one outcome: victory or death.