Citizen Survivor Tales (The Ministry of Survivors) by Richard Denham

house was flattened, and those that were left had no idea what had happened to them. I scraped a living for a while doing odd jobs and eventually I ran into my old mate, Harold, from when I was a nipper. He told me he was off to Cliveden, to join the Land Army, the Viscount had a communal farm of sorts, I suppose, a promise of work, a meal and a roof over your head. It was better than Reading so I went with him.
    It all seemed alright at first, I suppose, we got there and were ‘processed’; that was the word they used, I remember. The whole estate had turned into some sort of farm, like something from the dark ages, I reckon, peasants scattered about doing their bit. Me and Harold were put to work on the lower fields and it was back-breaking work. I didn’t mind that too much, it kept me busy, but the conditions! Oh, the conditions we were under you wouldn’t believe. The Viscount had fellas, and I’m not pulling your leg here, who would beat people they didn’t think were working hard enough. It was barbaric, anyone who spoke up met the same fate. If we didn’t like it, we could go we were told, but we all knew there was nowhere else to go, we were nothing better than slaves. We were put on rations, just enough food to keep our strength up to go to work. Here we were, hundreds of us, surrounded by food and we were all starving. The punishment for those sneaking food, well, you’d think we were slaves on some plantation. One man, and I can still picture it in my mind’s eye, was lynched for sneaking cheese back to the quarters. Eventually, this sort of punishment became more common and people stopped noticing after a while.
    It was all very confusing for people, and it would be wrong to judge people for tolerating it, mind. What choice did people have? Most men had wives and kids, what were they meant to do? People would tolerate anything for their families, I know that now. Me and Harold, and a few dozen of the other men, we were lucky in a way, we were single men. We didn’t have to look out for anyone else, we could take risks, chances that men with families can’t.
    I’d never seen the Viscount or his family, but I couldn’t believe they didn’t condone or were even ignorant of the horrors at Cliveden, none of us could. Starvation, daily humiliation, beatings, lynchings, no, no one should have to endure that. We began talking, in secret, those we knew had nothing to lose, and we knew we had to do something and we knew, we knew we were going to kill the Viscount and his men or die trying. I’m not proud of that, but you don’t know what we were suffering.
     
    Can you explain how the uprising started?
    I wish I could tell you it was some heroic rally, with big flags and noble men storming the gates to the cheers of the women and children, but it was nothing like that, it just happened. I remember the day before, being forced to watch as Harold got lashed for back-chatting one of the guards, his back was ripped to shreds, it was inhumane but do you know what was the final straw for me? Silly, really, I suppose, but it was a three-year-old little kid playing in the fields while his mother worked, a guard walked passed and grab him by the back of the neck and threw him violently to the ground. The mother wept, the guards laughed, but it was the boy’s face. He bawled and looked at me, the guards told the mother to keep her brat on a leash. But the boy, he just looked at me with uncomprehending eyes, why had that happened? What did he do wrong? And do you know what I felt, I felt ashamed, and I remember, believe it or not, hunching over, and sobbing to myself, clawing the dirt with my fists, my eyes red and blinded with tears, the injustice of it all. And just like that it happened, with no thought, I got up and shouted at the guard and demanded he apologise, the guard laughed at me and went to swing at me, I blocked it and got him clear in the chin and knocked him out. I then took his lash and beat him, beat