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 war 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 War -
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 war,
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 war
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 War.
We finished it.
We killed the bastards..
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
War 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 war 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 Töckelt.
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 war,
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 war 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 War 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 War Museum
and these preserved war 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 war,
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 artillery 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 guns 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 battlefield by the thousands.
Fast and merciless killing 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 weapon 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
stab 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 war.
He is a corporal in the army believed destroyed
in the first week of the war.
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 artillery 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-war 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 war?
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 war 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 war
litters the battlefield.
But as the sun sets, the horror rises.
A third alien war 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 war 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 killing 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 war'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 war 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 war 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 war 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 guns, 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 attacks,
with the lice deployed to harvest and directly fee
the alien war 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 war 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 explosives,
the blast is designed to take down
one of the Martians' ultimate killing 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 war 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 war 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 war 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 bullets
and materials of warfare that we had been depositing
on the fields of the Front every single day.
The aliens build their killing 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 war.
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 war,
and there are 27 miles of corridors.
This is the lowest moment of the war
Humanity is staring into the abyss,
but Roundway Down are about to discover
an alien secret that could turn the tide of the war...
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 war 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 battlefield 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, attacks intensify.
The aliens are no longer nurturing war.
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 rifles.
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 war,
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 weapon
The code name of the weapon is Trojan Horse.
It couldn't come soon enough.
After three years of crippling war,
the Allies have found a virus lethal to the aliens.
But the Martian attacks 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 attacks.
What is certain is hysteria took hold on American streets.
Roosevelt's pro-war 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 war 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 weapon 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 weapon 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 murder - we can win.
They had developed a secret weapon.
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 weapon 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 weapon?"
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 assault.
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 weapon 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 weapon.
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 war 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 war,
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 war -
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 war,
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 war, 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.