The Conscientious Objector's Wife ~ Open, PM interest

fuckmeat

That all you got?
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Apr 19, 2010
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Please PM me if you would like to do this thread with me. Please DO NOT just post here. Thanks :rose:

OOC (out of character)


Wikipedia said:
A conscientious objector (CO) is an "individual [who has] claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion.

In the UK during World War II, following the National Service (Armed Forces) Act of 1939, there were nearly 60,000 registered Conscientious Objectors. CO Tribunals assessed applicants and of those 60,000, only 3,000 were released from all obligation of national service without incurring some form of punishment. Of those directed to non-combatant military service almost 7000 were allocated to the Non-Combatant Corps, set up in mid-1940; its companies worked in clothing and food stores, in transport, or any military project not requiring the handling of "material of an aggressive nature". For qualified individuals, alternatives to combat included the medical corps, mining, firefighting and bomb disposal services.

Most applied as COs only to be turned away as frauds. They were then conscripted forthwith. Aside from deep religious conviction (that could be proven by long term attendance at some place of worship) very little was considered sufficient reason to be excused military service. Around 1,000 applicants however, pushed their case so far as to be court-martialled and imprisoned, in military detention barracks. The soldiers there had no sympathy for their charges and a significant number of these inmates suffered injuries during their stay. Some even simply vanished.

The social stigma attached to 'conchies' (as they were called) was considerable: regardless of the genuineness of their motives, cowardice was often imputed. People would give white feathers denoting cowardice to COs in the street, to oust them publicly as objectors. It was partly for this reason that servicemen wore their uniforms while at home. Any young, able bodied man in civilian dress was likely to be suspected of being a CO. Others were stripped, tarred and feathered before being left tied up in the street. A CO usually had to relocate after receiving such treatment or violence towards them would escalate.

Wikipedia said:
The Blitz was the sustained bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941,[1] during the Second World War. The Blitz hit many towns and cities across the country, but it began with the bombing of London for 76 consecutive nights. By the end of May 1941, over 40,000 civilians, half of them in London, had been killed by bombing and more than a million houses were destroyed or damaged in London alone.

Wiki again said:
On 7 December 1941, Japan attacked British and American holdings with near-simultaneous offensives against Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific. These included an attack on the American Naval fleet at Pearl Harbor, indented to destroy the bulk of the USA Naval fleet.

These attacks led the U.S., Britain, Australia and other Allies to formally declare war on Japan. Germany and the other members of the Tripartite Pact responded by declaring war on the United States.

So my idea for this SRP is for Ev Draper's husband to be imprisoned as a fraudulent CO. This will cause her terrible shame. As his wife she'll be ostracised. Unless she divorces him and does National Service herself, people will not forgive or accept her. Your character (male or female, though in WW2 women had only administrative roles) will arrive in London with the American military. It will be December of 1940 and London will be mid Blitz by this time, getting bombed every single night until May 1941. Your character will be staying in London to help with Allied strategy planning (or to assist a male officer in doing so).

Your character will be one who finds global warfare more thrilling than perhaps is healthy. Something deep down that you're not proud of will be drawn like a lion/ess to a limping gazelle, inexorably to Evelyn Draper; a demoralised young woman being ostracised and publicly vilified in a crumbling city. A tasty little morsel like her needs more than a convicted coward between her thighs. She may still technically be married but the man deserves no loyalty. If you take her and humiliate her nobody will rush to her defence or aid. She is friendless. It will take some careful and abusive persuasion on your part but if you subdue and demoralise her successfully, you can swap your austere military bunk for a comfortable apartment with an obedient cook/maid/bitch warming her husband's bed for you every night.

You will make sure her local community are in no doubt about how Ev is performing her military service.

For her part, Ev will resist at first but gradually find your strength and dominance a turn on. Pain inflicted on her will ease her self loathing, temporarily at least. She will gradually break into a pliant thing who truly believes that she deserves no better than to serve you in every twisted way you can devise.

Also, if you want, I think it would be hot for the first time between them, the first rape, to occur as part of a brutal interrogation scene, where you probe her mind for things that you can use against her spirit.


... This tribunal finds you, Robert Draper, guilty of attempting to avoid conscription unlawfully. Your objection is not based on deep religious conviction and yet you have pressed your case as far as the law allows, showing an arrogance that will be reflected in your sentence.

I have no compunction in punishing you to the fullest extent possible for this judiciary tribunal. You shall be remanded in custody at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Greenwich, until such time as the conflict to which you have objected so strenuously has drawn to a close and peace has been declared in this great nation, that you refuse to defend...


Evelyn Draper's shoulders sagged as the sentence was passed but she would not give vent any further to the emotions warring within her. Bert was a good man and he had been a good husband but in this, she was ashamed of him.

She had loved him when they married at nineteen and she loved him still. But some of the lustre had worn off of the man she had been infatuated with at eighteen years old. He didn't eat meat because the butcher's window made him nauseous. He caught fish but left her to gut and fillet them. He pottered around in the garden growing vegetables, fruit and flowers and though it was all very nice, sometimes Ev watched the late night revellers stagger past her window and couldn't help but think that her husband was a bit dull. He treated her like a fragile flower and when they made love, it was sweet and nice but as soon as she became excited and urged him on, he held back, afraid of hurting her. Ev had felt stirrings in her loins but nothing like the quiet passion Bert held in check until it spilled into her body. She had heard his gasps when he erupted, felt the rushing pulse at his throat and where he was lodged within her... but her body always got left behind, left quivering in nothing more than a frustration that she had no name for. Bert held himself perfectly still when he came, so that Ev couldn't even begin to guess what he was feeling.

When the war had started Bert had been critical about the politics behind it. This alone was shocking in a city where everyone had instantly united behind their government and its troops. He had not volunteered and when Ev had asked him about conscription he had always refused to discuss it. For all his gentleness, in some things he was utterly implacable. The first conscription papers he had successfully kept from her or destroyed but the postman one day handed her a red fringed envelope requiring him to enlist at his local office or provide proof of why he could not do so by the end of the week, on pain of court-marshal. Bert had sat in their front room and filled out the forms to apply for assessment as a CO that very night, right under her nose. They had had their first real argument that night. Bert thought killing was wrong. Ev thought Germany's politics a deal more reprehensible and deserving of retaliation. Bert announced that the newsreels were 'propaganda' and that there was a lot of things the public weren't being told. They argued in circles during the week preceding his first tribunal hearing, neither ceding ground.

At his first hearing, Bert had done a fairly eloquent job of explaining that though he lacked religious conviction, he did not place enough trust in the British government to kill as the crown commanded. Though enemy troops represented and carried out the will of the German government, he argued that they were just men following the same orders that ours were. He said that news in Germany must be as heavily edited by their government there as ours is here.

And how Mr Draper, would a person edit a German newsreel to deny the facts? They have started this war. They have invaded peaceful nations. They have turned on sections of their own population. Do please tell me how Hitler is able to put a positive spin on these undeniable truths.

Here, Bert's argument faltered somewhat. He stuck stoically to the assertion that he was not prepared to execute the footsoldiers of a regime because the leaders were barbaric. Without the religious conviction to back it up however, this had not been nearly enough.

Evelyn buttoned her coat and tied a scarf over her hair. She had not looked at Bert as he had been taken away. She could not bring herself to give him that hope, that assurance that she would stand by him until he was released. It would have been fraudulent. It hurt her to know she had pained him at such a moment but it could not be denied; her love and respect for him had taken a major wound, perhaps even a fatal one.

She started walking and eventually flagged down a bus that would take her away from Greenwich and towards the centre of London. Unable to go back home yet and look around at the life they had built together, Evelyn wandered into a nearby pub. The landlord, a WW1 veteran with a pronounced limp, raised the brandy bottle at her request but then thumped it down onto the bar, the glass in his other hand still empty.

"I know you. You're Bert Draper's missus. 'As 'ee packed it in yet and gone to fight?"

The pub fell silent as other drinkers paused to listen. Those who didn't know what what the landlord meant were abruptly appraised of the facts by others in whispers.

"He has gone to prison." She replied quietly, listless and numb.

"Too bleedin' right he 'as an' all." Ev followed his eyes obediently to the posters adorning the pub's walls. They urged men to volunteer, older men to join the home guard, women to take on roles in factories and on farms. 'Your Country Needs YOU!' yelled at her from every wall. "We don't need your sort in here. Best you sling yer hook." He told her, putting the glass and bottle away.

Now the pub fell silent. It was a silence that spoke of united rage. Evelyn left and dragged her weary feet home to the basement flat she had shared with Bert.

She had not even removed her coat when the air raid siren wailed into life. There had been plenty of tests and false alarms but this time... this time she could hear the drone of approaching aircraft. Ev grabbed her handbag and raced to the shelter that had been erected in the garden of their apartment building, much to Bert's disgust as it had required that much of his horticultural handiwork was uprooted. She had dived into the low slung corrugated iron structure and taken up a seat before it occurred to her that she might not be welcome here either.

~~~X~~~​

Two months on, Ev had become accustomed to the air raids and also to being a local hate figure. She had contemplated volunteering for National Service herself but Bert's letters implored her not to. Every day she wavered, languishing over her job as a clerk indecisively. Then the bank where she worked was bombed and closed. Evelyn withdrew into herself, not venturing from her flat unless it was to get rations and barter on the black market for gin.

People laughed at her. They called her names in the street. Worse still were the ones who quietly pitied her. White feathers were stuffed through her letterbox and strewn outside the one window in her basement apartment, street level and high up in her lounge wall. She dressed well and wore her make-up but it was more out of having nothing else to do than any assertion of personal pride. It gave her a mask of sorts.
 
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