Original subtitles

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.