It is the summer of 1940 and in Europe the time of Blitzkreig. John Howard, a 70-year-old Englishman vacationing in France, cuts shorts his tour and heads for home. He agrees to take two children with him. But war closes in. Trains fail, roads clog with refugees. And if things were not difficult enough, other children join in Howard's little band. At last they reach the coast and find not deliverance but desperation. The old Englishman's greatest test lies ahead of him.
The Pied Piper of Hamelin is a legend about the abduction of many children from the town of Hamelin (Hameln), Germany. Famous versions of the legend are given by the Brothers Grimm and, in English, by Robert Browning. Pied refers to patches of two or more colors, typical dress for minstrels and entertainers in the middle ages.
Maybe the tariff dispute on Planner's World could've have been settled by arbitration, but when war broke out, the United Cities hired the best mercenaries money could buy:
HAMMER'S SLAMMERS
Lt. Arne Huber was old enough to be a veteran but still young enough to have principles. He commanded a platoon of combat cars, leading from the front because he was a Slammers officer and that's the only place you can lead.
From Huber's first minutes on Plattner's World, he was in the middle of hot, flaming war. He knew that wasn't going to change until the Slammers either left the planet or his relatives back on Friesland got a coffin with a warning to bury it unopened.
![The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning [unabridged, with audio]](http://englishtips.org/uploads/posts/2009-04/1240653063_pied_piper.jpg "The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning [unabridged, with audio]")
