Chapter 273: Earl Kitchener's Final Moments |
"I heard Sweden attacked Norway? Will it be dangerous for us to continue through the northern Norwegian Sea back to Murmansk?"
On the morning of July 2—exactly two days after the cruiser squadron led by the Danae set sail from the Port of Rosyth in Scotland—the naturally cautious Count Benckendorff heard about the outside developments over the radio. Unable to hide his anxiety, he shared his concerns with his traveling companion, Kitchener.
The valiant Kitchener, however, brushed off the worry. "We've already sailed over eight hundred nautical miles. We are halfway there. What's the point of second-guessing ourselves now?"
Count Benckendorff was still uneasy. "You aren't a diplomat, so you might not understand the situation in Northern Europe. Norway has a standing army of 120,000 men, while Sweden has barely more than 20,000!
"Under these circumstances, for Sweden to brazenly declare war on Norway just because Norway supposedly violated its neutrality by organizing large-scale weapon smuggling through Swedish territory... it means the Swedes aren't the ones truly planning to fight! The Demanians must be behind this!"
At the mention of Demania, a flash of instinctive disgust crossed Earl Kitchener's eyes. He had suffered far too many defeats at the hands of the Demanians. They had beaten him down from his position as Secretary of State for War to Governor-General of Egypt, yet even then, they refused to let him be. They had continuously battered him in his own little corner of the world, ultimately forcing him out of his post in Egypt as well.
Driven by his habitual need to contradict, Earl Kitchener shot back, "So what? Even if Demania is behind this, do you think they can conquer Norway that quickly? Norway is vast, filled with mountains and fjords. As long as the Norwegians have the will to resist, they can hold out long enough for the Royal Navy to send reinforcements!
"At most, the Demanians used the window before the war to smuggle some troops into Sweden. Once the Royal Navy cuts off their maritime supply lines, the situation will improve!"
Kitchener certainly did not underestimate the Demanian Army. Having served as Secretary of State for War, he had swallowed enough bitter defeats.
He knew perfectly well that whether it was the Ypres-Dunkirk campaign the year before last, the Gallipoli campaign last year, or the Levant campaign this year, Britannia's failures stemmed entirely from the abysmal state of his own army. The navy had merely been dragged down with them.
The two men bickered for a while, but neither could convince the other. The convoy—consisting of two light cruisers and six destroyers—had no choice but to continue its northeast trajectory.
Not long into their journey, a new radio broadcast sent Count Benckendorff's nerves fraying once again.
"Norwegian merchant ships spotted a Demanian fleet in the Skagerrak Strait! They were escorted by a massive fleet of transport ships flying Swedish flags! Are the Demanians planning to land in southern Norway and seize the ports?"
"I don't know if your Brit Nation's Grand Fleet reacted in time to intercept them, but we absolutely cannot allow the Demanian fleet to casually transport their troops and equipment into Norwegian coastal waters!"
But things had already been set in motion. They had sailed further northeast and were long past the point of no return.
Although they confirmed sightings of the Demanian fleet operating near the Skagerrak Strait in southern Norway, with some vanguard vessels even venturing into the Norwegian Sea, these movements were ultimately interpreted as preparations for the invasion of Norway, not a targeted attack on their convoy.
As for the perfectly aligned timing, they could only chalk it up to coincidence.
And so, Count Benckendorff squandered his final opportunity to turn back and flee.
While Benckendorff and Kitchener continued their wide northeast detour through the open ocean, over a hundred nautical miles to their southeast, individual vessels from Admiral Hipper's battlecruiser fleet finally received intelligence on their convoy.
As it turned out, earlier that morning, a Demanian Navy reconnaissance airship had spotted the convoy dozens of nautical miles to the north. However, due to the polar day in early July, the Brit Nation ships to the north never noticed the Demanian airship.
Using airships for deep-sea reconnaissance to locate enemy fleets was a remarkably effective tactic. In the history of Earth's timeline, the German Navy frequently deployed airships for forward reconnaissance prior to major fleet engagements during World War I.
The problem was that Demania's intelligence and cryptography were completely abysmal. Every operation they ran was like playing with their cards face-up on the table, rendering all their scouting, feigned deployments, and ambushes utterly useless.
This didn't mean airship reconnaissance was inherently flawed; they were simply sabotaged by the utter incompetence of their intelligence departments.
Now that the glaring vulnerability of broken ciphers had been temporarily plugged, the true value of airship reconnaissance immediately shone through.
Moreover, conducting airship reconnaissance at this specific time of year offered an unexpected advantage. Under normal circumstances, an airship's massive profile meant that if its crew could spot a surface vessel, the ship's sailors would likely spot the airship in return, raising the alarm. It was a game of mutual discovery.
But the Norwegian Sea in early July was a completely different story. Being close to the Arctic Circle and just past the summer solstice, the central and northern regions of the Norwegian Sea experienced widespread polar daylight.
This meant the sun never set, continuously circling the southern sky for twenty-four hours a day.
The sun's trajectory under these conditions was highly predictable. From 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM—the normal "daytime" hours—it traced a standard semi-circle from east to west, peaking at noon roughly thirty to forty degrees south of the zenith.
But from 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM—the normal "nighttime" hours—the polar day region saw the sun trace a lower arc from west to east. At midnight, the sun hit its lowest and most southerly point, practically skimming the southern horizon without ever dipping below it.
Consequently, if an airship approached from the south between midnight and dawn to scout a fleet to the north, the shipboard lookouts would have their vision completely obscured by the intense solar glare behind the approaching aircraft.
Furthermore, twenty-four hours of unbroken sunlight easily led to psychological depression and a severe drop in concentration. It was the reason Northern European countries had such high rates of depression; shifting between months of total darkness and months of endless daylight completely shattered the biological clock. How could anyone not end up depressed?
The Royal Navy sailors, entirely unaccustomed to navigating and fighting in polar conditions, were already irritable and prone to mistakes after enduring two full days of polar daylight on this extended northern detour.
This combination of factors made the Demanian reconnaissance operation incredibly forgiving. Even if the Royal Navy lookouts managed to spot an anomaly or two, it wouldn't change the overarching reality of their situation.
Upon spotting the enemy convoy, the airship didn't even risk sending an immediate radio transmission, fearing that breaking radio silence would alert their prey.
Instead, it opted to return, heading toward the prearranged blockade zone. Several hours later, during the morning, it finally located two of Admiral Hipper's search squadrons and relayed the enemy's prior coordinates via light signals.
Only then did the informed search squadrons proceed to intercept and flank the enemy based on their projected trajectory.
Although Admiral Hipper had deployed all five of his battlecruisers, along with their escorting light cruisers and destroyers, these vessels couldn't just group up and operate as a single massive fleet in the Norwegian Sea.
Hipper only knew that the Britannians had sent Count Benckendorff and Earl Kitchener away. The Norwegian Sea was vastly expansive, making it impossible to predict the exact route they would take.
Even with submarine reconnaissance deployed in advance and airships quietly patrolling the skies, they could only narrow down the enemy's area of operations; real-time, pinpoint tracking was out of the question.
Therefore, upon confirming the enemy fleet's imminent arrival, Hipper cast a patrol net over two hundred nautical miles wide, spacing out his five battlecruisers from south to north and sending his light vessels ahead.
This ensured that no matter which route Benckendorff took, an interception was guaranteed.
The final intelligence from the airship made Admiral Hipper frown. "The Britannians are actually this cautious? They sailed over two hundred nautical miles off the Norwegian coast and nearly entered the Arctic Circle. Fortunately, the Lützow and Hindenburg in the far north can intercept them head-on. Our Derfflinger might not catch up in time, but we can flank them from the south to force their hand."
Staying more than two hundred nautical miles off the Norwegian coast was an extreme detour.
The shortest distance between the Norwegian coast and Jan Mayen was only 350 nautical miles. Sailing two hundred nautical miles out meant they would pass within 150 nautical miles of Jan Mayen at their closest point.
But thanks to Hipper's preemptive planning, sustained high speeds, and wide dragnet, even a detour of this magnitude couldn't slip the Royal Navy past his grasp.
A few hours later, around 1:00 PM that afternoon.
The light cruiser Danae, escorting Count Benckendorff and Earl Kitchener, along with its supporting warships and the Canadian merchant convoy providing cover, finally spotted an anomaly.
—
"East-southeast, bearing 105, unidentified warships spotted!"
The destroyers Hydra and Lizard, operating as the vanguard for the Danae, sent the first warning.
Within minutes, they confirmed the vessels were Demanian warships!
"What? How could the Demanians be this far north? Even if they were moving on Norway, they wouldn't operate in waters this high! If they planned a sneak landing, they'd target Kristiansand or Bergen. What are they doing all the way up here? Are they trying to land at Narvik or Trondheim?"
Captain of the Danae and commander of the escort fleet, Colonel Stephen Lacey, immediately tensed up.
He consulted his charts; the enemy's current position was already west-northwest of Narvik, roughly 170 nautical miles from the port itself.
It wasn't entirely impossible that the Demanians intended to strike across multiple fronts. Acting under the guise of mercenaries for the Swedes, they could be escorting a massive army to blockade Norway's entire coastline, ruthlessly exterminating the pro-Britannia factions to prevent them from fleeing into exile and becoming a future threat.
But if they were covering a landing operation, why swing so far out into the open sea?
On second thought, it made sense. His own fleet had taken this wide detour to stay hidden; perhaps the Demanians were doing the exact same thing to avoid prematurely alerting the Norwegians. If the Norwegians got tipped off and heavily garrisoned Narvik, the Demanian mercenary landing force might never make it ashore.
Either way, analyzing their motives was pointless now. With the enemy this close, his absolute priority was figuring out how to escape.
Considering the enemy's objective was likely escorting landing forces to Narvik rather than hunting him down, Colonel Stephen Lacey decided to play it safe. He would sacrifice his pawns to save the king, ensuring the safety of Count Benckendorff and Earl Kitchener at all costs.
Before setting sail, Foreign Secretary Balfour had repeatedly emphasized the immense importance of this escort mission. Even if every warship and cover merchant vessel was lost, the VIPs had to arrive safely. First Lord of the Admiralty Carson had entirely backed Balfour's orders, demanding the navy's total cooperation at any cost.
Thus, Colonel Stephen Lacey immediately made a ruthless decision. "This ship, the light cruiser Centaur, and the other four destroyers will immediately turn northwest and break away from the merchant convoy at top speed!
"The Hydra and the Lizard, which have already been spotted, will continue escorting the merchant fleet and engage the enemy! Make them think they are the convoy's sole escorts!"
Colonel Lacey intended to sacrifice the two compromised destroyers, creating the illusion that this was the entire fleet. He hoped the enemy, thinking they had merely stumbled upon a lucky target, would eagerly snap up the bait, lower their guard, and call off any further searches.
Thanks to the strict discipline of the Royal Navy, the captains of the two doomed destroyers didn't immediately mutiny.
Or perhaps it was because the approaching force from the southeast consisted of only a single enemy warship for now, and it didn't look entirely insurmountable. With two destroyers and the armed merchantmen in the convoy, there was even a chance they could launch a successful counterattack.
The Danae and the Centaur instantly pivoted, accelerating to 29 knots as they slipped away into the vast northwest ocean.
The exposed Hydra and Lizard retreated into the cluster of merchant ships, attempting to use them as meat shields to lure the passing Demanian warship into close-quarters combat.
Even if the Demanian ship opened fire on the freighters, it would buy the destroyers time to close the distance.
The merchant ships were doomed either way; if the destroyers sank first, the cargo vessels would inevitably follow.
Soon, the Demanian light cruiser began to close in, followed by two peculiar thousand-ton-class destroyers, noticeably larger than standard Demanian destroyers.
As the distance between the two forces closed to within 12,000 meters, the Demanian ship flashed light signals demanding the Canadian-flagged merchant convoy surrender and proceed to Narvik under Demanian supervision as prisoners of war.
The merchant fleet ignored the demand, desperately turning around to flee. Conveniently, they broke off in the opposite direction from the fleeing Danae, aiding in drawing the Demanian ships' attention southward.
Since the merchant convoy refused to surrender and flew an enemy flag, there was no need for pleasantries. The Demanian cruiser surged to 30 knots, rapidly bridging the gap. At just over 10,000 meters, 150mm shells began to rain down, obliterating the first 5,000-ton bulk carrier in a matter of minutes.
A brutal slaughter of the merchant fleet quickly commenced. The convoy consisted of fifteen ships carrying a total of 90,000 tons of military supplies destined for the Lushans.
In just fifteen minutes of carnage, six ships were sunk, and the engagement distance shrank by another three kilometers, leaving only 8,000 meters between them.
The Demanian cruiser stopped its approach, opting to maintain the distance and methodically pick off the outer merchant vessels one by one, waiting for the Britannian destroyers to expose themselves before finishing them off.
Seeing that the enemy wouldn't take the bait, the Hydra and the Lizard had no choice but to bite the bullet and accelerate, surging out from the cover of their own merchant ships and abandoning any hope of using them as shields to close the gap.
Watching the enemy bombard the merchant vessels had genuinely chilled them. The Demanian cruiser was far too fast! It actually hit 30 knots, and the bow housed a twin-mounted 150mm turret! This was utterly unprecedented!
Previously, even when Demanian cruisers sported 150mm guns, they were always deployed as two single-mount guns positioned side-by-side on the bow, offering terrible broadside firepower.
They hadn't expected the Demanians to finally perfect twin-mounted main turrets for their light cruisers—and deploy them against this very fleet in their debut battle.
The Britannian destroyers' only chance of survival was to charge in and launch their torpedoes. Otherwise, facing a light cruiser capable of projecting six 150mm guns on a single broadside, they had absolutely no chance in a gunnery duel.
Of course, during their desperate charge, the Britannian 102mm guns were not idle. They fired relentlessly, hoping to inflict whatever damage they could.
"Close the distance at top speed! Prepare torpedoes! For the glory of the Royal Navy!"
But a mere two minutes later, a 150mm high-explosive shell smashed through the bow and detonated deep inside the hull. The Hydra instantly died in the water, with at least six kilometers still separating the fleets.
Realizing it could not break through, the Lizard hastily launched its entire payload of torpedoes from over five kilometers away.
Upon spotting the torpedoes hit the water, the Demanian ship immediately initiated evasive maneuvers. Its six 150mm guns, however, never paused, sending the Lizard to the bottom of the sea as they dodged.
The two Demanian destroyers moved in to flank, unloading their 105mm guns onto the remaining merchant fleet. By 2:30 PM that afternoon, twelve of the fifteen merchant ships had been sunk, and the final three had scattered. Since the Demanian forces were few in number, they couldn't chase down every single vessel and could only turn back to hunt the stragglers after sinking their Canadian prey.
Even so, there was little doubt that these dozen or so merchantmen would eventually be completely annihilated.
On the other side, the Danae and the Centaur, bought over an hour by their allies' sacrifice, maintained their blistering 29-knot pace as they retreated northwest.
Just as they believed they had successfully shaken off the Demanian fleet without a trace, a new, far more devastating development occurred.
A colossal Demanian warship, accompanied by a handful of auxiliary vessels, appeared even further to their northwest, entirely blocking their intended escape route.
"Fuck! We are more than 230 nautical miles off the Norwegian coast! How are there warships this far out, practically in the Arctic?!"
The moment he laid eyes on the Demanian behemoth, Colonel Stephen Lacey's blood pressure surged. He simply couldn't fathom his own abysmal luck.
Enemy ships to the east made sense; they could be covering transport ships for a Narvik landing. But why on earth were there more to the north?
They couldn't possibly be heading for Jan Mayen or Greenland!
With enemy ships to both the southeast and the northwest, there was nowhere left to detour. Their only remaining option was a forced breakthrough.
"All forces, execute a torpedo charge against that battlecruiser! And transmit a message to the homeland: our fleet has been intercepted by an enemy battlecruiser in the waters west-northwest of Narvik!"
With their cover blown, radio silence was utterly meaningless. Relaying the enemy's position to the Grand Fleet was now the paramount priority.
Inside the conning tower of the Danae, an ashen-faced Earl Kitchener unconsciously rested his hand on his pistol holster.
He had already mentally prepared himself to go down with the ship. A grim thought even crossed his mind: if the ship was destroyed and the enemy attempted to fish out prisoners, he would take his own life to avoid capture.
Given his status, his capture would spark a massive uproar and deal a catastrophic blow to morale.
But what about Lusha's ambassador, Count Benckendorff, standing right next to him? Should he kill him to eliminate any future complications?
After a moment of deliberation, Kitchener banished the horrifying thought from his mind.
'No, he is Lusha's ambassador to the Empire. The Empire cannot simply murder an allied ambassador; the fallout would be too severe. If I act, there's bound to be a survivor among the crew today, and once their testimony gets out, the consequences will be disastrous—'
'Besides, Count Benckendorff isn't that famous. If he disguises himself as a regular officer, the Demanians might not even realize who he is, even if he's taken prisoner—'
In contrast, it was impossible for Kitchener to conceal his identity. His face was currently the most famous out of everyone in the Brit Nation.
Way back in 1914, when the war first broke out, the Britannians printed millions of posters bearing his face and distributed them across every major Brit Nation colony worldwide. They featured a single phrase—"BRITONS WANT YOU!"—paired with a close-up of Earl Kitchener extending his index finger and pointing directly at the viewer.
This legendary poster was later imitated by countries around the globe. The yanks in Chouguo, for instance, eventually produced a similar "Uncle Sam WANTS YOU" poster, featuring an old man in a top hat pointing a finger at the viewer (as shown in the image below, with the original on the left and the imitation on the right).
Therefore, if anyone were to ask whose photograph was the most recognizable on Earth, Earl Kitchener undoubtedly belonged in the highest echelon.
His face was better known to the public than the faces of kings. There was absolutely no way he could hide his identity in captivity; the moment he was captured, he would be instantly recognized.
His heart ashen, Earl Kitchener could only tighten his grip on his pistol.
He spoke mournfully to the adjutant beside him. "If we cannot escape, wait until I am dead, tie anchor chains to my feet, and throw me into the ocean. You absolutely cannot allow the Demanians to find my body."
