“Overlooked one point? Out with it! Don’t tell me you’re still trying to keep us in suspense!”
Major General Karl saw Lelouch pausing for breath as he spoke and hurriedly urged him to get to the point.
Lelouch then added to his analysis. “As far as I know, when the war first broke out, the Empire never expected the Britannians to enter the war at all. At the time, many people even believed that as long as we passed through Bilijin quickly enough and intimidated the Bilijin people in one stroke, Britannia would have no choice but to hold its nose and accept the fait accompli.
“But what happened? The Britannians seized the opportunity and entered the war with great decisiveness. This shows that the Empire’s high command had gravely underestimated the danger posed by the Britannians! The Empire never realized that Britannia had long since regarded the Empire as its greatest rival and was determined to destroy it at any cost.
“And now, the Bilijin Army has practically been annihilated by us, yet before that, Britannia’s Naval Minister had already promised to ‘receive the retreating Bilijin Army by sea’—once this gets out internationally, what will other countries think?
“They will think that Britannia’s army is incompetent, and that even the Royal Navy is just as incompetent! The allied army the Royal Navy publicly declared it would protect was wiped out by the Empire before they even arrived!
“With Minister Walton’s petty, vindictive nature, and considering his consistently bold, reckless, and radical style of action, do you think the Royal Navy might retaliate at any cost in order to regain face?
“The forty-kilometer coastal corridor from Dunkirk to Ostend, if viewed only from the land battlefield, is indeed completely impossible to outflank. The defending side can use it to bleed an attacking force dry.
“But if the enemy commits its navy, intercepting from the flank and bombarding the Imperial Army, can the Empire’s brave soldiers still rely on the ruins of two small towns to withstand bombardment from a battleship’s twelve-bu-inch main guns?”
Hearing this, Major General Karl finally felt a trace of lingering fear.
There was no doubt that the houses and ruins in the town of Nieuwpoort had already reached their limit by holding firm against a small amount of flat-trajectory six-bu-inch light cruiser fire.
If a battleship came—even an old pre-dreadnought—the German troops would not even know how they had died.
This logic was not actually difficult to think of. It was just that these men were all army generals; they had not understood the navy before, nor did they have that string in their minds.
Moreover, the discussion just now had only been a hasty preliminary one. None of them had time to slowly and deeply consider it.
The problem was, Lelouch had also been asked on the spot. He likewise did not have much time to think.
Yet he alone had been able to answer immediately and identify the crux of the problem at once.
Lelouch’s intelligence, speed of reaction, and understanding of military strategy immediately left Major General Karl with an extremely deep impression.
“Indeed… If the Britannians suffer a great loss of face this time and retaliate regardless of cost, the Empire truly will not be able to withstand it. Having the troops at Nieuwpoort withdraw as soon as possible is the right choice. Sigh, what a pity. Such an excellent situation for blocking and exhausting the enemy, yet we can only abandon it…”
Major General Karl sighed regretfully a few times.
However, just when they felt that the matter had already reached a dead end, Lelouch once again pointed out some room for maneuver.
“There is actually still a bit of an opportunity here. It’s just that we would need to change our methods, and design the plan more carefully.”
Major General Karl’s eyes lit up, and his spirits were instantly roused. He immediately found an excuse to completely dismiss everyone around him, leaving only Lelouch and Colonel List, then found a conference room to continue their private discussion.
“Quick! Explain the details at once!” Major General Karl no longer had any of a general’s reserve. Right now, he only wanted to seize more military merit.
Especially since Major General Karl and the men of the Sixth Army all came from the Kingdom of Baria, one of the four South German states. Within the German Army, they were already a minority, suppressed by the Junker officer corps of North Germany.
Under such circumstances, if they were still jealous of the talented and envious of the capable, they would never have any hope of breaking the deadlock.
The weaker one was, the more one had to band together for warmth and appoint people solely according to ability.
Sensing the general’s full authorization and respectful treatment of talent, Lelouch did not hesitate to further refine his strategy.
“If we want to break this situation, I believe we must solve at least two problems. First, we must ensure that ‘the troops left behind in Nieuwpoort and other places to delay the enemy can safely withdraw when they encounter enemy heavy artillery sealing off the coastal road.’
“Therefore, this requires that they cannot count on the coastal road as their only escape route. The coastal road can be completely sealed off by warship heavy guns at any time. Only by switching to the flooded area south of the coastal road can they avoid naval gunfire. To accomplish this, we will have to temporarily gather enough small boats and craft locally.
“Ordinarily, no boats sail in those flooded areas. Those places were originally farmland. But since those flooded areas were formed by the breach of the Yser Canal, we can entirely pull the inland river boats from the Yser Canal over there…”
Hearing this, Major General Karl immediately waved his hand. “That point is no problem! Gathering some canal boats, enough to carry away a few battalions of infantry—that can absolutely be done. I’ll personally instruct someone to handle it.”
Once this point was resolved, they could at least ensure that the bait rearguard troops could withdraw safely after completing their mission.
Although battleships were ferocious, they could not sail into flooded canal zones. With the coastal road between them and a lack of observation and aiming angles, they could not accurately bombard small boats on the water on the other side of the land.
Then Lelouch continued to discuss the next point requiring attention. “The second point is that the Imperial Navy must also, as quickly and secretly as possible, dispatch a high-speed fleet sufficient to deal with any bombardment fleet the Britannian Royal Navy might send. This will definitely require some intelligence deception measures.
“In the end, the Imperial Navy will be able to fight with superior numbers and bully the enemy’s old warships—according to what I know, the main new fleet of the Britannian Royal Navy is in Scapa Flow in northern Scotland, usually very far from here.
“The force that can provide timely support to the Bilijin coast is mainly the Channel Fleet usually stationed at Dover and Portsmouth. And according to public intelligence, the capital ships of the Channel Fleet amount to only three pre-dreadnoughts, correct? These old ships may not even all be maintained in a state fit to sortie.
“However, the biggest problem here is that we would have to coordinate with the navy’s generals. Someone must be willing to believe our judgment, and to shoulder the responsibility and risk of dispatching warships…”
At the side, Colonel List’s expression had already become somewhat troubled as he listened to Lelouch speaking so grandly.
This demand was simply too enormous, far beyond the authority that the Sixth Army could coordinate.
Afraid that the general would become angry, he hurriedly helped step on the brakes. “Lieutenant Lelouch… don’t you think what you’re saying exceeds your authority far too much? What kind of inter-service cooperation requirement is this? How could we possibly have any say in it!
“In the navy, the Junker officer corps’ problems of seniority and conservative style are even worse than in the army! This kind of fanciful demand of yours, and on such short notice, is absolutely impossible! Don’t make trouble for the general. We should just give up Nieuwpoort directly.”
Yet even as Colonel List poured cold water on the idea, Major General Karl’s expression grew increasingly solemn, and increasingly grave and serious.
He pondered sincerely for a long while. Finally, he abruptly waved his hand. “List! Don’t casually reject someone else’s train of thought. It is already excellent that Lieutenant Lelouch can think in this way. Whether it can be realized is another matter. We must allow people to speak freely.
“And what he said is not completely impossible to pursue independently… In the navy, the vast majority of high-ranking generals have no friendship with us. But there are a few from our Barian faction. For example, Rear Admiral Hipper, who commands the First Scouting Squadron—he is from our Kingdom of Baria. When he was young, he even served as aide-de-camp to my royal elder brother, Duke Rupprecht, commander of the Sixth Army…
“And Rear Admiral Hipper is also famous in the navy for daring to act. In the three months since the war began, he has already taken three battlecruisers to bombard several Britannian ports! Each time, he rapidly fired a few salvos, then immediately escaped at high speed, and has never lost a capital ship.
“With his courage, if there truly is an opportunity to destroy enemy pre-dreadnoughts and win merit, he will certainly be tempted! But we must first ensure that our intelligence estimates are correct, and ensure that if a battle truly occurs, we will definitely win… If that can truly be done, I will dare to telegraph my royal elder brother, and then have my royal elder brother telegraph Rear Admiral Hipper…”
Major General Karl analyzed aloud to himself. But just as he reached this point, Lelouch hurriedly interrupted, disregarding etiquette.
“General! Your other decisions are all extremely wise and prudent, but as for discussing this matter by telegraph… I believe that may introduce even more risk. The Empire’s communications system really cannot be called secure at present.”
Lelouch spoke these words somewhat hastily, but there was nothing he could do.
As a transmigrator, he of course knew just how thoroughly the Empire’s telegraphic codes had been broken by the enemy in the First World War. It was practically one-way transparency.
Therefore, even though he currently lacked conclusive evidence, he could only rely on a few traces and clues, first making a firm declaration to draw the general’s attention, then think of a way to slowly make the topic sound reasonable.
Moreover, in Lelouch’s heart, before he had raised today’s topic, he had already determined one point: for this plan to be realized, the radio deception component was indispensable.
It could even be said that if they could not carry out reverse radio deception against the Britannians, then it would be better to pretend today’s words had never been spoken, and better to give up the so-called opportunity for battle entirely!
As expected, Major General Karl’s expression changed. Even though he had already trusted Lelouch greatly before, now that Lelouch had said such words, Karl had no choice but to warn him. “Lieutenant Lelouch! I accepted everything you said earlier, but you cannot speak recklessly about this! You are merely a lieutenant. On what basis do you claim that the Empire’s communications system has enormous vulnerabilities?”
Lelouch’s mind was also racing at high speed. He knew very clearly that right now, he absolutely could not say, “The Empire’s radio codebooks were broken by the enemy long ago.” There was no basis for that.
Although he had read the history books and knew that as early as August, when the Britannians sank an Imperial submarine, they had salvaged a codebook from the submarine’s wreckage, the current him had no reason to know this. If he said it, no one would believe him; instead, they would regard him as a charlatan.
Fortunately, however, Lelouch had another excuse he could use. He remembered the undersea cable that Siemens had laid along the Bilijin and Netherlandish coasts before the war, which had been destroyed by a Britannian cruiser three days ago.
And the higher-ups had previously not known exactly why that cable had failed.
Lelouch had personally supervised the repair work, so on this entry point, he had absolute professional authority to speak.
Lelouch immediately seized the opportunity to make a mountain out of a molehill, analyzing the matter in a clear and logical fashion. “Some days ago, our platoon was temporarily dispatched by Army Group Headquarters to Nieuwpoort to repair a certain undersea cable. Based on my subsequent reexamination, I can precisely confirm that the break in that cable was located more than three kilometers out at sea.
“If the enemy had not spied out in advance the precise route coordinates from the undersea cable blueprints, they could not have salvaged and cut it at a fixed point. Afterward, I repeatedly investigated the matter. Among all three parties that could possibly have leaked the blueprints, Siemens would not betray the country for no reason, and the Bilijin people at that time had no time to sell this information. Therefore, there is a ninety-nine percent chance that there are Britannian spies inside the Netherlandish State Telegraph Company!
“I do not currently know how great an influence Britannian communications spies have within the Netherlandish Telegraph Company, nor how many of our communications secrets they can access. But I believe there is no harm in being overly cautious. This matter absolutely cannot be discussed by telegraphic means. We can even take this opportunity to turn their own trick against them, and test whether there truly has been a code leak, or whether wired telegraph cables are being physically monitored…”
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