“Sir, this is the warning broadcast script in French.”
“This one is in Dutch.”
More than half an hour later, after two soldiers with a smattering of foreign languages handed the haltingly translated drafts to Lelouch, his expression grew solemn.
He knew he had to make a decision that might determine the life or death of many people.
Before this, he had twice offered advice to Captain Andri, and had even overstepped his authority by attempting to request instructions from divisional headquarters and warn friendly forces.
But those actions were all things that had to be done as quickly as possible; there had been no need to consider timing.
This time was different. He knew very well that once a broadcast in the enemy’s native language was sent out, the enemy would immediately intercept and understand it—and it might very well prompt the Belginians to blow the dam ahead of schedule.
If that happened, the 16th Infantry Regiment, which was racing here at full speed, might be swallowed by the flood even sooner.
Would sending it earlier save more people? Or would sending it later save more?
Before his transmigration, Lelouch had never made a decision of such gravity. For a moment, fear actually rose in him.
After all, he was no demon.
“Should I delay another half hour before sending it? Gamble that the Belginians definitely won’t blow the dike within half an hour? Or at least wait fifteen minutes?”
Just as he was hesitating and calculating fiercely in his heart, the telegraph receiver reacted.
Lelouch’s heart jolted, and he hurriedly recorded the message first.
It turned out to be an encrypted broadcast from divisional headquarters.
“Reconnaissance aircraft dispatched by army group headquarters have confirmed the Belginians’ demolition work site downstream on the Yser River. Continuous aerial photography is ongoing. All units are to accelerate their evacuation from possible flood zones!”
Lelouch translated the message at top speed, and an idea finally took full shape in his mind.
“Our reconnaissance aircraft photographed the Belginians at work! This is a major victory! In the original history, the Belginians definitely weren’t photographed blowing the dike, which was why both sides could wrangle over it for so long afterward, each accusing the other’s heavy artillery of smashing it apart.
“But now the evidence is ironclad! In this era, there are no fighter planes. Reconnaissance aircraft taking photographs in the air can’t possibly be intercepted and shot down by the enemy! And there’s no Photoshop in this era either—no one can accuse the photos of being doctored!”
At this thought, Lelouch’s spirits surged. He immediately sent an encrypted request to divisional headquarters as quickly as possible:
“We have been informed that our side has obtained photographic evidence of the enemy’s intended demolition. Recommend broadcasting a warning to surrounding villages and towns in cleartext as soon as possible, and having our troops advise civilians encountered on the road to take shelter. If possible, we may also assist civilians in evacuation.
“In addition, our unit has already drafted a French/Dutch bilingual warning message. If divisional headquarters permits it, our unit can broadcast it immediately.”
Those few short sentences were sent out within minutes.
It would take the other side several minutes to receive and decode them. All told, authorization should arrive within twenty minutes.
After sending it, Lelouch sat before the radio as if on pins and needles, repeatedly glancing at the broken wall clock.
Several times, he even suspected that the battered clock had been damaged by shelling and that its mainspring was running especially slowly.
“So much time has passed, and it’s only been ten minutes? Fifteen?”
Just as he felt his whole body breaking out in cold sweat from waiting, the telegraph receiver finally sounded again.
Twenty-two minutes had passed since he began transmitting.
As expected, it was a reply from divisional headquarters!
After another six minutes of receiving and decoding, Lelouch confirmed that divisional headquarters had granted authorization.
Moreover, headquarters said that they were also calling people together as quickly as possible to prepare bilingual warning broadcasts, and that all units could decide for themselves whether to carry out humanitarian broadcasts.
In that case, divisional headquarters certainly could not beat Lelouch to the “first broadcast,” because he had already translated it in advance, saving the half hour required for translation.
A few minutes later, the warning broadcast in French first echoed across the entire land, followed by Dutch. The bilingual message continued to loop.
The world of 1914 was still very backward. Not every nearby town had a radio receiver. Even if one received the message, they might not necessarily pay attention and translate it; they might simply ignore it.
But no matter how many people received it, even if only one town in every three or four received the warning broadcast, believed it, and fled their homes as quickly as possible, that would still be a deed of immeasurable merit.
The number was not the key. The key was that someone had done it.
Within fifteen minutes, in places unknown to Lelouch, across the broad low-lying regions on both banks of the Yser River, several Belginian mayors began anxiously using loudspeakers to notify the townspeople still remaining in their towns to evacuate at once.
“Everyone, run! The army is going to blow the dike and release the water to drown the enemy!”
The remaining local population was not large to begin with, because this place was already a war zone. More than half the population, especially the young, had long since fled.
Those who would rather stay in their hometowns even after the enemy had come were mostly the old, the weak, women, and children.
At least a thousand Belginian civilians hurriedly left their homes, supporting the elderly and carrying the young, trying to leave the river valley to the north and south and seek temporary refuge on higher ground.
But even more people simply did not believe the Dermanians would be so kind, nor did they believe the Belginian army would blow the dike and drown its own people. They treated it all as mere rumor.
……
At the same time that the mayors of the towns on both banks of the Yser River received the warning broadcast,
the Belginian army headquarters at the port of Ostend, twenty kilometers east of Nieuport, naturally received the message as well.
It was in cleartext in their native tongue, and there was no need to distinguish whether it was intelligence deception, so it spread extremely quickly.
The commander-in-chief of the Belginian army was their king, Albert I: a handsome, mustached middle-aged man of around forty, with sharply defined features.
When he learned the contents of the Dermanian message, he was hiding in his office, his expression terrifyingly dark.
“You useless fools! How did something like this leak? Such a secret operation, and yet enemy reconnaissance cavalry were able to get close and see through the signs!
“Drobuk! Felix! You two tell me, whose responsibility is this?! If people actually believe it, how are we supposed to face our citizens in the future?”
The two officials whose names had been called immediately assumed expressions of utmost humility and respectfully took the scolding.
Drobuk was a civilian official, Belginia’s minister of defense.
Felix, meanwhile, held the rank of lieutenant general and was also chief of the general staff.
Only after His Majesty had vented his anger did Lieutenant General Felix say decisively, “The Yser River defensive line is the defense sector of Major General Victor’s 6th Infantry Division. The relevant demolition mission was also assigned to him earlier.
“However, at the time, the general staff’s plan was to hold as long as we could. Only if we truly could not withstand the Dermanian breakthrough, and if there was an utterly critical situation in which the main Dermanian force might completely cut off the retreat route of our entire army, was he permitted to detonate the charges! That is why he has still not acted up to now!”
With just a few sentences, Lieutenant General Felix washed his own hands clean. He had never said anyone could blow the dike casually. His plan had conditions—only in the ultimate crisis where failure to detonate would directly lead to the nation’s destruction could the demolition be carried out.
When King Albert heard this, he did not immediately reproach him. Instead, he paused slightly, then asked,
“Then do you think we have reached the final moment of life and death? If we keep delaying, will there still be a chance to act? Or will the long delay only invite more trouble and allow the enemy to obtain more evidence?”
Lieutenant General Felix’s expression changed drastically. He knew it was time to take the blame for His Majesty.
“Yes, Your Majesty. I know what must be done.”
He withdrew from the king’s office, returned to the general staff, and then made a direct telephone call to the headquarters of the 6th Infantry Division, which was blocking the enemy at the Yser River front.
“Connect me to Division Commander Victor! This is the general staff! Victor, can you hear me? Execute the final resistance plan. I mean immediately!”
The voice on the other end of the phone trembled somewhat, and whatever was said could not be made out clearly.
But twenty minutes later, several weak points in the dikes on the north bank downstream of the Yser Canal were blasted open by vast quantities of explosives buried deep within them.
The surging seawater immediately rushed from east to west, rampaging wildly, sweeping forward in a torrent and swallowing every place below sea level.
……
“Run! The canal dike really has been blown!”
“Devils! Who did this? It must have been those Dermanian dogs! I don’t believe they’d be kind enough to warn us to run. They must be crying thief after stealing!”
“Who knows! Emperors and kings are all rotten to the core. Every last one of them deserves to die!”
The civilians in the flooded villages and towns along the river wailed and cursed, crying out to heaven and earth, but there was nothing they could do. They could only abandon everything and move as quickly as possible, heading for higher ground. Those whose homes had upper floors simply went upstairs and waited for the flood to recede.
The elevation here was not too far below sea level. The lowest places near the river were about five or six meters below, but most areas were only two or three meters below.
The real danger would be if they were trapped by the flood for too long, lacked supplies, or if their houses collapsed after being soaked. That would be another matter entirely.
At the same time, on the gentle slope three kilometers south of Nieuport, Colonel Liszt of the Dermanian 12th Division’s 16th Infantry Regiment was still leading his entire force in a desperate, accelerated run.
Along the way earlier, he could actually have marched a little faster, but after receiving discretionary orders from divisional headquarters, he also realized that saving some Belginian civilians would help provide witnesses afterward and prevent the Belginian royal family from smearing the empire over this incident.
So, half out of a soldier’s sense of honor and his own impulse to render aid, and half for the sake of gathering testimony, he ultimately rescued several hundred civilians along the way.
As the sound of the flood upstream gradually became audible, Liszt once again urged his soldiers to increase their speed.
“Move! Faster! The engineers at divisional headquarters calculated it—after the dam breaks, we have half an hour before the water reaches us! It will take two hours for the flood to fill the area completely!
“Everyone, put your backs into it! If you can’t finish two kilometers in half an hour, did you not eat today?”
Hearing the rolling sound of water far behind them to the east, the soldiers all ran the best long-distance runs of their lives. No one dared to stop; every one of them sprinted with all their might.
Even if their lungs felt about to burst, none dared slow down in the slightest.
Some artillerymen who had ridden horses during the first half of the journey while towing 77mm field guns voluntarily dismounted and swapped with infantry comrades who truly could not run any farther, letting the infantry ride for the final two kilometers and rest their legs.
Relying on this mutual support, as well as strict military discipline, the vanguard of the 16th Regiment smoothly ran straight into the small town of Nieuport before the flood arrived.
The very last part of the column was trapped in water for a little over half a kilometer. But it was not a serious problem; even by wading, they could still climb into the town.
……
“Water… Is there any water?”
Although Colonel Liszt had ridden on horseback the whole way, the moment he entered the town, he was still so exhausted that he was gasping for breath. Paying no mind to his appearance, he sat down casually at the base of a wall.
Captain Andri, who was responsible for defending the town, heard that friendly forces had arrived and hurried over, travel-worn but proud, to hand over command. He also passed the colonel a canteen.
“Honored Colonel, Hans Andri, commander of the cavalry reconnaissance company directly under the division, reporting to you.”
“François Liszt, commander of the 16th Infantry Regiment. What’s the situation now?” Liszt, covered in dust and grime, returned a perfunctory salute, then began gulping down water.
Andri had not expected the colonel to be in such a hurry, without a single word of idle talk. So he immediately took out a map, spread it open, pointed to it, and explained,
“Our forces repelled another French attack half an hour ago. Although the enemy is numerous, they should also have only just arrived at Dunkirk and De Panne not long ago, and for now they have only light weapons.
“As for the Belginians to the east, I have already seen through them. They fled here in utter disorder all the way from Antwerp; they must have lost all their heavy equipment. They can only rely on human-wave charges. As long as our ammunition is sufficient, our forces can hold off at least ten times our number!
“Now that we have reinforcements from an entire regiment, this battle can still be fought.”
According to the original plan, the entire 12th Division of Bavaria was supposed to rush over. Now only one regiment had arrived. The remaining three infantry regiments and the artillery regiment had been cut off south of the flood zone, meaning that only about twenty percent of the planned strength had reached the interception point.
In any case, this was already more than ten times the strength they had had earlier, when there was only one reconnaissance company.
Historically, the reconnaissance company had had to fight one against two hundred. Now, they only needed to fight one against a dozen.
But Liszt seemed to feel that Andri’s report had still failed to grasp the key points, so he raised a hand and interrupted him.
“None of that is the most important. Answer two key questions for me first. First, exactly how much ground has the flood submerged? Has it only cut off our reinforcements? Does it affect the enemy’s breakout?”
Andri said, “I have already had men roughly survey the water situation. This town has not been flooded at all, and the enemy’s attack and breakout routes on the east and west sides have not been affected either—that is to say, the entire coastal road has not been flooded.
“This stretch of coastal land extending for dozens of kilometers should have been a peninsula since ancient times, not man-made reclaimed land. Its natural terrain is already high enough. By contrast, the areas on both banks of the Yser River to the south were enclosed by sea dikes.
“So the only effect of this flood is that it has cut off our reinforcements from the south. It has no effect on the enemy—
“If one insists on saying there is an effect, then it is that they can only launch frontal assaults along the coastal road, which narrows the width of the battlefield and prevents the enemy from flanking us through the flood zone. We only need to defend the eastern and western sides, and no longer need to consider the south.”
When Colonel Liszt heard this, his brow furrowed slightly, but no obvious joy or worry could be seen on his face.
He pondered briefly, then added one last key question. “How did you discover this danger? And were those temporary countermeasures afterward also things you thought of yourself? I read the messages the confidential clerk received on the road earlier. It seems you thought ahead of divisional headquarters.”
Hearing this praise from the colonel, Andri could not help feeling somewhat proud, yet also somewhat embarrassed.
In the end, he could not bring himself to shamelessly steal credit. After hesitating for a few seconds, he organized his words and said truthfully,
“Actually… all of this was discovered by a corporal from the wire-laying platoon of the communications battalion directly under the army group. He was also the one who improvised the emergency measures.
“I was busy commanding the battle earlier, so I temporarily entrusted everything in the telegraph room to him.”
Colonel Liszt could not help staring, utterly dumbfounded.
“A corporal?! Absurd! Is this how the empire buries talent? How could a mere corporal possess such keen insight and strategic foresight? He saved my entire regiment! Have him come see me at once! No—take me to him at once!”