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Page 106
"How interesting, Britannia, did you actually get lucky and find a Tiger II tank?"
The illustrations in this article have been modified from the actual historical photograph above, showing then-Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower walking past a Tiger II tank overturned on the side of the road.
Chapter 105, Section 161: The Unwilling Girl
"Well then, I'll go explore by myself, Lieutenant? Huh?"
"Go on, and don't forget to come back soon."
In a town east of Berlin, three young girls emerged from a building used as a medical facility by the Britannian army.
The one who just said goodbye and ran away was naturally Ipel. As for the remaining two, Angelina took Lilizia's hand and looked at that cute face that looked a little dejected with concern.
"Let's go."
They walked slowly through the town's soldiers, past passing vehicles and mechs. Angelie's steps were calm and composed; dressed in her civilian clothes, she gave the impression of a field-grade officer on patrol. Lilizia, however, was different. She wore a dejected look she had never seen in the previous battles, her head hanging low, her body twisting and turning. Her messy, light steps, coupled with Angelie's pulling and dragging movements, made her look like a child being dragged back inside by her mother after making a mistake.
Her clothes were the same style as Angelina's, but with a different color scheme: the tie, boots, and shirt trim, as well as the main color of the coat, were all black, with some dark red and pale yellow lines and blocks of color, giving her an unapproachable and aloof look from a distance.
But alas... it doesn't fit the scene at all...
When the two returned to the camp and entered their barracks, Lilizia sat down on the bed, and Angelie quickly pulled down the curtain.
“Yeah, you definitely don’t like letting others know about your unspeakable secrets, right?” The lieutenant crossed his arms under his chest and sat down next to Lilizia. “The moment you walked into the ward, the doctor knew what was wrong with you.”
"Ah, ah... I, what happened to me..."
"Not only did you skip dinner last night, but you also seemed to be carrying a heavy burden on your mind. Defeating a group of prepared enemies like this was already quite mentally exhausting. In the end, the 'giant rhinoceros' added fuel to the fire, allowing you to successfully feign death. However, the doctor only gave you an IV of glucose, which is really a bit unfair to your indomitable spirit."
"Ahem, I..." Lilizia sounded both angry and shy, "I wasn't afraid of that tank, it's just that its strength was a bit beyond my usual impression, I'm just, I'm just a little... a little..."
"Tell me about it. I've been a member of the Knights for so long, and I've never seen you share your inner world. Your fighting spirit is so strong that you could be an orator."
“I…” Lilizia pouted slightly, stretching her arm out and resting it on her thigh, “I’m just not happy with things as they are now…”
"Hmm?" Angelie's expression was a mixture of curiosity and expectation.
“I want to become stronger, I want to be as good as Lieutenant Griffin, but I always feel that I can't be as good as the lieutenant. I always feel like I'm a lagging person…”
"Huh?" Angelie looked surprised. "How so? I feel like I should learn more from you."
“I’m not here to compete in being the worst. Oh no!…” Lilizia suddenly realized she had misspoke. “I, I’m aiming for the best, not just content with what I have. I, I want to become a true ace!”
"Didn't you do it? Didn't you kill so many enemy soldiers last night?"
“What’s that?!” Lilizia slammed her hand on the bed, excitedly jumping up and glaring at Angelie. “That night, everyone retreated in the face of enemy fire, except for Lieutenant Griffin, who single-handedly blew up a railway bridge and successfully completed a mission that might have been a death sentence! And me? I couldn’t even stop the advance of a tank!”
She became more and more excited as she spoke, and there seemed to be a glint in her slightly reddened eyes.
"I want to save more people! I don't want to rely on others to save me! If I can't step up and stand on my own in this critical moment, am I supposed to just sit here anonymously in the cockpit of the KMF until death comes to take me away?!"
Just as she was excitedly talking non-stop, Angelina immediately stood up, put her hands on Lilizia's shoulders, and stared at her increasingly dreamy eyes under her short white hair.
“You…” Lilizia grabbed the lieutenant’s arm, seemingly impatient and trying to push it away.
“Look at me, Sergeant.” Angelie moved closer, their eyes meeting. “Look at me carefully and tell me, what do you see?”
Lilizia suddenly felt unsure how to answer. In Angelie's pupils, a rather disheveled head was reflected—but wasn't that her own?
"I...I saw it, it was me..." She helplessly lowered her arm, then had the lieutenant gently push her back to the edge of the bed and sit down.
“Tell me, Lily,” Angelina surprisingly used a rather affectionate nickname, “what were you thinking when you were a child, looking at the outstanding military uncles and aunts?”
"Uncle...Auntie?" The sergeant looked somewhat troubled. "I'm imagining myself as them..."
"Do you think you, as a child back then, could have carried a gun and gone to the battlefield?"
"No...no..."
"From the day you first thought of joining the army, to now that you've become a member of the Knights, a true standout in the military, how long has it been?"
"Huh?...I..."
"How long have you been in the Knights? When did you start improving faster than E. coli multiplying in a petri dish?" Angelie reached out and actually put her arms around Lilizia's shoulders this time. "And now, with your level, if you count the number of people stronger than you in the Knights and even the entire Black Prince Legion, do you need two hands to count them all?"
"This one……"
“You need to learn to see how much you’ve improved since then, instead of always using others as your benchmark.” Angelie took out one hand, brushed aside the hair that Lilizia had messed up while lying on the hospital bed, and then gently stroked her cheek.
"Uh..." The sergeant was stunned for a long time, "Okay, I understand..."
"Well, that's good." Angelie turned her face and looked up at the commendation order for Lilizia hanging on the barracks. "Live for yourself, live well, isn't that enough?"
But just then, she suddenly felt something pressing down on her shoulder.
"Hmm?" Turning around, she saw Lilizia leaning against her with her eyes closed. Sunlight streaming through the gap in the curtain shone on her fair skin, as if she were asleep.
“Ouch…” What should Angelie do? Actually, it’s nothing. She still sat upright, stretched out a hand, and touched the little head that was using her body as a pillow.
"Isn't it better this way? Haha."
Yes, you might ask me, "Why did it suddenly turn into a yuri (lesbian) story?" Well, can you imagine what it feels like to desperately need a girlfriend and then drink fake alcohol? 〒▽〒
(T_T)
Chapter 106, Section 162: Tranquil Moscow
Without Nazi Germany and without the World War, Moscow's Red Square would no longer be filled with those air-raid shelter balloons used to block sunlight and potential German aircraft.
The Soviet Red Army successfully stopped the invaders from entering the city, so the Soviet capital could relax its defenses and enjoy the occasional frost of early winter.
Soviet citizens could finally enjoy the victory in the Great Patriotic War, eating black bread and drinking vodka in the not-so-warm sunshine. But inside the Kremlin, it was a different story.
A few hours earlier, a Li-2 transport plane landed smoothly but somewhat hastily at Moscow's airport. This airborne special train, a modified version of the American DC-3 transport plane, brought some news that made the Kremlin uneasy.
Berlin is 1600 kilometers from Moscow. Even if the Li-2 flew non-stop at cruising speed, it would still take 8 hours to fly there. In addition, there was integration and negotiation in that troubled place, and it took a full 30 hours after the railway bridge over the Oder River collapsed to arrive here. Oh, and that doesn't even take into account the two-hour time difference between the two places.
And now, in that hall belonging to the Supreme Command, General Sokolovsky, who had just gotten off the plane, laid out the various items from his briefcase on a table in front of the generals and marshals gathered in Moscow.
"This photo should be fine, Comrade Antonov."
General Alexei Antonov, as Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Army, was examining a photograph that the former had brought from Germany. —Of course, you might ask, where was Marshal Vasilevsky, a major contributor to the Great Patriotic War? Three months before Germany's surrender, he went to oversee the dismantling of Manchukuo. Now, less than two months after Japan's surrender, the Marshal was still busy in the Far East, holding the position of Commander-in-Chief.
Enough of the small talk, let's take a look at what the photo in the general's hand looks like.
On a flat grassy field, a wrecked airplane, still emitting blue smoke, lay scattered like the massive skeleton of an African elephant that had died long ago. Everywhere were glittering fragments and withered metal frames—this airplane had neither the white star and blue disc of the Americans, nor the dazzling red star of the Soviet Air Force, nor the Iron Cross of the Germans, nor the red plaster of the Japanese.
It looked too big. By comparing it to the soldiers next to the plane wreckage, those soldiers wearing conical helmets and knee-length breeches—clearly British attire—plus a jeep that had pulled up to the side, and a right-hand drive one at that, there couldn't be anyone else.
"This is the crash site we photographed on the border, within the British-occupied zone, General."
"Have the British detected your observation activities, General?"
"Of course, according to reports from troops on the border. We were trying to negotiate with the British troops on the border to allow us to enter their occupied territory to inspect the aircraft, but we were met with a firm refusal from the British, who claimed they wanted to 'take a good look at the planes we had broken.' They even interfered with our taking photos."
"Huh? You forced me to take pictures?"
"When we were trying to take pictures on the roof of a small house right next to the border, British soldiers in their own occupied territory were holding bayonets and mirrors, pointing them at the sunlight and hitting the camera lens, almost ruining several rolls of film."
“The British are deliberately trying to prevent us from seeing this.” The Chief of the General Staff didn’t speak, but Comrade Beria next to him pushed up his glasses and spoke up. As the Minister of the Interior, he and several officers brought all the intelligence they could currently obtain related to Britain to the generals for analysis.
"As far as we know, the British have no large-scale military deployments in Europe, especially in Japan, which you mentioned when you interrogated the prisoners, or in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Moreover, as far as we know, the British have left almost no link unchecked. If there is any special method of communication that is hidden so well that we cannot discover it, it would be extremely disastrous."
"Damn it, where did all these army groups that forced the troops stationed in Germany to retreat several steps come from? Such a large-scale troop movement couldn't possibly have escaped our notice..."
"It can't be that the Americans are playing a trick on me, can it..."
……
Just as everyone was still annoyed, a burly figure walked in from outside the hall, surrounded by several people.
He was dressed in plain blue-gray clothes, with a wide and rugged collar, and walked with an upright and dignified posture. Looking up, he had just taken a hard pipe from his mouth, wiped his thick mustache, and his eyes, under the wisps of smoke, revealed a steely yet kind expression.
"Comrade Stalin!" Everyone in the room suddenly stood at attention and saluted, paying their respects to the supreme leader of the Soviet Union.
"Hmm." Stalin took the pipe in his hand and rubbed the hot casing. "Where's the news from Germany? Bring it here."
"Here." General Sokolovsky handed him the photograph he had just seen, along with a handwritten letter from Marshal Zhukov—which contained the bits and pieces of information they had been discussing regarding the plane crash.
"What about intelligence, Comrade Beria?"
"Please take a look. Everything is almost out of our control; the British haven't given us any clues whatsoever."
Stalin, with his pipe dangling from his lips, looked at the photograph, then at the letter, took another drag of his pipe, sighed deeply, exhaled the smoke back onto the paper, and shook his head.
"Oh no, this is outrageous! Right now, the Soviet soldiers in Germany are fighting the enemy to the death, and nominally we can file charges against Britain, but we can't even catch them making a sound? Is Britain trying to play 'radio silence' with us?"
As a military joke, the generals understood what their leader meant by "radio silence."
“You’d better have brought back something else of value, comrade.” He looked at General Sokolovsky. “Everything that can prove what the British did, I want!”
“Well, we might have other things we can use, but we just haven’t been able to reach a consensus yet.”
At that moment, Antonov handed a stack of photographs to Stalin.
"Huh? Isn't that the transport plane from earlier? Where did you get this close-up photo?"
"Comrade Stalin, according to Marshal Zhukov's description, the enemy used this type of aircraft extensively in their previous nighttime raids. The Soviet troops stationed in Germany found a lot of things written in English among the plane wreckage scattered all over Berlin. You see."
"First, we found several fire extinguishers with all the information written in English on several of the crashed planes. All the specifications were in English. And in the country of origin section, you see, it says New Westminster Fire Equipment Company. Westminster is a British name, there is no dispute about it. I don't think the United States needs the United Kingdom to help them produce these things, and the United Kingdom is unlikely to sell these to other major countries, because they probably don't even have enough for themselves."
"Then, during our battle with the enemy yesterday, we discovered through the identification documents on the enemy corpses that they belonged to an organization we had never seen before."
"The British have created a new army group?" Stalin asked.
"Not only that, but even the way it's organized is strange to us. It's not named after any army group, but it's a unit called the Black Prince Legion. Not only is the layout and borders of this ID card exactly the same as the ID cards of the 41st Army Group that we collected before, but as for the Black Prince, he was a former British nobleman, there's no doubt about that, and it's impossible for any country to be so bored as to use other countries' names as official numbers for its own troops."
“Go on, comrade, I’d love to hear more.”
"Just as I and several generals were thinking. The British are definitely using codes, numbers, and communication methods that we've never encountered before to evade our covert observation, and they're doing so by keeping us completely in the dark. So I think it's necessary for us to take the initiative and put things in front of the British. They might not expect us to dare to do this, and once their psychological defenses are breached, it's only a matter of time before they slip up."
"What do you think, Comrade Antonov?"
"I have no better suggestions, Comrade Stalin."
Stalin remained silent for a moment, took a few puffs of his cigarette, and coughed three times.
"Comrade Antonov, I'd like to know, how big are the American B-29 bombers we acquired recently?"
"30 meters in length, with a wingspan of up to 40 meters, comrade."
"So, General Sokolovsky, have you taken note of the size of those big guys that landed on German soil?"
"The exact figures hadn't been measured before I left Germany, Comrade Stalin, but we can assure you that the fuselage length and wingspan of the aircraft had reached over 50 meters. In short, it was twice the size of the B-29 bomber."
"Then there's nothing to hesitate about!" Stalin suddenly raised his voice. "To be able to build a bomber of the same size as the British and Americans, and even larger than them, is something that neither we nor the Germans could have done."
"Now, I declare my order." He raised his chin. "Compile all the usable information we have gathered, make two copies, and send one to the United States for Ambassador Gromyko, and the other to the United Kingdom for Ambassador Gusev. Instruct these two ambassadors to raise the issue openly and frankly with their respective countries, and present this matter to Britain and the United States in a clear and aboveboard manner, and see how they respond to us."
"Also, notify the Soviet Army Command in Germany and order them to take as many photos as possible of the remaining aircraft wreckage on the ground as possible, preferably with road signs related to Berlin and the surrounding towns. Make several rolls of film and develop several copies of the photos. Tell them that we really took these photos in Berlin, that they are genuine. Do they want to verify their authenticity? Give them the film and photos and let them verify them! It's not going to make us wait impatiently!"
"Yes, Comrade Stalin."
"Come on, comrades, let's see what else we need to do. I believe the United States and Britain should take our Soviet statements to heart!"
Chapter 163, Side Story (Part 4): Flights Sealed in History
It has been several years since that bloody war ended.
The European continent no longer bears any trace of the Holy Britannian Empire. There are no more cannons, no more disputes. For the British, who have been misunderstood in various ways, there is no better way to relieve stress and pass the time than to place a cup of red tea on a table in the afternoon sun.
Even those working in government departments were in the same boat. In the headquarters of MI6, they had not yet found any information that could threaten Britain. It was at this time that someone, by chance, found something that might be quite interesting among some of the heavily guarded items.