Thanks
And on to part 2…….
***** CONTINUING OUR REPORT *****
In the meantime, their left having been devastated by the Krupp gun - including the loss of their light gun - the British reinforced this weakened flank with two units of Rifle Volunteers.
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Hearing the cheers and hurrahs from the other side of the perimeter wall, the German Infantry burst through a side gate, suspecting that the Minister was there to be snatched.
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But the German Infantry unit was routed by a withering hail of rifle fire, leaving their Commander to extract himself to rethink and reorganise his troops, going so far as to order his Artillerymen to leave their gun and join in on the attack. While his remaining Infantry poured fire though the alleyways double gates, units of Bavarian Jaegers had edged around the perimeter wall, with those to his left jumping it to seize the Minister and those on the right edging towards the main gates.
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Meanwhile the Guildford Cricketers - a unit of Rifle Volunteers - quickly searched the Furnace Room and found the somewhat perspiring Mistress, who they extracted with a degree of excitement no less than if they’d hit a 6! However it wasn’t all good cheer, as the British CO was now dead, causing a number of their fellow units to melt away.
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At some point, and recollections differ as to when this was, it had dawned on the British that the Mistress was a German objective. Too late. The Jaegers threaded along the perimeter wall to ‘kick the bloody doors off’ and seized her, destroying the British Volunteers in the process.
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The remaining British Regulars had seized back the Minister and dragging him with them, they jumped over the wall back into the cattle field, attempting to hotfoot his rescue and their escape. But it was not to be, they were shot down to a man, with the Minister taken prisoner and the battlefield left devoid of British troops.
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In the Courtyard, the German Commander introduced himself to the Mistress, whom he would personally escort to the rear. He spoke of how honoured he was to have led the operation to return her to safety. Because as the British had started to realise, she was the German’s primary objective. The Mistress was in actuality the agent Fräulein Wilhelmina Winkelstein, the Emperors most ablest of spies, who had been at the heart of - and in the beds of - British government for the past two years. Her debriefing would be an illumination.
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The British had been determined and had expended themselves to the last man. Though the dutiful regulars and the gallant volunteers had been courageous to the end, ultimately, they had failed. Unable to stop the unending power and weight that was the German war machine, it had rolled over them. And the consequences might be dire: with so much of their intelligence now known to the enemy, what next for the British?
Later that evening, the British Prime Minister spoke to a crowded Houses of Parliament:
“We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We may have been pushed back from the fight on the beaches, but we shall continue the fight in the fields and hills, and then if it comes to it we shall fight in the streets; we shall never surrender. And even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, would carry on the struggle, until, in good time, we are liberated of the impertinence that is this Imperial Germany.”
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03 May 2008, 11:10:36 AM
