For King and Country

AYE!

Okay folks, I'm working on the resolution and trying to keep it as painless as possible for the good guys without coming out as to campy, know what I mean?

Anyway, like an old coach of mine always said, let's hear some chatter! Give me some feedback all you lurkers, your newbie writAAR is needing some more go-go juice! o

Red Hammer – Part Deux
The Resolution​

Slowly opening the door that led to the roof, which thankfully opened out ward, Drake inched his hand held trench periscope around the door to carefully look for those for whom he hunted. Luckily the door was at the rear of the building and faced the front, for if it didn’t there was a good possibility that young Captain Drake, A.D.C. to the new King, would never make it past that posting and instead end up adorning his family’s crypt in the old family church back in Falmouth. The door opened to his right and appeared to open against a small wall, with a small flight of steps leading down to the actual roof of the building. The roof itself was a maze of exhaust piping and skylights with the perimeter having what appeared to be a twelve inch parapet. Moving the trench periscope about further, Drake was able to identify five armed men at the front of the building, about thirty feet from the rooftop entrance that he was crouched in. Studying the layout and sketching a quick plan, he withdrew the little periscope and allowed the door to softly shut. Turning to his men he explained the situation. “Alright lads, we’ve got five hostiles facing the street, armed and prepared for a fight. Between our position and theirs is a maze of your usual rooftop obstructions. What I want is this. Sergeant Hamilton, you and Agent Saylor ease you way out the door and head to the left and work your way to the front of the building. Corporal Nym, you and Evans go right, I’ll being working my way up the center. Any questions?”

At the negative nods from his men, Drake took a breath and said softly, “Remember one last thing, my lads, these lowlife scum are out to kill the Royals. Any and I mean any sign that they are about to act, I want you to play like an American cowboy from the Old West and start shooting first and ask questions later, is that understood?”

The sober chuckles replied their assent and he smiled grimly back at them. “Then let’s go, shall we?”

Sliding the door open once again, Drake scanned the rooftop again and seeing that the five would be assassins had not yet moved, he motioned for Hamilton and Saylor to start out. Once they were out the door and down the steps, he motioned for Nym and Evans to move and quickly followed them out. Kneeling at the bottom of the stairs he looked to his left and right and once his men were in position, motioned them forward and then started stalking forward as a hunter toward his pray.

******

Next door, Leftenant Andrew Cadigan, formerly of the Gordon Highlander’s Regiment, faced a roof with the same layout as Captain Drake. Cadigan approached the tactical question from a different view and had his best two men, Sergeant James Pickens of the Royal Green Jackets regiment and Constable Joel Hatcher of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch, go up the center of the rooftop while having Constable Hugh McIntire and Private Allen Tucker, of the Royal Yeomanry Regiment, go up the right side and himself and Constable Peter Collins move up the left side. As Cadigan had his squad move, he caught a glimpse of Captain Drake’s movement on the building to his left and also caught just a slight sight of movement from the building across from him. Ducking low behind an exhaust pipe that would be better described as a brick chimney, Cadigan dearly hoped that what he saw briefly was one of Leftenant Smythe’s squad and not one of their prey. Peering around the edge, he saw no further movement across the street and more importantly saw that none of the five men he and his squad were hunting had changed their positions. Releasing his breath slowly, he motioned Collins forward and started creeping forward toward his enemies.

******

Across the street from Cadigan, the movement he had seen was indeed one of the men from Leftenant Smythe’s squad. Specifically it was the second largest man in this S.O.E. detachment, young Private Ian Fergueson of the Royal Marines. The roof top terrain facing Smythe and his men was completely different than what the others were facing. Rather than a maze-like affair of pipes, chimneys and skylights, this roof was studded with small storage shacks that could have provided ample spaces for enemies to lay in wait to ambush anyone attempting to reach the front of the roof to attack the assassins. Falling back on his training, Smythe decided to have MI-6 Agents Stephen Reed and Byron Marks move to the left roof edge and work their way forward, while he and Constable Freeman worked their way to the front by striding up the center. Fergueson and his fellow Royal Marine David Bloudin were tapped to climb upon the roof of the first storage shack and provide oversight security for the rest of their squad until they reached the set of next sheds, at which time the two Marines would climb down and move to the roofs of the next sheds and so forth until the entire squad was prepared to attack the EWUP assassins. The sight that Cadigan had seen was Private Fergueson scrambling down from the third roof on his way to the fourth roof, with only fifteen feet separating himself from his targets.

******

The last building of concern was be far both the easiest and yet also the most difficult. The door opened out on to a flat and featureless roof that was surrounded by a stone parapet that rose up three feet on all four sides. The good news, Sgt-Major Llewellyn thought to himself, is that were only twenty-five feet from our target. The downside is that we need to be within fifteen to make sure we get all of them at once, and with no cover, that’s going to be mighty difficult. Shrugging his shoulders in resignation, the Sgt-Major looked over his shoulder and down to the men following him. “Alright, me lads, here’s what we’re gonna do. Once we walk out this door, I want you lot to form a skirmish line with Farquharson on the left end and Archer on the right end. You two big strapping young lads should catch yon chappies eyes and scare the hell right out of ‘em. Gilbert, I want you inside of Farquharson and Barrelman I want you inside of Archer. Anderson, you line up next to Barrelman and I’ll be between you and Gilbert. Any questions?”

“Aye, Sgt-Major,” quipped young Daniel Farquharson, “Should I do a song and dance to get their attention?”

Smothering a chuckle, unsuccessfully, with a frown, Llewellyn retorted, “Look you, just for that you can take you bloody bullock self and be first out the door!”

Holding up his hand to stop the young Marine, Llewellyn said earnestly, “Look, me boyos, in all seriousness, these are supposedly some quite capable individuals, so don’t take any liberties, remember your duty, and don’t let any of those bastards so much as get a shot off, eh?”

Nodding grimly and once more checking their weapons, the six men stepped out of the door way and began their hunt.

******

In a weird twist of fate that would be remembered for many years to come, all four squads took their actions at exactly the same moment in time, ten seconds and ten minutes after the tenth hour of the morning on November 10, 1936.

Sgt-Major Llewellyn’s squad, standing in a skirmish line had silently stalked their prey, who were so intent on the approaching funeral procession that the S.O.E. men were able to get with ten feet of the would be assassins. Not believing the target fixation of his opponents, and not wishing to gun them down in cold blood as they were subjects of the King after all, Llewellyn had his men squat down to one knee and with their weapons trained upon the EWUP men, spoke softly, “Drop your weapons, you lot, and all will be well with you.”

At the S.O.E. Sgt-Major’s soft Welsh voice, the five men all began to twist themselves around, attempting to fire upon their hunters. With a slight sigh at the assassins’ futile attempt, Llewellyn squeezed the trigger on his Sten, and with a sound that sounded like a series of faint coughs, a stream of 9mm bullets rocketed from the end of the silenced barrel. The rest of his squad followed suit at the sound of the Sgt-Major’s sigh, in three blinks of an eye, all five EWUP assassins lay crumpled in a heap against the parapet, bloody, lifeless and most importantly, no longer a threat to the King of the British Empire.

******

At the same moment that Sgt-Major Llewellyn was having his men kneel down so that he could warn his prey, Private Fergueson had found that the targets of he and his squad mates had actually placed an extra man to their rear to act as security for their position. Unfortunately for the man they had picked, he was more concerned about his missing out on the anticipated assassination and less about what was occurring behind him, or more accurately, above him. The man, a steel worker from Birmingham by the name of Rick Savage, was leaning against the side of one storage shed, his stolen Lee-Enfield rifle propped against the wall next to him, and his arms crossed against his chest as he softly cursed the men in front of him preparing to attack the funeral procession of King Edward. He never heard Fergueson climb upon to shed roof, let alone climb back down and stalk silently up beside him, pulling his Sykes-Fairburn dagger from its sheath. The only thing Savage knew was that one minute he was minding his own business and the next, something quite strong suddenly jerked his chin down and to the left at the same time that something cold and hit him just behind his right ear.

Lowering the now lifeless corpse of Rick Savage to the ground, Fergueson left his dagger protruding from the dead assassin’s head and after un-slinging his Sten back into his hands, motioned for his squad mates to move forward. Moving as close as he felt comfortable to do without getting to close, Leftenant Smythe came to a stop and called to the EWUP assassins exposed in front of him. “In the name of the King, drop your weapons!”

Stephen Reed, one of the MI-6 agents seconded to the S.O.E., was on the far left of his squad mates and reacted instinctively when he saw one of the assassins reach for a grenade at the sound of Leftenant Smythe’s voice and squeezed the trigger on his Sten, sending a burst of three bullets directly into the man’s forehead, shattering the back of his head and spraying the man’s co-conspirators with blood, bone fragments and grey matter. Losing heart at the rapid and efficient suppression of resistance, the remaining conspirators dropped their weapons rapidly and threw their hands in the air in surrender.

******

Across the street from Smyth, Leftenant Cadigan and his squad and approached the edge of their self-determined kill zone when something unknown, possible instinctual alerted one of the assassins. Looking over his shoulder at the approaching hunters, time seemed to slow down. Cadigan could see the man’s eyes dart between the S.O.E. men and his fellow assassins and back and then seem to make a decision. Rather than reach for the two grenades at his side or the big Thompson submachine gun in front of him, the man raised his hands in the air and cried out, “I surrender!”

The man’s movement and voice, the assassin on his left twisted around to fire a shot from his rifle as he barked, “You bloody bastard!”

The second assassin’s finger never touched the trigger as Cadigan and Collins both fired a burst of bullets from their Stens, sending the man into a bloody reel before collapsing atop the surrendering assassin. Simultaneously with the curse of their apparent leader, the other conspirators also reacted, each man reaching for grenades or attempting to turn to fire upon their hunters. They, like their rapidly dying leader, never had a chance of success against the stalking S.O.E. men, and they swiftly followed in his demise.

Walking over to the surviving assassin, Cadigan barked a question, “Who the fuck are you that I should hold my finger from blowing your bloomin’ head to the wind?”

Peering up from under the cooling corpse of his would be attacker, the man replied as calmly as possible as one could with a still bleeding cadaver lying atop oneself, “I am Anatoly Veniaminovich Gorsky of the NKVD, former Rezident of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Embassy to London. I wish to seek asylum.”

Raising his left eyebrow in surprise, Cadigan replied coldly, “Well then, it’s a good thing for you, Gorsky my lad, that I’m not in charge. I’d just as soon as put a bullet in your communist head and be done for. However, I’ll let my superiors make that decision. Now, get up, very slowly.”

******

Captain Drake and his squad stalked their way forward, crawling over and around their obstacles, and reached their firing positions with out a sound being heard, save the approaching Guard’s band. Dropping to one knee, Drake brought his Sten up and prepared to fire while waiting for the rest of his squad to signal their readiness. Taking a deep breath and slowly releasing it after he acknowledged their being fully prepared, Drake squared his shoulders. Knowing that what he was about to do would not end the way he wished, he put a scowl on his face and barked harshly, “In the King’s name I demand you surrender immediately!”

As he foresaw, none of the six men in front of his squad chose to honor his command, and all rotated about in the hopeless attempt to turn their hunters in to the hunted. With cold methodical precision, the five S.O.E. men squeezed their triggers and swept the line of assassins, sending dozens of 9mm metal slugs flying from their Sten submachine guns at a rate of 1000 feet per second. With the distance between the two groups being less than fifteen feet, the time from the bullets leaving the end of the barrels and making impact upon the assassins’ bodies was near instantaneous and the results were brutal, bloody, and final. In less than ten seconds it was all over except for the removal of the bodies.

Rising to his feet and standing fully erect, Drake looked across the street and then to the buildings to the right and received the all clear signal from Sgt-Major Llewellyn, and interestingly his two Leftenants signaled that they had prisoners. Breathing a sigh of relief while his curiosity began to race, Drake looked at his squad, “Well done, lads, the threat is over. Corporal Nym? You and Evans head back to the trucks and radio headquarters and let them know that the mission has been accomplished… and that we have prisoners who shall need to be interrogated.”

As the rest of his men went about clearing away the weapons from the corpses, Drake pulled out a cigarette from his case and lit the end, taking a deep inhalation, feeling the exhilaration of a job well done and still being alive. Walking over the edge of the roof and doffing his beret at the passing of King’s Edward’s coffin, he caught sight of his new king. Taking another puff from his cigarette, he came to the sudden realization that the more he saw and was with King George, the more he saw parallels between his sovereign and England’s warrior king Henry V of old, and Drake wondered where the Empire would go under the guidance of his new king, and he wondered just how would the world would react?

Cat - Whaddya think? Did it work?

Thanks, gents.

I do sense a lot of my readers would like to see Britain go after the Soviets in retribution.... and mayhap the Empire will, but remember, she is still recovering from the Great Depression ( ), the loss of two kings in less than a year ( ), and we are talking about going after the largest nation on the planet (geographically speaking that is) .

Oh, and just remember one more thing.... it's only November of '36. We still have a lot of ride left in this trip, eh?






The next update should be ready in a day or two, and will be more narrative in style, 'cause I've got a lot of info to give out and it's a lot easier in narrative than dialogue, so let all yer friends and neighbors who like narratives know (hint: that would be you Allenby, if you're even lurking). Chat soon, folks!

Joe

As promised, here's the next chapter.


Despite the feelings of those directly involved, and to a certain extent the general populace, the assassination of King Edward VI and its after shocks were not the only things that occurred within the Empire and throughout the rest of the world in the Autumn of 1936.

Militarily, the British Army experienced the greatest number of changes after the summer of 1936. With a fresh new crop of officers in the Imperial General Staff, many of the British Army’s traditional plans for future wars began to be summarily thrown to the trash heap and new plans brought into existence. War plans were not the only things that were overhauled in the Army. As many of the of the new staff officers were veterans of the slaughter of the Great War’s trenches, and guided by the desire from the King down to the lowest commoner to avoid such wastage in future war, the Imperial General Staff began to work on what didn’t work in the fields of France. The first priority was to provide the Army with a fast mobile arm that could probe the enemy’s lines, and while that was the traditional role of the horse cavalry, the history of the Great War was still fresh enough that everyone including the most diehard horseman knew that in the face of trenches and machine guns, the horse was no longer a viable option. The decision was therefore quickly decided upon and the Autumn of 1936 heralded the beginning of the transformation of the cavalry from horse based to armoured and mechanized based.

This transformation fit in perfectly with the blooming of the first of many fruits from the Re-Industrialization Program instituted by King George VI while still Duke of York. In 1935, Leyland Motors was awarded the Army contract to develop the replacement of the Mark IV light tank and came through in the late winter of 1936 with the Mark V. Slightly larger vehicle than it’s predecessor, the Mk V, was a significant step forward for the British Army and was armed with two machine guns, a Vickers .303 caliber and the other an American Browning .50 caliber. Weighing in around 5 tons, the Mk V was capable of speeds reaching 30 mph on roads, and around 20 mph while moving cross country. The biggest difference between the new light tank and its forerunner was its crew of three. The Mk IV had one man to drive the vehicle and one who was the tank commander and gunner at the same time. With the Mk V, the gunner and commander duties were split, the gunner manning the big .50 caliber machine gun with the commander operating the Vickers while commanding the tank itself.

Now, October 12 was met with the announcement of privately development of a replacement for the Mk V that would also fill the need of the cavalry units that were beginning to turn their horse mounts out to pasture. The Vickers-Armstrong company created a machinegun armed tank designed as a scout and reconnaissance tank, and not intended to engage enemy tanks, and took the unprecedented steps of sending it’s designers to speak with the members of the British Army that would be using the vehicle.
At the suggestion of the now horseless cavalry troopers, the armament was twin Vickers machine guns, one 0.50 inch and one .303 inch in the same mount in the turret. The turret was hand cranked with a full 360 degree traverse, while the weapons could elevate to 37 degrees and depress to -10 degrees. 200 rounds of .50 in and 2500 rounds of .303 inch ammunition were carried. In addition to the armament, a No. 9 W/T radio was fitted in an extension to the rear of the turret

Power was provided by a Meadows ESTB six cylinder water-cooled gasoline engine producing 88 bhp at 3,000 rpm. A transmission was though a pre-selector gearbox with five forward gears plus reverse. Top speed, while officially rated at only 30 mph, was normally in the 40 mph range on roads, and off road the vehicle was able to reach official road speed of 30 mph. A vast improvement over the Mk. V, the Mk. VI, despite the increased equipment and crew load, only reached a weight of 5.2 tons, a negligible increase over the Mk. V.


The British Army, especially the remaining cavalry regiments, were quite pleased with the Mk. VI, and awarded a contract to Vickers for several hundred of the new Mk.VI’s. While the Army was transforming its cavalry regiments from horse to armoured it was also developing a whole new class of units based solely upon the premise of using armoured vehicles as offensive weapons rather than in the traditional role of infantry support or reconnaissance. To do this the Imperial General Staff turned to Sir John Carden to develop a series of tanks that were more powerful than the light tanks currently in existence.

After several designs, Sir John finally came upon one that he, the IGS and the men who would be fighting with the design could all agree would be a base line. Named the A10 Cruiser Mk. II (for the concept of breaking through the enemies static lines of defense and then go “cruising” through his rear areas and for the number of prior designs), was larger than the Mk. VI by more than twice as much, weighing in at almost fourteen tons. This weight of course had a drastic impact on the Cruiser’s top speed, but the Army was still quite happy with an adequate cross country speed of 15 mph. The weight to the Cruiser was due to its quick-firing 2 pounder (40mm) gun, BESA 7.62mm coaxial machine gun and Vickers .303 caliber machine gun in a barbette next to the driver, however the majority of the weight came in the form of the armor bolted on to the chassis to protect the crew of five (Commander, gunner, loader, driver and hull machine-gunner).


Taking the Cruiser, the British Army created a new army group based in Birmingham. Commanded by General Sir C.W.M. Norrie, the Imperial Armoured Army was made up, initially, by three of King George’s “super regiments” the Royal Hussars, the First Dragoons, and the King’s Own Chasseurs. With the organization of this first all armoured army, the first known of in the West and possibly the first in the world, the British Empire had a powerful offensive army to exploit any enemy’s weakness.





*****
Next, what new toys does the RAF receive?