"Sir, this is the French warning broadcast script."
"And this is the Netherlandic one."
Over half an hour later, two soldiers with a smattering of foreign languages handed the roughly translated scripts to Lelouch. As he took them, his expression turned solemn.
He knew he had to make a decision that could determine the life or death of many.
He had already offered strategies to Captain Andri twice before, and had even overstepped his bounds to request instructions from division headquarters and warn friendly forces.
Those actions had simply required him to act as quickly as possible; he hadn't needed to consider the timing.
This time was different. He knew full well that once a broadcast was sent out in the enemy's native tongues, they would immediately intercept and understand it, very likely prompting the Belgin forces to blow the dam ahead of schedule.
In that case, the 16th Infantry Regiment, currently sprinting toward their position, might be submerged by the waters a moment sooner.
Would acting earlier save more people, or would delaying it save more?
Lelouch had never made such a monumental decision before his transmigration, and for a moment, he felt a surge of fear.After all, he wasn't some kind of demon.
'Should I delay another half hour before transmitting? Bet that the Belgin forces won't blow the dam within half an hour? Or at least wait fifteen minutes?'
Just as he was caught in intense inner deliberation, the telegraph receiver sprang to life.
Startled, Lelouch hurriedly transcribed the message.
It turned out to be an encrypted broadcast from division headquarters.
"Reconnaissance aircraft dispatched by Army Command have confirmed the Belgin demolition sites downstream on the Yser River. Continuous aerial photography is in progress. All units, accelerate evasion of potential flood zones!"
Lelouch decoded the message at top speed, and an idea finally took full shape in his mind.
'Our reconnaissance planes captured photos of the Belgin operations! This is a massive victory! In the original history, the Belgin forces blowing the dam definitely wasn't caught on camera, which was why they could squabble over it for so long, with both sides blaming the other's heavy artillery for destroying it.
'But now there's ironclad proof! There are no fighter planes in this era; a reconnaissance plane taking photos in the sky can't possibly be intercepted and shot down! And there's no Photoshop in this era either, so no one will accuse the photos of being forged!'
At this thought, Lelouch's spirits soared. He immediately sent an encrypted telegram to request instructions from division headquarters at maximum speed:
"Acknowledged that our forces have captured evidence of enemy demolition preparations. Recommend broadcasting a plain-text warning to surrounding villages and towns as soon as possible, and ordering our forces to warn any civilians encountered to evacuate. If possible, assist civilians in evacuating.
"Additionally, our unit has already drafted a bilingual French/Netherlandic warning message. With division authorization, our unit can broadcast immediately."
The brief message was sent out in just a few minutes.
Receiving and decoding on the other end would also take a few minutes. All told, he should receive authorization within twenty minutes.
After sending it, Lelouch sat before the radio on pins and needles, repeatedly glancing at the battered wall clock.
Several times, he even suspected the shabby clock had been damaged by artillery vibrations, wondering if its springs were unwinding unusually slowly.
'Has it really only been ten minutes? Fifteen?'
Just as he was breaking into a cold sweat from the wait, the telegraph receiver finally rang again.
Twenty-two minutes had passed since he started transmitting.
It was indeed a reply from division headquarters!
After another six minutes of receiving and decoding, Lelouch confirmed it: the division had given authorization!
Furthermore, the division stated they were rushing to prepare their own bilingual warning broadcasts, and that all units could decide for themselves whether to execute humanitarian broadcasts.
In that case, division headquarters definitely couldn't beat Lelouch to the "first broadcast," because he had prepared the translations in advance, saving half an hour.
A few minutes later, the French warning broadcast echoed across the land, followed by the Netherlandic one. The bilingual message looped continuously.
The world of 1914 was still quite backward. Not every nearby town had a radio receiver. Even if they received the signal, they might not bother to decode it and could simply ignore it.
But no matter how many received it, even if only one in every three or four towns caught the warning, believed it, and fled their homes to evacuate as quickly as possible, it was an act of immeasurable merit.
The numbers weren't the key; the key was that someone had done it.
Within fifteen minutes, in places Lelouch couldn't see across the vast low-lying areas on both banks of the Yser River, several Belgin mayors began anxiously using megaphones to notify the remaining townsfolk to evacuate immediately.
"Run, everyone! The army is blowing the dam to flood the enemy!"
The local population that had stayed behind wasn't large to begin with. Since this was already a war zone, more than half the population, especially the youth, had fled long ago.
Those who refused to leave their hometowns even as the enemy approached were mostly the elderly, the weak, women, and children.
At least a thousand Belgin civilians, supporting the elderly and leading the young, hastily abandoned their homes, attempting to flee the river valley toward the north and south to seek temporary refuge on higher ground.
However, even more people simply didn't believe the Demanians would be so kind, nor did they believe the Belgin army would blow the dam and flood their own people. They treated it all as a mere rumor.
...
At the same time the mayors of the towns along both banks of the Yser River received the warning broadcast, the Belgin army headquarters at the port of Ostend, twenty kilometers east of Nieuwpoort, naturally received the message as well.
It was in their native tongue and unencrypted, requiring no counter-intelligence verification, so it spread incredibly fast.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Belgin forces was none other than their king, Albert I. He was a handsome man around forty, sporting a small mustache and sharp, angular facial features.
When he learned the contents of the Demanian message, he was holed up in his office, his face terrifyingly dark.
"You useless trash! How was this leaked?! Such a covert operation, yet the enemy's reconnaissance cavalry managed to slip close enough to spot the flaws!
"Drobek! Felix! Tell me, whose responsibility is this?! If people actually believe this, how are we supposed to face our citizens in the future!"
The two named officials immediately assumed expressions of deep, respectful humility, obediently accepting the reprimand.
Drobek was a civilian official, serving as the nation's Defense Minister.
Felix held the rank of Lieutenant General and served as the Chief of Staff.
Only after His Majesty finished venting his fury did Lieutenant General Felix speak up decisively. "The Yser River defense line falls under the jurisdiction of Major General Victor's 6th Infantry Division. The relevant demolition tasks were previously assigned to him.
"However, the General Staff's plan at the time was to hold the line as long as possible. He was only authorized to execute the demolition if they absolutely could not withstand the Demanian breakthrough—a critically dire situation where the Demanian main force would completely sever our entire army's line of retreat! Therefore, he hasn't acted up to this point!"
In just a few sentences, Lieutenant General Felix washed his hands of the blame. He hadn't told anyone to casually blow the dam; his plan had prerequisites—the demolition was only permissible in the face of an ultimate crisis where failing to do so would lead directly to the nation's destruction.
Hearing this, King Albert didn't directly reprimand him further. Instead, he took a slight breath and asked, "Then do you think we've reached that final life-and-death juncture now? If we delay any longer, will we even have the chance to act? Will it only lead to further complications and give the enemy more ammunition against us?"
Lieutenant General Felix's expression shifted drastically. He knew it was time to take the fall for His Majesty.
"Yes, Your Majesty. I know what must be done."
He exited the king's office, returned to the General Staff headquarters, and immediately dialed the headquarters of the 6th Infantry Division, which was currently holding the line at the Yser River front.
"Put me through to Division Commander Victor! This is the Chief of Staff! Victor, can you hear me clearly? Execute the final resistance protocol. I mean right now!"
The voice on the other end of the line trembled slightly; it was unclear what was said.
But twenty minutes later, several weak points along the dikes on the northern bank of the lower Yser River were blasted open by massive amounts of deeply buried explosives.
Seawater immediately surged violently from east to west, tearing through the land and sweeping over everything, swallowing all areas with a negative elevation.
...
"Run! The canal dikes have really been blown!"
"Devils! Who did this?! It must be those Demanian dogs! I don't believe they'd kindly warn us to flee; it's definitely the thief crying thief!"
"Who knows! None of these emperors and kings are any good. They all deserve to die!"
The civilians in the flooded riverside towns wailed and cursed, crying to the heavens, but they were utterly powerless. They could only abandon everything and move quickly, striving to reach higher ground. Those whose homes had upper floors simply went upstairs to wait for the waters to recede.
The negative elevation in this region wasn't too extreme. The lowest points near the river were about five or six meters below sea level, but most areas were only two or three meters below.
The real fear was being trapped by the floodwaters for an extended period, leading to a shortage of supplies or houses collapsing from water damage—that would be a different story entirely.
At that same moment, three kilometers south of Nieuwpoort on a gentle slope, Colonel List of the Demanian 12th Division's 16th Infantry Regiment was still leading his entire force in a desperate, accelerated sprint.
Along the way just now, he could have marched a bit faster. However, after receiving discretionary orders from division headquarters, he realized that rescuing a few Belgin civilians would provide witnesses later on, preventing the Belgin royal family from smearing the Empire over this incident.
Thus, half out of a soldier's spontaneous sense of honor and half to secure evidence, he ended up rescuing several hundred civilians along the way.
As the roaring of the upstream floodwaters gradually became audible, List once again urged his soldiers to speed up.
"Move! Faster! The division's engineers calculated that from the dam breach to the water reaching us, we have half an hour! It will take two hours for the water to fill up completely!
"Put your backs into it, everyone! If you can't run two kilometers in half an hour, did you skip your meals?!"
Hearing the surging waters from the distant east and rear, the soldiers ran the best long-distance race of their lives. No one dared to stop; they all dashed madly with everything they had.
Even though their lungs felt like they were going to burst, they didn't dare rest for a second.
Some artillerymen who had spent the first half of the journey on horseback, towing 77mm field guns, voluntarily dismounted to swap with infantry comrades who simply couldn't run anymore, letting the infantrymen ride the final two kilometers to rest their legs.
Through such mutual support and strict military discipline, the vanguard of the 16th Regiment successfully sprinted straight into the town of Nieuwpoort just before the floodwaters arrived.
The very tail end of the column ended up trapped in the water for a little over half a kilometer. However, it wasn't a major issue; they could still manage to wade their way into the town.
...
"Water... is there any water?"
Even though Colonel List had ridden a horse the whole way, he was still panting from exhaustion the moment he entered the town, sitting down haphazardly at the base of a wall without a care for his image.
Meanwhile, Captain Andri, who was responsible for defending the town, heard that friendly forces had arrived. He hurried over to coordinate the handover, looking travel-stained but bearing a proud expression, and handed the colonel a canteen:
"Respected Colonel, Commander of the Division's Direct Cavalry Reconnaissance Company, Hans Andrie, reporting for duty."
"Francois List, Commander of the 16th Infantry Regiment. What is the current situation?" List, covered in dust and grime, returned a hasty salute and then started gulping down water.
Andri hadn't expected the colonel to be in such a rush, skipping all pleasantries. So, he immediately pulled out a map, unfurled it, and pointed as he explained:
"Our forces repulsed another French attack half an hour ago. Although the enemy has large numbers, they probably just arrived at Dunkirk and De Panne not long ago and only have light weapons for now.
"As for the Belgin forces to the east, I've already figured it out. They've been fleeing in disarray all the way from Antwerp to get here. They must have lost all their heavy equipment and can only rely on human-wave charges. As long as our troops have sufficient ammunition, we can hold off at least ten times our number!
"Now that we have an entire regiment of reinforcements, this battle is still highly winnable."
According to the original plan, the entire Baria 12th Division was supposed to rush over. Now, only one regiment had made it. The remaining three infantry regiments and the artillery regiment were cut off south of the flood zone, meaning only about twenty percent of the planned forces had reached the interception point.
Regardless, this was still an expansion of over a dozen times the troop strength compared to when there was only a single reconnaissance company.
In history, the reconnaissance company had to fight one against two hundred; now, they only had to fight one against a dozen or so.
But List seemed to feel that Andri's report missed the main point. He raised a hand to interrupt him:
"None of that is the most important thing. Answer my two crucial questions first: One, exactly how much area has the flood submerged? Did it only cut off our reinforcements? Does it affect the enemy's breakout?"
Andri replied, "I've already had people roughly survey the flood situation. This town wasn't flooded at all, and the enemy's attack and breakout routes on the east and west sides weren't affected either—which means the entire coastal highway hasn't been submerged.
"This coastal strip stretching for tens of kilometers must have been a peninsula since ancient times, not reclaimed land. Its natural elevation is high enough. However, the areas along both banks of the Yser River to the south were created by sea dikes.
"So, the only effect of this flood is that it cut off our reinforcements from the south. It doesn't impact the enemy—
"If I had to name an impact, it's that they can only launch frontal assaults along the coastal highway. It restricts the width of the battlefield, preventing the enemy from flanking us through the flooded zones. We just need to hold the east and west sides; we don't have to worry about the south anymore."
Hearing this, Colonel List frowned slightly, his expression showing no obvious signs of joy or worry.
He thought for a moment before following up with his final key question: "How did you discover this impending danger? And those improvised countermeasures later on, did you come up with those yourself too? I looked at the telegrams the radioman received on the way here; it seems you thought steps ahead of division headquarters."
Hearing the colonel's praise, Andri couldn't help but feel a bit proud, yet slightly embarrassed.
Ultimately, he couldn't bring himself to shamelessly steal credit. Hesitating for a few seconds, he gathered his thoughts and spoke truthfully:
"Actually... all of this was discovered by a corporal from the Line-Laying Platoon of the Army's Direct Communications Battalion. He was also the one who thought of those emergency countermeasures on the fly.
"I was busy directing the battle just now, so I temporarily entrusted everything in the telegraph room to him."
Colonel List was dumbfounded, staring in stunned silence.
"A corporal?! That's utterly absurd. Is this how the Empire buries its talent? How could a mere corporal possess such sharp insight and strategic foresight? He saved my entire regiment! Bring him to see me at once! No, take me to see him immediately!"