The Twilight of Empire: Starting from Dunkirk

Chapter 124 I Am Alive

Carriage number 4 belongs to the Cold Creek Guards Regiment.

Passing through the windshield at the junction and pulling open the heavy oak door, the atmosphere is completely different.

If the vigil next door is a somber occasion, then this place is a mobile monastery where evening prayers are being held.

Quiet. The only sounds were the crisp clanging of metal parts.

Click—click—that was the sound of the bolt being pulled back on an Enfield rifle.

Sizzle—sizzle—that was the sound of an oiled gun cleaning cloth sliding across the barrel of a gun.

As the army's most elite guard unit, the soldiers of the Cold Creek Guards maintained an awe-inspiring discipline even on the retreating train.

They didn't express their emotions like the group of Scots next door.

For most of the Guards—with the exception of McTavish—emotions were superfluous, even harmful. They sat upright in their velvet chairs, just as they would on the benches in the barracks. Heads bowed, they wiped their weapons again and again in the dim light.

That was their only belief. As long as the guns were still lit and the bolts could still be pulled, they were still soldiers, not refugees.

Lai Deshao sat alone at a folding table at the end of the carriage.

He seemed somewhat out of place.

As an officer in the Norfolk Regiment, he should theoretically be in one of the crowded carriages at the back of the train, huddled together with his infantry comrades who were venting their stress with profanity and dirty jokes.

But that domineering bastard Arthur Sterling is completely unreasonable.

"You're my temporary chief of staff and my deputy, Ryder. Don't even think about slacking off in the back." Because of Arthur's words before boarding the train, he was forcibly "conscripted" from his own troops and shoved into this carriage where even breathing exuded rigid discipline.

But Ryder did not clean the gun.

He wasn't a member of the Imperial Guard, so he didn't have that kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

His sidearm—the Webley revolver—was carelessly tossed on the corner of the table, next to a beret stained with grease.

He was doing something far more important than cleaning a gun.

Under the dim glow of the desk lamp, a black leather-bound notebook lay open. Ryder held a fountain pen in his hand, the nib hovering over the paper, hesitant to drop it, the ink condensing into a black teardrop at the tip.

Swoosh—swoosh—that was the sound of the pen finally falling onto the paper, sounding like some kind of bone-scraping noise.

He is writing a list.

Now that Arthur has brought him in as the "head steward," he has to take charge of handling this most troublesome "butcher's bill."

This is a list that includes not only his Norfolk Regiment, but also all the fallen soldiers along the way whose affiliation cannot be confirmed.

He had to take these names back to Wellington Barracks, hand them over to the War Office in person, and then have those indifferent clerks notify the families.

This is also the moment that every surviving commander fears most—the count.

Major Edward Hawke (Commander of the 1st Battalion) - Killed in action (died of wound infection following the Battle of Furny).

Ryder's hand trembled slightly when he wrote the name.

The ink smudged and spread a black dot on the paper.

He was standing right there when he remembered the look in Hawke's eyes when he handed command to Arthur, that resolute look of entrusting hundreds of lives to him.

Captain Charles Windsor (Second Company Commander) — Missing (Last sighting: Niupot Bridge, suspected of being shot and falling into the water).

"Missing"—what a cruel word. It means no body, no grave, leaving the family with only endless, agonizing waiting, until hope turns to despair.

Lieutenant Thomas Baker – Seriously wounded (right leg amputation).

Private John Smith-Ryder's pen nib stopped on this unremarkable name, the nib piercing the paper and leaving a blot of ink.

The scene behind that farmhouse in Leparadis, which he had witnessed more than a week earlier, instantly flashed before his eyes.

They had already raised their hands, and were even clutching a white handkerchief in their hands.

Ryder remembered the sound of the MG34 machine gun, like a shredder tearing cloth, Smith's eyes as he was torn apart by bullets, and the SS soldiers' maniacal laughter as they finished off the corpses.

Ryder took a deep breath, suppressing the acid churning in his stomach.

He absolutely could not tell Smith's mother that her son had been killed like a pig in a slaughterhouse.

He gritted his teeth and wrote a lie heavily after his name, a lie filled with dignity:

6

During the breakout battle in Kassel, he launched a desperate charge against the enemy's machine gun position and died a heroic death.

Private David Jones—

Ryder closed his eyes again.

Jones was only 19 years old and was the fastest messenger in the regiment. When Ryder found his body while leading the remnants of the Norfolk Regiment in their retreat, Jones's legs had been broken.

But he did not die from a gunshot wound.

His chest and neck were covered with bayonet wounds—the masterpieces left by the SS using wounded soldiers as targets for bayonet training while clearing the battlefield.

The boy who always smiled and offered Ryder cigarettes shattered all his teeth in agony before he died.

Ryder's fingers trembled violently, and he could barely hold the pen.

He noted down this debt.

Skeleton Master, he'll remember this grudge.

But he couldn't bring that cruelty back to London.

He reopened his eyes, his gaze now filled with murderous intent, but his writing was incredibly gentle: "To cover the company's retreat, he held his position until the very last moment and gloriously sacrificed his life."

After writing this line, Ryder took a silver flask out of his pocket and took a big gulp of whiskey.

The liquor burned his throat, but it couldn't burn away the deep-seated hatred. He turned these names into heroes. As for the truth—the truth about the massacre, about the atrocities of the SS—he would put it in his gun and return it to the Germans the next time they met.

He took a deep breath and forced his stiff fingers to move, making the pen tip slide laboriously to the next line.

A name. It's more than just a name. In the dim, flickering light, the densely packed...

Even some of the hastily drawn black ink marks seem to be twisting and writhing, transforming back into living, breathing people.

Ryder didn't even dare to blink.

Reason told him that these people's bodies were currently soaking in the stinking mud pits of France, probably swollen and rotting, being devoured by flies and fat ditch rats, turned into unrecognizable pulp.

But as soon as he closed his eyes, those faces became terrifyingly vivid, even clearer than the living people sitting next to him—

He remembered the five pounds Smith owed him, the silly grin Jones had given him in the trenches when he showed him pictures of their newborn daughter, and the old soldier who always complained about how awful the canned beef was.

At this moment, they were all huddled on this thin piece of paper, separated by the boundary between life and death, quietly watching him.

Ryder's brow furrowed more and more deeply.

This is a million times harder than shooting Germans with a submachine gun in Calais.

Killing someone only requires pulling the trigger, a single second of ruthlessness; but this—this requires slowly cutting open one's own heart with a knife, carving the names of those people onto it.

But he would do it even if Arthur didn't ask him, because it was his responsibility.

As a survivor and their commander, he not only had to bear the weight of his own life but also the names of the dead as he returned home.

The adjacent carriage number 5 belonged to the remnants of the French 12th Motorized Rifle Division.

As you walk further on, the smell in the air completely changes.

The aroma of roasted meat and the smell of gunpowder are gone.

The flavor here is very simple and easy to identify. It's a strong, pungent black tobacco flavor—the distinctive taste of the "Gallic" cigarettes favored by French soldiers.

The oppression here is even heavier than death.

That's the taste of exile.

For the British passengers in the first two carriages, no matter how tragic their situation, the final destination of this train was "home."

o

London is right outside Waterloo Station, where their loved ones and familiar streets await them.

But for the hundreds of French soldiers in this carriage, the train's destination was nothingness.

It was pitch black outside the window; it was foreign land. They looked out through the car window, their eyes filled with confusion and fear.

"What are we going to do now?" A French sergeant broke the silence.

He was only in his early twenties, with a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his head and a half-burnt cigarette in his hand.

"That old bastard Wei Gang will definitely surrender. The radio's saying—Grand Marshal Pétain is coming out to take charge." The young sergeant's voice carried a sense of abandoned panic. "If we stay in England—wouldn't we be seen as traitors by our families? What if the Germans retaliate against our families later?"

This problem is like a boulder weighing on everyone's mind.

No one spoke; no one could respond to the topic.

Only the smoke swirled around them, blurring their faces.

"No," a bearded old soldier spoke up from the corner.

His uniform was so tattered it looked like a rag hanging on his body; it was the cheap conscript uniform of Brittany—clearly, the generosity of the British Empire had its limits.

In the eyes of that shrewd quartermaster, the expensive new wool battle uniforms were reserved for local gentlemen, while these French-speaking "poor relatives" were already considered to be blessed with a seat.

He slowly pulled a crumpled photograph from the pocket inside his clothes.

It was black and white, with a stone farmhouse on top, and a woman holding a child standing at the door.

He gently stroked the photograph with his rough thumb, forcing himself to be strong: "As long as we still have guns in our hands, France is not dead." He looked up and glanced around at his bewildered young comrades: "That British Brigadier General—Sterling—was right."

"What did he say?" the young sergeant asked.

"During the breakout in Berg, I heard him say to that Commander Jeanne: 'If you want to go home, you have to fight your way back first.'" The veteran pressed the photo back to his chest, the place closest to his heart: "From today onward, we have no home. Until the day we drive the Germans out of Paris."

Just then, the door at the junction of the carriages was pushed open. The sound of leather boots clicking on the wooden floor was clear and powerful.

Click, click, click.

Arthur Sterling walked in.

He was still wearing that crisp brigadier general's uniform, draped in that black German leather overcoat, except he had a cigar in his mouth.

He was followed by two fully armed Cold Creek Guards military police.

He didn't have the arrogance of a superior inspector; he stopped in the middle of the carriage and his gaze swept across the face of every French soldier.

That gaze was cold, but also steady, like a pillar that could stabilize the sea.

Whoosh—no password required.

The veteran was the first to stand up.

Next came the young sergeant, and then all the French soldiers in the carriage.

Even those with leg injuries struggled to stand up, holding onto the back of the chair.

They saluted the young British general.

That wasn't the prescribed etiquette between superiors and subordinates, nor was it the hypocritical pleasantries between Allied forces. It was a conversion born of despair.

On this foreign night, in the darkest hour as France was about to fall, the Englishman who led them out of the encirclement became their only lord, their only support, and their only hope to "fight back."

Arthur stopped, slowly raised his right hand, and returned a standard military salute.

He didn't speak. At this moment, any promise would be meaningless.

His very existence is a promise.

In this oppressive and solemn atmosphere, an announcement came over the train's public address system.

Several train attendants pushed a cart in and began distributing a special type of card.

"Wartime special postcards, postage free. Guys, write something. Your families are waiting for news."

These postcards were printed urgently by the War Department. The front featured a portrait of King George VI and the slogan "For the King and the Nation," while the back was a blank writing area.

A 19-year-old recruit sat in the corner. He clutched the thin card in one hand and a pencil covered in teeth marks in the other. The pencil tip hovered on the paper, trembling, unable to fall for a long time.

He had killed people in Calais. He had stabbed a German sapper in the stomach with a bayonet; the warm touch still seemed to linger on his hand, and the German soldier looked even younger than him. He had also seen dead bodies. His sergeant had been riddled with machine gun fire, his face splattered with blood.

He wanted to write these.

He wanted to tell his mother how scared he was, and he wanted to tell his father that he wasn't a coward.

But he found he couldn't write; every word was stained with blood, too heavy, too bloody. He couldn't bear to let his mother, far away in the Yorkshire countryside, see this, couldn't bear to let her imagine the hell her son was suffering in, and even less did he want his mother to know that he had become a butcher.

That "white blank space" made him feel suffocated.

Just then, a hand wearing a black leather glove gently patted his shoulder.

The touch was cool, yet it carried a reassuring power.

The recruit looked up in alarm and saw the red brigadier general's insignia and Arthur's face, which looked particularly cold in the dim light.

"Don't know what to write?" Arthur's voice was very soft, drowned out by the roar of the wheels, and only the two of them could hear it.

"Yes, sir—" The recruit lowered his head, his voice beginning to choke, "I want to tell my mother I'm scared, but I can't—I don't want her to worry."

"Then don't write those." Arthur took an expensive Parker gold pen out of his pocket and unscrewed the cap.

The golden pen tip flashed a golden light under the lamplight, a radiance of power and civilization, completely out of place in this sweat-soaked carriage.

He placed the pen on the recruit's desk and pointed to the blank postcard: "You don't need to write how many people you killed, or how much you suffered. Those are for historians."

Arthur bent down and looked into the recruit's eyes: "For those who are waiting for you, there's only one thing they care about."

"Just write three words: I am alive (lamalive)."

"Believe me. These three words are more precious than any medal."

The recruit was stunned.

He looked at the gold pen, then at Arthur. After a few seconds, he nodded vigorously, and tears finally streamed down his face.

With trembling hands, he picked up the heavy fountain pen and wrote those three words heavily on the suffocating blank space of the postcard.

I am alive.

The pen tip tore through the paper fibers, and the ink seeped in.

This is not just a message to let people know they are safe; it is a declaration from the survivors.

In this crazy world, what is a greater victory than "living"?

Arthur straightened up and put away his pen. He watched as the recruit carefully put away the postcard, then turned and walked to the next carriage.

His figure appeared somewhat lonely in the swaying corridor.

He taught others how to let others know they are safe, but who should he send his own postcard to?

That old count?

What the old man probably wanted to see more of was a list of spoils bearing Iron Cross medals.

Arthur chuckled self-deprecatingly and pushed open the door to the first-class box.

21:30, First Class, Brigadier General Sterling's private box.

"Click." Arthur locked the sliding door of the private room with his backhand and pulled the half of the blinds all the way down.

The light and shadows that had been flashing past the train window as it sped by vanished instantly, leaving only the dim yellow glow of the lamp in the compartment. The roar of the wheels hitting the rails, filtered through the thick soundproofing, became a low, muffled white noise in the background.

This is Arthur's absolute territory.

Apart from the woman across from him, who was curled up in the velvet chair and breathing evenly, there was only him and the unseen ghost—the RTS system.

Arthur casually stubbed out the burning, bitter cigarette butt between his fingers in the brass ashtray next to the armrest.

He stretched his stiff body, letting his back sink deeply into the soft velvet, and then casually pulled a cigar wrapped in an elegant aluminum tube from his inner jacket pocket.

That's a top-of-the-line Cuban product—"Romeo and Juliet".

He had "requisitioned" it from the fat old man's private cigar box while Winston Churchill was ranting on the phone before he left Dover.

Cut open the cap of the eggplant and strike a match.

A wisp of blue smoke rose slowly under the light, swirling around Arthur's thoughtful face. He closed his eyes, his thoughts drifting into the blue ocean of data deep within his retina.

It's time to take stock of our assets.

Although he left hundreds of trucks and dozens of artillery pieces in France in this battle—things he couldn't take with him—and although it looked like a disastrous retreat on the tactical map, the chips he won at the political and military gamble were enough to drive any military observer in Whitehall crazy.

Stirling Battlegroup Asset Inventory

Lines of pale blue data streamed down like a waterfall in the darkness, the numbers fluctuating before finally settling.

[Current Total Troop Strength]: 13,800 men. Arthur's gaze swept over the detailed breakdown; he needed to take stock of the inventory.

Survivors of the 51st Highland Division: 9,150 (This is the cornerstone of the entire battle group, the main force with the most complete organizational structure).

Cold Creek Guards 1st Battalion: 650 men (although the smallest in number, almost all of them are officers and senior sergeants with command capabilities, and they are extremely loyal and will fight to the death).

The remnants of the Royal Norfolk Regiment and scattered soldiers gathered along the way: 2,900 men (this is the "ragtag army" that Ryder brought back, the most diverse in composition, but those who survived the rout and gathered together are all tough enough).

Remnants of the French 12th Motorized Rifle Division: 1,100 men (like Jeanne de Valois, die-hard followers of Lord Stirling, a group of homeless vengeful ghosts).

This is an extremely complex, even somewhat deformed, unit.

If placed in peacetime army regulations, this group of people would be just enough to form a full-strength standard infantry division, but their equipment is so chaotic that any logistics officer would be driven to despair.

But Arthur never valued quantity, only quality.

[Personnel Quality Analysis]:

Veteran Ratio: 85%.

[Overall Combat Strength Rating]: Elite.

Arthur stared at the "Elite" entry that shimmered with a dark golden light, his fingertips tracing a line across the air.

Within the system's algorithm, this is probably the most expensive universal upgrade method in the world.

In peacetime training camps, it takes two years of physical exertion, five thousand rounds of ammunition, and countless grueling drills to train a farmer or worker into a qualified "elite" infantryman.

But in Calais, Dunkirk, Berg and Forne, the process was compressed into half a month.

However, the tuition fee is equivalent to thousands of lives.

The remaining 85% are survivors who have survived three rounds of this hellish ordeal, the tough guys who managed to maintain formation even after being bombed by Stukas on the beach.

They had developed a kind of terrifying muscle memory that allowed them to instantly determine the impact point of a shell upon hearing its whistling sound, to troubleshoot a Bren gun malfunction within three seconds with their eyes closed, and to know how to exert force with their wrists so as not to get stuck when a bayonet is thrust into an enemy's ribs.

More importantly, their eyes no longer held the romantic fantasies about war, nor the instinctive fear of death.

Arthur knew very well that in the upcoming homeland defense war, one such elite veteran was worth ten greenhorns who had just come out of training camp and could only polish their shoes and march in formation.

This is no longer an army; it's a pack of wolves that have tasted blood.

This is a terrifying fortune.

【Fanatical】: 3,200 people.

The number made Arthur pause slightly, his fingers holding the cigar. The system highlighted this group of people in bright red.

These 3,200 men will be Arthur's core force, including the Cold Creek Guards and the Scottish toughs of the 51st Division.

They did not merely obey orders; they were completely devoted to Arthur Sterling in spirit.

The system note, though only one line long, sent chills down Arthur's spine: "These men have deserted the army." Even if you ordered them to attack Buckingham Palace, they'd fix bayonets first, then ask whether to enter through the front or back.

"This is no longer the king's army." Arthur exhaled a smoke ring, his eyes deep and unfathomable. "This is the Sterling family's private army."

【prestige】:

Upper-class Londoners: [Awe/Suspicion].

【Remark】:

The old aristocracy of London need you as a hero to maintain their prestige, but they will also be terrified by your snap of the fingers.

As for Churchill?

He'll probably be too excited to sleep tonight, drinking port. He doesn't need an obedient puppet; he needs a beast that can kill a wolf.

Now that you've reached a consensus, he will never throw you to North Africa to eat sand, unless you ask for the opposite. He's thinking about how much power to give you so that you, this double-edged sword, can cut the Germans' throats in the upcoming storm and, incidentally, help him clear away those troublesome "weeds" around him.

Scotland: [Worshipped]

Note: If you were to run for MP in Edinburgh right now, you'd get more votes than God. That Major General Fortune is a grateful, old-fashioned soldier; he's already written you into the history of every regiment in the Highlands Division.

Free French government-in-exile: [Savior].

Note: Because of the woman sleeping opposite you, and the more than three thousand French soldiers you brought out.

If de Gaulle or any other French general wanted to form an army in exile, he couldn't bypass you.

Arthur tapped his fingers lightly on the mahogany armrest, making a rhythmic "tap-tap" sound.

They have connections, prestige, and political capital.

But that's not enough. Far from enough.

[Equipment Status Assessment]:

You are not a disarmed, defeated army, but a German-equipped division armed to the teeth.

Arthur's gaze pierced through the carriages, as if he could see the flatbed freight cars at the rear of the train groaning heavily.

There, secured with massive tarpaulins and steel cables, were not dilapidated British trucks, but "heavy trophies" forcibly seized from German armored divisions:

Several Panzer IV tanks painted in iron-gray, with gunpowder still lingering on their muzzles, and three low-slung and fierce StuG III assault guns.

Inside the infantry fighting vehicle, the situation presented an astonishingly eclectic mix.

The soldiers were no longer carrying Enfield rifles with only ten rounds in their magazines.

In this cramped space, you can see German MP40 submachine guns casually hanging on hooks everywhere, and MG34 general-purpose machine guns that originally belonged to the Wehrmacht are placed on tables, with long ammunition belts coiled around them like venomous snakes.

This is an army with almost complete combat capabilities.

They possess the most scarce heavy weapons and automatic firepower in the entire UK—although they were all stolen.

"Combat strength is not a problem," Arthur silently assessed in his mind. "They're even stronger than before we set off."

"The only problem is—this damn logistics. Once these German bullets are used up, I'll have to make them myself."

Please recommend, vote with monthly tickets, subscribe, and tip.

>