After midnight, as the rumbling of artillery echoed through the Strammer-Knoll waterway, the German guard posts on Vogue Island in the western Faroe Islands, east of the port of Sandwag, suddenly spotted a number of ships on the sea, which quickly approached the coast, and then lowered their dinghys and sampans to send hundreds of armed men to the shore about three kilometers from Sandwag. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 InfoThe men who landed brazenly wore a flat-topped beanie navy cap, dark jacket and trousers, and carried an Enfield rifle with a bayonet in their hands, and at first glance they looked like Kitchener's new army except for their military caps, but if you look closely, it is not difficult to see that there are many unique features of this unit. For example, the soldiers' leather armoured belts were equipped with two bullet boxes the size of a water bottle at the waist, the cross-body shoulder straps were able to carry extra ammunition like hunters, everyone's bullet boxes and bullet belts were bulging, and everyone's trousers were tucked into canvas leggings, and the letters "RMLI" were written on the wall of their military caps, which meant "Royal Marine Corps Light Infantry".

Of course, in the dead of night, the German sentries were not in a position to observe so clearly. Realizing that it was the British who had landed here, they rushed to send the information back to Sandwag Harbor. Sandwag and Sørvog, five kilometres away, were the only two coastal towns on Vogue Island, and they were never known to the world until the British troops on the island took the initiative to take the care of the Danish authorities in order not to fall into the hands of the Germans, and as a result, the Germans forcibly occupied the Faroe Islands, so that these British officers and soldiers could not escape the fate of being prisoners of war. The hegemony of the Germans rose inexorably on Vogue Island!

The news of the British landing on Vogue Island was transferred to the Theater Command in Tórshavn via the German troops in Sandwag Harbor, and by this time the unsuccessful artillery battle had come to an end with the voluntary withdrawal of the British ships. With the loss of four mine-striking ships, the German Navy losing only one transport ship and one large torpedo boat in the gun battle, and less than thirty others killed, it seemed to be another battle in which the British were defeated, but when combined with the landing of the British Navy on Vogue Island without any hindrance, the German Navy was mocked.

Natsuki and his theater command did not know exactly how many landing troops the British had committed to Vogue Island, but it was certain that the more than 1,000 German naval officers and sailors stationed on Vogue Island were fully prepared for battle, and the ammunition supplies, food and medicine brought to the island were enough to hold out for at least two weeks without any foreign assistance. In accordance with Natsuki's orders, they deployed only part of their forces in two ports, and moved their reserves, war materiel, and more than 400 British officers and men captured at Sandwag and Sawwag to the hills in the middle of the island. Even if the British landing force relied on the cover of naval guns to quickly seize these two harbors, it would not have hoped to achieve a "great victory on Vogue Island" in a very short period of time that would be enough to save face and boost morale.

Because of his experience in following the 1st Marine Division to fight on the Western Front, Natsuki was confident in taking charge of the war zone. The British had just landed, and he was not in a hurry to transfer Funk's battle fleet and the main force stationed on Strammer Island to Vogue Island, but told them to wait for the dawn to find an opportunity to clean up the British.

On the other side, the British troops who had landed on Vogue Island hastily launched an attack on Sandwag out of their tactical considerations. The British soldiers tried to dislodge the German troops in one fell swoop and free their own captured men, so they did not use naval guns. Upon entering the port area, several British squads marched together at the junction and were met with heavy German fire, and the Madsen light machine guns mounted on the roofs and the riflemen hidden behind the windows inflicted heavy casualties on the well-trained British marines. The battle lasted for more than 20 minutes, and the British army's progress was still confined to some residential buildings on the most edge of the north bank of the port, and they deliberately showed the enemy's weakness and tried to lure the Germans out of their bunkers to launch a tactical counter-assault, but the Germans were completely unmoved, and still patiently squatted in the simple and practical fortifications adapted to local conditions.

When this failed, the British army formed a number of commando teams with elite troops, took advantage of the cover of night to quietly approach the buildings where the German troops were entrenched, occupied two defender positions with bayonets and fists, and captured several German officers and soldiers. From these German prisoners, the British learned that all the prisoners of war had been evacuated, and all the German naval ships had been evacuated. They were disappointed and angry. Without the concern of "hostages", the British army decisively gave up the infantry attack, which suffered heavy casualties. At half past two in the morning, the battlecruiser "Australia", which had dumped dozens of shells on the port of Walls, arrived in the waters south of Vogue Island, and then launched a heavy shelling of the port of Sandwag.

More than 200 German officers and soldiers were scattered in natural or man-made bunkers, and the British bombshells rarely threatened them, but they stunned the Faroese who had lived here for generations. Now that it was determined that there were no German ships in the harbor, the two British destroyers turned on their searchlights outside the breakwater, providing an excellent view of the "Australia". The battlecruiser, armed with eight 12-inch guns, opened fire from several kilometers away, bombarding houses on the north and west shores at near-flat angles, quickly turning Sandwag into a burning ruin. The flames of the sky lit up the night sky, and the villages and towns that the Faro people had worked so hard to build were ruthlessly devastated by the war, pitiful, pathetic, lamentable!

In the face of overwhelming artillery fire from the British fleet, the German troops stationed at Sandwag had no choice but to abandon their defensive lines and quickly retreat. By the time the roar of the heavy artillery had subsided, the British landing force entered the almost razed seaside town unhindered, their crisp and loud footsteps echoing through the dilapidated streets, the light of the fire reflecting their dark blue uniforms and bitter, cold faces.

In this era, the Royal Marines continued the tradition of dividing their units into two parts - fleet detachments and land combat units. The former serves as a detachment unit on all destroyers and above ships of the Royal Navy, usually responsible for operating a main gun turret and a part of the secondary guns, and this part of the marines is actually completely the sailors on the ship, receiving less training in land warfare, and relatively weak land combat capabilities; The latter are light infantry trained in amphibious landing and land warfare, and are marines in the true sense of the word, who usually do not serve on ordinary warships, but are separately organized into divisions and brigade-sized marine units, and will only follow the fleet when they are on landing missions. Due to the tense war on the Western Front, Britain successively dispatched two Marine Divisions and one Marine Brigade to France, with more than 40,000 troops participating in the battle.

The attack on Sandwag was successful, and the British landed near Severwag. Perhaps in the eyes of the British commander-in-chief of this campaign, the capture of Sandwag and Sevog as quickly as possible would be the heaviest blow to the German occupation forces on Vogue Island. However, in the waters of Severg, the British ships that came to support the operation were in serious trouble, and the German Navy submarine U-63, which had returned from the North Atlantic waters, was resupplying in the harbor, although it only had one torpedo, and its hull was damaged in the battle, and it could only dive to a depth of 20 meters at most, but this did not prevent it from playing its killer nature. After leaving, U-63 slipped under the noses of several British warships at the southern mouth of the fjord, spotted British transports near the coast, and decisively surfaced to attack with deck guns, sinking one and damaging one before the British destroyers arrived. Despite the fact that both of these were empty ships that had already unloaded the landing personnel, the British were shocked into a cold sweat. The "Australia", which was originally scheduled to come to support the operation, canceled the operation due to its weak lightning resistance, and the Edward VII-class former dreadnought "Britannia" was tasked with shelling Thorvog, but it was not until 4:40 a.m. that the "Britannia" arrived late because it was slightly light on the sea and had some minor problems with the power system, and it was already being targeted by U-63 before it could get close to the coast.

At 5:04 a.m., the U-63 fired the only torpedo from 2,600 meters away, and the Britannia's watchmen failed to spot the torpedo track in time, and by the time the clumsy old battleship spotted the threat and turned around, it was too late. The torpedo hit its port side unbiasedly, and although the Edward VII class had 9 inches of waterline armor, it ran into an ace submarine that had carried out 6 combat voyages and sank 3 British warships and 10 non-combat ships, and the torpedo crews on the boat did not forget to set the correct torpedo depth because of nervousness, and the G2 533 mm torpedo with a track at 5 meters of the waterline avoided the main armor protection zone of the "Britannia". A large hole was blown in its weak spot near the bottom of the ship. Although the old British battleship did not adopt the advanced subdivided compartment design like the German capital ships, the large watertight compartment and automatic watertight door structure can still play a role in controlling leakage and ensuring buoyancy when the ship is damaged, even if the leak fails and the battleship capsizes inevitably, it can buy the crew as much time to escape as possible, or give them the opportunity to drive the battleship to shallow water and run aground.

At 5:40 a.m., after more than half an hour of hard work by the officers and men on board, the "Britannia," which was hit by torpedoes, was still too damaged to its hull, the drainage efficiency of the water pump was far lower than that of the inlet water, and some of the watertight compartment partitions were cracked due to the squeezing of seawater, and the hull of the ship was rolled by more than 30 degrees.

(End of chapter)