At dusk, the coastline at the northern end of Vogue Island was full of German officers and men wearing navy caps and dark blue uniforms, and their number far exceeded the British estimate of three or four hundred, including the advance combat detachment that had advanced inland, and there were eight or nine hundred officers and men ashore. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 Some of these German armed personnel were marines from large and medium-sized warships, some were surviving crews from sunken ships, and some were ordinary sailors drawn from various ships. Their uniforms are slightly different in accessories, and their faces and expressions are also different, but they have an obvious commonality - everyone is full of confidence and energy, as if they are the dominant psychology of chasing the enemy's defeated soldiers after victory. As for the fact that the land beneath their feet was supposed to be an inviolable neutral country, no one cared about that at this time.

Without a clear order from their superiors, how could a German soldier, who had always emphasized obedience and discipline, do such a great thing without such a command?

After landing, the German naval officers and men did not rush to chase down the British sailors who had come ashore in advance, only half of them followed the footsteps of their opponents inland, and the rest either unloaded supplies on the shore, or set up camps in the open area, or occupied the commanding heights nearby for vigilance and lookout. Not far from the shore, several German cruisers and large torpedo boats, with their guns high, watched the landing site with fierce eyes.

Viewed from the air, Vogue Island is a hilly and barren area, with only one coastal town at the southwest and southern ends of the island, and a modest harbour for fishing boats. The journey from the German landing site to the two coastal towns was about 10 kilometers, and even if there were no roads, it took only half a day to walk. However, the German advance combat detachment that had taken the lead in landing was still four or five kilometers away from the landing site, and the sailors, armed with Mauser rifles, carefully climbed over the ridge and through the valley, hindering them not only from the muddy ground drenched by heavy rain, but also from the moment they landed on Vogue Island, the British naval personnel who had landed earlier spared no effort to harass and stop them.

The British naval personnel who landed on Vogue Island before the Germans actually knew more than London knew, including the wounded, there were more than 500 of them, nearly half of them came from the damaged and stranded light cruiser "Brisbane", and most of the rest were shipwrecked by the destroyer "Crusader", but many of these people were not the original crew of the "Crusader", but the survivors who were salvaged and rescued by this destroyer in the naval battle - as the main battleships of the British main fleet capsized and sank one after another, The waters northwest of the Faroe Islands are full of lifeboats and people overboard, and the scorching winds and waves combined with the cold and freezing weather make it impossible for a man of his physique to soak in the sea for a few hours.

The Faroe Islands have been under Danish occupation since the 14th century and have undergone several changes and are now overseas counties of the Kingdom of Denmark, enjoying a certain degree of autonomy, but sovereignty and military diplomacy remain under the control of the Danish government. In view of the present neutral status of the Kingdom of Denmark, and under the terms of the Convention relating to the Application of Principles of the Geneva Conventions of 6 July 1906 to Naval Warfare, signed in 1907 (Hague Convention No. 10), British officers and men may be placed under the care of the Danish authorities as shipwrecked, wounded or sick persons until the end of the war, during which time they will not be attacked by German troops. Nevertheless, the British officers and men did not feel that they had taken refuge after disembarking, and they quickly left the shore and placed watchmen on the high hills, so that they immediately discovered the German landing and informed the British Admiralty of this important situation using radio transmitters dismantled from the "Brisbane".

In addition to the radio transmitters, the British crew of the "Brisbane" carried more than 80 rifles and two Vickers cannons, which were small enough to deal with the German troops who had landed. However, the range of the German warships was sufficient to cover the entire island, and in fear of this deadly threat, the British officers and men had to move with the wounded and equipment, and only a few rear personnel were used to contain the German advance team. The scattered gunfire was undoubtedly an insult to the neutral countries - as early as the outbreak of the war, when the waters around the Faroe Islands were declared a zone of war by Britain and Germany, the Danish government protested that the combat ships of both sides should abide by the war conventions and not invade Danish territorial waters for any reason, but this protest was like a stone in the sea and did not have any effect at all.

After nightfall, British troops on Vogue Island abruptly ceased their attacks on the German fighters and accelerated their retreat to the island's only two settlements. Soon the first British troops arrived at the port of Søvorg at the southwestern tip of Vogue Island.

The few local policemen in the port of Sørvog were stunned to see a large group of British soldiers swaggering towards them, and when they found out whether they wanted to accept the detention of the Danish authorities under the terms of the 10th Hague Convention of 1907, they were immediately confused, because they did not even know the content of the Hague Convention, let alone make their own decisions. They quickly got in touch with officials in Tórshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands, who said they also had no authority to make decisions and that everything needed to be decided in Copenhagen. Time passed quietly, and the German fighters had pressed into the port of Søvorg from the north.

A number of German warships also appeared on the sea outside the port!

Meanwhile, at the Danish palace in Copenhagen, King Christian X and his ministers had just made the difficult but important decision to fulfill their obligations as signatories to the Hague Convention to detain by midnight all British naval personnel who had landed in the Faroe Islands as a result of the sinking of the warship. Accordingly, Denmark will reply to the previous note from the German Government: Denmark will detain the British officers and soldiers ashore until the end of the war, in accordance with the Hague Convention, and demand that the German Government withdraw its armed personnel from Vogue Island by the same time limit.

In this way, neither side was exonerated and the German government seemed to have lost the excuse for forcibly occupying the Faroe Islands.

The Danes thought they had found a way out of the crisis, but before their reply reached the Germans, the German ambassador in Copenhagen sent them an ultimatum from the German government. In this ultimatum, the German government harshly – even brutally – accused the Danish government of violating the Neutrality Act by acquiescing to the British fleet's use of the central Faroe Islands waterways during the war, and decided to occupy the Faroe Islands in view of the fact that the British had in fact deployed combat personnel and even set up secret military camps in the Faroe Islands. If the Danish Government cooperates, the German Government will continue to regard the Kingdom of Denmark as a neutral country in good faith and undertake to return the Faroe Islands after the end of the war and to compensate for the losses incurred during the occupation......

Christian X, then 44, had only been on the throne for two years, but when he was crown prince, he was actively involved in government affairs, had his own independent views on national affairs, and had the courage and integrity of the Nordic people. The current head of the Danish government, the president of the Council, Carl Theodor Zach, is also a man of courage and perseverance who pursues the truth. In a war that erupted over the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian crown prince – a conflict between the interests of the British, French, Russian and German and Austrian camps – many countries sought to benefit from it. Denmark was defeated by Prussia and Austria in 1864, losing Schleswig-Holstein and Rhônburg, but the Danish king and head of government were well aware of their weakness and did not enter the war because of the Entente's inducements. Thanks to the efforts of Christian X, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, which had close ties with it, all chose neutrality in the war that swept the world, and the biggest purpose of this decision was obviously to save the kingdom and its citizens from the slaughter of war, but it backfired, and the war lasted only more than three months, and Denmark's neutrality faced unprecedented provocation. Christian X and his ministers were stunned by this no-frills ultimatum of the German government, and the Danish army could not withstand the German attack, and Denmark could not receive any substantial military assistance from the Entente in the present war situation. If you choose to resist, the country may be reduced to a scorched earth and fall into the abyss from which it will never recover. If compromise is chosen, the sovereignty and dignity of the country will be greatly violated......

The Danes wanted to refuse the outrageous demands of the Germans to insist on justice and justice even if they were involved in the war, but remembering what had happened to the Belgians and looking around the war situation throughout Europe, they realized that such resistance was useless. Having to choose between the Faroe Islands and the mainland, the only way to save the 2.8 million Danes from the war is the painful abandonment of the Faroe Islands – their pitiful national dignity......

The compromise of the Danish government overjoyed the Berlin dignitaries. From the initial delivery of the note to the compulsion of the Danish Government, it took only a dozen hours for the German Government to turn the military aggression against the Faroe Islands into a "legitimate occupation," which was probably the only commendable victory for German diplomats in 20 years.

At 7 a.m. on 25 November, the flagship of the German High Seas Fleet received a message from the Admiralty that the Danish Government had accepted the terms of the ultimatum and that a full-scale landing operation had been confirmed in the Faroe Islands. At the command of Reinhardt-Scher, more than 2,000 armed men landed on Strammer Island, East Island and Borroy Island in a number of large torpedo boats. The two formidable armoured cruisers, "Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau", sailed directly to Tórshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands, and under the threat of the guns of the Black Hole, the Danes surrendered the island's military defense and communications facilities without any resistance.

The British Home Fleet, which had been devastated in the Battle of the Faroe Islands, was naturally unable to prevent the German Navy from landing in the Faroe Islands, but their torpedo boats and submarines still posed some threat to the Germans. After investigation, the ship's hull was structurally damaged and could not be repaired even if it was towed back to port, so the Germans transferred the ship's weapons and ammunition ashore and built a new coastal defense fortress on the spot.

(End of chapter)