Free Grand Alliance (Kirov Series) by John Schettler

Lieutenant?”
    “Third
generation Dorchester Chobham, sir.”
    “Dorchester?”
    O’Connor
knew the place. It was a small market town on the southern coast, just above
Weymouth, with a population of about 10,000 people who chiefly traded local
produce three or four days a week. The ladies there had taken to organizing for
the coming war early on, setting up the local “Women’s Voluntary Service” or
WVS, which was soon called the Widows, Virgins and Spinsters. The town, like
many others after Dunkirk, had also set up the LDV troops, or “Local Defense
Volunteers,” many armed with little more than broomsticks. After the people
took to calling them the “Look, Duck and Vanish” squads, they changed the name
to the “Home Guard” last July. He had a relative there, and she had written
some time ago to say they were all busy making concrete anti-invasion blocks to
drag off to the beaches, “Dragon’s Teeth” as they were called. Yet here this
man was telling him they had also been hard at work on Dragon’s scales for this
monstrous tank!
    “Dorchester
Chobham…” O’Connor repeated the words, an unaccountable feeling rising in him
now. We could barely equip the troops that struggled home after Dunkirk. There
weren’t even enough simple rifles in the country to re-arm the men! How in the
world did we go from broomstick militias and concrete blocks to this?
    “Third
generation?”
    “Yes
sir, the process is hush, hush, but I understand that they’re using more exotic
materials now in the composites—carbon nanotubes and all.”
    O’Connor
heard the words, but was oblivious to their meaning. He suddenly felt daft as a
brush. Third generation? That implied two earlier models or versions of this
armor. He suddenly felt something was very odd here. Secrecy was one thing, but
hiding the design, development and testing of a weapon this sophisticated was
quite another. There was simply no way these new vehicles could have been built
and deployed in a fully combat ready status without thousands of men knowing about
it, people in the factories, testing sites, dockyards, merchant marine, and
anyone at Alexandria when they arrived. And he simply could not imagine that
Wavell, with his back to the wall at Sidi Barani, would have blithely ordered a
unit of this size and obvious value south into the heart of nowhere like this.
It simply made no military sense. He turned to General Kinlan with a strange
look in his eye.
    “Just
who in bloody hell are you people?”
    Fedorov
saw it now, behind the awe and surprise, a look of profound doubt, and he knew
the time was ripe to move O’Connor to a new understanding. The awakening had
begun.
    “Excuse
me, sir,” said Popski on Fedorov’s behalf. “The Captain suggests it may be time
to take the General aside for a more detailed briefing.”
     
     
     
    Part III
     
    Seeing the Elephant
     
     
    “It was six wise
men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.
    ― John Godfrey Saxe
     
     
    Chapter 7
     
    HMS Queen Elizabeth was in the vanguard of the fleet that day, her bow awash with rising seas as
the grand old lady led the way at 16 knots. Laid down in 1912 and commissioned
two years later, the ship had seen extensive service in WWI, with most of her
combat hours logged near the Dardanelles until a troublesome turbine sent her
home for repairs. She missed Jutland, eventually returning to Scapa Flow, but
was nonetheless honored to present the terms of surrender to the German Admiral
von Reuter after the armistice in 1918. After the war she went through two
major refits, and first saw duty in the warm waters of the Mediterranean in
1925. Her latest refit was completed in the shadow of impending war at
Portsmouth, where the ship had her guts torn out when 25 old boilers were
removed to be replaced with 8 of the new high pressure boilers. New AA armament
was