June 1918
Allen rubbed the ink smudge on his fingers and looked up. Soldiers, as Yamagata had told him more than once, didn't need to have beautiful calligraphy... which was greatly reassuring since Allen found his writing downright hideous most days.
"John Allen there is something we need to talk about."
The war had not been presumed to be going well. There had been a fresh set of hand wringing and Percy might have been bringing good news... but probably not. It would have been nice if the German Offensive which was all the papers kept twisting themselves up in knots about carried with it fresh contracts... but Percy had company.
He looked at the uniformed stranger. Another one of King George's men, and English.
Colonel Shan glanced up from the map table he'd been surveying. His aide de camp a captain not young enough to shave, but trying to grow a mustache straightened, barely managing to avoid flooring the stacks of papers. The papers detailing tables for the newest machine rifles.
"This is of sensitive importance."
"Yeah," He almost made a crack about asking what the huns had done now, but Percy must have figured he was going to.
"Its not... about the Germans." Percy remarked cutting him off, his friend, who had pointedly not been introduced but didn't look happy about Percy talking about potential details when it became clear Percy was about, "Its the Russians, the Bolsheviks and Kolchaks people. They're coming to blows, and the Prime Minister, there is a need... we need a body of picked men to do a favor for, for the king."
He looked at the badging of service branch on the khaki uniform and thought of the US Army's Civil Service, "Percy, I'm not going to Russia to put a bullet in Vladimir Illich Lenin's head... much as the son of bitch might deserve it." and he very much did, Lenin and his buddy Felix had turned Petrograd and Moscow into a cutting house hunting for spies... real ones and imagined ones and what was arguably worse was he was gloating about it with all the robespierre esque phrasing of equating moscow with Paris of the terrors. Red Terror had begun back before Christmas, so he had had six seven months of running amok... and given what they weren't bothering to hide he was a little worried about what the Reds were choosing to shove behind a curtain.
"We wouldn't ask that, but His Majesty's government does make the request that you go to ekaterinburg and rescue Tsar Nicholas and the Tsar's family. We have a ship prepared to carry them back to England."
Allen straightened, and looked to Shan, "Shan send a runner go fetch Cole and Bill."
Shan rolled to face his aide, "Captain, send runners to request Generals McCulloch, and Bohannon presence in the planning room." The young captain disappeared through the doorway the Englishmen had entered through a moment before. His chief of staff turned back to the English.
It hadn't escaped Allen Percy had been brevetted a lieutenant colonel, but he didn't mention it.
"Could we perhaps sit?" Percy questioned.
They drug chairs from against the wall to around the table, and sat down. Percy making a point of not looking at the papers, while his partner did the exact opposite. Shan started reading, and occasionally marking things with a red pen.
"Regarding the Tsar and Tsarina... the Romanovs... there were considerations last years, but his majesty's government has for reasons newly gathered become exceptional in our concern for their safety." and Percy would have readily admitted in hindsight perhaps not sending for the Tsar had been a mistake... he just wouldn't admit the reasons at the time.
"The bolsheviks are bandits." Shan grumbled, "It is absurd that they were so successful... even with German money." The colonel complained before reaching into a drawer that slid out from table containing maps, and after taking a few minutes to search pulled out railway charts for central asia that delineated a line running from Urumqi into Russia. "The Line. New Line into Transoxiana, and then north its finished you are aware of this."
Percy shuffled, "Yes. Yes. I know that, and we're grateful." And they'd been paid upfront to build the line, which had made spring busy... never mind the unpleasantness in Tashkent in March. Certain unexpected expenses. "We need you to go to Omsk and from there to Ekatrinburg... to save the Tsar and his family, we think that the Bolsheviks will move them... or worse... if they think they'll lose the city... and frankly the Bolsheviks don't have much to hold the city to begin with but it was far from the fighting before now... and that's changed. We are sure that the Whites, and the Czechs can get there soon, but not soon enough that the Bolsheviks could do something ghastly." Percy shook his hands out in front of him.
A gesture that would have been quite unacceptable in the staid social circles of Victoria, and Edward before him... and probably not that acceptable back home. The war though had made a lot of things excusable.
The doors opened.
Shan wasn't a small man. The Zhili native made a point to participate in the rowing club when in garrison, and as a result there was no contest that the two englishmen were the short fellas in the room with the captain having not returned.
"Brother John." Cullen slung into a folding chair, and looked at the two khaki clad officers, "I heard something about needing to fetch wayward blue bloods back to jolly old england." He was looking at the Englishmen, "I mean thats one way to top what we did last year."
Lloyd George needed a win. Churchill didn't trust the Bolsheviks. The British needed something dynamic and the coalition government had in a gathering over drinks and cigars were looking for anything that might inflate support for the cause.
To that end there offers for support in kind. This wasn't the sort of thing Lloyd George's government could authorize exorbitant sums of greenbacks for but transfers of the latest arms and patent rights and other things well those could shuffled off in contracts as 'for the war effort'. The war had produced a lot of goods.
There were unsavory parts of negotiations involved. The British were offering things that they didn't have, or weren't really theirs but at the same time they were material that had been difficult to source the patents licensing for.
The UK though had in the interest of financing the war had along with French compelled their citizens to give up certain property holdings. The British treasure had reimbursed expropriation of foreign securities with their own notes but they had also had to issue threats as well to cajole the compliance for the war effort. The French had had other problems... more institutional ones even in the face of the supposed 'sacred union' their equivalent of Ordinance had screamed and their stamped their feet at the idea of adopting machine guns not designed by the state arsenals, but that was to be expected. The French had had to expropriate ownership of foreign securities as well, but there had been less of those and the value of the Franc was lower catastrophically lower than the pound was now... and that would be a problem in a years time.
That would have consequences in the post war, it would impact decisions made by governments after the 'war to end all wars' was made and of course there were to be consequences to all the decisions made up to this point. There would be consequences, little things, big things, things that would not truly show results for decades after the seeds had been planted.
--
Waite looked uncomfortable. Part of that was they wouldn't be taking artillery, Griswold was working over time, and he wasn't happy about that either. That was only part of it. A look at the map well... Russia was dissolving at the seams. There was an independent Tungus, Yakutia, Kamchatka, Chukotka... and more it wasn't just Percy he'd called into Vladivostok to talk to Iseburo... and well he'd intimated that there were going to do something... just that he hadn't said what.
"You ain't taking a lot of guys." There wasn't a lot of option there. It was a volunteer force of men and restricted to men with three years of experience. The lowest rankings would almost end up being the specialist ratings. There had been arguments over how this other sort of light company would even function. "This isn't the Philippines, and it ain't the Arizona territories neither."
"I know that." Allen replied. "Have you told Lansing yet?"
Waite scowled, "You ain't worried this is gonna get back to Reinsch before you can step off?"
He really wasn't, and besides, "That the secretary of state has been encouraging the company's expansion of military force?" He wasn't entirely sure what Lansing's intent was it could have been nothing more than the secretary believed in preparedness, but it wasn't a surprise either that Lansing had been expressing support for it. He wasn't the liberal midwestern professor and he better understood the realities of things... but Lansing's support made more sense why Waite had been so adamant about moving forward with expansion proposals when he'd been more cautious about expansion before.
Griswold had fabricated suppressors for their Mauser rifles, but had complained that as a result of the function of the action there was no practical way he could suppress their 1911s... and certainly not fast. They didn't have the time to wait for Liu or a response to Lewis about the potential engineering problems.
The tables were being outfitted with everything they might need otherwise. The tables full of equipment were not dissimilar to experimental sections drawn previously from 1
st Battalion's ranks... but this body of men would be disproportionately high in her ranks. There were colonels and majors cursing they weren't being allowed to go on this expedition.
... of course some of those were red legs complaining that engineers were coming but with no battery attached to the company this wasn't 1913.
"this is not you taking some body of Philippine scouts into the brush, this is not some volunteer force riding off at dawn."
"The first one maybe not, but for all intents and purposes it is the second." Allen shrugged, "I see no practical difference to this. Now have you told Lansing or not?"
"No I hadn't told... not in so many words about this fool thing. How the fuck I am supposed to explain it, other than you're going to be unavailable. God damn it you saw what Yamagata wrote about Russia."
The words on the paper weren't wrong, if anything it was too damned polite of a description of the mess. "I am sure you agree that it is truly worrisome that the situation in our neighbor" [Russia] "Grows worse every day." Yamagata Aritomo.
--
Notes this has been quite a ways coming, the Romanov Rescue was teased a long while ago with the trio of segments in the misc thread of July 1918. And indeed as I've said though its been a while this is the conclusion of the Arc a year after the failed manchu restoration though there is an epilogue touching on 1919 that leads into the broader events of that year.
And of course this is also an explanation to having late ww1 era gear and data of the end of the war as an explanation. The British hand it over, just as they handed over, just as the French handed over, the japanese, the Italians and the US to their respective allies. The exchange of military or industrial technology at this stage was not what it was in two and three decades where governmental control of IP is much closer to what we have now. This goes to the thing with the Browning 1918 machine gun providing the TDP for foreign production during the war was not subject to the same legal protections on patents as it was during peace time.
This is part of what comes out of the global changes that world war 1 brings in terms of international finance and the international industrial economy. World trade changes in so many ways. This doesn't end with the second world war, Atlee gives Stalin British Jet Engine Technology with no strings attached and frankly the British government transfers to the CCP much later in the cold war, and against Component Control, jet engine technology from Rolls Royce in the seventies with further transfers of engine tech in the eighties. If you look this violation with government sanction of the Component Control treaties is not unique to england. Japan, Norway, and France all violate their treaty obligations regarding the transfer of sub tech. Japan and Norway sell computer tech they had agreed not to do under internetional agreement. Toshiba and Kongsberg got into this huge scandal back in the eighties but in 1918 all that was undiscovered country no one was really thinking about it like that.
So this is why in opening of the following arc why we'll start to see things like F1s proliferate, where the Avtomat rifle will finally make an on screen appearance. That will never be common its too expensive to manufacture and it has similar problems when firing a full power rifle cartridge (I think that given its performance with the Arisaka round it would have done really well with the Carcano cartridge in terms of recoil impulse, but thats neither here nor there). Stuff showing up once the war ends, and we get into the high warlord era.
Now that being said, what will need to be mentioned is that in June of 1918 Lu Jianzhang is murdered in Beijing at the behest (or directly complancent) of Xu Shuzheng. By all accounts this is one of the major incidents of internal Beiyang factionalism that foreshadows the Anhui Zhili conflict that begins two years hence. The other factor is that though it hasn't been mentioned the 1918 Parliamentary Elections are now in progress, and this will be relevant to events in 1919 and 1920 since this election called by Duan who is currently PM is responded to principally by the Northern provinces and boycotted by the south (not the least of which is because Sichuan is currently in its own civil war, Hunan is being invaded by the north, and Yunnan is a military dictatorship). These elections will be important in both 1920 and 22, and to a lesser extent the early events of 1919 which will be more directly foreshadowed in the arc epilogue
The other event that occurs is also in relation to the Hunan Crisis is that Wu Peifu's friend and mentor Zhang Qihuang was a hunan magistrate and he seems to have convinced Wu to support peace talks. This is not when it occurs relevant to the cadre, its why its not mentioned, but Qihuang seems to have been the actual author of some of Wu's circular telegrams urging peace. Wu actually joins the peace faction before Cao Kun, and Wu's support for a native hunanese leader in the province may have played a role in convincing Cao Kun.
Alternatively, Cao's principle objective could have been maintaining railway control and he didn't care who was Dujun of the Province per se. There have been people who argue that this was Beiyang 3
rd Division Leadership Policy under Cao Kun and Wu Peifu, but it is complicated, and I do think that was a factor in their positions if not immediately then by summer 1918 as the elections for Parliament got underway.
That being said, Wu was a native of Shandong (specifically Penglai county, which had had been subject to Japanese occupation during the first war in 1895) his opposition to Duan was very likely influenced by that event as well when the Anhui Zhili war kicks off (in 1920). [And of course there were realistically a lot of factors that shaped the conflict.]