A lot had happened that past week. First had come the dreadful news of the sinking of HMS Queen Elizabeth, pride of the Royal Navy. The news had stunned the country, to be followed by an outpouring of anguish and fury, directed first at the Russians who had perpetrated this atrocity. Then, increasingly, at the politicians and top military brass who had allowed this to happen. Nearly 900 men and women, sailors and marine and army commandos—the commandos laden down with bergen rucksacks, body armor and weapons, as they were preparing to disembark—had died in minutes, when the ship went down.

It was a figure beyond the comprehension of a nation that knew only the flag-draped coffins of the comparatively few servicemen and women who had been repatriated from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This was a casualty count not experienced since the Second World War. And for the first time ever, large numbers of young women sailors were included in the list of mass casualties. Nor were there many bodies to mourn. Most were entombed inside the carrier, deep beneath the Baltic Sea.

The Ministry of Defense Press Office had done its best to focus on the many acts of heroism; such as the ship’s captain, Commodore Tony Narborough, who had gone down with his ship, and the Executive Officer, Commander James Bush, last seen desperately trying to rescue a young female sailor whose legs had been blown off when the first torpedo exploded under the ship’s magazine. But nothing could stem the growing tide of anger felt by a traumatized nation, which gradually mutated into a stubborn determination to fight back and not to take this outrage lying down.

Of course, Walker reflected, it was inevitable that Prime Minister William Spencer, himself in an advanced state of shock, should be subjected to a sustained attack from the media at the state Britain’s armed forces had been allowed to fall into under his leadership. It had not helped that the newspapers, with deliberate cruelty and despite Walker’s efforts, kept referring to it happening “on his watch.”

Armchair admirals pilloried his recklessness in dispatching ships into a war zone without adequate protection, especially when it became known that a couple more days would have seen a suitable NATO force arrive in theater. The same newspapers that first encouraged and then praised his leadership in sending the Queen Elizabeth were the ones that most viciously condemned him.

Prime Minister Spencer, ever the consummate politician, had instinctively tried to hang on to power. First to be sacrificed had been Mainwaring, the Chief of Defense Staff and, as head of Britain’s demoralized Armed Forces, an obvious and immediate bone to throw to his critics. He had been ignominiously sacked, without the consolation of a peerage, much to his humiliation and the fury of his wife.