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Through My Eyes - A TFH AAR

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daemonofdecay said:
Also, I'm going to die suddenly before I turn fifty - or so my doctor keeps telling me, but whats the point of living if I can't enjoy fried twinkles and mayonnaise?
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Good news for you! Twinkies will be no more, so maybe you'll live longer! ;)

Now, I noticed you left yourself an escape clause by not specifying by what Wednesday the next update will be ready, but may I ever so slightly bug you and respectfully inquire as to the status of said update? I would undoubtedly much enjoy reading it. :)
 
Karl-TitleBar-Redone.png

From Through My Eyes by Karl Ludwig Ritter von Weißbrücke


Book One - Chapter Seven

Training for a war that is already underway is a very unique experience. The best comparison I can think of is passing by a drunk vomiting in a gutter on your way into a bar. You know that in a few hours that it is going to be you there lying in a puddle of your own sick, but until then you can enjoy the fact that it isn’t you and order yourself another drink.

Of course that analogy really only works if you are a functioning alcoholic like myself, but that is a minor point.

The war was a looming threat that covered everything in my life in red, white, and black bunting. Flags and swastikas were everywhere, along with Hitler’s face and posters of impeccably well-dressed soldiers beating the tar out of the British and French. One couldn’t go into any bar near the base without some damned fool belting out an incoherent version of Horst-Wessel-Lied and trying to pick a fight with anyone who didn’t sing along.

Which could be quite entertaining, in its own way. After all, the song is as stodgy and boring a piece of political music to ever be created, which is a winning combination if one is trying to conduct a drunk chorus of tone deaf soldiers while also intoxicated. Hearing a devoted brownshirt slur out “er scheissen” instead of “erschossen” is pretty amusing.

Well, it is pretty amusing the first dozen times it happens. But hearing the same mistake occur twenty or thirty times in a single night will drive anyone with a love for music to seek the cold comfort of a Luger barrel. In my experience there is an inverse relationship between ones patriotism and one’s taste for quality music – which could explain why waltzes were so popular just before the Great War.

Now I consider myself a fairly cultured individual. While I do love Back, Strauss (any of them, really), and Mozart, I musical love is American jazz. Which, for those deprived youths who grew up on Elvis and the Buggles,1 is the sublime genre of music that birthed that nonsense you listen too.

Jazz is music of the individual, where improvisation is a necessary skill and the composition is as fluid as ones emotions. Unlike the classic works like Beethoven, jazz is an entirely different experience every time one hears it. The same piece played by the same musicians in the same venue can come out entirely different depending on something as ephemeral as what mood they are in at the time. Men like Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk2 are glorious embodiments of what music can be. Their skills were even more impressive than their names.

Before the war it was a singular pleasure to enjoy a live jazz band from the United States. But even before the war jazz was not something the Nazi’s were prone to tolerate. Jazz, being music created by Negroes and Americans – I’m not sure what the Party considered worse – was obviously degenerative noise that Germany could not tolerate. It had to be countered with something suitably German; something big, loud and militaristic. Thus instead of jazz we were given… Wagner.

Wagner, Wagner, Wagner. What is on the radio? Wagner. What is that marching band playing? Wagner. What are those adorable children learning to sing? Wagner. And when it wasn’t Wagner it was some talentless clod trying to emulate Wagner. Taking a lady out became much more painful for myself during the war. Once the efforts to stamp out jazz and other degenerate musical styles took hold, the few places I could take a lady to that wouldn’t earn me a slap (or a knee to the groin, depending on how feisty she was) were the more prominent clubs which, to cater to their Party clientele, decided to ditch the music one could enjoy and dance to. Instead they were going to play what everyone hated yet was expected to sit around and listen too quietly. After all, it was Hitler’s favorite composer! And if there is one man I trust to judge musical quality, it’s a failed Austrian painter who has spent a few months under constant artillery barrage.

Frankly, I think the reason his liked Wagner so much was because some shrieking and overweight imitation of a valkyrie was one of the few things he could actually hear.

The Nazis cost me many things in my life, but it demonstrates just how destructive and dangerous they were when they could ruin something as simple as music. To this day I’ll go to great lengths to avoid a Wagnerian piece. Wagner became synonymous with the war: news broadcasts would use Wagner or party approved songs written to sound like Wagner during broadcasts and throughout the day. The news that the Netherlands fell was bookended by Wagnerian opera. The conquest of Belgium was followed immediately by some overweight singer trying to scream her way to success. Wagner and the looming war were inseparable.

So even when I was desperate to distract myself from the ongoing war by seeking the solace of a woman’s touch, I was assaulted by music that only reminded me that soon I would be on the front, puttering around in a car wrapped in tinfoil and trying to get angry, well-armed men to shoot at me.

Unsurprisingly, my adjutant Victor was not as bothered by our inescapable fate as I was. He positively giggled with excitement during the daily news broadcasts, bringing to mind the image of a child on his first trip to the fair. Whenever I heard a piece of propaganda so blatantly false that I wondered how anyone could ever believe it, I was always reminded by Victor that some people couldn’t outsmart a salmon with a learning disability. Like a child promised a treat by a teacher if they got a question right he would sit by the radio with rapt attention even as he squirmed in place: trying to do his patriotic duty and listen to the news – and I use the term loosely – while unable to resist how excited it made him.

“Karl! Did you hear? The allies are planning to invade the Low Countries!” he told me one spring morning, his obvious eagerness to pass on the information trying to break through the gravely serious expression he was wearing. I have to say that his attempts to try and look suitably grim were quite amusing, although the effect was ruined by his needing to bother me with his breaking news.

“Yes, so I heard,” I replied as I signed another report too important to trust to my adjutant. I was hoping that he might grow disappointed at the fact and drive him to inflict his presence upon some other unfortunate being, but he wouldn’t be dissuaded so easily.

“I just can’t believe the British! After all that talk about protecting national neutrality and what have you, they plan on invading Belgium and the Netherlands themselves! It’s… it’s despicable, that’s what it is! Dastardly! Betraying the neutrality of a nation that wants no part in a war – I mean, how could an entire nation – no, two nations! - sink to such craven depths?”

“Uh-huh. So, did you happen to hear the rest of that news report, Victor?”

“Germany is going to have to prevent their nefarious plans from coming to fruition by invading them first, of course!”

I would like to tell you that at that point a bit of my faith in my fellow man shriveled up and died, but that would be nothing more than a humorous lie; I’d never had much faith in my fellow man to begin with, and whatever I had been born with was long gone by the time I could wipe my ass without assistance.

Book1Chapter07-Netherlands.png

So the spring of 1940 was spent practicing maneuvers, waiting for our heavy equipment to reach us (which was much delayed by the fact that the best stuff was being sent to the divisions in combat), training the new recruits, and listening to Victor struggle to understand international relations instead of jazz.

However, all was not lost. Otto, being a man of fine musical taste (i.e. a greedy self-serving weasel), was able to secure for me a collection of jazz records for a very reasonable fee. They weren’t of the highest quality, but then, when put up against something as terrible as listening to Victor attempt to parrot whatever Dr. Goebbels was telling the nation, even a tone-deaf cat choking on a sparrow sounded like Marlene Dietrich. Those records were a godsend at the time; a reminder of what music had been like before the Nazi’s had bludgeoned ever talented musician to death with a bust of Richard Wagner.

And more importantly, they were something one could dance too. Being able to invite a woman back to your quarters for some dancing and decent music was a blessing. Any man who has gotten the goodnight kiss at her door after a few dates knows that women can be quite obstinate when it comes to letting a man into their home. But a woman is much more open to the thought of taking a peek into your living space, especially when the man is careful to suggest a reason for it which is totally benign and in no way related to getting her naked and in your bed.

General Karl’s Life Lesson #14: Good music and good wine are the paths to a good woman and a good time. If that fails, then it is flattery, falsehoods, and flowers that lead to fornication.​
​





1: I believe he means the Beatles. In fact, I am pretty sure he knew exactly what they were named and deliberately misspelled it that way just to annoy people.

2: The General is surprisingly knowledgeable about jazz. Like his talent for chess it is something that only rarely comes up and seems quite at odds with his personality and character. Actually, I take that back: his elitist air and arrogant dismissal of any music created after the end of the 1950s made without a trumpet or a saxophone matches his ego perfectly.

 
Stuyvesant said:
Good news for you! Twinkies will be no more, so maybe you'll live longer! ;)

Now, I noticed you left yourself an escape clause by not specifying by what Wednesday the next update will be ready, but may I ever so slightly bug you and respectfully inquire as to the status of said update? I would undoubtedly much enjoy reading it. :)
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It should be finished soon. *whistles innocently*

KLorberau said:
Eagerly awaiting our Hero's exploits. But do handle the real life events first. I would hate for this great story to just stop like so many of my favorites do (sometimes I think my interest in an AAR causes some malignant cancer which causes it to die. Dammit!). Only kidding. Keep it going when you have the time .....
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Yeah, sometimes it can be hard to make the time to write. But honestly, I had most of this chapter done on Wednesday, but I needed to finish it up first, etc. But it's out now!

Forster said:
This is great, I too will follow it.
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Thanks!
 
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daemonofdecay said:
Sorry for slow updates this week, been moving stuff out of my apartment and moving my parents into their new place, which has been sucking up my free time. And my delays have nothing to do with XCOM also having come out recently. Updates shortly.

I was always partial to the "Just hang in there" kitty poster.

<Snip>
Thanks!
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My favorite has always been the "Patience my ass, I'm going to go out and kill something." Of course in this day and age saying that could get you a visit.

Love this AAR. I tend to be sarcastic, something my wife used to appreciate but now does not think it funny when I make comments about her coworkers and friends. :rolleyes:
 
Finnally caught up. I love this guy and am looking forward to whatever mischief he will get into.
 
Excellent update as always....but I must complain.................It's about time!! (Only kidding). Glad you have it up and running again. It has been so long since the last update I almost forgot how it started!! Do try if possible to break up the text with some more photos or maps or whatever.......my eyes start to glaze over with so much text without a break.
 
daemonofdecay said:
Hearing a devoted brownshirt slur out “er scheissen” instead of “erschossen” is pretty amusing.
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Rather clever. Especially when (after a quick consultation of Wikipedia) it turns out that the first line of the second stanza is: Die Straße frei den braunen Batallionen.

The brown batallions, "erscheissen" by the Reds and Reactionaries. :)
 
Forster said:
My favorite has always been the "Patience my ass, I'm going to go out and kill something." Of course in this day and age saying that could get you a visit.

Love this AAR. I tend to be sarcastic, something my wife used to appreciate but now does not think it funny when I make comments about her coworkers and friends. :rolleyes:
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But at least you will have your smug sense of superiority to keep your company. It's all I need. *sniff* Honest.

Forster said:
Finnally caught up. I love this guy and am looking forward to whatever mischief he will get into.
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I'm glad!

KLorberau said:
Excellent update as always....but I must complain.................It's about time!! (Only kidding). Glad you have it up and running again. It has been so long since the last update I almost forgot how it started!! Do try if possible to break up the text with some more photos or maps or whatever.......my eyes start to glaze over with so much text without a break.
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Unfortunately I need to go in and fix my HoI3 folder, so I had a lack of screenshots to use. And I always try to keep it from becoming the dreaded "Wall o' Text" because that is just a pain and a half to try and read - especially without possessing the ability to indent properly, etc.

Stuyvesant said:
Rather clever. Especially when (after a quick consultation of Wikipedia) it turns out that the first line of the second stanza is: Die Straße frei den braunen Batallionen.

The brown batallions, "erscheissen" by the Reds and Reactionaries. :)
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It was my attempt at being more clever than I really am. I'm just glad some people actually got my poor attempt at a bilingual pun.

Capt. Tane said:
I don't know the song but "er scheissen" means "he shitting" (literally) and "erschossen" means shot/executed.

edit: Looked it up on wiki and understand the nuance now.
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I had to try and justify all those semesters of German in High School and college somehow. And making a poop joke is about as high as I can aspire, really.
 
Love the update. A great look into the down time of soldiering. I can picture the bars you're describing. Brilliant job
 
daemonofdecay said:
I had to try and justify all those semesters of German in High School and college somehow. And making a poop joke is about as high as I can aspire, really.
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Ah, it gave me the opportunity to use my rudimentary knowledge of German, which was nice (knowledge of German whilst living in the Netherlands - useful. Knowledge of German whilst living in the US - rather limited). :) And poop jokes, if properly handled, can be things of beauty. Alfred Packer had a running gag in his CK/EU3 Crovan AAR about Crovan rulers getting assassinated in the outhouse. The highlight was one dying king's limerick about defecating on his assassin's head (he'd been hiding out beneath the outhouse).

Anyway... Onwards with the AAR. Besides making crap jokes, I see that Karl has a nice penchant for alliteration, as well.
 
loki100 said:
a rather jolly musical interlude but one fears that Karl will, after all, have to take part in the war soon?
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Quite soon, in fact. Although I could argue that his hesitance to get to the war itself has something to do with his own cowardice, and not my own heel dragging. It's is absolutely a literary decision. Yep.

Jagdpnzr said:
Love the update. A great look into the down time of soldiering. I can picture the bars you're describing. Brilliant job
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Well thank you. I sometimes feel that I might try to describe a place a bit too hard (or not enough, as the case may be) and might be turning my words into molasses.

Forster said:
The audience sits waiting expectantly.
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Should have an update up today, actually. Working on it right now, in fact. Still have more work to do this weekend but Thanksgiving has given me some time to write.

Stuyvesant said:
Ah, it gave me the opportunity to use my rudimentary knowledge of German, which was nice (knowledge of German whilst living in the Netherlands - useful. Knowledge of German whilst living in the US - rather limited). :) And poop jokes, if properly handled, can be things of beauty. Alfred Packer had a running gag in his CK/EU3 Crovan AAR about Crovan rulers getting assassinated in the outhouse. The highlight was one dying king's limerick about defecating on his assassin's head (he'd been hiding out beneath the outhouse).

Anyway... Onwards with the AAR. Besides making crap jokes, I see that Karl has a nice penchant for alliteration, as well.
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That is my fault. I have an unhealthy love for alliteration when I write. It's a tragic trait told throughout the text atop this tale.

Which is really odd, considering I also have a relationship with poetry somewhere between ambivalence and antipathy.
 
BTW, I checked the start to see, it looks like you are using vanilla FTH, but made some tweaks of your own. Did that include the US lua? Belgiumruler's aar "Atlantic Dream - a Nationalist Spain AAR" discovered the USA lua is not working correcly.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...ntic-Dreams-a-Nationalist-Spain-TFH-AAR/page4

If you aren't planning to invade the US or expect a large US force helping the allies, it might not happen.
 
Forster said:
BTW, I checked the start to see, it looks like you are using vanilla FTH, but made some tweaks of your own. Did that include the US lua? Belgiumruler's aar "Atlantic Dream - a Nationalist Spain AAR" discovered the USA lua is not working correcly.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...ntic-Dreams-a-Nationalist-Spain-TFH-AAR/page4

If you aren't planning to invade the US or expect a large US force helping the allies, it might not happen.
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Hmmm... might have to look into a fix then. My "mods" are really just simple tweaks to suit my needs, like making the Waffen-SS brigades Panzergrenadiers, making the Guards motorized, adding names, etc.
 
Karl-TitleBar-Redone.png

From Through My Eyes by Karl Ludwig Ritter von Weißbrücke


Book One - Chapter Eight

I received much attention, in the press and from other officers, for my habitual practice of storing an anti-panzer weapon on or near my person throughout the war. Being a Hauptmann I certainly had men under my command whom I could have ordered to carry the heavy things themselves; doubly so once I was being held up as a hero to the Fatherland. The answer is simple and perfectly illustrates the downside to having a heroic public persona.

For you see, dear readers, many of my photographs taken for propaganda purposes early in my career showed quite clearly a bundled Model 24 grenade strung from my belt. It was heavy, impractical, and of dubious effectiveness, but it formed a striking visual accoutrement for as highly ranked an officer as myself. No other officer was as brave (stupid) as myself to keep a couple kilos of extra explosives hanging from ones hips. I wish I had known how much trouble those early pictures would cause.

But against my wishes the popular image of “hero Karl Ludwig Ritter von Weißbrücke, White Knight of the Fatherland” 1 was intrinsically linked to the damned thing right from the beginning. The mystique that grew up surrounding me was of an officer fighting side by side with the men, sharing in their risks and hardship: if they were to carry such burdens, then the White Knight would as well!

All lies and slander, of course, but once a myth is created it is hard to change another’s mind. Many who have met me have often asked about that grenade and why I started carrying it around. The truth is that the myth of the hero Karl von Weißbrücke started with that grenade. And that myth began with a very practical concern: enemy panzers.

For those who are ignorant of such things, the early days of the Second World War were marked by the supremacy of the panzer. Infantry were nearly impotent when facing down a multi-ton beast of steel and cannon. When attacked they had little with which to protect themselves. Artillery could be used in a pinch, but like anti-panzer cannons, they were rare and not available to the average man on the front. Weapons a soldier could carry, like large-bore rifles, had become useless the moment militaries stopped considering tinfoil as adequate protection.

Panzers were and are the best means of destroying other panzers. Military doctrine of the day had Germany concentrating her panzers into large divisions to smash through the enemy lines and cause havoc in the rear. And the invasions of Poland, France and the Low Countries demonstrated that it was indeed a wonderful strategy. But it also meant that the best means of defending oneself against Allied panzers was often a hundred kilometers away rampaging through French supply depots. Even though it helped end the campaigns quickly, panzertruppen gleefully crushing champagne and kepis beneath steel treads wasn’t very useful to a soldier being chased by some mad Scotsman in a forty-ton beast of armored death

A man-portable solution was necessary. The military, in its benevolent genius, found a wonderful ersatz solution. When one grenade lacked the power, why not tape six more explosive heads to the same grenade and use that? It was a cheap, simple, and quick solution to a problem – military thinking at its best.

Now, how about a joke? Tell me if you have heard this one: what do you get when you take an aerodynamic explosive projectile able to blow up a room, and strip away its aerodynamic abilities by adding more explosives and weight until it can barely be thrown to the other side of a closet, but is now capable of blowing up a garage?

You get what started me on the road to fame and cost me a week of drunken partying and carnal pleasure.

Yes, that is the punch line. No, you’re not supposed to laugh. Although I always thought crying softly was an appropriate response to the joke that was our ‘bundled’ grenades.

Book1Chapter08-Grenade.png

Soldiers of the Großdeutschland division train with a bundled Model 24 grenade​

By taking the heads off of six Model 24 grenades and wrapping those around an intact seventh grenade with chicken wire the Heer created a weapon with an explosive radius and throwing distance that were about equal. It was a weapon of such fearsome reputation that only a fool would ever try to use one in combat.

You needed the kind of fool that blurred the lines between stupidity and bravery.

__________​

“But sir, I don’t understand why I need to train with the grenade,” Victor repeated as he hefted the weight of the ersatz grenade in his hand. “Surely this is a job for a common soldier?” My second in command stood in a shallow pit on the edge of the firing range. A waist-high wall of sandbags stood just behind him, a dividing line between the safety of the trench and the cratered dirt of the range.

“Victor, you are my adjutant, are you not?” I asked him, keeping my tone easy as he shifted the grenade from hand to hand. At that moment I was quite jealous of Otto, who had decided to remain with the car parked nearby. Victor failed to notice when I stepped to the side to place a good portion of a tree between us. Even with his uncharacteristic display of common sense at the moment, I was still very nervous letting him handle such large amount of explosives. Thus, unable to use the engine of a large Mercedes like Otto, I would have to look to a rather pathetic oak for protection in the case of any accidents.

Victor might have seemed like the worst possible candidate to train in the use of a large and hastily engineered explosive device, but that’s because he was. However my options were limited at the time. My devotion towards self-preservation meant I wanted to have a means of protection against enemy panzers handy once we went to the front, but I’d be damned if I was going to carry the thing. It was heavy, it was dangerous, and it required being close enough to hug the panzer it was meant to destroy.

Considering that, leaving my pet monkey in charge of the grenade was a fairly significant risk, but a risk taken out of necessity. I had other soldiers in my headquarters company that had suitable weapons themselves, of course, but most of them had duties that did not entail always working within a few feet of me. I needed someone from my ‘inner circle’, as it were – although using such a name for the men who surrounded me is a disservice to the word. Otto wouldn’t risk his life to protect mine, but then the feeling was mutual, so I couldn’t begrudge him that. And giving Klemp something new to whine and complain about would was not something I was going to consider except in extreme conditions.

I needed someone who was never more than arm’s length away and who could be turned into a self-sacrificing hero – or momentary distraction – while I fled. That left Victor. And I was not going to trust him to carry any kind of explosive without knowing he could manage to use the thing and survive. Thus I had dragged him out to the training range, handed the man-child the grenade, and told him to throw it at the target – a rough outline of a panzer made of poor-quality wood and cheap paint twenty paces away.

Yet to my great annoyance his blind obedience to orders did not seem to extend to those commands where there was a real risk to bodily injury.

“Well, yes, of course I am your adjutant. And very honored because of it! But-“

He wasn’t making any more to throw the grenade and I didn’t want to be there all afternoon. I needed to ramp up the rhetoric.

“And are you not a loyal soldier of the Fatherland?” I snapped, cutting him off mid-sentence.

“O-of course, Hauptmann! I’m not saying-“

“You say you are a loyal servant of the Fatherland,” I stated accusingly, “yet here you stand, presented with a chance to demonstrate your devotion, but all you can do is offer excuses!”

“I’m not trying to exc-“

“Victor, you know you have a duty. You know you cannot let your family down. You’re a soldier of Germany and you need to embrace your honorable profession. So once again, Leutnant – I order you to throw destroy that British panzer!” I jabbed my finger at the mock panzer as my voice grew louder.

“But Hau-“

“Do it! Throw the grenade!”

“But si-“

“He’s almost on top of us Leutnant! Throw it! Throw it now!”

“I DON’T KNOW HOW!” he screamed.

__________​

The fake panzer swayed in the breeze. I blinked at Victor a few times. “What?”

“I… I never used grenades during training,” Victor admitted as shame dripped from his features. “My instructors never… never really let me near the explosives. I never understood why. I mean, sure, there had been some accidents during training. Philip and Jan never forgave me for shooting them in the feet, but anyone could have forgotten that that maschinenpistole was loaded. But then they also blamed me for Luis injury, when he clearly backed himself into my bayonet. And then that fire in the barracks when I was on duty, but that was just a faulty s-“

“Yes, yes, I get the point!” I said irritably. I had made the error of assuming Victor possessed a basic level of competency once again. Removing myself from behind the tree I dropped down into the shallow trench beside Victor. “Give me that!”

With a sigh of relief Victor deposited the grenade into my gloved hands. “I can’t believe I’m stuck giving basic training to an officer,” I grumbled as I spun the grenade around to show him the cap at the bottom of the wooden handle. “Now pay attention, I’m only going to do this once. To arm the grenade, first you unscrew this cap.”

A small string with a bead on the end fell from the open shaft of the grenade. “After that you tug the wire hard to arm the grenade, and then you throw it. Tug the wire, throw the grenade. Victor, do you understand?”

“Of course I understand, sir,” he huffed. “It’s simple enough once you explain it. I’m not an idiot, you know.”

“I’ll be the judge of that. Just remember: unscrew the cap, pull the wire, and throw the grenade. You’ll only have a few seconds, so make sure you throw it quickly and far enough away before it goes off. Now, show me how it is done.” I placed the cap in his hand and then offered him the grenade handle first.

“Sure thing, sir. I know what to do know now,” Victor announced proudly as he picked up the cap and then reached out to take the grenade from me.

Fate is not a fickle mistress: she is a sadistic manic-depressive with a cruel sense of humor and a fondness for screwing with those who are named after pointless pieces of Silesian infrastructure. One day she is batting her eyelids at me and making provocative motions with her hips, and the next she is trying to remove my spleen with a heated railroad spike while reciting Goethe backwards.

And yes, before anyone asks, I have seen more than a few doctor’s about my unusual dreams.

Due to the efforts of that pitiless harlot Fate, what had been a simple act of training would turn into a moment of sheer panic and terror – and the first step on a road to the undeserved label of hero.

As Victor’s fingers slid around the grenade’s handle, Oberstleutnant Batz and his new second-in-command Hauptmann Bauman happened to drive past Otto relaxing against my staff car. From what he told me later he had finally managed to fix the engine on the vehicle and decided to make sure it was still working by driving around the base in a short lap, which happened to take him past the training grounds. I assume he was a little surprised to see one of his battalion commanders spending time on the range as he ordered Bauman to slow down to observe what we were up too.

At that exact point is when his car backfired, causing Victor to pull his hand back in surprise – with the pull cord dangling from his fingers.

General Karl’s Life Lesson #15: Never hand a grenade to anyone else without first ensuring the closing cap on is sealed and the arming cord is not exposed.​
​


It took me roughly a lifetime to spot the removed cord and realize that I held an armed grenade in my hand. An armed grenade, let me remind you, with enough power to threaten enemy panzers. Now, once I discovered that piece of information, I acted quite quickly. And there are two versions of events. I will let the reader decide which they prefer.

From Batz’s and Victor’s recounting, once I realized that the grenade was armed I shouted a warning to everyone else before pulling Victor over the sandbag wall a moment before the grenade detonated, saving both of our lives in a display of quick thinking and raw heroism.

My memory is slightly different. Upon discovering the grenade was armed I wet myself while making a noise between a squawk and a gurgle. My priorities taken care of I then dropped the grenade and made a mad lunge for the nearest exit – which happened to be on the other side of the blond oaf’s body. In my desperation to push past the fool I instead slammed into him with enough force to break a rib upon his knee and knocked both of us over the wall in tangle of limbs. A second later my pathetic cries were silenced when the grenade exploded less than a meter from my tender body, knocking me unconscious.

__________​

I came too moments later with Batz, Baumann, Victor, and Otto standing above me, each calling my name. Bleeding from the ears, concussed, and with wet trousers, I did what any man in my situation would have done: I stopped crying long enough to look Victor straight in the eyes and called him a brain dead ape before passing out once again.

The more astute readers amongst you might realize then that I did survive the entire episode. And Victor, who had been shielded by my body and thus escaped unharmed (the lucky bastard), was quick to spread the story about how I had saved him from certain death with an act of self-sacrifice. To this day I have no idea how he avoided spending time in the infirmary; while he got to brag about being saved from almost certain death I had injured eardrums, three broken fingers and a broken rib.

But I had survived, and my actions had earned me three life-long rewards:

  • The absolute loyalty and “friendship” of Victor.
  • A medal and an undeserved reputation for bravery.
  • Tinnitus.

Some readers might now suggest that my cynical outlook is forced. ‘After all,’ they might say, ‘did you not just survive a near-death occurrence? Did you not gain a medal and a strong boost to your already formidable reputation? Might fate have been working in your favor on that day?

In a word: no.

In three words: [EXPLETIVE DELETED] 2

Book1Chapter08-Train.png

Soldiers headed to the front - note the graffiti "England ahoi!"​

Fate had sadistic plans for me, it was clear even then. The day after I was freed from the infirmary the Großdeutschland division was on railcars headed to the western front. My planned last week of intoxicated sexual debauchery had been spent in a cot getting my bedpan changed by a gruff Bavarian nurse who looked like a shaved bear, and just as kind. I still have my doubts that she really needed to take my temperature that many times. I suspect she just had an unhealthy fascination with rectal thermometers, but my accusations were left uninvestigated.

So that is how I also ended up carrying that grenade myself.



1: The title of an early propaganda newsreel published about the General after his exploits in France. The name was the most disgustingly over-the-top nicknames granted to him by the press. Indeed, the title seems to have become both a source of amusement and embarrassment for the General. The full title is often used by the General when mocking the popular representation of him as a selfless hero.

However, I am conflicted. Having met the General and dealt with his eccentricities I know for a fact that he is a vain, arrogant, and self-serving lecher of a man. Yet despite his efforts to say otherwise the many stories about his acts of valor and bravery paint a wildly different picture. It is hard to believe that everything he has done has just been all fortune and misinterpreted actions.

2: I will not be responsible for letting that get printed.


 
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this keeps getting better and better! absolutely marvelous, in a vaudevillian sort of way.
 
I love it. So, if you believe in the business theory of rising to your level of incompetence, how does he ever make it to General, never mind head of the Wehrmacht?
This will bear close watch. :laugh:
 
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