Re: Blood and Iron

Chapter 74: The Most Lethal Weapon of All



After two weeks of nonstop harassment via the use of constant shelling, sabotage, and just general humiliation. Bruno estimated that the inexperienced commander would have broken by now. And would no doubt be ordering a suicidal charge to eliminate the enemy before they could continue their assault.

Meanwhile, Bruno stood at the front lines, alert and ready. While his older brother Ludwig stood by his side. The man had dark circles around his eyes, clearly having not received a good night's sleep since the siege began.

No doubt kept awake by the ceaseless thunder of guns in the background. Bruno gazed upon his older brother and the poor state he was in. Making a comment as he did so, while gazing off into the fog which permeated in the distance. Preventing him from seeing what was happening beyond its boundaries.

"You better drink some coffee, or snort some cocaine. Because any minute now, the enemy will begin making their advance. The fog is the perfect cover for them to assault out trenches, and they won't have another opportunity to do so...."

Ludwig looked at his brother as if he was some kind of inhuman monster. The man was as energetic and as spry as a man could possibly be. Was cocaine really the answer to this? This was naturally not the case. Bruno was simply accustomed to war at this point.

But cocaine was indeed a stimulant that was issued by not only the German Army but all other major militaries across the world to keep their soldiers energetic and awake while at war.

A practice that would only fall out of favor after the Great War ended due to the side effects that became immediately apparent because of the overwhelming number of soldiers who were issued the substance in their ration kits.

Ludwig quickly did as Bruno suggested and sure enough the Red Army had begun its assault not long after. While Ludwig was waking himself up by adding cocaine to his coffee. Bruno had ordered a random machine gunner to fire a burst into the fog. In doing so, a scream could be heard. No doubt a soldier of the Red Army had been struck by the burst of fire.

Because of this, Bruno blew his whistle, signalling his troops to drop what they were doing and to prepare the counter for the enemy charge.

Thousands of men rushed to the edge of the trenches, with their rifles resting on the sandbags as they began to open fire into the fog. Meanwhile, Bruno pulled his luger out of his holster and chambered a round by pulling on its toggle lock action.

Once he had done this, he patted his brother Ludwig on the steel dome which the man wore on the top of his head and smirked at him.

"Is this the excitement you were looking for?"

Ludwig was terrified as he saw thousands of Red Army soldiers pouring through the fog with their bayonets attached. All the while they were cut like ribbons by the machine guns, and rifle fire that tore through their ranks without mercy.

He had never seen something so gruesome in his life before. He was, after all, a soldier who had spent his entire military career in a time of peace. But this was war, an actual war. Though he wasn't cognitively aware of it at this time, when he made it out of Russia, Ludwig would have a far better understanding of what Bruno had been through all these years.

Meanwhile, Bruno no longer paid attention to his older brother and instead aimed down the sights of his luger. Not with one hand as was common in the era. But with two as was proper doctrine according to modern combat from the 21st century.

The control he had over the weapon was more significant as he fired a single shot down range. Piercing directly through the skull of a red army soldier who foolishly charged at Bruno with his bayonet drawn as if with one thrust of his weapon he would end the Revolution there on the spot.

The man fell directly in front of Bruno. No more than three feet away as his lifeless eyes and open mouth stared at the man who killed him. Bruno, of course did not give the man a second thought as he aimed his sidearm towards more oncoming men.

Shooting each and every one of them with absolute precision as they fell down along with those killed by the Iron Division's riflemen and machine gunners. Perhaps if the 50,000 or so Red Army soldiers had advanced from their own fortifications without the cover of fog to conceal them, then they all would have perished before reaching the Russo-German trench line.

However, they managed to advance a significant degree with the fog concealing their assault. Because of this, thousands poured into the trenches to combat the Iron Division and Russian Army in close quarters.

Something Bruno was all too prepared for as he reached towards his belt. Not for a bayonet to stab the enemy with. But rather interestingly enough for his entrenching tool. Which he pulled from its sheath and wielded as an axe against the intruders into his trench.

Ludwig was freaking out as he used his rifle to prevent a Red Army soldier from skewering him with his bayonet. The man didn't even see his little brother come up from behind his assailant until Bruno had coldly and mercilessly split the man's skull over with his sharpened spade.

Having just seen a man killed before his very eyes with a fucking shovel, Ludwig stared at Bruno in disbelief, who merely winked at his older brother before walking off where he continued to get up behind the Red Army and split their skulls open with his shovel as if it were a weapon of mass destruction.

As everyone tried to use their full length rifles, and the short sword length bayonets on the end of them to kill each other in the confined spaces of the trench. Bruno simply walked among them like death incarnate nimbly dodging the enemy's rather awkward thrusts and cracking their domes with his shovel.

A weapon which was sturdy, and sharp enough to cut through their skull, and the brain beneath with a single hit. Perhaps if these men had been wearing a steel helmet, the blow would have been less severe. But the cloth hats on their heads which bore the red star of the Bolshevik revolution did very little to prevent such a lethal strike from killing them.

One by one Bruno took the lives of the Red Army soldiers in the trench line, wielding a sharpened entrenching tool in one hand, and a luger in the other. Only stopping to swap out the spent magazine of his sidearm before shooting men in the chest and cracking their domes open as if they were pinatas.

Bruno's ability to navigate the trench was almost uncanny to the eyes of those who witnessed it. He saved many lives of his own soldiers, and those of the Russians as he marched along the frontlines, either putting bullets in the backs of the Red Army's soldiers who were attacking

his own.

Or outright smacking them in the skull with his entrenching tool, and in doing so killing them on the spot. Rarely would he need to give a man a second strike. The e-tool was after all lethal to those without a certain degree of protection on their heads.

Because of this, Bruno's soldiers ended up thanking him as he saved them from potentially being stabbed by an enemy's bayonet. But by the time they managed to recover from their near death experience he had already moved on, ending the lives of any communist he came across without mercy, and without remorse.

As the slaughter continued it became abundantly clear to the Red Army who had lost thousands, if not tens of thousands from the artillery fire and the machine guns spread as they marched through no-man's-land that this was a battle they would not be winning.

Because of this, the violence lasted for no more than ten minutes at the most before the Red Army called off their assault and began fleeing back to their own fortifications with their tails between their legs.

Naturally, Bruno would not allow the enemy to flee from his domain without suffering the consequences, and because of this he gave the order to all his men to open fire on those survivors who ran away from the Russo-German trench line.

In the end, after failing to succeed in their assault, the Red Army fled from the Russo-German trenches, only to be mercilessly gunned down from behind. Out of the 50,000 men who attempted the suicidal charge, less than half returned safely to their fortifications at

Tsaritsyn.

Meanwhile, the Russo-German losses were less than a tenth of those suffered by the Red Army. At the same time, these same men discovered that the entrenching tool was perhaps the most lethal weapon on the modern battlefield.