Re: Blood and Iron-Chapter 484: Minor Setbacks

There was a lot to be said about the inability of people to properly innovate. For whatever reasons, humans tended to cling to what had proven to work, even if it was no longer as functional as it had once been.

This was a phenomenon witnessed across all levels of human society, even among those at the top. And those were perhaps the worst offenders, as often times their refusal to embrace new ideas that were forward thinking rather than trapped in the past could be paid for with the lives of those beneath their authority.

And that was exactly what happened when despite being given a glimpse of the future of warfare, Pétain chose to order his men into positions just as they had done in the battle prior where their ranks were shattered quickly under the exceptional mobility of the enemy.

The Gallian Militia, once more made use of the same tactics, preceding their assault with a barrage of artillery on the enemy positions, before using small, lightweight, elite units to breach through the less fortified regions of Pétain's lines, and in doing so create an opening for the whole force to move through.

Jack Brown was an American veteran of the Great War, having joined up with the French Foreign Legion in 1914 after seeing his home country betray the world by staying in isolation, despite what he perceived to be a growing threat of imperialist governments.

He had survived the worst of the war, and was at Ypres where over a million French men died trying their best to pierce the stalwart defenses the Germans had erected in preparation for the conflict.

Yet when the war ended and he escaped with his life, he did not flee back to his homeland, no; he stayed in France, and was quick to join the Gallian Militia in its objective or restoring order to the country.

He had sworn to serve for Five years in the legion, and just because France collapsed within two did not mean, to him at least, that his oath was over. Because of this he found a home within the Gallian Militia, and had been seen as a big brother, or even an uncle of sorts to the younger men who had signed up to wave the banners of De Gaulle having been too young to fight in the Great War just before.

Now? He was leading men through the trenches in Pétain's territory, hoping Pétain's fall would convince the other so-called warlords to lay down their arms and enter a proper diplomatic convention. freeweɓnovel.cѳm

Too much had been spilled in the lawlessness that followed the war, and he had personally killed too many men to remember. In his hands was an MP-34 submachine gun, a weapon he had scavenged from a German NCO after killing him during the Great War.

It was a weapon that had served as a secondary weapon until very recently, as storming trenches became more and more common. The man raised the muzzle of his weapon as he swept his sights past the trench opening, clearly hearing the loud chug of a .50 firing at his own men who were still trying to come over the wall.

With a silent signal of his hand, and signalled to the boys behind him that they were going to advance forward and take out the machine gun's nest, and hopefully breach another gap. And then he stepped forward, behind the wall of the trench that concealed him, aiming down the sights of his weapon as he saw the unthinkable.

A group of Pétain militiamen aiming down BAR automatic rifles at him. Jack did not even have the time to let his final thoughts escape as he and his men were riddled full of bullet holes.

And not the mere 9mm he was packing, but the destructive 30-06 that the automatic rifles wielded against him were chambered in. He and his entire squad of "stormtroopers" were slain in a moment, and from then on, Pétain's militia regained control of the battlefield as these men walked through the trenches in squads armed with BARs and semi-automatic shotguns.

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De Gaulle was shocked when he heard that Jack was confirmed to have been KIA. The man had been by his side for 5 years, and he had said that he was there to fulfill the promise he had made to the legion, but in two months, when his contract ended he would be back home.

Despite the man being so much further below De Gaulle in the hierarchy, De Gaulle had recognized the name on the report instantly. He remembered those who were there in Ypres, those who had bled, survived, and stuck by him.

Losing Jack… It was like losing the soul of his entire force. And he was not the only one who felt this way…. After reading that, their assault had failed, and the army had been repelled by several battalions of Pétain's men armed with BARs and Auto-5 shotguns. De Gaulle reacted in a way which nobody expected.

His face was filled with defeat, as the letter confirming the death of Jack fell to the mud beneath his feet, stepped upon and torn apart by his own boots as he walked away.

"Give the order to retreat. We underestimated the firepower that the enemy possesses and we must admit defeat…"

Though nobody sighed in relief, many were thinking of doing so, as the moment the French forces deployed their more advanced weapons in a way that fit their utility, the Gallian Militia was slaughtered.

As a result of this small change in doctrine, Pétain's forces had suddenly become the predominant power in France's post warlord state. As a result, de Gaulle either needed to find a solution to these weapon systems, or find a way to advance his own arsenal altogether.

Either way, the gaps in the hand-me-downs and surplus equipment his men had been using until now became abundantly clear in this battle, and unfortunately it took the lives of many of his own men, some of them invaluable to prove.