Reincarnated: Vive La France-Chapter 106: "The MAS-36? It wasn’t a bad weapon, right?"

The morning drills had ended with dull silence, not applause.

One squad had failed to breach a mock farmhouse door, their boots slipping on wet stone as they tried to swing the butt ends of their Lebel rifles against a wooden frame reinforced with old sandbags.

Another squad had frozen in the trench-clearing exercise five men in a narrow earthen corridor.

Rifles too long for the angles, knocking into each other like mismatched puppets.

One stumbled.

One cursed.

No one fired.

Moreau had watched all of it from the ridge, hands behind his back, his expression unreadable.

The wind caught his coat at the edges, flaring it like the wing of some ancient officer’s cloak.

Just tired.

Predictably tired.

Chauvet trudged up the slope toward him, boots caked in sludge, clipboard in hand.

He looked irritated.

Or disappointed.

Possibly both.

"They froze again," Chauvet said.

"I saw."

"They need something better than wood and bolt."

"They need more than that," Moreau replied. "They need instinct. Doctrine. And a weapon that doesn’t fight them when they need to move."

Chauvet looked out over the field, watching two junior officers arguing near a broken doorframe. "They need a miracle."

Moreau didn’t answer.

His eyes were already past 1935.

Back inside his quarters a modest cabin not far from the edge of the field he tossed his jacket over the back of the field chair.

Sat at the desk, and stared at the blank page in front of him.

He rubbed at his face, sighed, and pulled a sheet from a folder marked Ordonnance Internal Field Notes.

The title on it had been scribbled hastily.

Infantry Firepower. Tactical Reform Proposal (confidential, draft)

He tapped the pencil once.

Twice.

Then reached into the bottom drawer.

An older memo stamped and forgotten was clipped to the top of a dog-eared file:

"Request for more adaptable trench-clearing tools."

He remembered brushing it aside when he first saw it.

Now it felt like someone had left him a trail and he had simply been too blind to follow it.

He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes.

And there it was again.

The memory.

The one he’d buried for some time now.

A different desk.

A different life.

He could still smell the antiseptic polish of the modern lecture hall.

The screen behind him glowed with the image of surrender French soldiers near Sedan, 1940, hands above their heads, helmets aside.

Some smiled nervously for the camera, others looked dazed.

One soldier had no rifle.

Another had one slung over his back, muzzle down, like it belonged to a different century.

Moreau’s voice filled the room: "In war, doctrine collapses when it outruns firepower. We saw that in 1940. France had numbers, yes. Men, yes. But too often, we equipped them for the last war, and we asked them to win a new one with it."

A hand went up.

Bright-eyed, eager.

A student with square glasses.

"Professor, weren’t French rifles pretty accurate? The MAS-36? It wasn’t a bad weapon, right?"

Moreau had nodded. "Individually? No. The MAS-36 was accurate. Reliable. But accuracy is only part of combat. In street fighting, in close-quarters work speed, volume, and maneuverability matter more than a tight group on a paper target."

Another student leaned forward, skeptical. "So... are you saying France lost because they didn’t have submachine guns?"

A pause.

A slight smile from Moreau.

"No. France lost because no one believed they’d need them. Because they thought the Maginot Line would hold. Because they didn’t think about what the next war would require. Germany did. And they built for it. They trained for it. They armed for it."

There had been silence after that.

They all knew how the story ended.

Back in 1935, Moreau opened his eyes slowly.

He reached for a fresh sheet of paper and began to sketch.

The lines were clumsy at first a vague silhouette with an impossibly short barrel and an oversized magazine.

He scratched it out.

Began again.

It didn’t have to be revolutionary.

It just had to be real.

A short, compact weapon.

A machine pistol by name, but a lifeline in function.

Something a French soldier could sling over his shoulder, draw in a hallway, fire in a trench, or wield inside a crumbling house without needing to load a five-round clip under fire.

He began listing assumptions:

Caliber- 9x19mm.

Easier to supply.

Shared with other nations.

France didn’t use it widely yet, but it could.

Rate of Fire- 500 to 600 rounds per minute.

Any more, and it would eat through ammo and control.

Mechanism- Blowback.

No gas systems, no rotating bolts.

Just a simple design that could be built fast.

Magazine- Box-type, detachable.

20 or 30 rounds.

Side-fed for balance when prone.

Stock- Folding?

Fixed?

He wasn’t sure.

Folding was practical, but it added complexity.

He scribbled a note under the page:

Must survive mud, cold, sand, water.

Not for parade just for survival.

He cursed softly when the pencil lead snapped.

He stared at the lines again.

At the crude silhouette.

This wasn’t memory now.

It was improvisation.

Guesswork.

He couldn’t remember the MP 40’s internals.

Not clearly.

But he remembered the doctrine.

The way it moved in films.

The way it sat in museum cases, perfectly balanced.

Ge remembered how every history book had praised its simplicity. Its manufacturability.

Its elegance in brutality.

"We don’t need artisan steel," he whispered. "We need stamped war metal."

Three versions.

That’s how many he sketched before dusk.

The third was acceptable.

Passable.

Not production-grade, but coherent enough for an engineer to understand.

At the bottom of the final sheet, he jotted:

"For suppression and entry roles in urban environments, field testing recommended. Pilot concept, SMG-style. Model designation TBD."

He couldn’t label it an SMG.

The term would raise too many questions.

France didn’t even officially recognize that class of weapon yet.

Not without digging through scattered patents and foreign catalogs.

So instead, he gave it a sanitized name:

Pistolet Automatique de Proximité.

Modèle expérimental.

It sounded just vague enough to pass.

There was a knock at the door.

Chauvet stepped in, holding the readiness report.

He stopped at the sight of the sketches.

"You still alive?" he asked.

"Barely."

Chauvet tilted his head. "You designing something?"

Moreau didn’t answer.

He pushed the cleanest sketch across the desk.

Chauvet picked it up, squinted. "Looks like something from a German catalog."

"They’ll build one," Moreau said.

Chauvet frowned. "You mean... you think they’ll design this too?"

Moreau realized the slip. "Maybe. If they think the way I do."

Chauvet turned the paper sideways. "Short barrel. High-capacity. Looks like it chews ammo fast."

"It would."

"Perfect for clearing houses. Barns. Trenches."

"That’s the point."

Chauvet looked at him. "You think they’ll approve it?"

"No."

"Then why do it?"

"To give them the question."

Chauvet gave a short, dry laugh. "Well. That’s one hell of a question."

That night, after Chauvet left, Moreau tacked the drawing to the corkboard above his desk.

He didn’t label it.

He didn’t date it.

But below it, in small print, he wrote:

Designed for real war. Not for peacekeeping. Not for policy. For soldiers. For the moment France realizes it’s already too late.

He sat there long after the lamp went out, staring at the outline.

It wasn’t history.

Yet.

But it might be.