Re: Blood and Iron - Chapter 571 571: Promises and Illusions

Mindanao, Near Jolo

The air was hot enough to sear flesh from bone. Even under the patchy jungle canopy, the U.S. column shimmered in the haze.

Helmets dull with sweat, Springfield rifles slung loose, eyes darting to every shadow.

The captain in charge of the company wiped his brow with a trembling hand. Thirty days of patrols.

Thirty days of endless humid hell, chasing ghosts through valleys that stank of rot and gun oil. Then the jungle erupted.

A sharp crack-crack-crack of Mauser rifles split the silence. A corporal two steps ahead pitched forward without a sound; his helmet bouncing twice on the packed dirt.

Another volley tore through the company’s flank, blood misting into leaves.

“Contact left! Pour it on!” the captain screamed, yanking his pistol from its holster. But already his men were scrambling, firing wild into the green void.

Somewhere to the right, a Browning automatic rifle chattered desperately.

Then came the rush: dark figures in loose shirts and red bandanas burst from the undergrowth, kris knives and old Spanish swords raised high.

They fell upon the stunned Americans with gleeful howls. The captain emptied his pistol into one who was close enough he could see a missing front tooth.

The man fell backward, but two more surged past.

A private shrieked as a blade opened his gut from hip to sternum. Another fell to the ground, clutching at a splintered shoulder where a bullet had slammed through.

The captain staggered, felt something cold and wet at his own side. He looked down to see crimson soaking his belt.

A Moro warrior with a bolo already pivoted away, searching for his next kill.

Rifle fire dwindled to sporadic pops. Screams echoed off the trees.

And then, just as suddenly, the jungle swallowed the attackers again; gone as quickly as they came, leaving only writhing bodies and the coppery stench of blood.

The Captain fell to his knees, gasping.

Twenty-eight gone… fourteen more wouldn’t see another sunrise.

He stared at the corpses scattered on the jungle trail; boys from Indiana and Maine, far from any shore they’d known.

Above, carrion birds began to circle.

A silent echo accompanied the hiss of breath which escaped his lungs.

“Why are we even here?”

—

New York, weeks later

Franklin Delano Roosevelt sat behind the polished oak desk of his suite at the Biltmore Hotel, the soft tick of a carriage clock mingling with the muted roar of Manhattan beyond the glass.

His hand drifted absently over a telegram from Manila. The words were sharp and pitiless:

Ambush near Jolo… 28 dead… 14 wounded… Moro rifles… loss of two field pieces.

The Philippines. The islands were a festering ulcer on the campaign trail; yet paradoxically, they were also his clearest wedge.

When the war broke out, Hoover had promised an easy policing action, claimed the Moros would lay down their arms once the broader insurrections ended.

Instead, they sharpened their krises and rifles on American columns, melted into jungle, and sent coffins home to Kansas and Ohio.

In another time, another place, perhaps FDR would have pitied the President. But the memory of thousands standing hungry outside shuttered banks on Wall Street had hardened his sympathy.

‘This is your fault, Herbert’,he thought, smoothing the telegram. ‘You and your party presided over a decade of excess without any lifeboats ready when the tide turned. Now you bungle colonial war as if it were a summer excursion.’

—

Albany

A radio sputtered on a mahogany console. A CBS man was reading out casualty lists from the Pacific, each name echoing across rooms where Roosevelt’s aides scribbled polls and precinct analyses.

Every fresh broadcast about Moro ambushes saw Roosevelt’s numbers tick upward.

Louis Howe stood near the window, cigarette smoldering between two nicotine-stained fingers. “Sir, it is grim to say so; but every boy who comes back draped in stars and stripes rather than marching under them… well, it is another nail in Hoover’s coffin.”

Roosevelt did not smile. His gaze fell to his leg braces, hidden by the dark cut of his trousers. The irony did not escape him.

He could not stand unaided on a parade field, but here he was, poised to send thousands more across oceans.

“How many funerals before it becomes my coffin instead of his, Louis? The people want bread first. They want the mills open. But if they see no honor in this war, no spoils worth the blood… they may turn on us just as quickly.”

“You will give them bread, Franklin. You have plans the party never even dreamed of. And as for the war; once it is yours, you can settle it. Cut a protectorate deal. Withdraw the boys home under victory arches.”

Roosevelt said nothing. Outside the window, the Hudson glittered with autumn gold steamers crawling southward.

Somewhere in that sprawl of rooftops, men still lined up at relief kitchens. Yet new workshops were hiring again, railroads were laying fresh ties, even auto plants in Detroit had reopened lines.

None of them knew why.

—

Campaign Train, Pennsylvania

A cheer went up as Roosevelt’s private car rolled to a halt outside a broad red-brick station. Farmers waved hats, mechanics in oil-stained overalls clutched cardboard signs: “Bring Them Home, FDR!”

When he took the small stage; carefully braced on his son’s arm—his voice carried far stronger than his legs ever could.

“This nation stands at a crossroads. We can continue to spill the blood of our sons across distant islands with no promise of profit, no banner of triumph; only more graves. Or we can demand accountability, demand strategy worthy of American lives, and put our house in order so no foreign power, no banking cabal, no distant empire ever again decides the fate of our people!”

The crowd roared. He smiled, sweat slicking the back of his collar despite the cool October air.

If only they knew who had already decided so much of their fate. Who had quite literally bought the factories that now rehired them, who extended quiet lines of credit that rebuilt their silent towns.

But that was a truth for another age. For now, there were ballots to win, soldiers to bring home; at least for long enough that the voters would not notice the next storm on the horizon.

—

Lisbon Harbor

The Elsa steamed gently through the broad Tagus River mouth, her hull gliding past squat fortress batteries and lines of whitewashed houses climbing the hills. Seagulls wheeled overhead, crying against the slate sky.

On the upper deck, Bruno von Zehntner stood by the railing, a hand idly resting on polished teak. The salt wind tugged at his open collar and tousled sun-bleached strands of his hair.

Below, sailors shouted to one another, preparing mooring lines. Somewhere aft, Heidi laughed with Elsa over a tray of sweet pastries, their voices carried faintly by the breeze.

But Bruno’s attention was elsewhere.

Beside him, an ornate shortwave radio set, custom-built for maritime receptions, crackled with the unmistakable cadence of American campaign broadcasts.

The English words tumbled through static, half-drowned by the gulls and the lapping water.

“…Pennsylvania crowds surging… ‘Bring Them Home, FDR’ echoing across the yards… another damning report from Manila… White House insists occupation continues…”

Bruno’s eyes narrowed just slightly, pupils pale and unblinking. He did not look away from the distant sprawl of Lisbon; its tiled domes, its towers crusted in centuries of sea salt and empire.

America stands at the same crossroads it always does, he thought. Drunk on her own promise, yet terrified to pay the bill that comes due when world order cracks.

Both the Democrats and the Republicans wanted war with Germany. It started with Coolidge and his first attempt to run for office.

But Hoover was the first to hold the crown that actually attempted to break free of German control over its institutions.

Hoover had been the one who silently waged war against the German Reich. Marking up foreign goods with massive tariffs, with no just cause.

Sending his Navy to cut across protected shipping lanes in the East Indies. Hell, he also signed off on clandestine support for the Japanese when the war broke out in the South Pacific.

Bruno saw it all, the Oval office was thoroughly bugged after all, every communication had from its sacred halls fed right back to Berlin. And through Berlin it found its way to his office in Tyrol.

This was one of the reasons his special operations worked behind the scenes sabotaging supply lines, and stockpiles within the Philippines.

Hoover was the cold hand that first reached for Germany’s throat.

Now Roosevelt preened as the new champion of the common man. Speaking of bread lines and relief checks, promising to balance the books while simultaneously threatening German assets abroad.

A man who would happily wave the same sword as Hoover once the opportunity arose, only with a poet’s turn of phrase instead of an accountant’s dry ledgers.

Bruno’s mouth curved into something that might have been a smile, but held none of its warmth.

Very well. Let Roosevelt have his election. Let the press that still is not under my control crown him savior of the working man. I have no quarrel with illusions; they are often more useful than facts.

His gloved fingers drummed once on the gunwale.

And when the next storm comes, I will grind him and his Marxist allies into the dirt so thoroughly that even the memory of their slogans will vanish. You will not die of polio in this life, old man. I will see to it that you do not die at all… Not until you have watched your party broken on the wheel.

The radio squawked louder for a moment. A reporter in New York was recounting Roosevelt’s latest promise to “redeem the sacrifice of American boys” in the Philippines by redoubling efforts to modernize the fleet.

Bruno tilted his head, expression almost curious.

“Ships,” he murmured aloud, his accent a low ghost threading the Portuguese air. “Always ships with you people. Always the idea that distance and hull steel will spare you from history’s obligations.”

He turned then, strolling aft toward where Heidi and Elsa sat with glasses of wine. Heidi glanced up, instantly alert to the shadow behind Bruno’s eyes.

He leaned down, brushed a kiss against her temple, and sank into the deck chair beside them.

“Lisbon by night is charming,” he said lightly, voice smooth as lacquer over iron. “We’ll dock by dusk. I thought perhaps we might dine at a little place off the Rua Augusta; I’m sure you will enjoy it.”

Heidi watched him carefully for a heartbeat, then simply nodded, slipping her fingers into his.

Elsa chattered on about the gulls, trying to ignore her parents and their shamelessness. And so the family sat beneath a soft, failing sun, Portugal’s ochre hills spilling away into deep shadow; while the future of continents weighed silent and heavy in Bruno’s chest.