Re: Blood and Iron - Chapter 623: The Soldier of Tomorrow

Chapter 623: The Soldier of Tomorrow

The testing grounds at Innsbruck were quiet that morning, save for the muffled thuds of rifle fire echoing off the surrounding peaks.

The snow had been packed hard under the boots of the engineers, forming a crude parade square where the latest fruits of the Zehntner war machine were being demonstrated.

Bruno stood with his hands clasped behind his back, Feldmarschall Sepp Dietrich and a cluster of senior ordnance officers flanking him.

In front of them, a soldier stepped forward, the new model infantryman.

Gone were the plain wool tunic and leather webbing of yesterday’s armies.

In its place, a garment in the Blumentarn pattern, its surface oddly smooth, almost waxen to the touch.

I was made from a durable blend of cotton and polyester, featuring a ripstop weave.

Spun in the Zehntner chemical works, lighter than linen, but strong enough to endure the wars to come for decades.

Over this sat the real revolution: a body armor system consisting of three hundred and sixty degree soft armor protection, with incorporated hard plates over vitals, and sides.

Primitive by the standards Bruno knew, but decades ahead of anything else in 1935.

Inspired by designs that would not exist for nearly a century, the carrier was patterned loosely after what in another life might have been called a Fort Defender 2.

The carrier’s panels held shaped plates, a composite made of E-glass and aramid synthetic fibers the plates were tested to stop rifle fire at fifty meters.

Not shrapnel. Not pistol rounds. Rifle fire. And it worked. Bruno had seen it himself. The rig was worn beneath a SMERSH-pattern harness, giving the soldier both armor and load-bearing capability without the bulk of traditional kit.

On the soldier’s head sat the second miracle: a helmet of smooth, matte feldgrau, boltless and rounded in the style of a K-Pot style hlemet.

A blumentarn cover concealed the natural feldgrau cover

Inside, suspension pads and a webbed liner absorbed shock far beyond any Great War-era Stahlhelm.

The composite shell was made from an aramid composite, making it both lighter and more protective.

“Weight?” Bruno asked without turning his head.

“Eleven kilograms for the full rig, Herr Zehntner,” the engineer replied. “Five for the carrier and plates, one for the rigging. The helmet itself is a little over a kilogram, and the uniform isn’t worth mentioning.”

Bruno gave a faint nod. “Acceptable. We’ll shave it down when production refines.”

Dietrich’s voice was almost reverent. “No other army has anything close to this.”

“That,” Bruno said quietly, eyes fixed on the armored figure, “is the point. Protection buys time. Time keeps men alive. And living men win wars.”

He didn’t add the other half of the thought, that this was just the first iteration. In his mind, he already saw the generations that would follow: lighter, stronger, more integrated, until the average German infantryman of the future would look like something torn from science fiction.

—

The demonstration moved from the frozen parade square to the lower valley, where a cluster of E-10 wheeled armored personnel carriers idled in a neat column.

They were compact, low-profile vehicles, all sloped armor and broad wheels, designed to carry a full squad under armor at highway speeds.

A whistle cut the air. Hatches swung open, and soldiers in the new armor dropped from the carriers like clockwork.

Their rifles, too, were a modernization of the previous assault rifle. A sleek fusion of the Sturmgewehr 44 and a rifle that had yet to exist, the HK33.

The old Bakelite furniture was gone. In its place, polymer stocks and forearms, a redesigned fire control group for smoother, shorter pulls.

Steel-reinforced polymer magazines strong enough to withstand crushing weight, yet light enough to float in water were the new norm.

Even the charging handles had been re-engineered for ambidextrous use.

Each weapon wore a firing adapter at the muzzle, allowing the use of special paint rounds. But the sound and recoil were still enough to rattle the snow off the pine branches.

Across the valley, their OPFOR, regular infantry in standard wool uniforms and steel helmets, crouched in prepared foxholes, armed with semi-automatic rifles and light machine guns.

The whistle blew again. The E-10s roared forward, suspension swallowing the frozen ground.

At 200 meters, rear ramps slammed down, and the armored troops flowed out in practiced bounding maneuvers.

Fire teams fanned into cover, rifles barking in staccato bursts, as their SMERSH rigs kept ammunition and grenades tight against the body.

The difference was immediate and brutal, even in mock battle.

The armored troops advanced through fire that would have shredded a standard rifle company.

They moved faster, carried more, and stayed in the fight longer than the opfor could react.

Within minutes, the enemy positions were flanked, mock “casualties” piling up under the weight of accurate suppressive fire.

Bruno, watching from a heated observation stand, remained silent. Feldmarschall Dietrich allowed himself a small, smug grin.

The exercise ended with a signal flare. Not a single man in the armored platoon had been “killed” in the engagement. The OPFOR was annihilated in less than seven minutes.

“This is the future of war, Herr Zehntner,” Dietrich said quietly.

Bruno’s gaze stayed fixed on the armored figures regrouping at the E-10s. “No,” he replied.

“This is only the beginning.”

—

The lamps in Bruno’s study burned low, casting long shadows over the shelves of books and rolled blueprints stacked against the walls.

A decanter of brandy stood open on his desk, untouched. His eyes lingered on the day’s reports, pages of performance data, impact tests, and after-action notes from the mock battle.

Outside, snow fell in steady silence over the palace grounds.

He leaned back in his chair, fingertips pressed together, and let the thought slip aloud.

“It really is this simple.”

No guessing. No blind paths. No decades of wasted resources chasing theories that would die in committee or be abandoned for the next fad.

He knew the end state, what the world should look like, what soldiers should carry, what armor should stop. And how it was all made.

All that remained was guiding his engineers to it, trimming away every indulgent experiment, every obsolete design philosophy.

Others called it innovation. He thought of it as inevitability.

The first current crop of bullet resistant vests and plate carriers would be obsolete in a decade, replaced by lighter, stronger iterations, but their existence in 1935 was a hammer blow to the timeline.

The helmet designs, the polymer weapons, the APC doctrine, each was a cut across history’s intended course, shaping it into something useful, something his.

Bruno closed the folder and reached for the brandy.

Outside, the snow kept falling. Inside, the future was already written; all that was left was to build it faster than anyone else could imagine.