Re: Blood and Iron - Chapter 761: The Battle for Manila Begins
Chapter 761: The Battle for Manila Begins
Erich piled into the back of his command vehicle. It was the first to load into the strategic airlift, along with three others like it.
The airstrip Germany had seized in Northern Luzon swarmed with motion, cargo crews hauling crates, mechanics shouting over the roar of engines, medics prepping triage stations.
Rows of armored vehicles stood aligned like steel beasts waiting to be unleashed.
The German Army was already advancing toward Manila, and its airborne brigades were preparing to drop at the exact moment the outer assault began.
Those who remained at the air base, QRF teams, sentries, medics, administrators, had gathered near the runway to salute the men now tasked with executing the most daring operation in human history.
There were few precedents for this.
A single brigade of men, dropping directly into a hostile city, into a labyrinth of enemy defenses, entrenched infantry, armor, artillery, and anti-air batteries.
A million things could go wrong. High-altitude flak could blast them from the sky before the first parachute deployed. Low-elevation flak cannons could tear them apart in seconds.
And even if they survived the descent, they would land scattered, surrounded, and forced to fight block by block until the main army broke through the outskirts.
It was, by every metric, a suicide mission.
And yet… no one complained. No one protested. The moment the rotors spun up and the aircraft engines screamed to life, every man simply braced himself and accepted the path ahead.
Fighter escorts roared overhead, diving into formation with the lumbering airlift.
A Leutnant sat next to Erich within the command vehicle, the primary comms operator for the battalion.
He noticed something a pattern of behavior from his commanding officer. Before every drop Erich held prayer beads between his fingers, eyes closed, lips still.
Sometimes his prayers were vocal, if he were citing a specific verse. Some like today were more private.
His thoughts known only to him, and God above.
For a moment, the Leutnant said nothing.
Then, unable to restrain himself, he finally asked:
“…What are you praying for, sir?”
Erich did not move.
Not even when the first bursts of flak detonated around the aircraft.
Not when frantic voices whispered through the wire, reporting losses, damaged planes, ruptured hulls, men torn apart before they ever touched Philippine soil.
Not when the frame of the airlift groaned as if protesting gravity itself.
It wasn’t until the red interior light flipped to green, perfectly synchronized with the cargo bay, that Erich opened his eyes.
“Forgiveness,” he said quietly. “For all that I have done… and for all that I still must do.”
Then, louder: “Helmets on, boys. Things are about to get rough.”
The next moment, he felt it:
The plunge. The tearing void in his stomach as the entire armored vehicle dropped out of the aircraft from 30,000 feet.
It was a familiar sensation, unpleasant, but one he’d learned to associate with calm rather than terror.
Flak detonations flashed around them. Twice, maybe three times, Erich felt the shockwave slam into the APC, shoving them further off their designated drop zone.
He counted each second, waiting until the last moment to trigger the chute, praying it would be enough to avoid becoming a stationary target.
By the grace of God, or sheer statistical indifference, they landed.
The chute yanked taut, the vehicle slammed into the ground, and the moment its systems stabilized, the main gun pivoted and fired.
A stream of autocannon rounds tore through a row of American supply trucks, obliterating artillery shells, crates, and the men hauling them.
Erich doubted the Americans even understood what had landed among them before they were reduced to shrapnel and smoke.
But there was no time to reflect.
Comms lit up immediately:
“Alpha Company down two klicks north, taking fire”
“Charlie Company scattered across three blocks”
“Vogel’s squad lost, chute failure, poor bastards took a direct hit from one of the 90s.”
“Multiple vehicles damaged, several burning”
“Enemy armor, Liberty Tanks sighted in District 12, repeat, Liberty Tanks, not 32s. I’m in need of immediate armored support!”
That last message froze the blood in his veins.
“So they really brought them here,” he murmured.
Until now, all the Airborne Units had faced in Luzon were the older AMC 32s… Holdover designs originally pioneered as an effort by the French to keep up with German E-25s that were deployed to Spain during its civil war nearly a decade prior.
The Liberty tanks were well known for being a higher grade of armor seen most commonly in North Africa, and Sicily. But now they were here in Luzon.
He keyed his mic:
“Mechanized units, this is Falke. Form local clusters. Consolidate into company strength wherever possible. Avoid engagement with Liberty Tanks unless you in proper armor, of have an ATGM. If any of you have Panzerfausts now is the time to deploy your infantry. Establish choke points. Drive them into kill boxes.”
Affirmations crackled back, uneven, panicked, but present.
The vehicle lurched violently as something crashed onto the rear ramp, then slid off with a scream. A Thai paratrooper had missed the landing zone entirely.
“Driver, stop!”
Erich leapt from the APC, grabbed the dazed man by the harness, and dragged him behind a shattered concrete barrier as rounds zipped overhead.
The trooper coughed blood, but lived.
“Welcome to Manila,” Erich said grimly in near perfect Thai. “Get your rifle. We move.”
Above them, parachutes still drifted through tracer-filled sky, some intact, others shredded like tissue.
Explosions bloomed across rooftops. Fires crawled along the market district. Sirens wailed.
Civilians screamed. Entire blocks collapsed under American artillery trying, and failing, to hit the airborne units accurately.
Whether the mechanized forces of the Germans, or the more primitive airborne infantry of the Thai. Units landed all throughout the city with little coordination, if any at all.
It was chaos.
Pure, unfiltered chaos.
But it was his chaos.
And Erich could only inhale the thick, burning air, tasting the beginning of battle which he had become so intimate with.
