Re: Blood and Iron - Chapter 764: Steel Commanders
Chapter 764: Steel Commanders
Erich gazed through the rubble that had once been an elementary school.
The glass was shattered, the wall half torn apart.
Yet by some divine miracle, part of the window frame still clung to the concrete, just enough for him to rest the edge of his Panzerfaust on.
Today was an all-hands-on-deck situation.
And because of the casualties sustained by his battalion, and the rest of the brigade, as the battle raged on, he, a battalion commander, was now back on the front lines getting his hands dirty. Again.
The old wound in his shoulder, the one from Spain, ached. Not because the launcher was heavy. But because his body remembered danger better than his conscious mind ever could.
The roar of motors grew closer, engines straining, treads crushing pavement and the scattered bodies of fallen Americans beneath their steel mass.
He checked the backblast behind him, clear.
He checked the radio operator beside him, rifle raised, finger hovering over the transmit switch, waiting for Falke’s intent.
Erich didn’t need to speak. One look from him conveyed everything. The operator pressed the switch.
“Apex to all teams, hostile armor approaching. Falke’s order is encircle and destroy. Leave no survivors.”
Erich ignored the chatter. He focused through the 4× optic, the sight picture tightening until the Liberty’s flank filled the glass.
He centered the horseshoe just above the track return rollers, the softest meat on the beast.
The tank lumbered past a collapsed building. Its turret turned, presenting the shot.
Erich flicked the safety off. The Panzerfaust roared.
The shaped charge struck home, burrowing into the American tank’s side.
A half-second later the Liberty erupted in a guttering column of flame, ammo cooking off in a violent chain of metallic thunder.
But Erich didn’t linger on the fireball. Because the moment the lead vehicle died, all hell let loose.
German E-10 light tanks punched out from alleys. IFVs barked 30mm bursts down the boulevard. Thai paratroopers launched their Panzerfausts from balconies.
American and Filipino infantry were caught between converging kill-zones. Erich dumped the empty tube, letting it drop on its sling. His rifle was already in his hands.
He flicked the safety to automatic and stitched disciplined bursts across the street, catching a squad of Americans trying to push into a forward position.
The radio crackled.
“More mediums inbound, Liberties mixed in! We’re almost out of rockets, Oberleutnant! Request permission to fall back!”
Erich glanced once at the operator, permission given, while lining up a shot on an American sniper perched in the church belltower.
Crack.
The 8×33mm Kurz round punched straight through the man’s M1 helmet. His body tumbled backward out of sight, meanwhile Erich swapped magazines mid-stride.
“Alpha Squad of Charlie Company move forward now; provide covering fire for Bravo’s withdrawal. On the double.”
The operator relayed. Across the shattered district, German voices affirmed.
And gunfire intensified. Manila had become a maze of death, and Falke intended to navigate every turn of it.
The enemy armor wave hit the airborne positions like a hammer.
Within minutes, the radios overflowed with overlapping reports:
“Two Liberties breaking through Divisoria district!”
“Unknown mediums at the pier, moving fast!”
“Thai regiment taking heavy casualties, requesting AT support!”
“We can’t hold this block without armored support! Requesting permission to withdraw!”
Erich forced himself to listen without reacting. Panic traveled as fast as bullets. He wouldn’t allow it.
He and his men shifted positions through alleyways, shattered storefronts, collapsed homes. Each street corner was a new front, and each room was a fresh tomb.
German airborne fought like wolves in a burning forest, hit, fade, hit again.
Thai airborne, lacking armor entirely, fought with sheer grit. Short bursts, ambush shots, blades in the dark.
But the Americans had numbers.
Convoys of mixed medium tanks, chassis similar to the Sherman that would never exist in this timeline.
But upgraded with heavier guns and improvised shields, pushed through the ruins. Faster and more nimble than Liberties, they cut into the flanks like knives.
Erich’s battalion was forced to peel back street by street, building by building. He ordered fighting withdrawals, firebreak traps, kill corridors.
“Falke to King Six, collapse to secondary line.”
“Falke to Dog Five, detour through the market and delay them ten minutes.”
“Falke to Thai Regiment, fall to our line at the river. We’ll cover your crossing.”
Each order was delivered coldly, cleanly, and each one cost blood.
A German IFV was hit by a 90mm round that punched straight through its side armor. The vehicle exploded in a shriek of shattering steel.
Erich didn’t even flinch, only marked the loss and moved on.
Another team was pinned in an apartment complex by Filipino sharpshooters.
Erich personally led a three-man element to flank them, clearing the rooms one by one with grenades and point-blank fire.
The battle expanded and contracted like a dying lung. Every time the airborne gained a street, they lost two. And every time they killed an enemy tank, three more appeared.
When the brigade reached the old Spanish fortifications near the city’s edge, Erich finally exhaled, but not in relief.
The main army should have been here.
But the gunfire ahead told him exactly where the Germans and Americans were clashing, too far to support the airborne yet, too entangled to break through.
They were alone.
Again.
The gunfire ahead swelled, then thinned, then swelled again, the rhythm of two exhausted armies strangling each other in the suburbs of Manila.
Erich stepped out from behind the sandbagged doorway and scanned the road leading back toward his brigade’s rear. Smoke. Muzzle flashes. Movement. But none of it friendly.
What little remained of his battalion filtered into the courtyard one squad at a time, limping, dragging wounded, faces blackened with soot. Some had lost helmets. Others had lost boots. A few had lost everything but the rifle in their hands.
A medic passed him carrying a Thai paratrooper missing an arm, the stump crudely tourniqueted with a belt.
The man kept murmuring something, a prayer maybe, or someone’s name, but the medic didn’t have time to listen. No one did.
Mertens returned from the west wall.
“Sir… they’re regrouping. Whole companies. Armor behind them. They mean to break us before the main army arrives.”
Erich nodded once. He felt neither dread nor hope.
He looked up at the sky through a hole in the ruined ceiling, a thin strip of pale Manila daylight filtering through dust.
For a moment he wondered what his grandfather would say if he could see him now. Probably something sardonic. Probably something honest.
He chambered a fresh round, wiped blood from his cheek with the back of his glove, and murmured:
“Then we hold until we can’t.”
He pressed a blood-stained hand against the stonework and spoke quietly over the battalion net:
“This is Falke. All units… This is it boys… The last defensive line. Hold for as long as you can.”
There was no tremor in his voice. No fear. Only inevitability. Armor roared closer, dozens of engines. They were coming to finish the job.
The roar behind him told the truth before the radio did.
Americans had encircled them.
Five Liberties emerged through the smoke, hulking silhouettes of steel and wrath, their guns lowering one by one toward Erich’s final defensive knot.
Their spotlights sliced across the rubble, illuminating exhausted airborne soldiers preparing for a final stand, rifles low, rockets empty, helmets cracked, hands shaking from adrenaline and blood loss.
Mertens whispered, “Sir… we’re out of time.”
Erich raised his rifle, even though it would do nothing. His breath steadied.
So this is where I die, he thought. Fine.
Then….
Five explosions detonated at once.
Not incoming shells.
Not grenades.
Not rockets.
The Liberties themselves erupted in upward columns of molten steel, turrets launched into the air like coins flicked by a god.
The shock wave kicked dust and blood into a swirling cloud.
Everything froze.
Erich blinked, jaw clenching.
Through the haze, he heard engines, deep, confident, mechanical thunder that did not belong to American armor.
Tracks crushed rubble under hundreds of tons of steel discipline.
Then they emerged:
E-50s.
The main army’s spearhead tanks. Stabilized 105mm APDS cannons still smoking, while their armor was glistening with dust and heat. Their thermal optics swept across the battlefield like a demon’s eyes.
Behind them, full-sized German infantry, mechanized, rested, over-equipped by comparison, poured through the breach, rifles raised, grenadiers advancing with brutal purpose.
One of the E-50 commanders saluted Erich casually, as if they’d merely met on a parade ground.
“Falke,” the man called over the tank’s engine, “sorry we’re late. Traffic.”
Erich let the rifle hang from its sling. His knees finally gave out.
He slumped against a chunk of broken wall as the E-50s rolled past him, destroying three more American mediums in five seconds with surgical bursts of APDS fire.
The city shook under the weight of German steel reclaiming the streets.
Mertens knelt beside him.
“Sir? Are you?”
Erich waved him off.
With steady hands, he pulled a cigarette from his pocket, struck a match on the ruined wall, and lit it.
His hands did not tremble. Not even once.
He took a long drag, exhaled slowly, watching the smoke bleed into the Manila night.
His eyes, however, were distant, cold, haunted, fixed somewhere beyond the battlefield, beyond the stars themselves.
“About damn time,” he muttered.
He didn’t say another word.
He didn’t need to.
The iron wall had arrived.
