Re: Blood and Iron - Chapter 850: What Comes After

Chapter 850: What Comes After

Heinrich was given the order to withdraw from Cuba not long after the war came to an official end.

The island nation off the coast of the United States, or its former boundaries was destined to become a Spanish proxy.

Already one of the princes within the Spanish branch of the house of Bourbon had been selected to become the ruler of Cuba.

And this meant that the Central Powers were slowly but surely leaving the island nation. Leaving its occupation and governance to the Spanish Royal Family.

As he sat aboard the SMS Bismarck, which he initially arrived in the Caribbean aboard, Heinrich could only smoke a cigarette and sit upon its flight deck.

Watching the maintenance crews perform their daily tasks as he thought about how the world he had known his entire life had just come to a swift conclusion.

He had lived most of his adult life as a playboy, only settling down and getting married much later than his peers.

And because of this, his eldest children were still not yet adults.

The man exhaled a plume of smoke, wondering if the life he had lived had been worth it. Had he lived a different life, would he feel more content right at this moment?

He had initially joined the academy to bring honor to his family of merchants. It was never his intention to make an entire career serving in the military.

But in doing so, and following Bruno to victory he had become a Count. A member of the upper nobility, he had married a countess half his age, and had a family of noble brats together.

Along the way he had lost friends, and buried enemies, but he had never expected that he would be sitting here, aboard ship he could have never dreamed was a technological possibility when he first joined up, coming home from a war whose scale was beyond his youthful imagination.

As a Generalfeldmarschall, and a highly decorated one at that, Heinrich was not wanting for money. He could retire and never have to worry about working another day in his life.

And frankly, he felt he had given enough of his life as Bruno’s right-hand man. He just didn’t know how to tell the mighty lion that he had fought enough.

Speaking of… He couldn’t help but grimace when the thought crossed his mind, but because Bruno had been recalled for diplomatic summits, it meant that the man was currently enjoying his retirement with his family in the Alps, while he was stuck here on this floating city. Waiting impatiently for the day it docked in the Adriatic.

“Lucky bastard….”

Heinrich finished off his cigarette and tossed the bud over the edge of the ship’s deck, it fell, briefly being caught by the wind, before eventually being drowned by the awesome depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

—

Erich stood outside the plane that carried his command vehicle. The paint was chipped in many areas, and the composite hull was dented by small arms fire small enough in caliber to be deflected or stopped outright by the vehicle’s sloped armor.

The main gun was being checked by the vehicle commander and the gunner to ensure that it was completely cleared before being sealed up and driven into the cargo bay of the strategic airlift.

He could hardly believe the time had come… The war was over, and he, like every German soldier still deployed was being recalled home.

Home… He could not even begin to calculate the amount of time that had passed since he last saw the frosty crags of the alps which he had been raised in.

It was almost like a dream come true… He wanted more than anything to take his helmet off, and gaze at the photo he had stashed in its liner. The photo of him, his wife, and their small brood of children.

But Erich was a man of discipline; he would not take off his helmet until he and his men had left behind this island and taken to the skies.

Instead, he continued to smoke what remained of his last cigarette, all while one of the lieutenant colonels who answered to him approached with a manifest in his hands.

“Sir… Everyone and everything has been accounted for. This is the last sortie for the brigade. Once the command vehicle is loaded, we will be out of here for good….”

Erich gazed back over at the Cuban Airstrip which they had occupied and used as a base to fly several sorties deep into American airspace. Selling weapons and munitions to the various warring factions in exchange for gold, oil, or minerals.

That mission had been concluded, America, or what was left of it, was now entirely on its own. Germany had no plans to overtly interfere in the way they had been doing so up until the treaties were signed in Geneva and Hanseong.

And as Erich gazed towards the lands that now burned in eternal warfare, he simply shook his head before stamping his spent cigarette beneath his boot.

“Good… I’ve seen enough of this place to last a lifetime. Let us depart from this place and never return.”

It was not that Erich and his men had particularly bad memories of Cuba; in fact seizing the island was easier than any of the fighting the Brigade had seen since the war began.

The problem was that the men were tired. They had been fighting for years, with only a few months rotation in between. And they had been the spearhead of many of the Reichsheer’s major strategic victories.

Of all the units deployed in the war, Erich’s brigade had one of the highest casualty rates, with an estimated 40-60% of its initial members having been killed or wounded in action at some point during the war.

Erich could not even remember the names of the newest replacements, or the faces of the dead he had buried.

All he knew was that the moment the landing gear raised after the plane took flight, he could finally afford himself a sigh of relief.

He took off his helmet and gazed at the photograph inside. Placing two of his fingers on the face of his wife, who had consumed his thoughts over the course of the last few weeks since the war had come to an end.

“I’m coming home, Erika….”

—

Bruno sat on the water’s surface of his estate’s pool. Floating in its center, wearing a pair of swim trunks and sunglasses while relaxing with a beer in his hand.

He was not alone. Many members of his family had joined. Brothers, sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, grandsons, granddaughters, and so on and so forth.

As he sipped his beer, he saw a gathering of dozens, if not hundreds, of his family members walking throughout the estate grounds in the middle of summer.

Some were barbecuing; others were enjoying the pool like himself, others still others were riding horses or outright competing in sport shooting.

Bruno honestly felt like a fish out of water as he stared at his family and its vast size. The best part of it all is that they all seemed to be happy, or at the very least, content with their lives.

It was only then that he felt something tug at his feet. He looked over the edge of his inflatable tube to find Heidi submerged beneath the surface of the pool from the neck down.

She seemed elated at the idea that Bruno had finally gotten to truly enjoy the luxuries his life had blood, sweat, and tears had bought their family. Even so, she couldn’t help but smirk and make fun of him.

“You look like a fish out of water.”

Bruno chuckled as he took a sip from his beer, watching the liveliness of his home and his house. Knowing his wife wouldn’t give up without receiving tit for tat, he responded to her jest with one of his own.

“Perhaps then I should hide in a barrel like the wily fish.”

Heidi couldn’t help but break out into laughter at the absurdity of her husband’s comment. She could not possibly understand what the man was referring to when he said that, but the idea was too comical for her to take seriously.

“The wily fish?”

Bruno didn’t respond any further; he simply raised his beer and drank it, with a smug look on his face. A look that Heidi knew all too well, causing her to pout in silence as if she had suddenly regressed to a childlike state.

“I hate that I will never know that life….”

Bruno raised the sunglasses off his eyes as he looked at the serious expression of his wife, sulking in the pool while clinging onto his tube.

He simply smirked as he grabbed her hand and pulled her up onto his lap. Causing the woman to blush in embarrassment as he whispered into her ear.

“And I thank God he gave me the chance to make sure that you never will….”

Heidi looked up at Bruno with a heartfelt smile. In this life, she was the only person he had ever truly revealed the full extent of his memories.

The world he had come from, the world he had lived, and the suffering he had endured before finding her in this life. None of it mattered now, as it would never come to pass.