Re: Blood and Iron

The roar of engines was deafening inside the belly of the transport.

Metal walls shook with every gust of turbulence, bolts rattling, the smell of oil and steel mixing with sweat.

Oberstleutnant Erich von Zehntner sat hunched over the radio set in the armored command vehicle lashed to the floor of the hold.

His gloved hands rested on his knees, but his knuckles were white all the same.

Around him, aides checked straps, maps, the delicate wiring of their communications rig.

Each man moved with the precision of practice, yet beneath the discipline of their training Erich could feel the same gnawing that gripped his own gut.

They had drilled this a thousand times.

Joint exercises with the Belgians. Simulated deployments across the Reich's fields.

Countless hours rehearsing every step of airborne doctrine until muscle memory had replaced thought.

But this was no exercise.

This was no proxy campaign Spain, where he had fought alongside volunteers against republicans and syndicalists, a proving ground for a young officer hungry for combat.

That had been war in name only, a sideshow compared to this.

This was Europe on fire again.

This was his grandfather's war reborn.

Erich closed his eyes for a moment.

He could still hear his grandfather's voice, calm and iron-bound, telling him the lesson he had repeated all his life: "Duty does not wait for you to feel ready. Life is ephemeral, but duty is eternal."

He opened them again. His men were watching him.

They did not ask if he was afraid.

They asked without words whether their commander was steady.

He nodded once, firm.

"Signal check," he said. His voice carried over the drone of the engines. "Confirm line to Brussels command. Confirm readiness for ground link once we deploy."

One by one, reports came back.

Clear. Ready. Green lights across the board.

The pilot's voice cracked through the intercom.

"Drop zone in fifty minutes. Flak expected. We'll take you as close as we can."

Erich exhaled, slow, measured. He adjusted the map on the desk in front of him, eyes tracing the streets of Ypres.

He knew what awaited them: a French armored spearhead, already pushing into Belgium, trying to turn the city into a shield against the Reich's counterblow.

His battalion would drop in behind the lines, cutting supply and communication, forcing chaos before the heavy armor of the Belgian Royal Army met the enemy head on.

It was doctrine written by his grandfather himself, long ago: the hammer and the anvil.

And now Erich was the anvil.

For a moment, he allowed himself to think of home.

Of Erika's hand on his shoulder as he left the palace. Of his children asleep, too young to understand the burden that had fallen on them simply by blood.

He pushed it down. There was no room for sentiment here.

The command vehicle jolted as the aircraft hit a pocket of turbulence.

A young lieutenant cursed under his breath. Erich looked up sharply.

"Steady," he said, voice clipped. "We are Germans. We do not falter. We face death head on… and above all we fulfill our duty...."

The words were not for himself, but they settled his own nerves nonetheless.

The red lamp above the hatch glowed steadily.

Fifty minutes. Forty-nine. Forty-eight.

Every second ticking down to the first true battle of his life.

The aircraft jolted again, harder this time. Somewhere above, the engines roared against the shifting air currents.

A metallic rattle shook through the hold, a sound that made younger men grip their straps tighter.

Then, faint but growing, came another sound. Not turbulence. Not wind.

Thunder. Bursts echoing from below.

"Flak," one of the aides muttered, voice tight.

Erich felt it too.

The plane's belly thrummed with each distant shell exploding in the dark sky beneath them.

The French were shooting blind, their guns too small, too short-ranged to strike at this altitude.

But every boom was a reminder of what waited below.

He kept his face carved in stone. "They can bark all they like," he said flatly. "So long as they cannot bite."

The men chuckled nervously, but the sound died quickly.

No one here believed they were untouchable. Not once the hatches opened.

The countdown light flickered, then steadied.

Ten minutes.

The hold filled with a different kind of silence.

Not the chatter of drills, not the rattling of bolts, but the silence of men realizing that when the hatch opened, they would cross from training into history.

Erich leaned forward, resting both hands on the map one last time.

Ypres. The drop zone. The French lines behind it.

His grandfather's doctrine was clear: strike deep, disrupt, cut supply, sow chaos. The hammer and the anvil. He was the anvil.

His chest tightened, not with doubt, but with the weight of inevitability.

The lamp above the hatch blinked green.

The cargo doors groaned as they opened, flooding the hold with blinding daylight and the cold rush of high air.

The roar of engines deepened as the aircraft prepared to disgorge its steel and flesh into the fire below.

"GO!"

The command vehicle lurched forward, its restraints undone.

One by one, armored beasts and their crews rumbled toward the yawning hatch, their parachutes unfolding like white blossoms in the sky.

Erich gripped the radio, bracing as the world seemed to tilt. The vehicle shuddered, then dropped into the void.

For a heartbeat, there was silence. The freefall was almost peaceful.

Then the flak below reached up with black fingers, bursting all around.

The armored hull trembled as shockwaves tore past.

The air smelled of smoke, cordite, and burning oil. Each explosion grew sharper, closer, as the ground surged upward.

Erich clenched the radio mic, his voice steady despite the thunder.

"Hold fast, men!"

His voice nearly cracked, and he took a moment to silence himself.

Clutching to the words his grandfather had once told him when he was but an adolescent boy begging the old man to allow him to join the military academy.

Death comes for us all. All a man can do in this life is wait for the day his name is called.

But when you're staring down a machine gun nest, and your men are pinned down.

Sometimes the difference between life and death comes down to the will to act.

Remember that boy, because one day you too will face the reaper when he comes for you.

And when he does… You act.

Having taken a deep breath, and calmed his nerves Erich realized that still the sky burned as Ypres rose up to meet them, a graveyard waiting to be written anew with the blood of another generation.