Re: Blood and Iron-Chapter 498: Réveil de France

The year was 1920, and banners burned, bearing the colors of France on both sides. But each distinctive in the center and the symbols displayed there. Surrounding them was a sea of corpses. Some were wearing old uniforms from the Great War, barely cleaned in the four years since.

And others were new, tidy, or were prior to the stains of blood and mud that freshly coated their olive green hue. A great battle was waged here. The bodies were legion. Uncountable even. Yet, this was not a conflict waged between two foreign nations and cultures.

Rather between brothers, cousins, and neighbors. For what? Only they knew what was worth killing each other over. Standing over the corpses of the soldiers which bore the armbands of the Gallian Militia, Pétain, his uniform as clear, and pristine as ever, applied fresh wax to his mustache, as the rain tried its best to be away the human stain that slicked the earth below.

Despite the lives lost in his name, and the youth of many of those lying hewn across the streets of Paris. The aging general did not seem the slightest bit remorseful for what he and his rival had done.

No, he was not lamenting the price paid in the name of ideology and governance. Rather, he was gloating at his victory, hard earned across four years of struggle. His voice was almost too gleeful as he shouted towards a nearby soldier who was having his head patched up from some shrapnel which tore through his Adrian style helmet. The steel cap barely saving his life.

"You there? Where is he? Where is De Gaulle?"

The soldier appeared to be suffering from either a traumatic brain injury or shell shock. Either way, his response was slow and haggard as it wheezed through his lungs with the broken stare of a man who had lost his life already.

"Gone…."

Pétain had little patience for such imprecise language and was quick to become flustered as he demanded a better response from the clearly wounded teenage boy who had taken up arms in his name.

"Gone? What do you mean Gone? Gone as in dead? Or Gone as in fled? Gone how? Well? You have your wits about you? Speak, boy!"

Even with the taunting and goading from an aggressive superior officer, no… an impatient dictator, the boy soldier did not immediately speak, rather continued to stare at the rain splashing into the red puddle that pooled below the nearby road.

"Gone… He ran… With the survivors…"

Pétain's joy turned to ashes in his mouth as he heard the news that his biggest rival had lived to fight another day. And was quick to take his cap off his head and stomp it into the mud and blood as he cursed in his native tongue.

After forcibly calming himself, the man was quick to point towards the nearest officer, and demand an unreasonable task of him.

"I want De Gaulle found! Alive or dead matters not to me! But he cannot be allowed to escape Paris!"

The Officer, seemingly fatigued himself, despite having a clean uniform, clearly more exhausted from his leader's behavior than he was combat managed to form a salute before going off to relay the orders to someone who might be able to track down what happened to De Gaulle and where he was.

---

De Gaulle and his men were long gone by the time Pétain arrived to revel in his army's victory. The majority of the Militia had broken trying to defend the city. Now, only a small cadre of his most loyal soldiers and most skilled officers had followed him into a rural area.

They were covered in grime and ichor, no doubt having fought their hardest until the last shell casing was spent. Here in the French countryside, however, they had some rest as they sat against rocks and wagons, defeated, mentally, physically, tactically and strategically.

Nobody said a word as wine and tobacco were passed around to be abused in silence. Until finally De Gaulle who stared in the distance of Paris did the unthinkable. He stripped off his armband, and then his epaulettes. From there he tore off his tunic and his helmet.

Having checked the chamber of his rifle to ensure he had truly fired every last shot at the oncoming enemy, he made his statement clear.

"The Militia is dead… And the Republic has died with it…."

The survivors perked their heads up at their leader who took his last cigarette and lit it aflame, taking a long and hearty drag from its tobacco before flicking the spent bud into the mud below.

Among his group, one of the survivors forced himself to ask the question that was on his and everyone else's mind.

"What… What do we do now?"

De Gaulle said nothing. At least at first, but eventually he spoke, and when he did, he had breathed life back into these men who had lost everything, and gave them purpose once more. As he had done at Ypres all those years ago.

"Now we go underground… We clean ourselves up, we ditch our uniforms, and insignia that say we are soldiers, and we bide our time in the shadows. Building the resistance that will see Petaine, or more specifically his master in Tyrol seething when the day comes that the people of France stand up and reclaim what is theirs.

But for now… We hide, we watch, and we wait… The Gallian Militia may be dead, but so long as we yet breathe, the war continues. Though it will no longer be waged with machine guns and artillery in the field. Rather, it will be a war to win the hearts and minds of France and its people. So that we may remember that these colors don't run… Nor do they yield to foreign masters!"

With this said, each and every survivor of the Gallian Militia rose up, and performed the same act of cleansing their attire as De Gaulle had done. They were with him until the end.

---

Bruno was not surprised to see a day later when an intelligence report arrived on his desk. Pétain had defeated the Gallian Militia and its warlord. He established himself in control of Paris, and more importantly all France's provinces which bordered Germany. Providing stability to the region in the process.

Unfortunately, De Gaulle had escaped, and Bruno suspected this meant that things were wholly unfinished. Yet Pétain did not appear to see it this way. Instead, he proclaimed the National Restoration Government.

It was a transitional state that claimed legitimacy in the succession of the collapsed Third French Republic. In practice, it was a military dictatorship with Pétain at its head, and a junta below him acting as advisors.

Nevertheless, it was a better option than the other self-proclaimed warlords who acted like the territories they occupied were their own feudal domains. And it was perhaps because of this that Pétain's first declaration was either the peaceful integration of these warlords, or their annihilation through "Superior firepower."

A quote that Bruno almost laughed at. On more than one occasion in his past life, he had held a lecture on April Fool's Day to future General Staff Candidates regarding the concept of "peace through overwhelming firepower."

It was a holiday that Bruno had learned from some Americans he was stationed with in Afghanistan back during the early years of the ISAF's intervention. And he had carried that spirit over with him during his lectures as a prank to his students.

And it would appear that Pétain had quite seriously used this as his primary form of diplomacy. As Bruno took a sip from some fine port imported from Lisbon, still not even close to finishing the pallet he had received as a gift from the King of Portugal a year later. He turned the page to find the news in Paris to reveal something else.

Images of graffiti within Paris' streets written with the words Réveil de France ("France's Awakening") went unnoticed by the Pétain regime, as the headline was totally unrelated. But Bruno narrowed his eyes upon seeing these words.

This was not some celebratory statement made by errant youth raised without a father in the home after the Great War claimed the lives of most. No… This was a statement of resistance. And Bruno could think of exactly who was responsible for this.

Because of this, the man set the paper down, as well as his glass, before dialing a number. The phone number rang for a second, and then two. Finally someone on the other end picked up, yet Bruno did not give them time to speak.

"This is Generalfeldmarschall Bruno von Zehntner… I am requesting intelligence assets to be deployed to Paris within the next fortnight… Their purpose, to investigate the fate of the Gallian Militia and its senior members… If they are alive, and in hiding, I want them infiltrated and reports on their actions on my desk at the regular intervals."

Bruno did not wait for a response. In his position he didn't need to. He simply hung up and treated this matter as if it was already been concluded. Because in this world there was nobody who was better suited to intelligence than the networks Bruno had helped revise, reform, and enhance for the modern world.

After taking one last look at the paper on his desk ,before folding it up and throwing it in the trash. A slight smirk etched itself on Bruno's face.

"Of course he lives… Nothing is ever easy in life, now is it?"