I March for Kaiser and State
Summary: An unusually philosophical Imperial State deserter is captured by an Ormeli party and contemplates the nature of war, headgear styles, cheese and war.
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My name is Uwe Cornels.
I am a Kaiserlicher Gefreiter, Infantryman and thinker.
I have fought the former statements for my entire career.
I grew up wretchedly poor, seeing patriotic marches from the homeless man's point of view. Prisoners driven like cattle past cheering crowds, absurdly helmeted soldiers on jet black horses, holding their sabres stiffly upright and blinking confetti out of their eyes. Mothers pulled children away from me, soldiers put their discipline to good use an ignored me and shopkeepers shooed me away from their stalls, fearing a drop in business. There was a march too often to count. Commemorate the dead, celebrate the seizure of territory, welcome the heroes home, see off the newest battalion. Citizens marched on the pavements of the main boulevard. Soldiers kept formation in the centre, a man on a cart blurted out slogans against the newly deemed 'Greatest threat to the State, our Kaiser and our people!' this month. Footsteps and patriotic song rang in the streets for hours.
First, it was the Laurians, "Garish, paper thin armour! Sub-standard imitations of State engineered gunnery! Look around us, citizens! See the lovely
frauleins the State is blessed with! Imagine the horrors inflicted upon them if this scourge were allowed to our cities! I've been at war! I've served the Kaiser and I know exactly what happens to pretty girls when the dust settles!"
That went on for months. Just shouting. Every week, a new war veteran who seemed a little too pretty to have actually seen war would tell his story of bravery. One week, there was a cuirassier that couldn't stand up straight in the heavy armour. The next was a Guard who waved his caliver's business end at the crowds during speeches with finger held on trigger. Those imbeciles in the crowd ate it up.
Years in the street? Probably a decade. I can't remember when I last slept in a bed that wasn't cobblestone. I wasn't in the registries and dodged the draft. Everyone else my age were the proud centrepiece of a march for once in their life. Boots spit-shined for hours hammered the floor and they held their arquebuses proud. I'd like to note that these were the same arquebuses the war veteran considered, 'Sub-standard imitations of State engineered gunnery.'
Some people say being a beggar is a life of misery and toil that is extremely difficult, but survivable.
Those people are wrong; it's excruciating.
I enlisted.
Those recruiters will throw a uniform at anyone. I was starved, haggard and dejected and for once in my life, I felt proud to be
better than the other people in the line.
It made me sick.
Training was a lot like the parades; shouting, marching and stiff backs. We learned to salute, to march, to shine our shoes, to march, to march (because no matter how well you marched, those bastards would always show you a dozen ways that you were doing it wrong), to wake up absurdly early and march. Between marches, I got a wooden mock-up of an arquebuse. A bearded man with the kind of muscular build that just screamed, "When I'm finished with you girls in the evening, I go and wrestle bears in the mountains!" taught us creative ways of bashing people's skulls in with our weapons.
Never use the trigger group. That can break a finger.
Never hit sideways with the barrel, that can bend it and reduce accuracy.
Never use the upper sights, which can crack them and reduce accuracy.
Someone asked if the State's weapons were of such high quality, how could they bend? The sergeant commended him for his patriotism, and then introduced the man to the finer points of kinetics, punctuating his beating with stock slogans about unquestioning loyalty.
It was 2 weeks before they let us fire real weapons. Arquebuses. We fought and won stunning victory after stunning victory against paper targets.
We marched some more.
Come graduation day, we marched to the parade ground and nearly put the statue of the Kaiser out of a job in the afternoon heat. Pride and sweat rolled off of us when Sergeant Bear Wrestler pinned a small insignia to each of our chests. A tiny lead and white trimmed Imperial eagle. He gave us a speech, gesturing to his substantially more decorated chest and showed us the Imperial Eagle that he earned after training a decade ago.
There was fanfare. Drummer boys led us out of dramatically slow opening wooden gates and into more confetti than any nation strictly needed to stockpile. We marched. Pride or discipline shone from our faces. Our weapons were an extension of our bodies. Musket balls rattled in our packs with each heavy step. Months of rehearsals had finally culminated in another generic parade out of Lorraine's gate.
We were assigned to a certain Field Marshal Mackenson. Introductions were made to his war party and we took the week-long march to Haelmarian territory. If the parade speakers were right, then these Haelmarians were imbeciles who thought their honour would protect them and wore
chic coats and hats into battle, wielded glorified cattle prods and slow-loading, explosion prone muskets.
We'd conquered a city.
I saw no action. I manned a nice, quiet post at the camp with a few of my friends. We'd conned our way out of frontline duty after a few bribes and when Kessler slept with the general.
If the drop in our numbers and morale were an indicator, the propaganda was probably wrong about the Haelmarians. In fact, they were definitely a match for us man-to-man. I don't recall more than a dozen who hadn't tripped trying to evade a forest of spear points and broke something or took a scrape from flying splinters after taking cover behind a wooden fence.
The propaganda used to say, "Blood in war with the Kaiser's enemies. Yours or the enemy's." Guess it was both, sometimes.
We had the Kaiser.
They had cheese.
The real difference beyond fashion and dialect was cheese. They had an
obsession with the stuff. Sure, it was good, even great enough to get some of us to march faster if promised more of the stuff, but it wasn't that amazing. The Haelmarians thought otherwise, however and judging from the borderline fanatical obsession with cheese, I'd finally decided that if you convinced a Haelmarian cheesemaker that making sweet, sweet love to the cheese would make it taste better, he probably would.
I was promoted for my imaginary service to the Kaiser. "Kaiserlicher Gefreiter Uwe Cornels, proudly in service to his majesty the Kaiser and the Imperial State under Field Marshal General Mackenson."
I loved introducing myself to those pretty Haelmarian girls. With an opening like that, I mean, those troubles just melted away. Something about a man in uniform, no matter if it smelled like blood of their brothers and fathers just
worked.
We lost a city.
Yes, the same city I was in.
No, I didn't get to kill anyone.
No, I didn't
have to kill anyone.
We escaped just in time, leaving a full quarter of our men behind to cover our retreat. That little group of my friends was selected and this time, no desperate offer of sexual favours could sway the Field Marshal. The battle was lost. Our reinforcements were probably 2 weeks away and still practicing for their graduation parade. The city was lost and nobody seemed willing to relieve the glorious battle against those cheese loving inbreds.
My closest friends died heroes for Kaiser and State.
The paltry few of us trudged for weeks through snow, then steppe. Razor-sharp grasses and cold nipped our feet like those street dogs would bite at my torn coat in Lorraine.
It made me sick.
Dysentery.
The doctor prescribed a potent mix of leftover cheese and steppe grass. It didn't work.
The march was gone. We fought Mother Earth tooth and nail for greener pastures a week down the road. It was too cold for vultures. Not for a lack of vultures, though. Bandits circled, chillingly comfortable in the harsh weather and wound around our party just out of weapon range, waiting for the something to fall off the supply carts. We'd learned to pick our comrades' bodies clean of possessions before leaving them behind.
I deserted.
That's it. No heroic escapes. No parting curses. No Herculean planning.
More generally, myself and 6 dissenters deserted. My friends died. I made new friends. Lion territory was 3 days away and we ducked into a forest one evening when the others were busy with a stray bandit detachment. The 7 of us liberated all the food and munitions we could carry and slept on the 3 heavy blankets in shifts.
Pity none of us thought to steal a compass.
We trudged for a day and a half in the wrong direction. Trudging, slogging, walking, struggling, whatever worked. No more marching. Back into the Ormeli territory. The wind hit us hard and our sweat froze. That knocked it home. We'd gone in the wrong direction.
We trudged for half a day in the right direction. Trudging, slogging, walking, struggling, whatever worked. No more marching. Almost into Lion territory. The spears hit us hard and our blood froze. That knocked it home. We'd lost.
Pity none of us thought to learn basic spotting techniques.
It wasn't even
us who were struck by spears. I was out looking for firewood that hadn't been turned into pulp on the soggy ground and came back to camp to see corpses strewn about. Orange garb and rifles, tanned skin, slim features. Somewhere in that mess, there were 5 black uniforms worn by corpses, gripping bloody firearms and a curse still on their lips.
Then the Ormeli corpses attacked me.
So that's how this exhausted, motley crew of men we had defeated a dozen Janissaries in close combat; they didn't.
Comparing headgear was all I could do for the next 2 days. Turns out, the scouting party that we were attacked by would reach the main force in that time and then they'd work out what to do with me. I was non-standard, apparently. There wasn't anyone willing to ransom a deserter and those traveling slave drivers weren't always around when it was convenient.
The Janissaries spoke the universal language of rifle butt beatings and bayonet prodding.
They also knew what the words, "Hail," and, "Licker," meant. Though, it usually came out as, "Hei," and "Likkeh," respectively.
All I could do was compare headgear.
Of the 4 types I had known: Pickelhaube, Laurian, Fancy and Strange (Imperial, Laurian, Haelmarian and Janissary, in that order), I'd finally pieced together the connection between all of them. They each reflected on their nation's customs and personality.
Our Pickelhaube were pressed iron and steel. Mass-manufactured and adorned with just enough ornaments to make them not appear like trash. The Laurian's had years of storytelling in each man's decoration. A feather for a particular campaign or insignia carved into the side to mourn an old friend. The fancy hats worn by Haelmarians were
cultural, like their cheeses, or women. Festive and carefree. The Janissary hats were just plain frightening. Some twisted amalgamation of wedding veil, helmet and rank insignia. Maybe they were so tall, because the Ormeli were slightly shorter than other peoples and they felt the need to compensate.
It made me sick.
Shouldn't elephant guns have been enough compensation?
I couldn't ask them. I didn't speak Ormeli Rifle Butt Beating.
I was blindfolded and lost track of time. I know I slept through some of it, and get kicked whenever I tried to get into a more comfortable position. These people didn't shirk on security.
They held my hand out to a rock face to guide me for some distance then took off my blindfold and gently caressed me with their rifles toward a large, painted spot on the rock face. I looked left at the row of Janissaries in full dress uniform, rifles propped against their shoulders. I looked right at that spot on the rock and dark brown stains surrounding it.
I marched.
One final effort. My bones creaked. A cut began bleeding again.
It made me sick.
I got to the spot, backing against the rock face and stared down the firing squad. The lead Janissary raised his sabre and mouthed off a command. The squad hefted their rifles at me; a dozen black muzzles that each found a spot somewhere on my torso.
I stood at attention.
One final effort.
For Kaiser and State.
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Author's Note: I have no clue if non-people-who-have-been-writing-****-here-for-years are even allowed to write this kind of thing, but I felt like doing it. TEatRC is a very, very good mod like that.
Story inspired after I particularly nasty stretch of fighting against the Laurians, then Swadians followed by an ugly retreat into hostile Ormeli territory. A few of my men deserted from the lack of food. Low morale and all. Half an hour later, when peace was struck up with the Ormelis, I found and Ormeli party with 2 Imperial State prisoners and thought, "In your face, losers."
More importantly, I'd gotten incredibly tired of the fact that every story was about some huge battle. Those big, scary generals duking it out, or a campaign ending in glory. Or about cheese. Maybe, even an epic duel somewhere, or a journal that introduces a character but doesn't actually give us anything new on the universe. I need grit, depression. So here's a story of a man who never fought a single battle and was killed by war, anyway.
Then the story was writ.