Leon stood on the edges of the French and Luxembourgish Border. Frankly speaking, the German troops in the Grand Duchy had been focusing more on building defenses around the capital, which was the most strategically important region of the minor and neutral European nation.
While this gave the French time to rearm, and resupply, as well as tend to the wounded. Few reinforcements were provided to them. With the losses sustained currently, and their focus being primarily on invading Belgium, what with Luxembourg already being a lost cause.
The French Republic only gave Leon a few brigades worth of men to replenish his losses, but no more than that. His orders hold the line no matter what the cost. Once victory in Belgium had been achieved, 250,000 men would be sent to aid him.
So, he dug in deep just outside the city. However, time and time again, small raiding parties would harass the French lines, allowing for a greater number of German troops to break into their trenches with minimal effort. The French in Luxembourg had been trounced by stormtroopers armed with semi-automatic trench guns, semi-automatic rifles, automatic sub-machine guns, and general-purpose machine guns.
There was, however, another introduction into Luxembourg that served as the first use of its kind on a battlefield. The German stormtroopers, whose bodies were protected by hardened steel plate armor similar in design to those issued to German soldiers at the end of WWI, came running into the trenches with a terrifying new killing machine.
41 was a man portable, lightweight flamethrower that Bruno had specifically designed for use in the upcoming Great War in years past. The weapon was modelled after those used by German soldiers during the Second World War of his past life, with one major difference. He introduced napalm as its primary incendiary, though it was capable of using more conventional flames. This was an incredibly nasty thing to do, as napalm when touching the flesh could not be put out through normal means, and if one dared to try to pat out the fire, it would spread and burn brighter.
The bursts of napalm flame tore through the French trenches by the men who wore Stahlhelms marked with the fabled Totenkopf, not the design from the Second World War, but the one that Bruno had adopted for the iron division.
Supported by lightweight 60mm mortars from men hiding in no-man’s-land, as well as the overwhelming rate of fire from the MG-34, these stormtroopers obliterated the Front lines of the French in the midst of night without any need for an armored column to advance before them.
Once the French soldiers had either been killed or charred into dust, an entire Brigade of German Infantry would advance through the choke point the stormtroopers created thoroughly breaking the French lines until they were forced to retreat, leaving behind artillery and machine guns as they fled further back.
The result of these repeated skirmishes that turned into significant retreats was that even Leon, a General who refused to get his hands dirty was covered in mud, oil, and blood, some of it his own, after being personally shot by an MP-34 machine gun in the arm.
He was lucky it was just a flesh wound, but even so, the man demanded himself see treatment above all others. It didn’t matter if there were men beneath his command who were far more grievously wounded than he was. He was the fucking general and thus he received priority, God dammit!
Or such was Leon’s mentality, as a medic treated his flesh wound with a less than pleased expression on his face. All the while, Leon vented his frustration on the men fighting beneath his orders, having perceived their repeated retreats as an act of the utmost cowardice.
“Time and again the enemy crosses into our trenches in the dead of night, and massacre our men while they sleep! I want to know who has been on watch for this past month! Because if they’re not already dead, they soon will be!”
Leon’s words were not exactly welcome among his soldiers. These men had quite literally just faced down an advance of hellfire and masked wearing demons. Who seemingly came out at the witch’s hour to personally take their souls.
Mortars were not like artillery. Their launch was not exactly something that crackled with the horizon when fired. They were subsonic launches and had ranges that could be fired from far enough away without really being heard by their victims.
In the dead of night, located within the midst of no-man’s-land, such weapons could be used to launch precise and deadly attacks on French munitions stockpiles, triggering bigger explosions and causing widespread panic before the assault truly began.
And this was exactly how the German stormtroopers had been using their 60mm mortars in Luxembourg. It had eaten away at the morale of the French soldiers time and again. And now that they had to hear their general bitch at them for his failures, they were starting to reach a breaking point.
This was evident by the harrowed looks on the men who stood there listening to Leon launch verbal abuse at them in some of the worst ways imaginable. Questioning their honor and their manhood as they had rather valiantly defended their positions against a superior enemy.
As the medic who was treating Leon heard the French General’s ongoing denigration of his soldiers. He shook his head and sighed. That is until another medic ran up to him and whispered something in his ears. The look on the first medic’s face turned grim, and perhaps even spiteful, as he nodded towards the fellow medic who ran off.
Leon, however, was far too obsessed with chastising his men and their “failures” as men, and as soldiers, to notice the rather concerning look on the medic who was treating him. He didn’t even notice the man reach into his bag and pull out a syringe, which he injected straight into Leon’s veins.
This sudden and unexpected action quickly prompted a response by Leon, who yelled at the medic for jabbing a needle into his arm without any warning.
“What the hell do you think you are doing? Are you even a properly certified medic?”
The Medic simply scoffed as he cleaned up what remained of Leon’s wound, assuring the man that it was nothing to be so angered over.
“Relax sir, it was simply something to dull the pain…”
Leon, however, did not feel the drug take effect, and instead began to complain about how poor of a job the Medic and all of his men were doing.
“Honestly, it’s just like you lot to be so fucking incompetent at your jobs. If you would all just listen and obey my orders, we would have won this war by now! But instead you’re all a bunch of filthy cow-”
Leon’s words fell short, as he noticed he no longer had the means to speak his mind, no matter how nonsensical his drivel was. He looked over at the medic, who stood up and only now realized the hatred in the man’s eyes as he walked away.
The medic nodded towards the other soldiers, who had for too long bore the burden of Leon’s incompetence and rotten personality. However, just as the medic was about to turn away so that he would not have to gaze upon the gruesome affair that was about to occur, he left behind some final words.
“You really should have treated your men with more respect, General… You see, your incompetence is one thing, but your selfishness is another entirely. I just received word that my brother died because you decided to prioritize the treatment of your flesh wound over that of far more seriously injured soldiers beneath your command.
Soldiers who had fought valiantly to hold the line in this miserable failure of a campaign you have led us into.”
After saying this, the Medic walked off, as the Bloodied and bruised French veterans pulled out their trench clubs and began to menacingly approach Leon’s paralyzed body on the ground. As much as the man wanted to scream for help he could not do so, nor could he utter a single sound of agony as he was brutally beaten to death by the men beneath his command to a state so unrecognizable it could be claimed he was killed by German artillery. And Leon, despite his drug induced paralysis, felt every single ounce of pain dealt to him by the men he had utterly failed.
Thus ending the incompetent French General, and would be Marxist revolutionary’s role in this war before it ever truly began… It was truly an ironic and fitting end for Leon. As a man
who had spent his entire life professing himself to be fighting for the good of the common man. It was those same very men who ended up taking his life in the most brutal fashion
possible.