Chapter 5: The Spanish Civil War – The Battle of Guadalajara (2)
Translated by Vine | Proofread by Lust
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The situation was clearly a mess.
The heavy weaponry and elite status of the Condor Legion were enough to crush the enemy’s surprise attack, concealed by the fog, but they were too few to repel the relentless waves of enemies.
“Relay! Hold this position for 30 minutes!”
“R-Relay! Hold this position for 30 minutes!”
After relaying the order to his platoon members, who were fighting from behind the now-crumbling wall, he pressed himself against the wall and fired at the enemy soldiers charging towards them.
As the enemy fell and the bolt of his bolt-action rifle clicked, every nerve in his body tightened.
The enemy was pouring across multiple pontoon bridges, threatening to overrun the riverbank. What the hell were those Italian idiots doing?!
This wasn’t a small-scale raid. This was clearly the enemy’s main thrust! And there were only three battalions here!
Amidst the chaos, the sounds of bullets hitting the wall and the whistling of passing rounds filled the air.
“Agh!”
It stung like hell, and his hand was covered in blood, but thankfully, it was just a graze. He might not have lost an ear, but he knew for sure that sticking his head out in this situation would be suicidal.
He pressed himself against the wall, clutching his ringing ear, when Clemens came up beside him.
“We’ve already lost six men! Dietrich! Where’s the Captain?”
“Seven! Clemens! Pick two, no, three of the fastest runners and send them to battalion HQ as messengers! We can’t hold the line! Tell them we’re engaging in delaying tactics and request permission to withdraw!”
His ears were still ringing, so he had to shout even though Clemens was right next to him. Clemens, instead of asking about the Captain, nodded and immediately yelled for Sergeant Kohr, giving him quick instructions.
While he was selecting two messengers from among the soldiers desperately returning fire, a private from the 3rd Platoon came running.
“Heil-”
Seeing the idiot private trying to stand at attention and salute in this situation, he grabbed him and pulled him down in disbelief.
Sending a private as a messenger? Is Lieutenant Habenstein out of his mind, depression or not?!
“Just give me the report! What is it?!”
“Seven casualties in the 3rd Platoon! We’re being pushed back from the defensive line! The p-platoon adjutant has been shot!”
“Damn it, what happened?! Why are you already in this state?!”
He knew that while this clueless private was making his way here, the number of corpses would be increasing in real-time!
“W-well…”
“Can’t you see everyone’s fighting for their lives?! Speak up!”
Frustrated, he slapped the private and yelled, and the private, almost in tears, finally answered, “T-the Italians abandoned their positions and ran, so we were flanked…”
Those f*cking pizza-loving bastards…
“G-grenade!”
“Get down!”
At the shout from somewhere, he slammed the private’s head to the ground and threw himself down. The ground shook as an explosion rocked the area.
Fortunately, the grenade didn’t explode near them. However, the machine-gun team firing the MG 34 from behind the crumbling wall was wiped out.
Republican battle cries like “Death to the Fascists!” and “No Pasarán! (They shall not pass!)” were getting closer and closer.
This was madness. If they stayed here, half the company would be dead in 15 minutes, let alone 30!
“Dietrich! We’re all going to die here!”
Even Clemens was visibly shaken. If only the Captain were here…!
If those damned Italians had held their positions, this wouldn’t have happened! With their flanks exposed, they would be surrounded soon if they kept fighting along the wall.
He quickly recalled the city map he had seen during the operation briefing and focused on a relatively large building further inside.
“Messenger! Run and tell the 3rd Platoon to pull out! Delaying action while withdrawing to the post office! 1st Platoon, cover the 3rd Platoon for five minutes while they abandon the wall! I’ll bring the 2nd Platoon and cover your rear, then you pull out! Narrow the defensive line and fall back inside, using the buildings as cover!”
The private nodded frantically and started running, and he grabbed Clemens, who was about to return to his position, and added urgently, “I don’t trust that kid, send another messenger!”
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—
He opened his eyes to a grey ceiling. He blinked slowly, but it was still a grey ceiling, not the canvas of a field tent.
“I’m… b-back… uuurgh…!”
He instinctively tried to sit up, but his body screamed in protest.
What the hell?! This searing pain, like a metal rod scraping against his shoulder… what the f*ck is this sensation?!
“Uuurgh… ugh… haa…”
He trembled on the cot for a while, his vision swimming in agony, but as the pain subsided, a dreadful sense of reality returned.
“Damn it… this isn’t right…”
It wasn’t his room in Korea. He couldn’t even remember the color of his ceiling.
He then realized that even his instinctive groans had been in German.
“F*ck… this is sh*t…”
He deliberately spoke in Korean. His pronunciation wasn’t as awkward as a foreigner learning Korean for the first time, but it certainly didn’t sound like a native speaker.
Besides, his voice was completely hoarse, a rasping sound like scraping metal.
“Heh… hehehe…”
“Ahem, ahem. Seems like you’ve come to.”
He was chuckling in despair when a man’s voice suddenly spoke from beside him. He turned sharply, only to be wracked with pain again.
“Oh dear, oh my. Here, have some water.”
The man sitting on the opposite bed poured him a glass of water from the bedside table, and he gulped it down before finally focusing on the man.
“Th-thank you.”
Honestly, with his receding hairline and Hitler-esque mustache, the man looked quite unpleasant, but he seemed much older and offered a friendly smile.
“Don’t mention it. Hehe, I’ve heard a lot about our brave lieutenant.”
Brave lieutenant? What is this stranger talking about? Wait, what happened? He was clearly in Brihuega because of those damned pizza-loving bastards…
“We’re all going to die! We have to retreat!”
Clemens’s desperate voice, along with the roar of explosions and machine-gun fire, flashed through his mind, accompanied by a throbbing headache.
Seeing his expression, the man smiled kindly again. He seemed like a friendly person despite his appearance.
“Oh dear, I apologize. You must be disoriented. Hehe, you’ve been promoted, Lieutenant, for your meritorious service in the Battle of Guadalajara. I hear you’ll receive the Wound Badge too.”
The Wound Badge was awarded to soldiers wounded in battle. Damn it, who wants that?
“They’re also considering you for the Iron Cross, hehe, I envy you. Oh, my manners. I am Paul Oskar Dirlewanger, Unterscharführer (junior squad leader – equivalent to Second Lieutenant) of the Schutzstaffel (SS). Hehe. You’re Minister Schacht’s son, right? It’s a pleasure.”
His initial assessment of the man instantly turned sour. Dirlewanger? The commander of the Dirlewanger Brigade?
Seeing his face harden, Dirlewanger coughed awkwardly and started explaining, seemingly misinterpreting his reaction.
“Ahem, you might not like sharing a room with an SS officer, but this isn’t an SS-exclusive hospital, you see. Hehe, just between us, it takes someone with connections like us to enjoy the luxury of a two-person room like this, haha…”
He didn’t want to correct whatever misunderstanding this lunatic had. If he could, he’d leave this room immediately.
“Ahem, h-have you perhaps heard some… unfavorable rumors about me? That… that little girl… she wasn’t a good kid! It was all cleared up in court…”
This man was infamous for his massacres and rapes, so much so that it hampered his own unit’s advance.
“The attempted rape charge was a complete fabrication! Or rather, it was a mistake. I’ve completely reformed myself, a new man! Hehe! Thanks to Berger, I even had the honor of being wounded in Spain in place of my comrades.”
This was news to him. He had no need or desire to know what this man did before World War II. Well, he seemed to be acting somewhat normal now.
But once World War II started, this man would be a madman, committing war crimes and even using women and children as human shields, tying them to tanks, abhorred even by the Waffen-SS!
Seeing his continued displeasure, Dirlewanger gave up on his self-justification, turned over in his bed, and muttered something to himself.
He had absolutely no intention of befriending this piece of human garbage. The problem wasn’t this man, but his own company.
As he regained his senses, memories began to resurface.
Captain Kaufmann was dead…
His superior, who had kindly offered him warm coffee while he shivered in the sleet, lamenting that he couldn’t do the same for all his men, died not for his country, but in someone else’s civil war.
After the Captain’s death and the retreat of those damned pizza-loving Italians, they had fought a delaying action, retreating to the post office and holding out, using the building as cover, until they finally received permission to withdraw from battalion headquarters.
The problem was that he had been hit by an enemy air raid while running for his life after receiving the withdrawal order. He was alive and had been transported to the rear, and judging from that scumbag’s words, the retreat itself seemed to have been successful.
His body still ached, but at least he was in one piece. He just hoped Clemens and the other company members were safe.
But that aside, he knew staying put like this was madness.
Vaguely imagining the horrors of the Eastern Front and thinking of surrendering to the Allied forces if he was deployed to the West or Africa was one thing. Witnessing the death of a respected superior and nearly dying himself was a completely different experience.
Moreover, he had experienced firsthand the incompetence of his so-called Axis allies. What were those Italian idiots doing, running away without even putting up a fight?
And their other ally was the glorious Japanese Empire. Were they even allies? Setting aside his hatred for Imperial Japan as a Korean, what had they done for the Axis besides the monumental blunder of driving the US into the Allied camp?
Above all, he didn’t want to shed blood for this damned Nazi Germany and the Axis powers.
He wasn’t insane enough to like those Nazi lunatics, and he didn’t want to march into hellfire with them.
Especially not with the likes of that human garbage lying in the next bed!
Of course, he didn’t believe the Clean Wehrmacht myth — the nonsense that the Waffen-SS committed all the atrocities while the Wehrmacht honorably and loyally served. Nor did he think all SS members were scum. There were scumbags in the Wehrmacht and decent people in the SS.
But that made it all the more tragic. Captain Kaufmann was a truly good man. What did he die for?
He had lost too many of his subordinates, with whom he had shared hardships on the battlefield, even though he couldn’t befriend them due to his position as company adjutant.
It was said that the surviving German soldiers cried out after the end of World War II, asking what they had shed blood and fought for.
All that remained for those who sacrificed their lives fighting for their country were accusations of serving a criminal regime and a Germany in ruins.
That’s all that awaited those who served in the German army under Hitler, that madman.
As soon as he was discharged, or when his superior came to visit, he would inquire about the company’s situation and immediately apply for discharge.
If his application wasn’t accepted, he was more than willing to feign mental breakdown from his injuries.
He would get discharged by any means necessary, and then leave Germany. He considered persuading his family, but realistically, he couldn’t muster much attachment to a family he hadn’t met, based solely on Dietrich’s memories, though he might try with Clemens.
Persuading his father, Hjalmar Schacht, who was still the Minister of Economics in the Nazi regime, wasn’t practical either. Besides, this Dietrich fellow was quite the delinquent playboy and didn’t have good memories with his family.
Fortunately, both he, as Yoon Seong-il in Korea, and Dietrich were fluent in English, so he could try going to the US.
That was decided.
…However, would the God who dropped him in this hellhole really let things go so smoothly?
—
He was already irritable from lack of sleep due to that damned Dirlewanger’s snoring when, the very next day, Major Edmund Beckers, the battalion commander, came to visit him.
He was getting increasingly annoyed with the Nazi salute, but fortunately, his right arm was injured, preventing him from saluting, and the Major understood.
“I’m glad you’re awake, Lieutenant Schacht. Ah, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but you’ve been promoted for your service in the Battle of Guadalajara.”
“Thank you, Major! If you don’t mind, may I ask a question?”
“Of course.”
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