Bruno often had a grim sense of humor, and that humor manifested itself as the opening shots were exchanged between the “punitive expedition” consisting of the 1.8 million men belonging to the Army Group dispatched into Serbia and the Serbian Army defending against their onslaught.
Bruno stood among his soldiers, or more specifically the command staff in the rear echelon, as he gazed upon the explosions detonating with each passing second. The sound of machine gun fire echoed along with artillery, and the screams of the wounded created a symphony of death.
All the while, Bruno smoked another cigarette and spoke his thoughts on it all.
“I was curious if history would remember me as the man who made such great preparations for this moment, only to be the first to fall in battle by a stray bullet… Truly ironic, wouldn’t it be?”
Erich chuckled at Bruno’s remarks, finding the man’s grim sense of humor aligned with his own. In preparation for this war, he had resigned from his position as the Director of the Kaiser’s reformed secret police and re-enlisted. Granted his old commission, the man now served as Bruno’s personal adjutant.
Meanwhile, Heinrich, who continued to serve as a colonel, was also nearby to witness Bruno’s poor attempt at a joke about his own mortality. He shook his head and sighed, speaking with an almost exhausted tone in his voice.
“Sometimes I wonder if all the wars you’ve fought have done something to your brain… You really should see a doctor about that sooner or later…”
Bruno simply shrugged his shoulders, a silent dismissal of his friend’s concern. Watching an artillery shell explode in the distance, he pointed to it as he exhaled a large plume of smoke from his lungs, seemingly indifferent to the life lost in that moment as he commented on the scale of artillery.
“I see the 210s are being used to greater effect than I initially thought they would. How much do you want to bet the enemy army capitulates by the end of the day?”
The First Battle of the War began at the Serbian border between the German 8th Army and the Serbian 2nd and 3rd Armies. Wanting to seize Belgrade and knock the Serbians out of the war by the year’s end, Bruno made a bold advance into the region, while the other Imperial armies sent to the campaign did so from various other entry points at the borders they shared with Serbia.
Serbia, of course, was not expecting such a swift advance by the German 8th Army. But to be fair, the Germans were supported by extensive railway infrastructure and a logistics network of trucks well supplied by Russian oil.
The rest of the world was relying on horses and carriages to support their logistical networks, while the German Army was supported by motorized means. The speed with which they could advance was significantly greater than that of their rivals. So much so that the Serbians were not expecting immediate contact with the enemy, let alone 300,000 of them, supported by heavy artillery.
To compare how disadvantaged the Serbians were in this invasion, they had only managed to mobilize 450,000 men by the start of the war, whereas the combined Imperial Powers had brought with them 1.8 million, many of whom were equipped with extremely modern weapons.
Even if Serbia had its own Alexander leading their forces, which they did not, merely protecting their own capital from such an overwhelming invasion force encroaching on multiple fronts was a daunting task, to say the least.
At the outbreak of the war, half of the Serbian Royal Army had come into contact with just one of six field armies deployed into their territory. Despite this, the Serbians were the ones who were numerically disadvantaged.
Bruno had advanced so quickly and deployed his troops in such a rapid manner that they had managed to capture half of all of Serbia’s military forces currently mobilized in an encirclement. The Serbian troops were caught in interconnecting lines of fire and were being cut to ribbons by the overwhelming firepower the Germans were able to lay down upon them.
All the while, Bruno watched from a safe distance, cracking jokes at his own expense and those of the men being killed by his soldiers. Needless to say, at the moment, things were going exactly as Bruno had planned, but for how long they would? Only God knew the answer to that question…
—
While Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary had split the majority of their forces along the borders of the Balkan and Italian theaters, Germany had left two field armies to cover their Western Front.
With the fortifications built and the overwhelming advantage they had in terms of firepower, this was more than enough to defend the German border and still not cede an inch of ground against the French onslaught.
Yes, I said the French onslaught, because at the outbreak of war, British transport ships carrying thousands of soldiers inexplicably found themselves being sunk in the North Sea. Nobody knew how the Germans were doing it; one moment these ships were en route to their destination, and the next, all contact had been lost.
But the British had yet to land a single soldier on French soil to support the war effort. And they had sent over 10,000 men to the depths of the sea trying. Because of this, the French Army was forced to assault the German fortifications without support.
Especially after hearing about the initial contact made between the Serbian and German armies at the border—one that had the potential to eliminate Serbia within the first month of the war if France did not force the Germans to divert some of their forces.
Because of this, Leon had been sent to try and capture Elsass-Lothringen for France, a major point of contention they had with Germany since losing it in 1871. The French general was confident that he and his men would break through the German defenses.
There was just one thing he wasn’t expecting: German technological superiority. Whether it was sniper rifles, long-range artillery, mobile mortars, or close air support aircraft, every time the French tried to set up their field guns, the men operating them would be hit by some form of hostile force.
The Germans had an uncanny ability to instantly detect French forces trying to set up heavy weaponry and take them out within moments of being spotted. This was, of course, due to the significant investments in wireless communications Bruno had made in preparation for the war.
When scouts in armored cars could advance into enemy lines undetected and report to the artillery where the enemy was setting up their mortars and howitzers, it didn’t take much more than a single, precise bombardment to take care of the problem before it manifested itself.
And that was currently the role German armored cars played. Given sloped rolled homogeneous armor, a 20mm auto-cannon as a primary weapon, a max speed of 90 km/h on roads, along with both camouflage paint and netting, these motorized reconnaissance units would require a direct hit from an artillery piece to be damaged by the French forces.
But the French would have to spot them first, and that was assuming the French artillery could hit the German armored scouts before they could off-road out of the area of impact. In other words, Germany had the ability to completely deter any French attack with significant enough destructive power to damage their fortifications before it even began.
And it was driving Leon absolutely mad, as the man stared into the distance while shouting commands at his troops, trying his best not to lose his cool and insult them.
“Then attack the enemy fortifications with your machine guns! I don’t give a damn about the casualties; if we do not break through here, then there will be serious consequences for us all. Do you understand me?!”
The result of this poorly planned attack, which lacked both heavy firepower and machine guns in support of the advance, would result in perhaps one of the most significant numbers of casualties in a single battle that the world had ever seen up until this point.
That is, of course, if you don’t include the battle that Bruno was currently fighting against the Serbians at the exact same time that Leon commanded his forces to march to their deaths…
