Guerilla campaigns were ultimately one of the most difficult types of warfare for one to emerge victorious in. That is, of course, assuming you were the one fighting against the guerillas. Hiding among the civilian population, and attacking when you were nearly forgotten, murdering in the name of your cause before retreating back to the shadows like a rat?
It was a cowardly but effective means of warfare. And unfortunately for Bruno, this was how the Red Army had chosen to fight in its last death throes. Because of this, Bruno found himself operating as a commander from afar, rather than in the field, as he preferred.
Because, frankly, there was no battlefield for him to step foot upon. The streets of Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Tsaritsyn, et cetera were the battlefields. Merely stepping out your door exposed you to unknown dangers lurking in the shadows.
But there were some officers leading the efforts to kick down doors and drag out the Bolsheviks from their homes. And these men were Heinrich, and Erich. Two of Bruno’s oldest friends, and brothers in arms.
Though Majors now, they led entire battalions of soldiers through the streets of the cities which fell under their authority. And currently, Erich was in the streets of a Russian city called Belgorod, walking alongside his soldiers with his luger in hand.
He and the men of the Iron Division, along with the Russian soldiers, police, and loyalist militias they worked alongside had received actionable intelligence from a potential informant on the whereabouts of a Guerilla cell, as they made preparations to bomb the local Iron Division garrison and their headquarters.
No doubt they were in the midst of preparing for the operation, and because of it, these men knew they would be walking into a building with explosive compounds inside of it. Even so, they did not fear what needed to be done, rather accepting their role.
Curiously enough, the man at the lead of the fireteam which was stacking up outside the surrounded Guerilla compound was wielding a shotgun. Which Bruno had acquired from Browning Arms, which was an American Arms corporation owned and named after John Moses Browning. This was one of many of the American companies that Bruno had invested in after receiving the small fortune that his family gave him in exchange for his weapons designs.
As a partial owner of the corporation, or at least having enough shares to influence the company. Bruno was able to outfit the Iron Division with Auto 5 shotguns, which were specially made for military and law enforcement applications after his suggestions were made in this regard.
The auto-5 in use by the breacher was of the “Riot” variety, as was seen in use during the Rhodesian Bush War of Bruno’s past life by the Rhodesian Security Forces. This version in particular had a factory extended magazine tube, and a handguard giving it a unique and striking appearance.
Once the Breacher was lined up with the door, Erich nodded his head at him from among his other troops who were securing the perimeter, giving the man the signal to proceed.
*Bang*
*Bang*
*Bang*
Three slugs were fired off in as many seconds, blasting apart the locks on the door and blowing it wide open. Allowing the men of the Iron Division to enter the building. For the sake of anti-guerilla operations, these breaching teams, who by now specialized in clearing houses and urban warfare, were not equipped with the standard Gewehr 98m, as the other men of their division were.
But rather wielded Mauser C96 automatic carbines. These carbines were chambered in 9x19mm Luger and made use of detachable 20 round magazines. They were another design by the engineers at Waffenwerke von Zehntner and were inspired as a stop-gap solution to the MP-34 submachine guns Bruno had introduced when the Kaiser became aware and wanted an immediate adoption of a similar design.
These weapons had seen limited service among specialized units, and police within the German Reich for the last couple of years, and were only being fielded here in Russia by the Iron Division because Bruno was not yet ready to introduce submachine guns to the world, such as the MP-34, or MP-05 as it was known in this life.
Erich did not enter the building, rather, he was standing by the wayside waiting to see if any of the rats tried to escape from his trap. Gunshots rang throughout the building, along with shouts both in German and in Russian.
But after several chaotic minutes, a group of men sporting red armbands and face masks were dragged into the streets in front of Erich, who gazed at them with an unsympathetic gaze. Frankly, Erich had not started in this life despising Marxists. He was not like Bruno, who knew of all the things they would come to do in the coming century should they be given any semblance of power.
The hundred plus million dead civilians would owe their lives to Bruno for his actions here in Russia. But Erich had grown to hate the Marxists after witnessing the deaths of his comrades, and the cruelty in which they treated their own soldiers, let alone the civilians of the towns they occupied.
And because of this, he simply pulled back the toggle lock on his luger, ensuring a round was chambered, before shooting each of the Marxist prisoners in the head without any regards to interrogation or trial.
Not that anyone seemed to care at the frontier style justice, which he just dealt to these bolsheviks. A few men were pulled out of the building following the Marxists. These were soldiers of the Iron Division who had either been wounded or ended up dying during the brief exchange of gunfire that just took place.
Erich looked upon the faces of the dead, memorizing them, before pulling out a pack of cigarettes, lighting one device as he took a deep drag before telling his soldiers what to do with their deceased comrades. Not that they weren’t already of what to do by now.
“Have them packaged up and shipped back to the Reich, where they can be buried in the graveyards of their ancestors…”
No words were said in response to this, even by the men who had been on the teams of those slain in battle with the rebels of the Red Army. Eventually, one more man was dragged out of the house. He was clearly dressed in the uniform of a soldier of the Red Army but was missing the armband. No doubt having ripped it off the moment the house was stormed to identify himself as the informant.
The man gazed upon the men shot in the streets by Erich before looking away. A look of shame was on his face as he tried not to gaze upon the corpses of men who had been his friends and comrades until moments ago.
Erich had grown cold in this campaign. Hell, he had begun to become callous long before that. The ten days at Mukden taught him just how worthless life really was, how little anyone actually cared when a life was taken.
He was perhaps even colder than Bruno was whenever he gazed upon the corpses of the men he killed or was at least responsible for the deaths of. The jolly, foolish young officer who Bruno knew at the academy was long gone. Replaced with an utter sociopath forged on the bloodstained battlefields of foreign wars.
It was perhaps because of this that Erich flicked his used cigarette in the face of the informant, before ordering his men to force him to look at the result of his treason.
“Make him look!”
The soldiers under Erich’s command were equally callous as Erich was and immediately grabbed hold of the man’s head and forced it into a position so that he was staring at his dead comrades. Erich then got down on his knees, so he was on the informant’s level, staring him straight in the eyes even though he was pointing in the direction of the men he had just murdered in cold blood.
“Those deaths… They’re on your hands, you know that, right? Because the Generalleutnant has decreed that mercy is to be given to rats and roaches like yourself who turn on their brothers and give us actionable intelligence, I can’t bury you with the rest of your kind. But you’re going to look at what you have done.
How did it feel? Knowing we were about to storm the compound where you and your fellow communist bastards planned to murder good and honest men? Did you get excited knowing that your friends, your comrades, were about to die while you were to be spared?
Or did you perhaps feel sorry for them? If so, then why betray them? Was your life really so important to you that betraying these men, and sealing their fates, was worth their suffering and the suffering of their family?
I want you to look upon what you have done here today and remember it for the rest of your life. Every time you look in the fucking mirror, I want you to know the cost of your treason, treason to the Tsar, treason to the Bolsheviks which you so merrily took up arms alongside.
Now go, before I change my mind and bury you with the rest of your kind!”
After saying this, Erich stood up and nodded to his men, who let the man go. He quickly sprinted off with a look of terror and depression on his face. And as he was fifteen meters down the road, Erich pulled out his pistol once more, which he had stashed away in order to smoke, and aimed down its sights. Once they were aligned with the back of the informant’s skull, he pulled the trigger. Sending a shot down the alleyway in which there were no witnesses and killing the man who was so close to freedom.
Erich broke out into a slight chuckle as he saw the corpse hit the ground and tumble over, all the while making a sick joke about the man he had just killed.
“He fell funny…”
It was a joke which caused the other members of his unit to laugh as well. Though he had disobeyed a direct order from Bruno, quite frankly, Erich made sure there would be no witnesses to it. And as far as the other Bolsheviks knew, those who ratted out their comrades would be granted clemency.
For the most part this was true, but for those who were unfortunate enough to give their intel to Erich’s regiment, well they were killed just like this man had been, their deaths going entirely unnoticed by Russian Society as they were counted as just another dead bolshevik in the streets of Belgorod.
By the end of the war, Erich’s excessive cruelty to the Marxists would earn him his own nickname, one that would rival Bruno’s many nicknames, which he himself had gained over the years.
Erich von Humboldt would henceforth be known as “The Terror of Belgorod.”
