Chapter 715: Man or Myth?
Erich stood near the harbor, gazing across the English Channel.
A cigarette rested between his fingers, half-forgotten, the smoke curling upward into the gray sky.
He took a long, tired drag, letting the bitter taste settle on his tongue.
Since France had surrendered, and England not long after, the work was... sterilized. Superficial. Necessary, but uninspiring.
Patrolling reconstruction sites, keeping order among a pacified population, coordinating relief shipments from the fatherland, work befitting a staff officer or logistician, not the commander of a Fallschirmjäger battalion forged in blood and thunder.
Still, the stories never stopped.
They floated like ghosts through the shattered alleys and cracked stone walls.
About the Great War.
About a man who’d become more myth than mortal. And how this war, despite its size and horror, lacked something elemental that the old veterans still carried in their bones.
Sitting nearby was a small squad of airborne soldiers, resting, eating lunch in the cold wind, while their NCO, a man with gray in his hair and war etched into his brow, spoke of days long past.
"...he took up the machine gun himself," the man said, voice dry as gravel. "Right on the line. Gave us a night’s rest while he pulled the whole night watch for that sector alone."
Erich didn’t need to turn around to know who was speaking.
That voice, haggard, deliberate, stripped of glory or theatrics, spoke like a man who’d never truly left the battlefield.
It was the tone of Stabsfeldwebel Oskar Keller.
Keller’s audience were three young men, recently blooded.
They’d enlisted after France began "training exercises" near the border, smashing border fortifications under the absurd pretense of peacetime drills.
A convenient provocation. Just enough to trigger war. Just enough to give men barely out of youth the excuse to become something harder.
Now they sat huddled around an ammo crate, chain-smoking, faces hollowed out by weeks of combat.
There was no awe in their eyes, only respect. Respect for the man who had lived through three wars, and the commander who once led him.
"Was that in the Carpathians?" one of them asked.
"No," Keller replied, tapping ash from his cigarette.
"Italian Alps. 1915. The Austrians had planned to hold the high passes while the rest of the K.U.K. and our 8th Army crushed Serbia. But they lost control of the ridge in the winter of ’14. After we took Constantinople, we turned west we pushed into the Tyrolean alps and drove the Italians back into their own mountains. They surrendered faster than I expected. But for a few nights, we held the line alone."
The youngest of the trio, a lad from Danzig with too-bright eyes, leaned forward. "Is it true? The Reichsmarschall used to go into no-man’s-land with just a knife and pistol?"
Keller chuckled low. "Didn’t see it myself. But I wouldn’t bet against it. During the siege of Tsaritsyn, they say he pioneered trench raids. Night strikes. Close-quarter killing. The man was like a ghost. A reaper. You’d find half a Bolshevik trench slaughtered, not a single shell fired."
Erich shifted slightly, eyes still on the sea.
The tension in his shoulders was nearly imperceptible.
They were talking about his grandfather, of course. Bruno von Zehntner. But not as kin. Not even as a commander. They spoke of him like a demigod.
He turned his head slightly. The moment the soldiers noticed, their postures changed, backs straightening, cigarettes hidden, boots drawn close.
Keller met his gaze and offered a crisp nod. "Herr Oberstleutnant."
"Carry on," Erich said quietly.
But his eyes lingered on Keller’s sleeve. Just beneath the regimental insignia was a faded white Totenkopf, the skull of the Iron Division.
Unofficial. Against regulation. But tolerated. Honored, even.
Keller didn’t look old enough to have marched into Russia in 1905 with the first Iron Division.
No... he wasn’t.
That meant something else.
8th Army.
Bruno’s personal command.
The realization struck with quiet weight.
Keller was one of his men, one of the few remaining non-commissioned officers still serving, carrying the torch of an era nearly lost to time.
The Iron Division had earned its name in the Russian Civil War of 1904–06, born from a volunteer brigade filled with veterans, Seebataillon marines, and diehards.
But in truth, they were never volunteers. They were the Fatherland’s blade, sent under false pretenses to bleed for order.
Bruno had led them. Hell he had formed the division himself. And in doing so he had become legend through them.
And when the Iron Division was folded back into active service the 8th Army carried its banner and legacy which lived on in whispered stories and fading cloth stitched to uniform sleeves.
A private, wordless brotherhood.
Now those who survived had become the backbone of the Reich.
Ministers. Professors. Generals. Magistrates. A warrior fraternity, sculpting the world their commander once dreamed of.
How Keller remained an NCO after all these years, Erich couldn’t say.
But one thing was clear:
Despite his name... he was not one of them.
Not yet.
---
The corridors of the Dunkirk command post still smelled of sandbags, stale coffee, and crushed stone.
Erich saluted as he entered the operations room.
Generalfeldmarschall Heinrich von Koch stood over the table, one hand braced against a map of northern France, the other holding a porcelain cup of steaming black coffee.
"At ease, Erich," Heinrich said, offering a faint, tired smile. "Come. Let’s not pretend we’re in Berlin."
Erich relaxed his posture. "Sir."
The elder commander looked him over, nodding with quiet approval. "Dunkirk is secure. Civil unrest is contained. You’ve exceeded expectations."
"Thank you, sir."
Heinrich reached into a small wooden box and produced a silver cross, attached to a ribbon of black and white.
He held it out with a subtle reverence.
"His Majesty, the Kaiser, has seen fit to authorize a new generation of Iron Crosses, for a new generation of warriors. And those who have earned them."
Erich accepted the medal with both hands.
It was heavy.
Engraved at its base: 1938.
The year this war began.
He studied the symbol. The same medal his grandfather had once earned in the Balkans decades before.
But this one bore no blood. Not yet.
Heinrich saw the hesitation in his eyes.
"In case you’re wondering, you are being given this honor due to the actions you took when you seized this city. Seizing Dunkirk may not have received the same headlines as when I marched into Paris with the 8th Army at my back, but it cut off the shores and the French Army’s access to them."
Erich looked up from the medal gleaming in his hands beneath the artificial light.
"Do I truly deserve such an honor? Or is this because I carry his name?
Heinrich chuckled. "Believe me, Bruno is not the type of man to be sentimental towards his own blood once they have donned the feldgrau. Nor is he explicitly cruel either. The Army is as much his family as your house. He has a million sons, and you his grandson are one of them. Likewise he has endeavored to show no favorable treatment to any of them, yourself included."
He placed a hand on Erich’s shoulder. Firm. Grounded.
"If it makes you feel better, Bruno gained his first iron cross by smashing the Serbian Army at the start of the Great War, so I’d say you’re in good company...."
There was a brief pause, Heinrich’s hesitation seemed to vanish, as a firm resolve spread within his blue eyes.
"I know."
"Good." Heinrich turned back to the map.
"The Atlantic will be quiet for now. But the world’s real war is still ahead. The New World will not go quietly. And neither will the enemies we thought defeated."
Erich nodded once. Then saluted, medal in hand.
As Erich stepped out into the pale morning light, the wind from the sea caught the edge of his greatcoat, snapping it gently like a banner.
Below, the harbor groaned with the sound of cranes and boots and barking orders, a city in transition. From ruin to rebirth.
But in the back of his mind, something gnawed.
They spoke of Bruno like a legend because they needed to believe legends still walked among them.
They wore the Totenkopf not for fear, but for faith. A sigil of defiance, of unbroken will. Yet Erich had not earned such faith. Not yet.
The Iron Cross weighed heavy in his hand, not because of its metal, but because of what it demanded.
Not remembrance. Proof. Proof that he belonged.
That he was more than a name, more than a favored officer or product of pedigree.
That he could carry the fire forward, not merely keep its embers warm.
He looked once more to the sea, its iron-gray waves roiling toward unseen shores.
Somewhere out there across the Atlantic, the next crucible waited.
The Allied powers across the seas stirred like the birth of titans.
And this time, there would be no myth to guide the sons of the Reich in the field.
Only men.