Origins: The Reich (17 page)

“You’re a soldier in the Germany army serving the people, not its leader and his political party!  Now act like one, soldier!” Gallono shouted and had his words rewarded with the captain’s immediate bending of his right elbow to bring his hand to his brow with palm out presenting his best Queen Anne salute. 

“Don’t you forget it,” Gallono said before returning the gesture and going about his business.

Gallono’s division moved through the day and into the night, stopping only to refuel the tanks while the men ate and relieved themselves in the bushes.  The 7th Panzer division managed to traverse nearly two hundred miles in a single day, an inconceivable pace for a large force to cover behind enemy lines.  At nightfall, Gallono’s advanced scouts came upon an entire French motorized infantry division consisting of twelve thousand men.

His scouts stayed back and observed from the shadows until Gallono arrived with the bulk of his tanks to assess the situation.  He found the enemy in camp for the night with their commander clearly believing they were still several days away from the perilous front line.  They had parked all of their transport trucks and fighting vehicles in neat, orderly rows alongside the road.  This made for an easy departure in the morning, but also an impossible to miss target for Gallono and his tanks.

Under the cover of night, Gallono sent his force in with guns blazing.  The panzers utilized their shortwave radios to full effect and designated targets to avoid doubling up.  The first volley from the heavy guns rendered the entire compliment of parked vehicles a smoldering pile of twisted metal.  The second volley raked the base camp with explosions as four hundred tanks rolled in and opened fire with their heavy cannons and turret mounted machine guns.  The entire infantry division ceased to exist within minutes.

Gallono considered taking captives, but an armor division was not equipped to process prisoners.  That was a function for the infantry, but they were several days march away.  Leaving enemy soldiers free to operate behind his lines was not acceptable either; therefore, the only real option was to show no quarter.  Every single French soldier was rounded up and shot by Gallono’s men.

The 7th panzer division continued its trek across French territory and proceeded to roll up the entire defensive effort of the French and British forces in the process.  No hard lines of defense could be established due to the mobile force operating in their rear.  Meanwhile, German forces poured across the bridgehead Gallono’s division secured and rolled into France through the gaping hole he ripped through their lines.  It was Blitzkrieg in its truest form.

After reestablishing radio
contact with Central Command, Gallono received orders to hold his force’s position near the city of Arras.  The city was a few hundred miles north of Paris and sat more or less between the French capital city and the English Channel.  The orders may have come from General Hoth’s mouth, but he could not shake the feeling that they echoed with Tomal’s scheming. 

“Your recklessness endangered the lives of every man under my command,” the General had hollered over the radio the previous day.  “How can I manage this war if my tank division turns into a ghost on me by not communicating its position for days on end?  For a time we thought your entire division was lost to the enemy until we intercepted a radio communication.  A pair of French and British commanders were sent into a panic over the presence of a large tank force cutting across their rear positions.  I can only assume that was you.”

“And what happened as a result of those reports?” Gallono asked, knowing full well the answer would exonerate his act of disobedience.

“They pulled away from their lines, allowing the bulk of our forces to catch them on the move rather than entrenched behind fortifications,” the General conceded.

Gallono took the opportunity to emphasize his point even more.  “And now you find your forces knocking at the door of an undefended Paris after only a few weeks of combat operations.  I believe your initial battle plans anticipated our forces reaching this point after a full year of fighting, at the earliest.  And all this was accomplished with the loss of just twenty thousand soldiers rather than a million or more that the original plan of battle deemed acceptable.  It looks to me like my reckless actions preserved the lives of our brave fighting men.”

All General Hoth could do was eat crow and agree with Gallono’s self-appraisal.  The following day, however, the general got even.

“Your overly aggressive actions may have been
the
catalyst for taking France so fast, and it may even have spared a million or more of our soldiers,” General Hoth declared over the radio,  “but it has placed the men under your command in extreme peril.”

“How so?” Gallono demanded, but he already had a good idea.  Tomal definitely had a hand in giving the order for his division to remain near Arras.

“The remaining British Expeditionary Forces are in full retreat and heading for the coast to be evacuated across the English Channel.  I’m afraid you and your men stand cut off and squarely in their path.  We are sending infantry divisions your way, but as you noted earlier, they are slow moving and are unlikely to reach you in time,” General Hoth reported with a hint of unspoken satisfaction in his voice.

“Air support? Dive bombers?” Gallono inquired.

“I’m afraid the heavy concentration of anti-aircraft guns in your vicinity makes it far too dangerous for the Luftwaffe to fly missions in your area.  For the next few days your division will be on its own, and I’m afraid the French and English forces appear quite determined to eliminate the Panzer division that undid their entire line of defense.”

Gallono could almost see Tomal sipping his coffee and taking delight in his puppet delivering the ominous news.  He vowed at that moment to punch Tomal in the jaw the next time they saw each other.  For now, Gallono made do with bravely stating into the radio receiver, “We’ll be ready for them; General Erwin Rommel out.”

He did not waste time cursing himself for the situation he and his men now faced; Gallono knew himself well.  He was a warrior through and through, but did not have a knack for grand strategy like Hastelloy.  The captain would have seen this coming and already have had ten contingency plans in place to fall back on.  Gallono would now have to wing it, but his conversation with General Hoth did give him an idea.

“Assemble the officers right away,” Gallono ordered his adjutant and set about spreading a topographical map with known enemy anti-aircraft gun positions marked on it.  By the time his officer corps assembled in the command tent, he had orders for all of them.

“We’re about to be overrun by retreating forces that are overwhelming in number.  There’s no retreating or hope for reinforcements, so the only thing we can do is assume the most defensible position and hold the line,” Gallono began.  “That place is this network of canals near La Bassée where they have concentrated their antiaircraft cannons for the city.”

“Why there?” a very nervous major asked.  “Taking the guns will allow the Luftwaffe dive bombers to help, but the terrain is flat and the canals will funnel our units into narrow columns and neutralize our mobility.”

“True, but it will require them to do the same,” Gallono responded with a sly grin.

The 7th Panzer division took La Bassée without much trouble, but the following day trouble arrived in the form of five thousand infantry and a British armor battalion featuring seventy-four Matilda class tanks.  These beasts were slow moving, and had thick armor that presented Gallono with a very big problem.

Upon their approach, Gallono dispatched all two hundred of his Panzer II tanks and held the later model Panzer I’s back in reserve.  He watched the lead Matilda tank through his binoculars as his tanks hammered it with shell after shell, but the armor was too thick.  Dozens of shells exploded against the metal behemoth, but only succeeded in leaving a black smudge. The rounds could not penetrate the armored exterior.

On the other hand, the cannons mounted atop the Matildas were very effective and the British gunners put them to good use.  After seeing two dozen of his tanks burst into flames without stopping a single one of theirs, Gallono ordered a withdrawal back to the row of 88-millimeter antiaircraft guns his men had confiscated from the French a day earlier.

Gallono waited for the British forces to encircle his division and draw to within a thousand meters of their front line before unleashing his measure of last resort.  They lowered the firing angle of the AA guns to shoot parallel to the ground in a successful alteration of their designed intent.  Upon his order, twelve quad-barreled AA guns opened up on the British tanks and shredded them like they were made of rice paper.  A counter attack by Gallono’s panzers immediately followed and sent the attackers racing for the port of Dunkirk to await evacuation across the English Channel.

Two more attacks came over the next three days and were similarly repelled by the converted AA guns.  Word must have reached the British commanders to give Gallono’s division a wide birth because all was quiet for the next two days until the German infantry arrived to relieve the 7th Panzer Division. 

With the new arrivals came orders for Gallono to join the German Central Command and other prominent politicians in The Compiegne Forrest a few miles northeast of Paris.  There, after only forty-two days of fighting that resulted in three hundred thousand French and British casualties with another million and a half soldiers taken prisoner, an armistice was to be signed; the French had surrendered.

Gallono learned on his way to the proceedings that Tomal was in charge of the ceremony.  He saw on arrival that Tomal was at the top of his game as he milked the propaganda opportunity of the armistice signing on all four tits. It started with the location and grew progressively more insulting to the French delegates as the ‘festivities’ commenced.

The Forrest of Compiegne was where the 1918 Armistice was signed at the end of the Great War.  It symbolized Germany’s most humiliating defeat, which Hitler and his Nazi party harped on to no end.  Selecting this location was a supreme moment of revenge for Germany over France, but the insult did not stop there. 

Tomal took the extra symbolic step of removing the very same rail car that housed the original armistice signing from a nearby museum.  He had the rail car placed in the exact same spot where it sat for the 1918 signing.

Not yet finished rubbing the French delegate’s noses in their defeat, Tomal orchestrated the seating arrangement so that Hitler sat in the exact same chair that French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch used when he faced the defeated German representatives in 1918.

The final insulting blow to the French came during the reading of the preamble where Hitler, in an obvious prearranged gesture of disdain to the French delegates, stood up and walked out of the carriage.  He left the task of negotiating with the lowlife Frenchmen to his subordinates.  They were unworthy of the Führer’s precious time, which the photographers and newspaper reporters snapped up and ran with all the way back to Berlin where all of Germany hailed their magnificent and faultless Führer.

It took another full day following the show and signing for Gallono to get Tomal alone in a room for the two of them to talk.  It was not easy since the engineer made every effort to avoid Gallono, but that crippled leg of his could not outrun him forever.

Gallono followed Tomal out of a midday meeting and down a long hallway inside the main lodge of the compound.  Tomal hastened his pace to reach his sleeping quarters in time to shut and lock the door behind him, but Gallono was quicker.  While trying to close the door, he found Gallono’s boot wedged between the door and its frame.

Tomal stared at the polished black foot for a moment before releasing a sigh laden with anxiety and raised his head to look Gallono in the eyes.  “Won’t you come in, General?” Tomal said while opening the door wide to receive his guest.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Gallono responded on his way in.  He then took the door out of Tomal’s hand, shut it behind him and slid the locking bar into place with a resounding metallic clap.

Tomal’s face remained confident and defiant, but his body betrayed his demeanor as it slowly stepped backwards away from Gallono.  “I’m glad to see that our hero from the Battle of France survived the onslaught of retreating British forces.”

“Are you?” Gallono asked with a question dipped in sarcasm and smothered in a thick layer of cynicism.  “Because it looks to me like you set me up for failure under General Hoth.  When I managed to toss that little obstacle aside, you moved on to plan B and tried to have my entire division killed.  That order to hold position for two days was not for my men to rest.  It was so you could guide that retreating stampede right over the top of them; and me.”

“That’s specula…” Tomal began, but found it impossible to finish his sentence with Gallono’s fist in his mouth.  The blow sent him crashing onto the hardwood floor in front of his bed.  He remained there, holding his jaw with the back of his hand trying to catch a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth.

“That’s me calling you out as a selfish coward.  By trying to eliminate me you jeopardized our entire mission, and for what?” Gallono insisted as he moved in to stand over Tomal still lying on his back.  Every few decades it seemed necessary to slap Tomal around and bring him to heel.  Hastelloy always successfully administered the attitude adjustment with a diplomatic flair, but the captain was not here now.

  “You did your very best to sabotage my blitzkrieg tactic in the Battle of France by putting General Hoth in charge of the campaign.  Did you even bother considering what a prolonged war in France would have done to your Third Reich?  Would it be able to hold France if a million German soldiers died in the fighting and French partisans had time to organize a network of resistance rather than random splintered cells?”

“You risked everything,” Gallono went on, “because you still think all our work here on this planet is about you and your need for the rest of us, in particular Captain Hastelloy, to recognize your ‘greatness’.  Grow up!  It’s about the twenty million Novi soldiers locked inside the Nexus, damn it.  It’s about getting them home, and believe me, there will be enough fame and glory to go around if and when we accomplish that goal.  It’s a team effort, Tomal.  It has been for the last four thousand years and by God it will be over these last few or I will put an end to you once and for all.”

A knock and a twist of the doorknob interrupted Gallono’s rant, giving Tomal time enough to get off the floor and face Gallono on equal footing. “Sir, is everything all right in there?  I heard a loud crash and some shouting.”

Tomal took a moment to dust off his suit coat and tighten his tie while looking straight through Gallono with serpentine eyes.  They both knew Tomal could request help and have Gallono executed.  He was the physically weaker of the two men yet he had complete control of the situation, and Tomal reveled in it.

Still staring at Gallono, Tomal answered his aide with a calm voice.  “Everything is fine.  I’ll let you know if I need you.”

“Yes sir.  I do want to remind you that General Rommel’s award ceremony begins in ten minutes,” the aide said before walking away.

Tomal cracked a sideways grin that made Gallono want to snap his neck like a chicken, but he could not.  They had their orders from Captain Hastelloy to unite Europe.  Like it or not, Tomal was now well positioned to make that happen.  For the sake of their mission he restrained himself and allowed the engineer to say, “Come then, your Iron Cross medal awaits you.  Careful not to let it go to your head or I might have to put an end to
you
.”

Gallono drew a long, cleansing breath through his nostrils while standing nose to nose with the man who, more and more, behaved as an enemy.  “I hate you, Tomal. You’re a selfish, petty little fraction of a being.  From the bottom of your hooves to the top of your pitchfork I hate you and all your little like-minded Nazi friends.”