Rasputin of the East

＜ Episode 55 >

Varna, Bulgaria. Russian occupied territory

“Ten minutes break!”

At the shouts of the guards, the prisoners put down their sacks and shovels one by one.

It was a construction unit that recruited prisoners of war acquired by the Southern Front Army.

To be more precise, it was forced labor for prisoners of war, but in fact, there was nothing legally involved in this.

Although the Geneva Treaty did not prohibit prisoners of war to work for the sake of health care, that is, sports, there is a part that the labor should be strictly limited to non-military activities.

However, it was in 1929 that a clause on prisoners of war was added to the Geneva Conventions, and there was no international convention on the treatment of prisoners of war, at least during World War I.

In other words, there is no reason to say anything about having the prisoners clear the road.

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Moreover, since the road is also the way their food truck will come, it is closely related to the treatment of the prisoners themselves, and in fact, the motivation of the prisoners who received such nuances from the guards was quite high.

No human being is stupid enough to say that he will starve himself when he asks if he will have to carry at least food for you.

“Ha, I never thought I’d ever be envious of Czechs, but I’m a bit envious.”

“Yeah, I don’t know anything else, but you say you can get a good amount of cigarettes and taste alcohol if you’re lucky? Oh shit, I ran out of cigarettes, Corporal, do you have any cigarettes left? Didn’t I say you don’t smoke?”

POWs are also provided with supplies. Among the rations, one cigarette per month was paid for each soldier under the name of “favorite food”.

Of course, even the Russian army had no choice but to do so in the face of insufficient supplies. Even if the supply has become a little wider than in the original history, it is essential goods such as bullets, food, and various armaments, but the supply of items that are not so essential, such as cigarettes, was small.

As an added bonus, in the case of the Interior Ministry, those who do not smoke will receive additional points in the promotion examination, but from the point of view of the prisoners, there was no way to know.

In the end, cigarettes were smuggled through barter, and smuggling prices soared.

Even some guards took part in the smuggling, bringing snacks and smoking cigarettes, and thanks to the smugglers, no one after another suffered withdrawal symptoms.

In any case, the soldier tried to negotiate because simply asking for a cigarette was the right thing to be tolerated even if he threw bamboo bread among the prisoners.

“A piece of chocolate.”

“I can give you one for four pieces, how about this one?”

“Turn it off, you idiot.”

“I have no idea.”

“Oh, don’t…”

At that moment, the prisoner put his hand into his pocket, took out the envelope, and took out a cigarette from within.

“uh?”

“Take it.”

“Wow, wow, crazy.”

“hey! hey! Give me one too!”

“You madman! You are there!”

“Hey! Why are you making so much noise! The break is too long!”

“no!”

“Ah, thank you so much, Corporal! What was your name?”

“……”

“Why no answer?”

“Leave it alone, that person is originally like that. Being a prisoner of some inferior Slavs is a disgrace or something, it’s a shame that he is so advanced that he is shoveling here.

“Isn’t that the guy who tried suicide once last time? Come to think of it?”

“He’s a pretty decent bastard, where is the kid who commits suicide because he’s been taken prisoner? Do you know any secrets?”

“Those who were captured with me say that they were the messengers of the regiment. What, didn’t the regimental commander know what he ate for breakfast this morning?”

“……”

When the opponent did not respond, the soldiers, who got tired of it, went straight to another topic and talked.

The soldier, left alone, looked to the horizon.

‘Where is the German Empire going?’

A second-class recipient of the Iron Cross, who doesn’t even receive any parcels or letters other than rations from the Red Cross, and gives away alcohol and cigarettes to other prisoners. corporal receiving .

Adolf Hitler couldn’t help but be frustrated by the devastating news he heard more and more.

‘Vostok, Vostok.’

What kind of existence is he who led the inferior Slavs and defeated the great Aryan legion head-on?

It is said that he is not a Slav, but rather a being from the east.

‘Maybe his origin is Aryan.’

It would have been so, otherwise, it was inexplicable that he led the inferior Slavs to unilaterally defeat the great army of Aryans and forced him to endure such a humiliating captivity.

There was evidence of that. In any case, the Slavs themselves did not defeat the Aryans even once.

Only when that stranger, the Count of Vostok, led them could they triumph against the great Aryan people.

It’s not their victory. There was no way the inferior Slavs would win against the Aryans in the first place.

It is a victory for the Earl of Vostok. Count Vostok wasn’t even a Slav in the first place.

It was absolutely disgusting to see them snatch his ball and wrap it up as if it were their own victory.

‘Someday… One day, the day will come when all those Slavs will be erased from the earth.’

A shout came from behind Adolf Hitler’s delusional head.

“24601! what are you doing there Break is over! If you want dinner to arrive safely, work! He who does not work, do not eat!”

“Isn’t that just the right word for this situation? Labor will set you free (Arbeit macht Frei).”

Picking up a sack of sackcloth, a German soldier joked.

The break is over, the president of the ㎢ who was studying a grand strategy to wipe out all the inferior races in delusion disappeared with a whistle announcing the end of the break, and Adolf Hitler, who had to shovel the road all day today, to restore the road. Only the corporal remained.

“hey! Painter! Can’t shovel straight? How did you eat jjambap? Are you the one with a medal? Where did you get it from the corpse?”

When that day comes, Corporal Adolf Hitler vowed and vowed to kill that bastard first.

Of course, even if it was, the reality of being scolded for not shoveling straight away did not change.

***

France, near the river Somme.

– Awesome!

A roar rang out, breaking through the speed of sound, and an explosion broke out.

It wasn’t just one or two feet.

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Massive British artillery fire, pouring down like a shower of rain, covered the German defenses.

The British army prepared a single offensive for the British army without the French army to exasperate the shame they suffered in the last siege on the British mainland, and their target was Bapoum, a strategically important location.

It also had a political element. The British mainland was invaded for the first time in hundreds of years due to the massive shoveling of the Navy under former Navy Secretary Winston Churchill, who was already virtually buried in politics and banned from even calling his name.

However, the invasion was eventually repelled by the army. Of course, the battlecruiser squadron brought by Admiral Fischer, who was transferred to the new naval minister after failing to advance under the bombardment of the German Kaiser Marine, and Admiral Hipper, reluctant to face a head-on collision with the Queen Elizabeth class, picked it up while making the decision to withdraw. The army succeeded in defending the British mainland, which apparently failed the navy.

Aside from the fact that the Germans were not capable of advancing as far as London in the first place, and ignoring that it was the navy that effectively defeated the Germans, and finally that the army had virtually nothing to do with it, the British people applauded the army, not the navy, for the first time. have sent

In particular, a British Army platoon commander named Bernard Law Montgomery rose to prominence as a national hero when he hoisted a Union Jack on Canby Island, occupied by the Germans.

It is often said that when the water comes in, you row an oar. In addition to raising the morale of the people, the British Army tried to raise their position by successfully launching a large-scale offensive.

On the 8th, it was the time when the British troops poured concentrated artillery fire on the Germans.

However, the actual damage suffered by the Germans was minimal. The proportion of unexploded ordnance was also considerable, and in most cases, the shells did not collide and explode due to the soft soil, but only the pits due to being buried deep in the mud and exploding or due to misfire.

In addition, he made the mistake of using shrapnel bombs for killing human beings as the main type of ammunition rather than high explosives for destroying structures.

The number of heavy artillery was also small. The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, which is said to be the best fighting force on the front line, was far inferior considering that it deployed a significant number of 155mm-class heavy guns in the front lines, even if it cost a lot of money.

It goes without saying that it was not enough to destroy the German defense positions that had been leveled up based on the battle with the Interior Forces and open a passage.

The soldiers were locked in a trench as deep as a few meters, where it was possible to significantly reduce the damage from fragments, and the machine guns were dismantled and stored in a safe place.

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Many of the shells fell short of the German defensive positions due to mistakes in even calculating the range.

The eight-day bombardment, which was a total chaos, was technically close to a waste of shells, but the British generals even thought that the Germans were annihilated by this shelling alone and that the infantry needed only to go and plant their flags.

And that fatal misjudgment led to an absurd order.

“Ah, spread the word to the troops, the enemies must have been wiped out by the allies’ shelling, so never run to the German trenches and march in line.”

“Preach to the regiment, so that in order to line up, each member kicks a soccer ball and advances to the German trenches. More than.”

Next up was the video. The Germans were shocked to see the British soldiers walking in line and kicking soccer balls, and they fired machine gun fire at the enemy lines, erasing the British troops.

Even if the units did not walk in line or charge with soccer balls, the engineers had to slow down as they were carrying construction materials to build their positions, and the damage was inevitably large. did.

The British army’s lack of training was the decisive blow. When the machine guns poured in, the skilled soldiers quickly dispersed and survived by hiding behind cover, but most of the soldiers were drafted according to the recently passed draft law, or they had just received basic training after volunteering.

Literally, platoons, companies, and battalions evaporated in the meantime.

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Most British soldiers, who did not even get a chance to respond properly, made the Somme their epitaph.

However, the British leadership was still in a fantasy, imagining at will that the Germans who hunted the British with machine guns in the trenches would have suffered similar damage, and this was the result of the British General The Hague, who was in charge of the offensive, with troops in the Somme. It came as a result of issuing an order to continue the offensive by increasing the number of

Once again, British soldiers had to be driven into Hell Road, a slaughterhouse where humans were efficiently slaughtered.