Re: Blood and Iron

The smoking chamber of a bolt-action rifle as it ejected a spent brass case, one of too many to count filled the air, as a man in low ranked military uniform ensured another round was seated before aiming down the weapon in his hand and squeezing the trigger again.

Squeezing wasn’t quite the right word, panic, adrenaline, and excitement flooded the blood stream as bullets whipped past his body and shredded he men behind them, the sanguine liquid of life now ripped from its grace and future poured out on the dirt beneath their freshly rotting corpse something barely worth mentioning.

Such a scene was common, far too common, far too tiresome to even think about in the Balkans. Especially here, and now in the interwar era. Yet the young man, the boy really, hardly even an adult, perhaps even younger than one would expect by the age on his face, fired another thunderous shot downrange towards the machine gun nest, and the men within it who had killed his comrade just moments before.

The language he spoke was old, changed in time into something new, modern, but whose roots were ancient. He was a Serbian boy, who had witnessed Bruno’s march through his lands just two years prior, but then he was young, younger than now, not yet old enough to pick up a rifle and defend his home, avenge his father, and brothers, some of which were choked to death in the miasma of gas that suffocated Belgrade into extinction, and the soldiers defending its heritage.

But this was a new year, a new Serbia, a new army ,and most importantly a new capital. Ironically, the city itself, the buildings within it I mean, we’re more damaged now than they had been in Bruno’s diabolical vengeance against the black hand.

Evil had been committed here, then, now, and long before anyone alive today had ever drawn their first breath. It was the nature of life, the nature of the Balkans, the nature of humanity. And so too, men and boys struggled, with arms in their hand, for family, god, king and country as they killed in the name of all the above, and to protect what was behind them.

Finally, as the boy splattered the brains of the machine gunner, he rushed into the nest bayonet affixed and thrust the steel that lie at the end of his rifle straight into the heart of the loader.

The man he killed was easily twice his age, and wearing a Croatian uniform, a shared history, heritage, and linguistic roots. But a different cross, a different God, a different nation. And so they fought, they bled, and they burned.

And his death was just one of many in the name of such fruitless endeavors. Another nameless face in the tides of bodies that had been claimed by war and its cruelty. And the boy who killed him? Not the slightest remorse.

No, just fatigue. He was tried, physically, mentally, spiritually, and far too accustomed to the bloodshed at an age that was simply unforgivable for such a sentiment to be learned.

Nevertheless, this was his life, and as a soldier of the new Serbian Kingdom, he fought further more, reloading the weapon with a stripper clip from his load bearing equipment as another Croatian soldier came rushing in with a revolver in hand, aiming it straight at the boy and pulling the trigger without a second thought.

*bang*

—

Lines were drawn on a map in Bruno’s war room, which was one of the few completed rooms of his palace as it currently stood, yesterday’s lesson to his son Josef had been completed without incident, but today was a matter of politics, ethics, and an understanding of the burden that came with the right to rule.

The map was one of many, borders had changed so frequently throughout the last few decades, and they represented more than just lines, but the changing of time, the passing of civilizations, and the rise of empires.

Such things need not only be remembered, but the context in which they occurred lest humans, and especially future leaders be doomed to repeat them. In particular, Bruno was showing Josef and his younger brothers the reality that was the Balkans.

In the last hundred years alone, since the time of Napoleon until now, this region in particular had changed more than any other. And Bruno needed to highlight why this was. And the price that had been paid for the consistent reorganization of these lines.

Josef, not understanding the full weight of what he was looking at, seemed rather elated, innocently so as he mentioned his thoughts to his father, that did not immediately provoke a thought.

“Do all nations change so frequently throughout history, father?

Bruno thought long and hard about this question for longer than he should have before finally shaking his head and sighing.

“No… at least not as frequently as the Balkans, and nor should they. You may not understand this yet at your age, Josef, but every time these lines are changed, it doesn’t just represent the acquisition or concession of a territory or two, and sometimes an entire kingdom or another.

No… it represents a loss on a scale of magnitude you cannot even begin to understand…”

Bruno then when silent, his gaze suddenly becoming glassy, as if he was no longer looking at the map, but well beyond it and the floor beneath it. Josef couldn’t possibly understand what his father was thinking. He barely understood what the man said.

He had an inkling, but he was still young enough where the concept of war wasn’t something horrific, but rather gallant, and chivalric in a way that men should aspire to. No matter what era and nation, boys would always aspire to be a soldier at some point in their life no? Or at least a fair amount of them would…

Perhaps because of this innocence and naivety, Josef made a comment that couldn’t help but snap his father back to attention.

“Loss? Like what… resources? Materials?”

As if, pondering whether he should reveal the truth to his son, Bruno paused silently as he rolled up the map, and pulled out the next one, before finally deciding to just go through with this thoughts, albeit filtered and sanitized for a boy Josef’s age that he would properly process.

“Yes, that too, but I was more alluding to the young men who fight for these changes… You see, Josef, when a soldier goes to war, more often than not he doesn’t come home… He won’t live to see his mother, his father, his brothers, his sisters, or if he’s old enough his wife and children.

For every time you see these maps change, just know there are a number headstones somewhere in a graveyard on some country’s soil where the ultimate price was paid for what was gained, and what was lost.

Contrary to what they will teach you in school, my son, war doesn’t determine who is right and who is wrong. No, at the end of the day, it only reveals who is left standing when the bullets stop flying…”

Josef, as if picking up on the severity of his father’s statement, and the reality reflected within it, could not help but ask another question, not one of childhood innocence and ignorance, but rather curiosity in understanding something that he instantly realized was not as glorious, or celebratory as he once thought.

Especially when he envisioned in his mind the ever increasing graveyards and the headstones within them as the borders changed time and time again between the maps and the years between them.

At first Josef tried to think it through rationally. Why? What could be worth such a price to be paid? But no matter how he thought about it, he could not find an answer, and in the end he was forced to ask his father for the answer.

“So… If this is true… Why do we fight?”

Bruno deciding to end this lecture now that it had become far more grim and somber of a message than he had intended to part upon his son began to instantly roll up the aging maps and carefully seal them away for future generations of their family to absorb, future lectures to be imparted upon them.

And as he did so, he let his tone loose almost as if he was working through the answer to his son’s question in his own head.

“Why do we fight? …. To ask this is to ask why the leaves fall from the trees in autumn, and why they bloom again in the warmth of spring… It is simply in our nature… No… the better question is to ask what is worth fighting for…”

After saying this Bruno stashed the containers filled with the large maps away in the family archives, leaving his son stunned into silence, he did not need to ask what was worth fighting for, because as he looked around at this partially finished palace which he and his family were helping to build with their own hands, and his parents, and siblings within it, as well as all the laborers who treated him to chocolate and pastries whenever he did a good job, he already knew in his heart the answer.

For family and fatherland… What else was worth such a price to be paid?

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