Chapter 58: Formation of the Iron Brigade Part III
Heidi knew something was wrong the moment Bruno began spending his days around the house. At first she thought that perhaps the man had gotten some extra time of leave for reasons unknown to her. But in the end, she knew this was too good to be true.
Sure she had her ways to find out just what exactly Bruno was up to. But she did not want to go behind the man's back to find out. Rather, she trusted when the time came he would tell her himself.
And because of this, she waited patiently, all the while fulfilling her role as a loving wife and mother. The upside of spending time at his home while organizing the formation of the Iron Brigade was the fact that Bruno had managed to be around his children much more.
They were, after all too young to go to school, and because of this they spent their time at home, being raised by their mother. Now that he was home for the majority of the day, other than a few weekly visits to the Central Division in order to report the updates of his project to his superiors. Bruno found himself taking breaks quite frequently to play with his daughters, and to teach his young son valuable lessons.
As the weeks passed, Bruno found that he had more volunteers from the German Navy than he initially expected. In particular, the German Seebattalion, which was the Imperial German Naval Infantry, in other words their version of Marines had well over two dozen volunteers join the unit.
This made sense when Bruno considered the small scale of the Seebataillon and the fact that they really didn't have much to do, as one only one of its two battalions had been deployed to defend German colonists in the Herero Wars
In fact, now that it was mid-October 1904, Bruno was all too aware of what had happened in the region. It did after all cause some major drama at the Central Division of German High Command. In an act of rebellion, the Khoi and Herero tribes had massacred 125 German settlers in what would be known as Namibia in the 21st century.
In retaliation, General Lothar von Trotha had ordered the extermination of the Herero tribes by killing all the men, as well as forcing the women and children into the desert where they would die from dehydration or exposure.
It was no doubt an act of cruelty, but considering the Herero tribes had murdered innocent German Settlers, Bruno quite frankly considered it not necessarily justified per se, but more so the natural result that would occur when a colonial subject performed such a heinous act against their masters.
In addition to this, Bruno was well aware of Lothar von Trotha's character. Having served beneath the man in China during the boxer rebellion. Well, not exactly directly as Bruno was only a captain at the time who answered to a Lieutenant Colonel. But the man was in charge of the East Aisa Expeditionary Corps, which Bruno was a part of and thus could have been considered the boss of Bruno's boss.