Re: Blood and Iron

Albanian guerillas were smoking a cigarette while gazing upon the lands just east of them. These were Serbian lands, a nation that had come under occupation by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and was in the process of being fully annexed.

They had yet to hear of the Kaiser's declaration. How could they? These were a few men near the border with some old rifles. Radios, telegraphs? Modern communications equipment? They hadn't the slightest idea what those were, or how to use them.

Instead, they joked about the violence that had begun in the Balkans, violence which they were at least partially to blame for its escalation. These men had no idea that the German invasion had already begun.

While their coasts were bombarded by the Hellenic and Austro-Hungarian navies, the Germans had begun to march through the west. Albania, being a heavily mountainous region, thought nothing of this. Their natural landscape had been given to them by Allah to protect against the infidels.

Or so these men thought, but when the armored vehicles of the German 8th Army began to push forward through the mountain pass, and the roar of their engine's echoes throughout the ravines in between the granite spires, it was almost as if the end of times were upon them. The Albanian Guerillas quickly ceased their recreational smoking, and their banter, instead, loading their rifles as they shouted at one another in their local tongue.

"Something is coming up the hill! Be prepared to engage!"

Something was indeed coming up the hill, and it was not anything these men could have ever expected. The Panzer I in this life was a Light Tank designed after the lessons learned from the Great War, the Interwar Period, and the entirety of the Second World War in Bruno's past life.

It was relatively lightweight, agile, but still packed an impressive punch, while also having armor designed to protect it from much greater firepower than these mountain guerillas were capable of bearing.

On top of all of this, it was equipped with its own radio systems, allowing it to maintain communications with the chain of command. To say that such a thing was never before seen by these goat herders armed with bolt action rifles that had been obsolete for more than 20 years was an understatement of the lifetime.

When a 25 ton steel machine of war comes barreling down at speeds greater than your fastest steed and begins aiming its main gun upon your location. That is indeed what one might call a moment worthy of soiling their pants.

But when ten of these same vehicles, and another thirty armored cars of a similar design, are right behind it, there is only one natural response a man should have. And that is to run away... But were the Germans willing to let these men run away?