Chapter 265: Contingencies
Word came over the wire shortly after the battle had concluded. In the dead of winter, amidst one of the fiercest storms the Alps had ever seen in recorded history. The Italian Army made a desperate move. One that had paid off the dividends and then some.
The front lines at Isonzo collapsed overnight, and the secondary lines fell not long after. Reinforcements arrived just in time to hold the line in the third region of defense. But fighting was continuing, even now, as Bruno sat in his office drinking a shot of vodka as he looked over the reports in his hands.
The Austro-Hungarians had assumed nobody would be crossing no-man's-land in such frigid and unforgiving weather. And rightfully so... It was not a wise move to make. But desperate men seldom acted with wisdom in mind.
Perhaps because it was such an unpredictable move, or at least one of such low probability that the senior leadership in Isonzo had been lax on their soldiers who desperately huddled around fires with all the coats and blankets they could find.
This lack of concern for protecting the lines of defense had ultimately been their ruin. And as far as Bruno was concerned, he would have never allowed such a thing to come to pass had he been in charge of the theater.
Why was this the case? Because the man understood human nature exceptionally well, and was also deeply paranoid as a result of it. Even in such frost fall, Bruno would have ensured at the very least men were on sentry rotation.
His men surely would have hated him for it, but at the end of the day, while one was deployed to a war zone, comfort was secondary on the list of priorities to operational security. A measure the Austro-Hungarian leadership had learned through the price of blood. And by the sound of it, rivers of it...
After drinking the shot of vodka, Bruno poured himself another while Heinrich approached him with more information in his hands. And it was further bad news from the look of the expression on his face.
"So... Your request to the Naval High Command to begin adoption of the Landing Craft you have prepared was accepted."
The words Heinrich spoke did not necessarily match the look on his face or the tone in his voice. Causing Bruno to speak with a stern tone in his own as he responded with his inquiry with a single word.
"And?"