Chapter 288: Ex Gladio Libertas!
The battle was over before it had begun. The Ottoman Empire’s only army stationed within Eastern Thrace, or left to defend it after all sides began to crumble around them, stood slaughtered. They had chosen to die rather than surrender, not that Bruno would have given them the option to do so.
The signature red banner with the white crescent moon of the Ottoman Empire lies tattered and broken among the men who defended it to the last breath. Riddled with bullets and torn apart by shrapnel and explosions alike.
Their bodies were as humiliating as the bolt of cloth they had fought in vain to protect, and the ideals it stood for. While Bruno was generally a man who respected the virtues commonly found within martial societies, the Ottoman Empire was not one of them.
An Army of slaves, pressed forward to their deaths by slavers unworthy of the power they wielded. These were the men who had built the Ottoman Empire, and though they had done much to modernize over the course of the last century, when built upon such shameful foundations, how could one have much respect for their empire?
It was perhaps because of this that Bruno wrenched the standard away from the hands of the man who had died with it in his arms. But even with having been claimed by Azrael, this soldier refused to let go of the banner, causing Bruno to step upon his already shattered arm, and forcefully removing the grip from the shaft of the banner.
An act of mutilation that his soldiers witnessed him perform. All the while, Bruno gazed over at Heinrich, who was looking at him curiously before asking a question he did not expect.
"Have a smoke I can borrow?"
A smoke? Didn’t this man just begin quitting the habit? Was he really giving up now? Even so, smoking wasn’t something that was entirely looked upon as a filthy and unhealthy habit in this era, and because of this, Heinrich quickly reached into his pocket and handed Bruno a cigarette, along with a lighter.
Having decided to make his last smoke one of legend, Bruno lit the Ottoman Banner aflame and used it as the means to light his cigarette, where he then took a long drag with one hand and expelled a large plume of smoke, before tossing the blazing standard into the pile of corpses in front of him.
Corpses which had been doused with gasoline and diesel. The bolt of crimson cloth which represented the flag of the Ottoman Empire was consumed in a burst of flames, as were the soldiers who had died defending it.
The burning stack of corpses was gazed upon by the German 8th Army and the Austro-Hungarians who accompanied them, while Bruno turned his back to the massive pyre, disregarding the dead men who had fought against his advance as if their only worth was to light his cigarette in dramatic fashion.