The Memoirs of Commander Erwin Smith
I dreamt of my father last night. It started in the classroom. I was a boy, a proud boy admiring his pappa, the smartest man in the world. He was recounting the history of our people, how the story in the textbooks did not, could not, make sense. How out there somewhere were other humans, just waiting for us to come and find them. How, with courage and resourcefulness, we could overcome our jailors and rescue them and take back the world together.
The scene shifted and I was telling Nile Dok my father's theories. Only it wasn't Nile, my earnest friend from our cadet days but Commander Dok, head of the military police. He thanked me for my loyalty and gave me a purse of silver as a reward for turning in such a dangerous dissident. Then the scene shifted again and I was one in a group. We were beating a man on the ground. Kicking him to death. When he turned his face, I saw that it was my father's. It was not a new dream. Through my naivety I killed my own father, as surely as if I had been the MP goon who snapped his neck. It is a guilt I have had to carry all my life.
Tomorrow, the Survey Corps will ride out to reclaim Shiganshina. We will seal the breach in Wall Maria and liberate great tracts of land for humanity. Then, we will reveal the secrets that are held in Eren Yeager's basement and finally learn the truth about what lies beyond the walls. It will be the fulfillment of my life's work and my father's vindication. The mission will be exceedingly dangerous. With my injury I am not half the fighter I used to be and I know there is a strong possibility that I will be killed. Levi certainly thinks so. The impertinent, undergrown, softhearted bastard had the nerve to come to my office and threaten to break my legs in order to stop me from going! I can't blame him if he considers me selfish, but there is no way I could not go on this mission. It would be an impossibility. I simply must know the truth about this world. I do not fear death. I did not join the scouts to live a long life. Family? I missed my chance a long time ago.
Captain Levi's outburst prompted a thought. I would not be doing my duty if I allowed the knowledge and experience I have gained as commander of the scouts to die with me. It would not be fair to the soldiers who gave their hearts pursuing my dream. Thus I have decided to put to paper my memoirs. I hope that I can provide military and personal lessons to my successor that will allow the regiment to succeed and lives to be saved. This account will also serve as a history of the Survey Corps from before the fall of Wall Maria to the present day. One day soon, after the war has been won, the honored dead who gave so much for humanity deserve to have their story told. When that time comes this account may be released to the public.
My dear Hange, I hope it will be you who reads these papers in the event of my death. I chose you as my successor for your curious mind—a powerful and rare gift that will serve you well in your time as Commander. I have every faith in you. However, you know as well as I the dangers of the life we lead and I have prepared this manuscript with the possibility in mind that you may fall in this next mission as well. I will therefore cover in detail events that you were witness to yourself in your time as a senior officer of the Survey Corps. If, by black chance, command does fall to someone from the next generation it will be doubly important to pass on the hard-won tactics and structures that have sustained us thus far. Bear with me as I tread over familiar ground— and perhaps you will enjoy reading the perspective of your old captain.
I have structured my account in six chapters. First, I will describe the Scout Regiment before the fall of Wall Maria and how the fall changed us and describe the disastrous first attempt to take back the wall. Second, I will detail the next five years of what I have termed "conventional warfare" before we gained the power of the titans in the form of Eren Yeager, as the regiment struggled to build a route from Trost to Shiganshina and will provide an overview of how a Survey Corps is organised. Third, I will cover the time between the Battles of Trost and Stohess. Fourth, I will cover the Wall Rose Crisis. Fifth, I will cover the coup. Finally, I will provide an overview of the state of the Corps as we embark upon this final mission. Let us begin.
Chapter One
The Scouting Regiment was different before Wall Maria fell. Materially we were stronger. There were two Survey Corps under the regimental standard, both generally kept near full strength, and several auxiliary units as well. But we lacked purpose. Every few months we would ride out beyond the wall and a great many of us would die, but there was no clear goal in mind. Was our objective to learn about the titans? To kill them? To map the lands beyond the wall? Even if the regiment could settle on a goal we received so little support from the government that we had no chance of actually achieving it. The rest of the army was a joke: the Garrison Regiment idle and usually drunk, while the MPs were more interested in brutalizing civilians than doing their jobs (this, alas, has not changed). The Scouts subsisted on the nibblings of table scraps.
In those days humanity was 1.2 million strong. The most I ever saw on the active scout rolls was 712. We were, are, humanity's sword. The only branch of government actually trying to accomplish anything positive and we accounted for 0.0006% of the population. Just over 2% of the army. Eventually, we learned that the Reiss kings had never wanted to defeat the titans. That Karl Fritz intended for us to die out behind the walls he had built. At first, I wondered why the monarchy permitted the existence of the Scout Regiment at all. Certainly, there were voices calling for our disbandment. It had been 100 years since the titans had attacked and in the intervening time they had half faded to memory. Mankind had grown comfortable in its chains. For many the world ended at Wall Maria and they had no desire to see it grow. What resources we were begrudged were seen as a waste. A taxpayer funded titan buffet. Through all this it was the King's patronage that kept the regiment afloat—a king that had no desire to see us accomplish our task.
I have come to the conclusion that the Scout Regiment was an escape valve. There will always be humans who yearn for freedom. The mere existence of the regiment allowed the government to maintain the fiction that they had not given up. It gave the bravest of the dreamers the opportunity to join up and fight and die. It gave the rest hope. Whenever we left on an expedition children would line the streets and stare and point at the wings of freedom we wore proudly on our backs and I would allow myself to feel I was a part of something. But it was a lie. My comrades were sent out to be butchered by leaders who knew our cause was hopeless. Who ensured that it was hopeless. The Reiss kings were our greatest patrons and our most cynical betrayers. We should have torn the whole rotten edifice down years ago. But treason comes hard to the soldier and we did not know then what we know now. In any case our coup could not have succeeded without the support of the Garrison Regiment. In such conditions the idealists who joined the scouts quickly turned into cynics.
Things changed with the fall of Maria. At a stroke humanity lost 65% of its arable land and the Scout Regiment's goal was suddenly made clear—retake the wall. Other things changed as well. Scout budgets rose as the threat we faced became undeniable and the rest of the military began to professionalize. However, before we could reap these fruits there was still one bloody drama to play out.
We could not feed our population.
The calculations were made quickly. Draconian rationing was imposed that continues to this day. But the math was obvious. There were too many people and not enough farmland. At the highest levels of command there was never any doubt that the goal of the Operation to Retake Wall Maria was population reduction. Genocide. The basic concept was simple. "Excess" citizens—refugees, the elderly, the crippled, criminals, the poor—would be conscripted. They would be given the bare minimum of training and equipment and sent forth to retake Shiganshina. There was not even a coherent operational level plan. Brigades were sent out as they were raised in pulses of futile bloodletting, all through the winter of 845-846.
Who can forget the quiet heroism of those who volunteered for that doomed effort, even though we all knew it was a suicide mission? It was a grandfather's crusade. Tens, hundreds of thousands chose to die so that their children might live. Others did not choose. They died screaming. Beating against the doors of Wall Rose with their bloody hands while titans ripped them apart. Once their screams fell silent the next wave was sent out. And then the next. And then the next. And then the next.
Until 200,000 were dead and we could once again feed ourselves.
It is ironic. The one time humanity roused itself for total war and we wasted the effort. All that courage, all that manpower poured down the drain. It did not have to be that way. We should never have let the military degenerate to a gang of useless rent collectors. We should never have given up the land between Wall Maria and Wall Rose without a fight. We should have contested every inch. I have fought titans all of my adult life and I know that they can be killed. Imagine if a fraction of the resources we used to systematically kill 20% of our own population had been given to the scouts instead. My scout regiment is about 300 strong. Everything I have accomplished has been with fewer men than we lost an hour over the winter of 45-46. Give me 10,000 Scouts—trained, equipped and motivated—and I could drive the titans in to the sea within a year, wherever the sea is.
I suppose it is a useless thought experiment. Our government was beaten mentally the moment the Armored Titan made his charge. Our people didn't do much better. There wasn't a retreat from Wall Maria, there was a rout. Monsters that nobody had taken seriously were suddenly running amok. The response of the human species—run away. What a disgrace. By the time we had regrouped behind Wall Rose there wasn't time to organize 10,000 Scouts or even 1,000. It takes 3 years to train a soldier on ODM gear and another year of frontline service to make a useful Scout. We had a few months before famine set in. Still, the incompetence, apathy and cowardice the government demonstrated during the fall of Wall Maria, and which it was prepared to demonstrate again during the "fall" of Wall Rose, is to my knowledge the greatest crime ever perpetrated by a government upon its subjects.
I must digress a moment to go over my own background. I joined the military in 828 and graduated from the cadets in 831. There was never any question that I would join the scouts. I wanted to go beyond the walls and prove my father right and if I died, I would die atoning for my greatest sin. That didn't seem so bad. I trained hard and became strong. I became friends with the idealistic fools that make up the Scout Regiment. The bravest of the dreamers. I was not one of them but I loved them. I rode out on many missions. I saw many friends die. I killed many titans. I rose through the ranks.
It has been my blessing and curse to see clearly what others can not. In 845 I was a corps commander—the 1st Survey Corps. My mission in life was to persuade the commander of the Scout Regiment, Keith Shadis, to agree to my proposal to adopt a new long range scouting formation. I hoped that by dispersing our forces, setting up a rational system of communication and avoiding unnecessary battles we could continue to accomplish our missions while bringing more scouts home. Commander Shadis told me to try it once I was commander. Shadis wasn't heartless but he was broken. If anything he had too big a heart, but he didn't believe in the scouts anymore. He was a fatalist.
The massed citizen battalions that fought that winter did not fight with ODM gear. There was not nearly enough of it to go around and they would not have known what to do with it even if there had been. They fought in the old style. With pikes. They would form up, 16 or more deep with 16 foot wooden spears. When the titans charged they would try to pin them with their spears and throw them to the ground. Then soldiers with flesh pairing blades would run up and cut the titan's nape. I even saw it work, once or twice.
The real military had orders to avoid battle. Professional soldiers took a long time to train and so we were exempt from the government's cull. The Scout Regiment did ride out with the farmers but it was intended as a symbolic gesture to raise morale. But what could we do?! It is not human nature to stand by and watch fellow humans being butchered. It was not Keith Shadis's nature, pigheaded though he was. Time and again we were committed to battle and time and again we failed. When the struggle turned against us we would flee up the walls with our grappling hooks and watch thousands die. That winter the Scout Regiment experienced a holocaust in miniature that reflected the holocaust humanity was experiencing as a whole. Keith Shadis broke down entirely and I was made commanders of the scouts. One of my first acts had to be to disband the decimated 2nd Survey Corps and fold its members into the scarce better off 1st—my old outfit—to maintain at least nominal fighting strength. I stopped the Scout Regiment's glorious rides out with the citizens. When we watched the massacres from atop the walls, and we did, it was with dry blades. By the end of the winter some of us were still alive.