Ok, I have to start off by saying I had to change Norway to Denmark in the last chapter because I got some of my facts mixed up. I'm so sorry!
I stood on the top of a wooden bar, beer soaking my hair, and the top half of my uniform somewhere outside. Excitement filled my lungs as I joined my fellow soldiers in a wildly out of tune drinking song.
We were in a town in Denmark that I didn't bother to learn the name of and had managed to capture the whole of the country in two hours. The Danish bartender was less than pleased and all the locals had fled the scene of our victory celebration. A fellow soldier named Alrick crawled up onto the bar next to me and proceeded to kick his legs in time with our atrocious singing. This continued as half the occupants of the bar were on tables and ended when one slipped and fell off, laughing. A bunch of his fellow drunkards dragged him and dumped him somewhere outside where my shirt was. Honestly, I don't remember anything after that.
That night was one of many nights we spent goofing off. I heard that in Norway the Norwegians were putting up a valiant fight, but here in Denmark, we celebrated our swift victory, our only casualty being a private's dignity after slipping in fish guts.
The Danish greeted us as we were: conquers. We weren't very welcome company but we were here and hell if we weren't going to make the most of it.
Our reasons for being here were a bluff. Really, we just wanted the ports and the land. We depended on Swedish iron ore, and the vast majority came out Norway. Britain and France threatened our magnificent presentation of military manufacturing with a blockade up north. They were too chicken to face us in the form of a conventional war.
We said we were protecting the countries of Denmark and Norway from an occupation by the colonial terrors of Britain and France. Not a total lie. But now with control of these lands, we had Holland and France surrounded.
I often wondered about the plans for a supposed invasion of France. I knew my reason for being here in Denmark was so I was occupied and had something to do instead of constantly hounding my brother for information. Who the hell were these "military leaders" to think they didn't need me?!
I did do my best to think optimistically about this operation. With me being blind, deaf, and dumb to the goings on in the military I couldn't afford to be so pessimistic when I had no way of changing our situation. I was in the back seat now and I hated nothing more in this world.
I was stationed in Denmark a full week and a half before I got a telegram telling me to make my way back to Berlin. Well, when I got home I was received with the long overdue telling of information: there were decisions made on the plan invade France, and the very vague route explained to me seemed all too familiar.
I learned this interesting nugget from a letter sitting on the kitchen counter. It was for me from Germany and read like a mother telling her child not to forget to wash the dishes. Despite the fact that the tone of the letter put a small hole in my impenetrable pride, the contents of this message were much more concerning.
I had paced the length of the living room enough times to leave ruts in the floorboards and thinking about the stupidity of the plan before my brother returned home. When the door opened I paced my way right up into his face.
"I hope you came up with a better and less outdated strategy," I said through grit teeth.
"Yes, we have."
"And..?"
"We are invading through the Ardennes." My breath stopped for a second as I attempted to process what he had said. I took a deep breath to calm myself down.
I spoke slowly while I bit my tongue to keep from lashing out at my brother. "You never consulted me or asked for my opinion or told me a thing. Why?" I knew why: it's because I've become irrelevant, unimportant.
"The ones in charge don't care about what you think. You don't matter to them." He was always blunt.
"Do you care what I think?"
He paused and I suppressed my anger, "yes, of course."
"Then why?"
He said nothing, he actually looked helpless. I turned and began to walk away.
"We couldn't have done this without you!" My brother shouted after me. "We've been using your tactics, your order. It's because of you we have conquered Europe."
Turning back I screamed, "Because of me? You have left me out of everything! If you truly want to see what raw power is, what conquest is, you should've asked me!" I walked back up to him, doing my best to try and calm myself down. "I feel like I have earned the right to an explanation."
He stared at me in surprise before answering: "ok."
My brother sat down on the living room couch and began to explain the whole plan of attack. Not the explanation I wanted, but I kept quiet. Forces would attack the maginot line while the bulk of the army moved through the Ardennes and Holland. As he continued to explain, my skepticism did not diminish. We were going to take on the French army, the most powerful army in Europe, with only a fraction of our troops? The success of our attack depended entirely on this new blitzkrieg tactic, which had been successful in Poland and up North, but how were we to achieve the necessary speed and surprise in one of the most impenetrable forests in Europe? Whoever orchestrated this plan had made an assumption that an attack on the Netherlands would be swift and successful; they also assumed that the Belgium Army would crumble with due speed. So much was up to chance. Could we cross the Ardennes, which many had viewed as nearly impossible? If we were to use part of our forces as pons, could our weakened numbers fight against the expected French counter-attack in the Somme region? Fighting a battle at the site of our last military disaster wasn't my idea of "genius."
Yet through all this, Germany seemed confident.
"What do you think?"
"Blitzkrieg through one of the densest forests in Europe?"
He nodded.
"This will definitely be entertaining."
I'm sorry about the length and quality of this chapter and how long it took to come out. I have been very busy with my senior year and am in no way abandoning this story. The biggest reason this took so long to write was because I've been having more fun writing other parts of this story than this part, so didn't really have the motivation for this chapter. The next two chapters will definitely be longer and more entertaining since they will be about the invasion of France. Thanks for putting up with me!