Chapter 62

Wednesday, 2 July, 2014
War Room, City Hall
Roanoke, Virginia

“We have confirmed reports that the ASF has lost control of roughly forty percent of its coastal territory since the Norfolk counteroffensive. Poquoson and Hampton, for instance. What they found was ... well, not only uninhabited, but uninhabitable. This time around, the ASF carried out ‘scorched earth’ policies and destroyed whatever they could. Buildings were dynamited, not that they were very well-populated. By all accounts, there were not that many folks around,” Munson informed me now.

“Furthermore, our air strikes and theirs have done considerable damage to their fuel and other supplies. By theirs, of course, I mean the VNDF. The Virginia Naval Defense Force. FA-18E Super Hornets and also F-14 Tomcats brought out of mothballs. The enemy is critically weakened now. They have had to pull back even more from southern Virginia, places such as Emporia, to conserve their resources. Places like that are just too far for their supply lines to reach,” another staff officer, Major Randolph Lane, added.

“We don’t know what’s happened there, of course, beyond the evacuation. It’s not as if we have any troops on the ground there. Those entire areas are presumably ghost towns, thoroughly uninhabited. Who knows what is going on there? We’ll have to find out later, I guess. We don’t really have the time or manpower to look into it yet, do we?” I grimaced, especially knowing that my own time there was short.

I would really miss these guys. They had become family to me, closer than expected by now, just as the folks in Charlottesville and Frederick had. I wasn’t looking forward to my departure. Then again, I wouldn’t miss the war ... well, not the killing. I would miss the camaraderie of the war, the fellowship, the comradeship of the common struggle against the mutual adversary. Then again, I fully expected to bond with my new neighbors when I went out west.

I had no idea how much longer I would be here, of course, so I tended to milk my quality time with these people for as much of their company as possible. I would probably never see them again, after all. I had to make it count. I wouldn’t let that time go to waste. It would never come again.

I sighed as we reviewed even more reports and updates, both by telegrams, CB, and other anachronistic technology. We had a variety of sources, including our human recon patrols, of course. They just hadn’t gone as far south as Emporia, Virginia, or what used to be it, of course. Why would they? There were no enemy troops there anymore and those who had been there weren’t close enough to the frontlines of combat. There was nothing worth inspecting or scouting for as of yet.

I thought back the past couple of days, also, realizing that Monday had been the eightieth anniversary of the infamous Night of the Long Knives, on 30 June, 1934. That was the date when not only Ernst Rohm and the other notorious SA leaders, many of them homosexuals, had been purged, but also Gustav von Kahr, Kurt von Schleicher, and rival Nazi boss Grigor Strasser, etc. These were all enemies of Adolf Hitler in some capacities or the objects of lingering grudges. Well, technically, the purge continued for the next two days. This made it eighty years ago, even then, that such a horrid crime was perpetrated by National Socialism and its false messiah, Adolf Hitler.

Well, as awful as Rohm was, he deserved better from his old friend than betrayal of that caliber, even if he was a brawny bully, braggart, racist, and thug. Perhaps there was some poetic justice that such a vicious ideology, which had even cannibalized its own earliest champions, would begin to thoroughly unravel eighty years after its worst expression. It certainly would if I had anything to do with it. National Socialism was a stain on the memory of the human race, and the sooner we were rid of it, once and for all, the better.

The demons of the Third Reich would be exorcized from the world, at long last. That fool Eckart had been lured here into a trap, and I was determined to do my part to close it. I had a real God-given duty, a mission, a destiny to crush the Nazi worldview forever, and chase it into the dustbin of history. It was my purpose in life, the one for which I was born, far more than anything else, I now knew. No matter whatever else I achieved, it would pale next to my presence at this critical juncture, this moment that would forever seal the fate of humanity.

It would also mean being ruthless in how I dealt with the foe. I could not show any clemency or mercy to the enemy. The adversary was to be crushed, eliminated, extirpated entirely, wiped off the face of the Earth. National Socialism was to be annihilated and the Nazis with it. I would make an example of them, even if I wouldn’t get to stay to see the full fruits of my labors, of my victory. If they listened to me, and frankly to Preuss, the necessary measures, draconian though they might be, would be taken.

“Sir, Colonel Lassard has arrived for his promotion ceremony tomorrow. We’re still on for that, I presume? Major General Andre Lassard, no less. It’s a big deal. I’m glad to see that you have a professional soldier as a deputy who can take over the reins on the ground when you have to depart,” Munson reassured me, even as I perused the maps.

“Let him in, of course. Right, Your Honor?” I turned to Austin.

“Naturally,” the Mayor of Roanoke, a fellow, if junior Prophet, concurred, clearly still seeing himself as my understudy.

Lassard had a very fascinating mustache, a cavalier business, and looked very much the stereotypical Frenchman, even if he was actually French-Canadian. He intentionally played up the cliches, had great fun with them, in fact. Especially when going up against a bunch of phony German (and sometimes real) Nazis like Eckart and company, he enjoyed a kind of spiritual revenge upon the ideological disciples of Hitler, Dietrich (the original) Eckart, Gottfried Feder, Alfred Rosenberg, etc. He wanted to play up the psychological edge it gave him to annoy the mutual enemy. The rest of his uniform was similarly ... well, interesting.

“You remind me of Marshal Foch, I think. Just the right kind of look to irritate the Nazis. I love it. Don’t worry, tomorrow, bright and early, you’ll be the newly minted Major General and CINC-West. Your new force is being recruited as we speak, though, you’ll be expected to oversee the bulk of it. The sooner you can hit the ground running with it, the better. We don’t know when the foe will try its full force against us here in Roanoke, after all. They are getting desperate,” I stipulated with a grin.

“You’ll be a hero soon enough, and you know what that means. You’ll be very popular with the ladies. And some gents, if you wish. You have Schumacher Syndrome already, if I recall correctly,” Austin added.

“Very much so. Popular, oui? Well, I am a hot-blooded French-Canadian libertine, oui? I can’t let my people down, non? I have to live the part,” Lassard chuckled while looking over the maps with us.

“The latest reports have Jamestown wrested from the Nazis. Weirdly, some of them were taken alive. They didn’t survive for long. Per his established policy, Preuss had them drowned in the James River. They were deemed unworthy of the bullet and he wanted to save ammunition, anyway. Preuss wanted it clear that he has no intentions of ever sparing any Nazi lives, not of any grown-ass troops. If they’re young enough, well, he’ll cross that bridge when he gets there,” Munson elaborated.

“Well, at any rate, the counties of York, Gloucester, Mathews, and Middlesex have been liberated from the Nazis, not that they are populated by any actual human beings. For a supposed government, the ASF doesn’t act like much more than an armed camp. There’s very little to the faction. They don’t repair any infrastructure, don’t seem to have a civilian populace, not that our scouts have seen. Suffice it to say that Preuss is right in his approach,” I noted.