Chapter 26: Tit for Tat
"Heca, take Deputy Division Commander Jörg to the command post."
The middle aged man with the small mustache standing beside Naz stepped forward and studied the young officer who had delivered a surprise the instant he arrived at the division.
"Please, Mr. Jörg. I'll show you to your office."
Jörg waved a hand lightly.
He had no intention of retreating now.
Before coming here, he had already made certain inquiries about both Captain Naz and Division Commander Heca. Both men were deeply conservative and firmly opposed to reform. If he failed to force them into public agreement in front of the entire division, if he failed to pin them down here and now, then his future reforms would never even take their first real step.
And without that first step, the First Logistics Armored Division would never become the cornerstone of Germany's future armored force.
"No hurry, Division Commander Heca," Jörg said with an easy smile. "All the troops of the division are present. Since you and Captain Naz have both arrived, why not say a few words as well? After all, military reform still requires your approval."
Heca's expression stiffened.
Looking at the expectant faces of the soldiers below, he felt a wave of helpless conflict.
This little snake.
He bites, and he does not forget to leave venom in the wound.
Jörg's speech had already stirred up the mood of the rank and file, as though tanks and armored vehicles might become their new training focus tomorrow morning. If Heca echoed him now, then he would be granting open legitimacy to Jörg's reform line in front of the entire division.
But if he refused to speak, then what prestige would remain to him in the eyes of his officers and men?
Heca glanced at Jörg's smiling lips, then turned instinctively toward Naz, seeking his superior's judgment.
Naz did not answer at once.
His face was so dark it looked as if water could drip from it.
After a long silence, he finally forced out a single word.
"Speak."
Jörg stepped back half a pace and yielded the position with deliberate politeness.
He then stood quietly and listened as Heca, with all the reluctance in the world buried beneath official composure, gave a brief endorsement. Once it was done, Jörg smoothly raised one more request.
"Division Commander Heca, I would also like one man."
"Who?"
"Heinz Guderian."
Heca, already preoccupied with how he might later teach this lucky captain a proper lesson, could not be bothered to dwell on such a minor detail.
He tapped the microphone and announced,
"All personnel, resume training. Captain Heinz Guderian, step forward."
In the formation, Guderian's eyes lit at once.
He looked up toward the platform, and that pair of young, deep blue eyes met his directly.
Once the troops began dispersing again, Heca turned back with visible strain in his expression.
"Now," he said with a weary formality, "may I ask you to return to your office, Deputy Division Commander Jörg?"
…
The old wooden door had to be hacked open with an iron axe.
The rusted lock dropped to the ground with a dull clang, and the thick dust disturbed by the blow immediately sent several people into coughing fits.
Inside, the room was a disgrace.
Old wooden chairs were buried beneath a thick film of dust. Cobwebs clung to the ceiling like draped veils. The window glass was so filthy that, at first glance, it looked more like a gray wall than glass at all.
"Deputy Division Commander Jörg," the reception officer said stiffly, "this will be your office from now on. Division Commander Heca is currently assigning your guard platoon. If there is anything else you require, you may instruct me at any time."
Jörg said nothing for a moment.
It was not his place to lose his temper.
The adjutant standing beside him, on the other hand, looked ready to explode.
But Jörg merely nodded.
"Please inform Division Commander Heca that he need not trouble himself over my safety. Commander Seeckt has already assigned a guard platoon to me directly. They will arrive tomorrow."
Then his tone sharpened just a fraction.
"And please also tell him that his taste in office selection is remarkably distinctive."
The reception officer saluted.
"I will relay it exactly, Your Excellency, Deputy Division Commander."
Then he bowed and withdrew, leaving them alone in the ruined room.
"Mr. Jörg, this is too much!"
Ethan could no longer hold himself back.
"I'll send a telegram to Headquarters immediately. Failing to receive us was one thing, but this office, this is simply… this is…"
He originally meant to say cheap.
But the moment he touched one of the chairs and it collapsed into a heap of rotten wood, he felt that another word suited it better.
"Trash."
Jörg shook his head.
"No need, Ethan."
He looked around the room once more.
"A ruined office in exchange for smoother reform work later is a very good bargain. Besides, if I complain now, people will only think I'm some pampered young noble incapable of bearing hardship."
His voice remained calm.
"I will repay this insult. Just not yet."
Then he gave practical orders as if none of it mattered.
"Arrange for a few men to clean this place. Get a telephone installed, along with the basic furnishings and supplies. If the division refuses reimbursement, I'll pay the cost myself."
Ethan nodded at once.
When he had first been told he would be serving under this newly arrived officer, he had half expected some privileged aristocrat full of demands and vanity. Instead, the entire day had overturned his assumptions.
This was indeed the man personally placed by Commander in Chief Seeckt and personally escorted by Hindenburg.
On his very first day, he had shocked the whole division and, in full public view, forced explicit approval for reorganization out of both the supervising captain and the division commander.
When Ethan first saw him raise the pistol on the parade ground, he had thought for a moment that he was serving a lunatic.
But now, looking back on it, he felt something very different.
Though Jörg was young, he carried tricks enough for a seasoned politician.
And Ethan suddenly felt that he himself was the lucky one, to be serving alongside such a man.
With that thought, he left to make arrangements.
The room, poor as it was, fell quiet again.
"Have a seat, Captain Guderian."
Jörg gestured toward the wreckage of the office.
Guderian looked at the shattered wood on the floor, swallowed, and shook his head.
"I'll stand, thank you."
Then, after a brief pause, he added with obvious caution,
"May I ask what I can do for you, Your Excellency, Deputy Division Commander?"
"Don't call me 'Your Excellency,'" Jörg said. "Call me Jörg. In rank, I'm only a captain as well, and in age you're clearly older than I am."
He took out a pack of cigarettes and offered one.
Since there was nowhere fit to sit, the two captains ended up leaning against the cleanest part of the doorway, smoking and talking like a pair of students expelled from a classroom.
Even so, Guderian did not dare treat the man beside him as an ordinary captain.
The pistol at Jörg's waist bore Hindenburg's signature.
His guard platoon came directly from Headquarters.
And he had been dropped into the division by force of will from the highest levels.
A man like that either had a background too high to comprehend, or a talent too valuable to ignore.
Guderian suspected it was both.
But compared with all of that, he cared more about something else.
The speech on the parade ground.
That speech had given him the unmistakable feeling of finding someone who finally understood.
That alone explained the light in his eyes now.
"Then… Mr. Jörg," he said carefully, unable to completely suppress the anticipation in his voice, "do you also believe that armored vehicles and tanks will become the masters of the new age?"
Jörg took a long drag from his cigarette and nodded without hesitation.
"Of course."
He exhaled slowly.
"I am not one of those obstinate old conservatives who refuse to move simply because history has already started moving without them."
His gaze sharpened.
"The tank already proved its worth at the Somme. As time advances and technology changes, it will absolutely become one of the army's sharpest swords."
He flicked ash to the side.
"And the honors of the old age, the ones clung to by cavalry romantics and reactionary old officers, those honors will one day die in the dust of history."
Then he spoke the sentence Guderian had wanted to hear more than any other.
"I came here to turn the First Logistics Armored Division into Germany's first true armored tank division."
For Guderian, it was like hearing his own buried convictions spoken aloud with authority and force.
Everything he had endured, the dismissal, the ridicule, the indifference, the sense of being a lone voice speaking to walls, came surging back at once.
And with it came exhilaration.
His chest tightened so hard it almost hurt.
He spoke in a rush, hardly able to keep it in.
"I knew it. I knew someone would understand armored warfare eventually. I knew I couldn't be the only man in Germany who saw this road ahead."
The words came out almost as an exclamation, as though something long suppressed had finally broken loose.
.....
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