Read Daily Updated Light Novel, Web Novel, Chinese Novel, Japanese And Korean Novel Online.
Forged in Iron and Ambition (Web Novel) - Chapter 930: A Century of Blood and Iron
Chapter 930: A Century of Blood and Iron
This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl
Retirement had not truly suited Heinrich. Then again, the heir to the Koch family fortune had never expected to make a lifelong career out of the military.When he went to the Royal Prussian Main Cadet Institute as just a young man he had done so for a simple reason. To earn his family a noble title.
He expected to be a field officer who saw some combat in minor colonial skirmishes. And in doing so gained the eye of the Kaiser. After that, he had wanted to retire and live a luxurious life of a nobleman, spending the first decade after service travelling the world and enjoying the company of the world’s many exotic beauties.
Life... had other plans.
In that academy, he had forged a bond with a talented young cadet named Bruno von Zehntner and their mischievous friend Erich von Humboldt.
He had not thought that the fighting in the Orient would make it impossible for him to leave the military.
Let alone that he would find himself shipping off to South Africa to witness the Boer War as an attache.
Asia, Africa, Europe, and back again. He had served through multiple wars and battlefields. And earned many honors.
By the time he was in his mid twenties he suddenly found himself a father, a young Russian peasant girl he took pity on during the civil war and adopted as his own. His family chastised him for it.
They considered it reckless and grossly unusual behavior. And after Alya had entered his home, any dreams of continuing his life as a bachelor came to an end.
Responsibility had a strange way of finding the most irresponsible men. Eventually, he earned that particle of nobility for his family. Becoming Heinrich Graf von Koch after the Weltkrieg ended.
He had played a major role in the push to Paris and was awarded handsomely. And when he came back from the front, he found that one of his friends had been buried back home.
Erich had died in disgrace, and his name was tarnished for many years that followed. It took decades for the man’s name to be redeemed in the public eye.
Whereas Heinrich noticed subtle change in Bruno that perhaps nobody else truly understood.
Bruno had left a part of him forever behind in the Balkans, in the Alps, and in the fields of Verdun.
Though Heinrich continued to serve by Bruno’s side as his second in command in the decades that followed. He noticed that Bruno was an entirely different man.
The victory at Versailles had not allowed the man to find peace. It had driven him into obsession. Obsession with fighting a war against fate itself.
At first, Heinrich had never thought he would make his life’s career as an officer in the army. Then, he never thought he would see the day where he retired.
When Bruno laid down the sword, Heinrich followed a mere three months after. Where Bruno received a parade for his retirement, one that made headlines across the Reich.
Heinrich went entirely unnoticed. Since the war came to an end, Heinrich had seen Bruno as many times as the years had passed. Once yearly during the anniversary of Erich’s death.
They went their separate ways shortly after. No words exchanged, no reminiscing of a life shared bound by blood, sweat, tears, and the marriage of their children.
Heinrich now had the life he had always wanted. The wealth he inherited from his family was no small sum. They had made a fortune selling their business to the von Zehntner consortium during its era of rapid expansion.
And that money was now Heinrich’s. And Heinrich found it all to be so.... Boring.
He had no desire to run off to the corners of the world and search for the world’s most beautiful women. He had eventually gotten married... after his adopted daughter had.
And now had his own children.... But even if he didn’t, Heinrich still wouldn’t travel. He had seen the world, not at its best, but at its worst.
So now, he simply did what he could to relax. He read, he rode, and he drank.
Today he sat in his study, putting pen to paper. He didn’t use a typewriter, nor one of those new personal computers that many noble and wealthy households flaunted as a status symbol.
No... He wrote with an old fountain pen. Describing a life lived, battles fought, friends lost, and the courage of generations wiped out fighting for bolts of cloth and the ideas they represented.
Most of those banners were gone now... and others had risen in their places. His hands began to twitch again as he thought of it all, causing him to reach for his beer, taking a sip from its brew his fingers stilled once more.
Then and only then did he finish the last word. Once the punctuation had been dotted properly, Heinrich closed the manuscript.
It was larger, larger than any biography had a right to be. He gazed upon its title illuminated not by electricity, but by the rustic light of a candle.
"A Lifetime of Blood and Iron: The Life of History’s Most Feared General and How I Knew Him. - Generalfeldmarschall Heinrich Graf von Koch."
He read the words aloud... His voice lingering in the background of his office space. A heavy sigh laced the tip of Heinrich’s breath as he thought about it all...
The bright-eyed young cadet who thought he could change the world. And the man he became in order to do so.
He raised his bottle once more, a silent toast to the men who would never hear its words.
"To victory.... In the end, I hope it was all worth it...."
He sat there in silence as he finished his beer. Before standing up from his seat. Heinrich snuffed his candle before exiting the room. Leaving the biography he had written about Bruno.
It contained everything he had personally seen Bruno do, and all that he hadn’t.
Bruno would later describe the biography as the single most accurate piece ever written about his life. And the most damning of them all....
