Dogs and Monkeys (7)
A deserter ninja named Charles de Gaulle.
Colonel Philippe Pétain, who had given up on being a general.
And me.
Hmm... What is this? What kind of combination is this supposed to be? Traffic-light fried chicken?
De Gaulle, now that he'd already slipped the leash, announced he'd take a full day's leave and report back tomorrow, and Colonel Pétain just... let him.
Is this French army stuff actually real? It'd be about on par with Manchuria.
"What can you expect from a boy fresh out of the academy? At that age, it's only natural."
"...I, I suppose so, sir."
And so the 33rd Infantry Regiment at Arras, where only Pétain and I had arrived, turned out to be a sleepy outfit in a sleepy town. How should I put it — the kind of place you ship off troublesome field officers and generals to.
And no, you may not say this is basically the French version of a Green Camp. No-no-no-no.
"You're not wrong. Starting with my time as head of the artillery bureau, the whole world hasn't exactly been fond of me."
Pétain said this as he entered the regimental commander's office and took his seat.
"Right, then. Artillery doctrine. What is it you want to know?"
"I'm looking for something that could serve as a gunnery and employment manual for our unit."
"You said division chief of staff, didn't you? One division. Under the current French establishment, that's thirty-six light guns."
He pulled out a sheet of paper and a pen, scribbled something, ran a quick calculation, and spoke up.
"I personally believe it's the right call, but do you truly intend to operate heavy artillery?"
"Yes, sir."
"How much?"
"A single division should have at least seventy-two, shouldn't it?"
"......?"
Pétain stared at me as if I were some kind of warmongering lunatic.
"I'm telling you the French establishment allots thirty-six light guns per division."
"Honestly, I think that falls quite a bit short. If you can just blast everything to pieces with firepower, why bother? Why order poor infantrymen to charge with bayonets?"
Just bury them all under 105mm and 155mm high-explosive shells and be done with it.
"Ha, haha! Hahaha! Good grief, but you're a savage one."
That would be because my former profession was serving in the army of a nation obsessed with firepower.
When exactly was I supposed to round up three million North Korean goblins and a million and a half PLA troops from the Northern Theater Command with bolt-action rifles?
You need big, awesome, big-fucking shells for that.
Pétain set his pipe between his teeth and savored the tobacco like it was the finest thing he'd tasted in years.
"It seems you already have a rough outline in your head of how artillery ought to be employed. All I'd be doing is fleshing it out for you."
"Frankly speaking, yes, sir."
"Then let's align our thinking first. I ought to know what notions you're carrying around, shouldn't I?"
Pétain laid out a handful of markers across the map.
"Most of my friends at the War Ministry are advocates of the offensive à outrance. They believe a valiant charge can crush any enemy.
But I see things rather differently. The world today has seen the amount of firepower a man can wield swell to monstrous proportions compared with the past."
Between forty years ago in the Franco-Prussian War and now, an infantryman running at enemy lines with a rifle had barely changed at all.
But what was waiting for that infantryman had multiplied beyond counting.
Machine guns, barbed wire, concrete bunkers, field artillery — even landmines.
"What on earth did the poor bastards who have to charge into all that ever do to deserve it?"
"Well said, sir."
"Concentrate firepower to crack the enemy's defensive line, then push through the breach and tear the front wide open — that is what I believe in."
I knew it.
The finest commander of the Entente in the Great War was a different breed entirely.
His sharp eye already saw straight through to the great war to come.
Of course, that's precisely why he was being persecuted at the moment.
"According to my research, these joint infantry-artillery operations demand a precise timetable. The officers in your division — do they all carry wristwatches?"
"...I couldn't say, sir."
"Then see that they're provided. You cannot fire guns without clocks."
Fair point.
Since these were men who, things going sideways, would hop on a horse and charge like Reinhard, it hadn't occurred to me.
Make a note of that.
"The type of gun matters too. What does your unit field?"
"Krupp 75mm guns. They've been used well past their prime — time for a change."
"Let me caution you in advance: you won't be getting the French Army's 75mm quick-firer. Classified as top secret — exporting one abroad is a one-way trip to the guillotine for treason."
Pétain stroked his jaw for a moment before speaking again.
"My recommendation would be the Schneider 105mm howitzer."
Ah, that tired old dung cannon.
What a familiar name...
"The Russians buy them up like children at a candy stall. The performance is solid."
"If they sell that well, they must be quite expensive."
"Hmm. Would you prefer to think of it in francs or dollars?"
"Dollars would be more convenient."
"Then figure around eight thousand dollars per gun."
"Whew."
Truly the god of war, as advertised.
I'd gulped down a twenty percent stake in the Lewis gun for eight thousand dollars, and now a single cannon was going to burn through eight thousand more.
Granted, the Lewis guns were rotting away in the armory's basement dungeon while those Schneider howitzers were flying off the shelves, but still — wasn't that a bit steep?
"You don't seem enthusiastic."
"It's rather expensive."
"Then let's see..."
Pétain thought a moment longer, then —
"If it's something cheap you want, there's the 155mm Rimailho howitzer."
"I'm sorry?"
"That thing's been rotting in a warehouse. Frankly, the manufacturer — Saint-Chamond — would leap at the chance to sell, if only you cover the shell costs."
"Why on earth would 155mm guns be sitting idle in a warehouse?"
"It grew out of the 75mm quick-firer, and in its obsession with that damnable rapid-fire capability, its range got chopped short and it sprouted every manner of convoluted mechanism, which broke down constantly. We call such things 'scrap.'"
Two-thirds the range of the German Army's standard howitzer — a lump of junk that, after firing once, would eat a counter-battery salvo for its trouble.
So the French Army and Saint-Chamond alike regarded the 155mm howitzer as a white elephant, apparently.
But hold on. That's only junk against the Germans.
Haul it off to Manchuria, and isn't it just a massacre of civilians?
Most of the warlord factions there hadn't even properly assembled an artillery force yet.
"Truly, all I'd pay for is the shells?"
"When I last spoke with the people at Saint-Chamond, that was the arrangement. The storage costs alone to keep them from rusting run into the thousands of francs — enough to drive a man mad."
"...And might I ask why you're divulging such valuable information to me?"
"Hmm. Well."
His throat seemed dry; he took a sip of water and continued.
"Call it a gift for an old soldier finally meeting someone he can talk to. And even if Saint-Chamond did build a dud, they're a patriotic enterprise that has toiled for the nation, no?
Opening new markets for goods they cannot sell — I consider that a service to the fatherland as well."
"Thank you! Thank you, Colonel!"
"Well then, now that I've played the broker, you'll pay the price, won't you? Consider tonight's sleep forfeit."
And so, through one entire sleepless night, Pétain poured out to me, without pause, all the thoughts he had accumulated alone — because no one had ever deigned to listen to him.
Any ordinary person would call it a night of tedium listening to an old man lecture, but to me, every word of it was gold.
Ah. Sweet.
The next day.
"So, you're planning to stay about a week?"
"I think I'll have to, if I'm to absorb every drop of your wisdom, Colonel."
"...Quite the silver tongue you've got there. The ladies must have fallen for you plenty?"
"Why does the conversation keep going there? I'm still single, sir. Single."
"Really? Might I introduce you to someone I know? Commanding a Foreign Legion post in France wouldn't be a bad alternative to being a staff chief in China."
I'm sorry, old man.
Do that, and Dr. An Jung-geun will appear in my dreams and just stare at me.
As we strolled side by side across the base grounds, a gangly figure approached and snapped off a salute.
"Second Lieutenant Charles de Gaulle, returning from leave! Reporting! For! Duty!"
"...Right."
The return of the giant deserter ninja.
"Lieutenant Lee, this is my aide-de-camp, Second Lieutenant de Gaulle. You met yesterday, I believe?"
"Ah, yes. Pleasure to see you again."
"Second Lieutenant de Gaulle, this is Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Lee, visiting from China."
"A pleasure, Colonel!"
"You two look to be about the same age — take this chance to get acquainted. Your thinking runs along similar lines, I've noticed."
"Oh. Is that so? Might I ask your year of birth, Colonel?"
"1889."
"I was born in 1890. Well then, we're the same generation."
Pétain, worn out from the sleepless night, excused himself to the officers' quarters, while I — still fresh in my twenties — and de Gaulle shared cigarettes and traded small talk.
"So what exactly happened yesterday?"
"Ah, that. Nothing much. One simply cannot comply with an unjust disciplinary measure, can one?"
Most people do comply, though?
Charles de Gaulle, the fresh twenty-two-year-old second lieutenant fresh out of the Saint-Cyr military academy, was — as historians would later appraise him — very much the 'to hell with it, I'll walk my own path' type.
Pétain, just how decent a human being are you?
"So, Colonel, do you believe artillery will be the decisive element of future battlefields?"
"I do."
"I believe one more factor deserves consideration."
"Oh? And what might that be?"
De Gaulle clamped the cigarette between his lips and pointed a finger at the sky.
"The air force."
"Oho."
"The wars of the future will make even the sky itself their backdrop. And once you dominate the sky, you can drop a shell precisely on the enemy's head anywhere you please. To employ artillery, one must now command not the high ground, but the heavens."
Right. That's the caliber of foresight a man needs to become president of a nation someday.
"I rate the importance of air power extremely highly as well."
"Oh, do you?"
Because I used to be a sparrow, that's why.
"The old fogies at the War Ministry insist 'aviation is, in the end, merely a kind of sport — nothing to the military whatsoever.'"
"But isn't France precisely the leading nation in aviation?"
"Haha. Well, the old fogies' brains have merely gone rigid. Let them experience German planes snapping photographs of them bare-bottomed from overhead while they're changing their underwear in the privy, and the shock will change their minds soon enough."
Exquisite insight.
Getting friendly with the future president of France couldn't hurt, either.
"Is there a bar nearby?"
"I have a regular spot. Why do you ask?"
"Let's go have a drink and get acquainted. It's on me."
"Whew, that silver tongue — you've definitely chased some women before."
I said I'm still single!?
"It's been a long while since I met a fellow I liked so much. Come see me next time you're in France."
"Haha, thank you."
"Colonel, if I'm ever posted to the Shanghai Concession, I'll be sure to look you up."
Don't come, you beanpole. What are you going to look up after downing wine like it's water? Give me my money back!!!
After bonding heartily with Pétain and de Gaulle, I headed back up to Paris.
"Ah, you'd be Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Lee? I'm Emile Rimailho, head of artillery production at Saint-Chamond."
"A pleasure."
"Colonel Pétain gave me a heads-up, but frankly, I'm not sure about this. I built it myself, but this 155mm howitzer of ours is not an impressive beast."
"Which is why you'll let it go cheap, no?"
Apparently Saint-Chamond had been desperate to clear inventory — the moment I asked, 'Do you take orders for those 155mms?', they were already fully wrapped and packaged like a clothing shop in Dongdaemun.
If I said, 'Ah, actually, I'm just browsing,' they'd probably plant themselves down and declare, 'Sorry! It's used stock now, can't sell it!'
Frightening frog-folk.
Of course, Saint-Chamond wasn't quite that insane. They'd never do business again if they were.
The deal they offered: twelve Rimailho howitzers in exchange for a purchase of two thousand shells at twenty dollars a round.
For reference, a single 75mm quick-firer shell ran six dollars, so twenty was a little over triple.
From their perspective — the French Army wouldn't use the guns, the guns wouldn't sell, and since the guns wouldn't sell, nobody was buying shells either — the idea was simply to recoup whatever production costs they could.
I signed the contract in the merriest of moods.
Useless against the Germans, sure — but in the godawful free-for-all that was China, that thing was Little Boy and Fat Man rolled into one.
Finishing my signature, I capped the pen and addressed Director Rimailho.
"Could you perhaps call me a taxi?"
"A taxi? Where might you be headed?"
"I'd like to have a look at Blériot Aéronautique."
"Of course. My, but you do shop properly, don't you."
Before long a taxi arrived, loaded me up, and carried me off to Suresnes, a western suburb of Paris.
The moment I stepped out of the car, the smell of sawdust and varnish hit me full in the face.
A worker drenched head to toe in sweat saw me, cupped one hand over his eyes, and squinted.
"...Huh? A soldier? An Asian?"
"Excuse me — is this Blériot?"
"It is. And who might you be?"
"A shareholder."
Time to see the boss's face.