Warriors and War Criminals: The Red Shall Bleed (Definitive Edition)

Date: November 5, 1929

Exact Time: 08:42 AM

Location: Supply Route 14, Eastern Approach to Grady, Volhynian Voivodeship, Poland

Weather: 1°C, damp freezing mist sticking to muddy furrows, bitter northern wind whistling through barren pine trees, low ash-grey clouds blocking the morning sun.

The interior of the heavy Ursus A-type covered transport truck reeked of damp wool, unwashed bodies, cheap tobacco, and the suffocating fumes of low-grade gasoline leaking from a cracked exhaust manifold.

Every time the rear dual axles slammed into a waterlogged crater along the unpaved Volhynian road, sixteen young men of the 27th Mountain Infantry Division were tossed violently against each other like sacks of grain. Steel helmets clattered loudly against wooden bench slats. Hands gripped the icy receiver boxes of Polish-manufactured Mauser Wz. 29 bolt-action rifles, knuckles bone-white from cold and sheer, unadulterated fear.

Outside, the air was vibrating with a deep, subsonic rumble that didn’t come from the truck’s engine. It was the mechanical pounding of heavy armored columns advancing east—a grinding cadence of iron treads tearing open the soft Polish earth.

Seated near the open canvas tailgate, Private Józef Dziedzic stared down at his boots. His hands, caked in dried transport grease and cold mud, were trembling. He clamped his fingers harder around the wooden stock of his Wz. 29, trying to force the shakes out of his arms, but his body refused to listen. Around his left wrist, the wooden beads of his rosary—carved by his uncle in Kraków—bit sharply into his skin as he squeezed his fist. He was seventeen years old. He had lied on his enlistment papers at the recruiting depot, adding a full year to his age out of a fierce, desperate desire to serve the Second Republic, just as his father had done during the miracle at the Vistula in 1920.

Now, four days after the Red Army had smashed through the eastern frontier garrisons without a declaration of war, the romantic visions of cavalry charges and glorious military banners were drowning in the mud of Volhynia.

Sitting opposite Józef was Corporal Stawicki—a thick-necked reservist from Radom with a pockmarked face and a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his cracked lower lip. Stawicki was nervously wiping the glass lens of his gas mask container, his eyes wide and vacant.

“Did you hear the dispatch from headquarters before we mounted up?" Stawicki asked, his voice strained, barely audible over the roaring engine and the grinding iron outside. “From the diplomatic pouches... The Soviets haven’t just mobilized a few border corps. Moscow is dumping everything. Eighteen million men. Eighteen fucking million bayonets rolling across the border from the Baltic down to Galicia."

A suffocating silence settled over the soldiers in the truck bed. Eighteen million was not an army; it was an ocean of men, an industrial pestilence designed to erase Poland from the map.

Józef felt a knot of icy bile rise in his throat. His jaw clenched so hard his molars throbbed. He looked up at the corporal, his light blue eyes wide, his pale face flushed with a mixture of terror and raw, defensive rage.

“I... I don’t give a fuck!" Józef spat out, his voice cracking violently on the first word, almost stammering as he tried to swallow his anxiety. “I don’t give a single fuck if there’s eighteen million or eighty million of those godless bastard Bolsheviks! We’ll... we’ll rape those damn Soviet tankers right out of their iron boxes! We’ll beat them until they go running back to their mothers in Moscow and Leningrad crying like kicked dogs!"

Corporal Stawicki stopped wiping his gas mask container. He stared at Józef for a long second, then let out a dry, wheezing laugh that lacked any real humor.

“Listen to the little schoolboy from Kraków," Stawicki sneered, leaning forward, his breath reeking of stale cabbage and tobacco. “Listen to him roar. You haven’t even seen a Red Army heavy battery shell a treeline yet, kid. You’ll be shitting your trousers and praying to your virgin icons before noon."

Józef’s face turned bright red. Instead of backing down, instead of giving some grand, heroic speech about Polish honor, King Jan Sobieski, or the glory of the White Eagle, Józef leaned straight across the narrow aisle, glared into the corporal’s face, and snarled:

“Suck a dick, corporal."

Stawicki blinked, stunned. The pockmarks on his cheeks flushed dark purple. “What the fuck did you just say to me, you little shit?" Stawicki growled, dropping his rag and grabbing the front of Józef’s heavy wool tunic with a hand like a meat cleaver. “I’ll throw you out the back of this moving truck—”

“Shut the hell up!" an older sergeant shouted from near the cab, but his voice was instantly drowned out by a deafening, metallic roar from outside.

CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CRUNCH!

The canvas flap was suddenly shoved aside by the sheer displacement of cold air and diesel exhaust. Flanking the Polish troop transport on the left side of the muddy road was a behemoth of refined German steel—a Panzerkampfwagen Rheinstrat-29.

The 38-ton heavy breaching tank moved with an terrifying, unstoppable momentum. Its massive, riveted glacis plate of 60mm sloped armor was covered in wet mud, crushed saplings, and white tactical cross markings. The Maybach aviation engine roared with a high-pitched, mechanical shriek, spraying thick plumes of black smoke into the freezing mist as its iron tracks crushed rocks, fences, and deep ruts into flat dust. Multiple MG-08/15 machine gun ports bristled from its hull, while its central angular turret housed a short, lethal 75mm high-velocity gun pointed menacingly toward the eastern horizon.

The sheer size of the Reichswehr armor sent a wave of shock through the Polish infantrymen inside the truck. They were allies—for now—thrown together in a desperate, chaotic joint defensive axis to hold the rail junction at Kowel against the Red tide.

Riding high in the open cupola of the Rheinstrat-29 was a German panzer commander in a black leather jacket and a padded head-frame, his face spattered with engine oil and road grime.

Suddenly, off to the right flank through the misty pine trees, a squadron of German Reichswehr cavalry broke out of the woods at a full, frantic gallop. The horses were lathered in white sweat, their nostrils flaring red in the cold air, hooves tearing up massive clods of frozen mud as the riders leaned low over their saddles, spurring their mounts forward at a suicidal speed toward the forward ridgeline.

The German tank commander leaned out of his cupola, looked down at the open bed of the Polish truck, and shouted in heavy, booming German over the thunder of his Maybach engine:

“Look at those madmen go! They’re riding like it’s the Großer Preis von Baden!”

The Polish soldiers stared back at him in utter, blank confusion. Józef blinked, holding his Wz. 29 rifle tight, his mouth slightly open.

“What the fuck is he talking about?" Józef called out, squinting through the diesel haze. “What the hell is a Baden?"

The German commander caught the question, letting out a wild, booming bark of laughter despite the freezing wind tearing at his collar.

“The Großer Preis von Baden, boy!” the commander yelled back, grinning wildly and pointing toward the galloping horsemen. “The grandest horse race in all of Germany! I used to be a jockey before they stuffed me into this iron furnace! Won the cup in 1926 on a stallion named Westwind! Absolute beauty of a—”

WHACK-SPAT!

A sharp, whip-like crack tore through the humid air.

A high-velocity Soviet anti-tank rifle round or heavy machine gun bullet zipped out of the distant treeline, smashing directly into the commander’s left shoulder with a horrific, wet impact. The force of the round spun the German around, smashing his shoulder against the cupola ring. Blood splattered across the polished grey steel of the turret.

“Verfluchte Scheiße!” the commander screamed, his face twisting in agony as he collapsed backward down into the interior of the tank.

CLANG!

The heavy steel cupola hatch slammed shut from the inside, locking with a dull, iron thud. Inside the tank, the Maybach engine revved to a terrifying scream as the 38-ton Rheinstrat-29 surged forward, its 75mm turret beginning to traverse slowly toward the grey horizon.

Up ahead, the entire column of Polish trucks ground to a sudden, violent halt. Brakes shrieked. Tires skidded sideways in the deep mud. Drivers screamed from their cabs, blowing whistles and shouting orders.

“EVERYONE OUT! OUT OF THE VEHICLES! DEPLOY ON THE RIGHT FLANK! RED ARMY PROBES IN THE TREELINE!"

Józef’s heart slammed against his ribs like a trapped bird. He stared at the closed hatch of the German tank, his mind racing wildly. Is that cavalry crew still alive out there in the trees? Did the horses make it?

There was no time to think. There was no time to breathe.

Józef grabbed his equipment. In his left hand, he hauled his heavy, cumbersome Wz. 35 anti-tank rifle—a long, brutal piece of steel designed to punch through light armor—and in his right, his Wz. 29 service rifle. He threw himself over the wooden tailgate of the truck, his boots slamming hard into the freezing, ice-crusted mud of Supply Route 14.

All around him, hundreds of Polish infantrymen were spilling out of transports, screaming commands, fixing long bayonets to their rifles, and diving into the icy ditches. In the distance, beyond the misty meadows of Grady, the sky was already turning a sickening, bruised shade of orange as Soviet heavy artillery batteries began their opening salvo.

The earth beneath Józef’s boots began to tremble. The Battle of Grady had begun.