Hetalia Deaths

Gilbert Beilschmidt (Prussia)

Now, we are finishing up the tail end of the main part of the Axis with Prussia.
Gilbert was a soldier who died protecting his country, which explains his love of violence and militaristic attitude.
******************************************
The air was filled with a haze of gunpowder. It hung, making every breath labored and metal-tinged. It was as though an iron curtain had descended upon the hectic battlefield, obscuring almost all sight. It made it hard for Gilbert to see his hand in front of his face.

It dyed the whites on their uniforms a dusky gray, only the green holding a former hue of itself. His unusually fair hair was the color of ash, and his face was blotted with gray patterns without order. The entire affair was a chaotic blur, the wailing clash of swords and the staccato scream of gunfire stabbing at his eardrums. His heart was in his throat and beat out of time, adrenalin coursing through his every vein.

Around him stood other soldiers, with black banners raised, cries of glory to Prussia united in a broken and scared chorus. Despite the fading scraps of enthusiasm from the soldiers, it was disgustingly clear that they were to suffer a heavy defeat; one that would cost them a great number of lives, and land.

In terms of the way things worked, all that mattered was the land.

It was a harsh reality; in the real world, lives were handled like pawns. If they were lost, it wouldn't matter. It was one less gun to be paid for, one less uniform to be sowed. On the battlefield, if someone died, their body was left to bleed out and then anything on them was stripped. Sometimes they got a burial back home.

If they were lucky.

Gilbert had a feeling that he wouldn't be one of the lucky ones. His parents had died when he was young, and the mercury was going to his grandfather's practically ancient head. That was really all he had left; a senile old man and a crappy, shared apartment back in Berlin filled with a couch, a bed, and a couple dishes. No missus, not even a mister that was kept a secret.

That was part of his personal reality. He was alone, and that was the real impetus behind him joining the Prussian army. Yes, the glory and fame and guns and honor to your family or something that came with it were pretty nice, but he had really no other options left. He had a talent for writing, but that would get him nowhere in a militaristic kingdom. So, it was the pen or the sword, as they say.

Ultimately, that was what had brought him here, into the cloud of gunpowder and the smoke from firing canons. It had been an inevitable battle. They'd been fighting the damned Grande Armée on and off for a while now, and it had come down to this.

At this point, the Prussian Army had come to understand their certain defeat. Their senior officers were all twice as old as the field officers, and Gilbert had come to realize that the tactics Napoleon's men employed far outshone theirs, which hadn't really changed much since Frederick the Great's time. Considering that was about twenty years ago, they had some improvements to make.

Well, that was a bit of an understatement.

At the beginning, they had greatly outnumbered the army of frogs. Unfortunately, that did essentially nothing to help them. You see, it was how you used your men that mattered. And France knew how to do it a whole lot better.

Gilbert was currently engaged in a not so small spat between what was left of the small squadron he commanded and a storm of furry helmets and white uniforms across the field. His ears rang at a pitch high enough to shatter glass from the roar of shots around him and the dynamic of his voice as he tried to scream commands at the few men who weren't too panicked to listen.

The French kept on advancing, and they kept on pushing back. He had been lucky enough to have been assigned quite a few good shots, as long as their hands weren't shaking from fear, and they managed to shoot a few high-and-mighty kind of guys off their own horses. Other than that, they mostly managed to hit shoulders and thighs of soldiers; nothing fatal, but it at least slowed their opponent down.