Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread III

I think the grand admiral pounded into his head that it does matter where they come down in this tl. Pity about all those widows and cripples of old London town who don't have a living due to wernher von braun.
Perhaps ITTL’s (German) Tom Lehrer can talk about the widows and cripples of old Kure town, etc, etc... I believe von Braun was involved in the Quartum attacks at the end of the Pacific War.
 
OTL' s Tom Lehrer is still alive but in this time line I think he would have to change the lyrics to the MLF Lullaby. And depending on who is the TTL Pontiff would he need to amend the lyrics to the Vatican Rag. Oh well, in any time line we will all go together when we go, all suffused with an incandescent glow. Who's Next?
 
I think that Kiki has overblown the significance of going to staff school, by becoming a major in the JMS or for that matter in any branch of the service going to staff school is basically automatic.
From my fuzzy memory both Hans and Kurt went to staff school as majors or as captains and being on the list to become majors.
As for Kiki future prospects in the JMS, even if she wasn't a princess and her last name was really Fischer her record would mark her as a potential head of the JMS anyways.
By talking to Drs. Peter Holz and Nora Berg, Kiki will find out that there are always going to be some sort of administrative function that she has to preform the higher up she goes in her medical career no matter if she is in the JMS or not.
Peter still did practice medicine and saw patients no matter on how high of rank he got and I think that Nora is the Head of the OB/GYN department at the hospital she works and that hasn't stop her from seeing patients.
 
I think that Kiki has overblown the significance of going to staff school, by becoming a major in the JMS or for that matter in any branch of the service going to staff school is basically automatic.
From my fuzzy memory both Hans and Kurt went to staff school as majors or as captains and being on the list to become majors.
As for Kiki future prospects in the JMS, even if she wasn't a princess and her last name was really Fischer her record would mark her as a potential head of the JMS anyways.
By talking to Drs. Peter Holz and Nora Berg, Kiki will find out that there are always going to be some sort of administrative function that she has to preform the higher up she goes in her medical career no matter if she is in the JMS or not.
Peter still did practice medicine and saw patients no matter on how high of rank he got and I think that Nora is the Head of the OB/GYN department at the hospital she works and that hasn't stop her from seeing patients.
I think she knows this, but both Berg & Holz spent more time as a doctor on the pointy end of the scalpel during their rise through the ranks. Kiki is only just becoming a fully-fledged doctor after already reaching the rank of major, due to all those side quests she kept getting talked into. And she was talked into them.
As such, she is beginning to worry that her own time at the pointy end of the scalpel will be abbreviated due to the pressures of rank; she is dreading that she will find herself as XO of a medical unit with far less time to practice her craft, a craft that she is relatively junior in.
 
I don't know how it is ITTL with M.Ds. in the JMS and this may be an apples to oranges comparison but when doctors in the United States join the military they are given rank according to their level of training and speciality so that a doctor that has finished their residency and are board certified are directly commissioned as an O-3 or above.
Kiki's problem is that she is approaching ten years service in the JMS and has combat experience and is still under thirty years old which puts far ahead of the proverbial M.D. who has received a direct commission in to the JMS.
Even if Kiki doesn't go to staff school she still would be a team leader, shift leader, or a department head just on the basis of her years of service and experience and going to staff school is no guarantee that she will be immediately slotted for an administrator posting but it is inevitable that the longer she serves the more likely she will be in command of higher level units.
 
Kiki needs to find her version of Reier/Jost to work with in the JMS. This would help her quite a bit when she does go to an administration job, to have more time to see patients and do actual medical work.
 
Kiki needs to find her version of Reier/Jost to work with in the JMS. This would help her quite a bit when she does go to an administration job, to have more time to see patients and do actual medical work.
I'm picturing a 6 foot 4 inches tall chiseled beast of a man who just looks naturally evil, but is not only current but very capable at Gynecology now working under Kiki.

I love it.

A bonus point if he's gay as well honestly.
 
Part 112, Chapter 1851
Chapter One Thousand Eight Hundred Fifty-One



16th June 1968

Lichtenburg, Berlin

There came a time when the past had to be let go of, no matter how hard the act of letting it go was. The cemetery had contacted Kat and had told her that with her father now being deceased, no one had paid to renew the lease on her mother’s grave. They had wanted to know if she was interested in renewing it herself? Or if not, what did she want done with her mother’s remains if there were any? It had caused her a great deal of grief, but in the end, Kat had to admit to herself that she need to let go of the events that had occurred in the hours after she had been born. Still, she had wanted to be present for this and for some odd reason, Tatiana and Marie Alexandra had insisted that they should come. If Kat had to guess, she figured that they wanted a connection to the grandmother they had never known. Suse Rosa was curious about her namesake. Jo said that she was coming along to offer moral support and Sophie had nodded in agreement to that.

When Aunt Marcella met them at the gates of the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery. She looked at them and said, “Suse always did end up making everything a big production.”

When they got to the plot, workers were already digging up the grave. After nearly four and a half decades buried here things were about to change. Kat stood watching as one of the workers shovels hit the rotten pinewood of Suse’s coffin. Looking down, Kat saw that there simply wasn’t much left to see besides a few scraps of decayed wood and bone fragments. For the life of her, Kat didn’t know what she had expected. Some part of her was still the little girl yearning for what she could never have.

“Probably just as well” The retired Groundskeeper who Kat had had many dealings with over the years said. “There have been a few disturbing findings when graves are opened up.”

Kat knew from a lifetime of experience just how true that was. It wasn’t something that she needed to be reminded of at this moment. The loss of the woman whose grave this had been had played a profound role in why Kat had become who she was. How much had that in turn led to Kat’s relationship with several other women starting with Gia and ending with Sophie, for now. There was also Marcella to consider. Marcella had lost her little sister at the same time she had found herself raising her sister’s children, something that no one could possibly have been prepared for.

“Goodbye Suse” Marcella said, “Dust to dust and all that.”

It was a reminder to Kat that nothing was ever truly static, not even in death.



Quito, Ecuador

The good news was that the mail had caught up with them. There was a problem that created though. Everyone in the team had seen that Ritchie had a few letters from Lucia among the usual stack he got from his mother. The result was that everyone in the team had seen the letters and they had a lot of questions. Like just who this mystery lady was and the all too expected crude questions regarding if he had done more than just go on a date with her? Ritchie had blown off the questions. The guys didn’t need to know about how he was planning on having Lucia come to visit Fort Drum when they got back to New York in a few weeks. They also had far more pressing problems in Ecuador to contend with, Parker had told them that they needed to focus on that.

On the frontier with Peru, they had been hearing alarming things. Mostly the clank and squeal that was the signature of German Panzers. Partially the result of cutting corners in wartime, there were rumors that the Germans had discovered that the noise scared the Hell out of opposing Infantry and had deliberately engineered that sound into their armored vehicles. That was especially true if the other side didn’t have tanks of their own. Ritchie had led a scouting mission across the frontier and had photographed several old Panther II tanks that must have been left over from the Second World War. The Peruvian Government would have been able to get those at fire sale prices because the Germans had sold thousands of them after the Pacific War had concluded and it was cheaper to just sell them rather than trying to take them home. It didn’t matter if they were considered obsolescent nearly everywhere else in the world if the other side didn’t exactly have effective means of countering them. They also represented just how quantitatively superior the Peruvian Army was from a material perspective. Meaning that everyone was expecting that the Ecuadorian Army would likely get overrun in the first hours of any conflict.

With any luck, the Ecuadorians and Peruvians would refrain from doing something stupid before Ritchie’s team rotated back to the States. However, the had entered the relatively cool, dry season that was considered the prime time of the year for exactly the sort of stupidity.

Into this, Parker had received one of the letters that he got through back channels. It had gone with how he had disappeared when he had gone on leave. There were rumors that he crossed into Canada or had flown down to Cuba to meet a woman. Was anyone really surprised? There had been talk for years that Parker had been Agency before he had gotten into the 1st SFG. Didn’t cloak and dagger come with the territory?
 
Last edited:
Into this, Parker had received one of the letters that he got through back channels. It had gone with how he had disappeared when he had gone on leave. There were rumors that he crossed into Canada or had flown down to Cuba to meet a woman. Was anyone really surprised? There had been talk for years that Parker had been Agency before he had gotten into the 1st SFG. Didn’t cloak and dagger come with the territory?

Parker and Sigi ae still a thing huh!?!
 
For the Ecuadorians the solution to the Peruvian tanks is pretty simple, it is the M72 LAW Light Anti-tank Weapon which came in service to the United States military in IOTL 1963 and that should be very effective against an almost thirty year old Panther II tank.
One of the main jobs of the Special Forces is to train the trainer plus by having demonstrations of firing the weapon in to a target that has the same thickness of armor as the Panther II it will give confidence to the Ecuadorian soldiers about their chances against the Peruvian tanks.

On reading about Kat's mother lease running out on her burial plot reminds me about reading about the actor John Banner who was best known to American audiences as Sgt. Schultz on Hogan's Hero's which is another show that won't be made in ITTL and probably would have never came to America in the first place because there is no Nazis ITTL, and how there is someone else buried in his plot because the lease on it ran out and there was no one to pay to continue the lease.
 
My brother lives in Germany and once sent me a photograph of what he described as a graveyard for gravestones. It took some back and forth before we found it that it wasn't a result of someone desecrating a churchyard.
 
Top