Köln, European Federation – May 2035

I find Johannes waiting beside the Fighter of the Fatherland statue in front of what remains of the old Köln Cathedral, just outside the train station. The controversial statue, depicting a mix of German, Belgian, Dutch, and French soldiers towering over figures half their size, has sparked endless debate. Its eerie gaze watches over the square, now a shadow of what it once was.

Johannes looks rough—his disheveled hair, scarred hands, and worn face all tell the story of his time as a Panzer Grenadier rifleman.

“Not sure who first started calling our companies ‘the Vietcongs,’” he says, ten minutes later, as we sit in a nearby café, sharing a beer. “Despite what the movies show, the tunnels were just a piece of the puzzle. Our real strategy was hit-and-run. We’d attack, raise hell, then slip back into the sewers or service tunnels before popping up somewhere else behind enemy lines to do it all over again. We called it ‘resting’ when we sat in the tunnels smoking and sleeping. But most of the time, it just meant waiting for ammunition.”

He pauses, taking a sip. “That last attack… I kept trying to get a signal on my phone. Damn thing was at four percent. But no dice. My parents and siblings were in France like nearly every other German who wasn’t fighting tooth and nail to hold the line, working in ammunition plants for the entirety of the war. They hadn’t heard from me in weeks.”

I nod and ask, “Why wasn’t a full retreat from the Northwest Rhine ever called?”

He exhales sharply. “Because ‘Northwest Rhine’ wasn’t just a region. It was a massive urban sprawl. Before the war, nearly 20 million people lived there, one of the only metro areas in Europe that could compare to American or Asian metropolitan areas. Too much industry, too much infrastructure. Sure, nationalism played a part, but I think the brass hoped we could push back, restart the factories, and roll fresh Leopards off the lines. Wishful thinking.

“Every city was a different mess. Düsseldorf, Duisburg, and Essen? Lost. Köln? Split in half. Bonn held out, but more crabs poured in by the day. Frankfurt held thanks to the Americans and the French, but everyone knew what would happen if they lost it. The French were ready to nuke the entire Rhine if their line broke. Hell, they weren’t just ready—they were itching to do it.”

I lean forward. “How did the crabs even cross bridges? They always said it was thanks to tripods, but I never saw it happen.”

Johannes smirks. “That’s pretty much it. They’d use the tripods to cross narrow sections, then, once they had a beachhead, they’d just pile in debris until they made their own damn bridges. Once, they even recorded a beetle acting as a bridge. They were limited, sure, but they found ways around it. That’s when NORTHAG got caught with its pants down, and the crabs swept through Berlin, Hamburg, and all the way to the Danish border. Funny thing, though—they never pushed north. Instead, they turned south… straight for us.”

"We fought with everything we had—rifles, machine guns, Marders, Pumas, Molotovs, knives. You name it. Our company commander ran around with a hunting shotgun. Nearly everyone carried a machete or an axe of some sort. At one point, I thought I saw a ghost.

We held that damn roundabout for an entire afternoon. Our Marders ran out of ammo, leaving just me and my platoon. They promised us more armored fighting vehicles by sundown. I’ll let you imagine my surprise when we saw them rolling in—BMP-1s. East German emblems and all."

He pauses, then continues.

"BMP-1s? How?" I ask.

"The East Germans left us a lot of them. Most of their Soviet stock was either pawned off or used for target practice before the war, but we still had a few tucked away. They were built to survive and keep fighting after a nuclear war. Took a few weeks to get the T-55s, T-72s, and BMPs up and running, so they were rare. That’s why they became a big part of the post-war mythos—why you see them as monuments now. But back then? I didn’t care where they came from. Watching those two BMP-1s roll in and fire high-explosive rockets was worth its weight in gold.

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You couldn’t surrender to the crabs. It was on sight with them. If you ran out of ammo and couldn’t retreat, you fixed a bayonet to your rifle, grabbed your fire axe—whatever you had—and charged. Easier said than done. A lot of guys froze, thought they could hide, or just ‘give up.’ The crabs didn’t see it that way. Best case? If you surrendered, they’d drag you outside, line you up with what was left of your squad, and shoot you.

I was in Köln. The Rhine was wide, sure, but not deep enough. They crossed it easily in two or three spots, breached the western side of the city from the north and south. We fought for every apartment block, every staircase, every damn room. The underground tram network turned it into a nightmare—take a station at sunset, lose it by dawn.

And that was just on the western side of the Rhine. The part of the city the higher-ups considered ‘safe enough.’”

"Morale was all over the place. Some units refused to move, just stood where they were. Others outright evacuated—only to be stopped by rear-echelon units and ordered back. They made sure no one left without authorization—tanks stationed on the western outskirts of the city, ready to fire on anyone who tried. Safe to say, morale broke."

He pauses.

"That’s where the ‘Vietcong’ stories come from?" I ask.

"I guess so. Not gonna lie, we were high as kites. Our platoon commander was dead set against the crab sauce at first, but after a week? Even he gave in. Our company quartermaster—the guy partly in charge of ammo, hot food, and other logistics—well, when he wasn’t hauling munitions, he and his squad were air-frying crab meat, steaming it, cooking it every way you can imagine. We had so much energy it wasn’t surprising we were popping out of sewer holes, shirtless under our vests, screaming like madmen as we charged them from behind. Good thing about the crab sauce, it only fucked with your emotions and dopamine receptors. Did minimal effect on your senses. So you could shoot, aim, think without being a total fuck up.

Point is, every unit reacted differently. Some stayed disciplined. Others only existed on paper, pretending to run missions while they dug in defensively. And then there were madmen like us.

I still remember this one time—some American colonel came down to see the situation firsthand. Wanted to get a ‘real feel’ for what was going on. The guy looked at us like we’d eaten his dog or something. We had just come back from one of those rear attacks—spirits high, thirty crabs dead, no casualties on our side. We were trying to act sober, laughing our asses off, shirtless with our plate carriers strapped to bare skin—never mind that it was only ten degrees out.”

"Why was your unit so effective?" I ask.

"Well, like any unit that lasted more than a week in the cities, we figured out the crabs’ weaknesses. They were slow—mentally. It was like they couldn’t process being attacked from the flanks. They had no real squad or platoon-level tactics, just moved in mobs, almost like, ‘Hey guys, let’s go see what’s happening over there.’

So when twenty shirtless Germans popped out behind them, screaming and shooting, they had no idea what hit them.

If you made contact, the lead guy had one job—make himself as obvious as possible. Shout, yell, shoot. Even if he was behind cover, he had to scream his lungs out. And he better find the hardest cover available—their blasters could punch through half a meter of concrete. While he ducked low, firing blindly, the rest of the unit stopped the lunatic act and started calmly picking off crabs, targeting anyone shooting at the lead guy.

That was it.

The key was knowing emergency rally points. If they had too much firepower, the lead guy had to be ready to make his way back alone—because chances were, he’d be cut off."

"I don’t want to overstate our achievements, but those attacks were our lifeline in the cities. Relieving pressure on the front lines bought us just enough time for the rest of the world to arrive.

Of course, when we found out we wouldn’t be pulled back the moment reinforcements landed, we were pissed. But in hindsight, it was for the best. The Nigerians, Moroccans, Brazilians, Americans and all the rest arriving in Germany had no idea how to fight like we did. They were still stuck in the old ways of warfare. We had to teach them—show them how to move, how to adapt to this new kind of war.

Sure, by then we had the numbers, and they didn’t have to fight as recklessly as we did. But when you’ve spent your whole career training to hunt jihadists in the Sahel, busting drug labs in the Amazon, or preparing for Russian and Chinese tanks, getting dropped into a German city to fight two-meter-tall crabs isn’t exactly your cup of tea."