Imperial Elite

Chapter 31 The Best Party in Bonitania
At this time and place, it's perfectly normal to be curious about tanks, so Joe didn't think much of it and blurted out all his complaints about them.

As Joe complained, the lieutenant colonel's expression wasn't particularly pleasant; it was as if he had just attended a parent-teacher conference and heard the teacher earnestly tell him, "Your child is very smart, but his mind isn't on his studies."

Then, like any protective parent, the lieutenant colonel asked Joe, "You say these areas are flawed, so you must have ways to improve them. You're not just complaining, are you? You can't be, can you?"

The lieutenant colonel's question had really put Joe in the line of fire. Joe was already furious because he hadn't received a response to his report, and now a slightly overweight infantry lieutenant colonel dared to question him. Fine, I'll show you what professionalism is all about.

Joe immediately pulled the lieutenant colonel into the Lucky Bella and began explaining his modification plan to the lieutenant colonel in the hot and smelly carriage.

The engine should not be placed in the center of the vehicle; it should be placed at the rear, and an exhaust system should be installed to prevent exhaust fumes from accumulating inside the vehicle.

The left and right turrets have poor firing arcs, while the roof-mounted machine gun turret has a good firing arc but poor gun depression. Therefore, the left and right turrets should be eliminated and replaced with a single roof-mounted turret that is equipped with the main gun.

The pilot's visibility is very poor. The pilot's position should be adjusted, and an access hatch should be added in front of the pilot to make it easier for the pilot to see the way when not in combat.

Communication inside the vehicle is very poor due to the copper pipes. Two telephones should be installed inside the vehicle: one for communication between the crew inside the vehicle and the other for communication with infantry outside the vehicle.

In short, the way the lieutenant colonel looked at Joe changed after Joe finished speaking.

If the lieutenant colonel's expression when looking at Joe was somewhat skeptical before, now he looked at Joe as if he were looking at a prophet.

After stepping out of the sweltering Lucky Bella, the lieutenant colonel, leaning on his cane, looked at Joe.

"Friend, you know so much about tanks, have you written it all down in a report and submitted it?"

"Of course I wrote it."

Joe sighed, took off his hat, and scratched his head.

"I even gave Marshal Haig a tank design along with it, but more than half a month has passed and there is still no news."

As Joe spoke, the lieutenant colonel's gaze was unconsciously drawn to Joe's strange hairstyle, which was too eye-catching with a tuft of hair missing on the top.

"I get it, those guys need someone to whip them, but if it's not offensive, what about your hairstyle?"

"Oh, this."

Joe put his hat back on and then spoke in a very casual tone, as if he had just gone downstairs to buy a pack of cigarettes.

"There was a Teutonic sniper before..."

After putting on his hat, Joe gestured with it.

"So my hair ended up like this. I was rushing to write reports and fix cars, so I didn't have time to take care of my hair."

Looking at Joe in front of him, the lieutenant colonel extended his hand to him.

"Thank you for sharing. My name is Winston Leonard Spencer Faborough. It's nice to meet you."

"Me too, nice to meet you."

As Joe shook hands with Lieutenant Colonel Winston, he felt like he'd heard the name somewhere before, but after letting go, he realized it must have been his imagination.

After all, the name was just too damn long, and he might easily confuse it with other long noble names he had heard of.

"We'll get there now..."

Just as Joe was about to say goodbye to the lieutenant colonel, a commotion suddenly broke out on the Lucky Bella, as if something had happened.

"What's going on? What are you guys doing now?!"

Upon noticing the commotion, Joe immediately headed towards the Lucky Bella. However, before Joe could even get close, the crew members rushed out of the vehicle like cavalry charging.

Just as Qiao was about to stop them, the gunner grabbed him and ran towards the trench ahead, shouting as they ran, "Run the hell out of here! The engine just caught fire again, and when we came out, the flames had already spread to the ammunition racks!"

Upon hearing this, Joe immediately started running, and as he passed by Lieutenant Colonel Winston, he didn't forget to give him a hand.

"Don't just stand there like an idiot! This thing's going to explode!"

As soon as Qiao and his group rushed into the trench, they heard a loud bang behind them. Then, as various fragments fell into the trench next to them like rain, a series of dense and crisp explosions rang out outside the trench, just like during a New Year's celebration.

Peeking out of the trench, Joe cautiously glanced in the direction of the Lucky Bella.

Although from the first time Joe saw this tank, he thought it was so ugly that it seemed impossible for a human to design it, more Teutons would die laughing at this ugly thing on the battlefield than they would be killed by it.

It would be better to just push it into the sea, or burn it down.

But when he actually saw the tank burning like a volcano, with raging flames pushing aside the re-welded top armor and spewing flames outwards like a real volcano, Joe's feelings were somewhat indescribable.

After pulling his head back into the trench, Joe looked around and then waved to Herbert, who was crouching not far from him.

"Herbert! Herbert!"

When Herbert, his face covered in black grime, looked at Joe, Joe asked Herbert in confusion.

"What happened? Why did the car suddenly catch fire?"

Herbert looked at Joe with an innocent expression.

"I don't know either. It was probably because the engine overheated badly. The thing first started spraying hot oil out like a fountain. You know how hot that thing gets, so I couldn't fix it or even get close to it until it finished spraying. Then it caught fire. You know how hot oil and flames are? At that point, no one could do anything, so we had to run away."

Hearing Herbert say this, Joe was also helpless. He could only say that it was fortunate that the Lucky Bella broke down at this time. If it had happened any earlier, Joe would have been in big trouble.

"You've done your best, so let's leave it at that."

After nodding to Herbert, Joe looked at Lieutenant Colonel Winston.

"Lieutenant Colonel."

Call me Winston.

"Okay, Winston, you see, that's the situation now. This piece of junk is unreliable. Now that the car is gone, we can only go back."

For some reason, Winston, with a dark expression, nodded. "You've done your best. Go back now. Have a nice day."

"You too, have a wonderful day."

After saying goodbye to Winston, Joe and his group, having lost the Lucky Bella, had no choice but to walk back to the camp.

Back at camp, after reporting to Company Commander Daniel that they had been ambushed by Teutonic artillery and that the Lucky Bella had been lost due to mechanical failure, Joe, as usual, took on his daily task: writing a report and submitting it.

The good news is that Daniel said there's no rush and he can submit the report this week.

While receiving his daily task of writing reports, Daniel also quietly told Joe that the regiment's tanks had been almost completely destroyed, and that they would soon be able to return to the rear to rest.

It's certainly a good thing to be able to rest, but the report due this week can wait until Sunday night.

Suddenly, Joe had some free time, so he decided to go back to his tent and get a good night's sleep.

When Joe returned to his tent, he found a thick stack of letters and packages thrown onto his bed.

What's going on?

Joe sat on his bed, somewhat puzzled, and picked up the stack of letters and packages that were tied together with rope. After untying the rope, Joe picked up the letter on top.

Looking at the densely packed postmarks on the envelope, Joe roughly understood why he had received such a pile of letters.

Although his relationship with his family was a little complicated, and his relationship with them was once quite tense because he used a cane to pull his younger siblings into the classroom.

However, even after he joined the army, his family still communicated with him by letter once a week or every two weeks.

Until Joe and his troops were deployed to the Somme.

The delivery of letters was already affected during the war, since precious transport capacity had to be used to transport more important things. So these letters were usually piled up and delivered to the recipients at the front a month or longer later.

Joe's situation was clearly different. After the battle began, Joe was first transferred to another unit and then promoted in rank.

This change caused chaos in the already not-so-smart postal system. Is this Corporal Joe Harrison the same Lieutenant Joe Harrison?
This letter, which was originally intended for the 32nd Infantry Division, has no address. Should it be returned, or should it be forwarded to the person with the same name in the Heavy Machine Gun Regiment? Although the letter is addressed to Joe Harrison, the recipient's address is different.

However, the priority and weight given to officers' letters made the postal system hesitant to process them casually, since officers also read newspapers.

After several months of back-and-forth passing of postmarks between various departments, the postal system finally figured out who the letters should be addressed to, and the accumulated letters finally reached Joe's hands.

Now that the letter from his hometown had finally arrived, Joe wanted to see how things were going back home.

Unsurprisingly, upon opening the letter, Joe found his younger brother James's handwriting, which resembled the crawling of earthworms. As for why it was written by his brother and not by his parents, it was naturally because Joe's parents had not lived to see a good time, and the only words they knew how to write were their own names.

The first half of the letter rambled on about what the family had eaten during this time and how his younger siblings were doing. It was clear that his parents wanted to tell him what they wanted to say.

The subsequent comments about how Joe was doing and how boring school was, with rigid teachers and hypocritical classmates, were clearly the work of his younger siblings.

As these brats complained to him that school was boring and that the streets were better, Joe wished he had a long enough cane so he could whack these ungrateful little devils on the butt from the Somme.

Sitting on the bed, Joe began to read the letters one by one, following the postmark dates.

As time went on, his parents and younger siblings learned from the newspapers that Joe had been sent to the front lines and had become a hero.

Joe's parents told him not to think about being a hero, that life was good enough for the family now, and that he just needed to make it home alive.

Meanwhile, his younger siblings were asking what the battlefield was like, whether the Teutons were really as ferocious as the newspapers described, and how Joe had single-handedly wiped out an entire trench of Teutons.

After these letters that made Joe's eyes twitch, the next few letters were all similar, except that at the end of the letters they said they knew Joe was very busy on the battlefield, so they hoped that Joe could take some time to reply to them.

Looking at these letters, a smile unconsciously appeared on Joe's face.

It wasn't until Joe opened the last letter that he saw James telling him that they finally understood why Joe had sent them to the school of these hypocritical upper-class people.

They've now realized that forming gangs on the streets is a dead end; those guys are like mice before a cat when they see the police.

But when these upper-class people form gangs, they form political parties. Not only do they not have to fear the police, but if they become powerful enough to become members of parliament, the police will have to salute them!

After uniting with friends from several schools, they established their own government and formed an organization called the Best of Buntania Party.

Although the party's name seems rather casual, the platform of the party founded by James is even simpler: because Bonitania is the greatest country in the world, everything must be done to the best of our ability.

When Joe saw this, although he felt his blood pressure was a little high, it was a huge improvement compared to his previous desire to stand on the street and do political party cosplay at school.

Joe felt he shouldn't ask too much of his younger siblings who had grown up on the streets. He just wanted them to be able to support themselves, as long as they didn't cause any major trouble.

Then on the next page of the letter, Joe saw his younger brother James say that since brother, you have now become a hero, we have been recruiting members in your name at school. Now our membership has grown to three digits, and the dues they pay are enough for us to advertise in the newspaper.

Next, James plans to continue expanding membership in the surrounding schools and develop the Best of Brittany Party so that when he comes of age, he can run for local office and become a glorious councilor!
The letter made Joe's head spin.

Although Joe knew that none of his younger siblings were easy to deal with, they were all young but already old, and shorter than a rifle, yet they were thinking of going out into the streets to make a living.

But to cause something like this at school is a bit too much of a mess.

Damn it! I have to do something about this. These brats don't even realize how many nobles there are in Bonitania. Compared to them, what reason do these street kids have to attract voters?!
Even if we take a step back and say that campaigning costs money, have you wastrels learned how to make money? You've chosen such a money-burning project.

Thinking of this, Joe immediately jumped out of bed, pulled out the chair at his desk, grabbed a piece of paper, and began to write a letter.

“Dear Father, Mother, James, Ron, Jane”

"Seeing the words is like seeing the face."

“James, you guys are something else! Can you even go to college? And you’re here thinking about forming a party! Starting from the first weekend after I received this letter, you’ll all be working in the factory every Saturday and Sunday morning. Learn how to make money before you talk to me about your little organization.”

"And don't even think about refusing. If I find out you didn't go to work in the factory, I'll write to your principal and have him disband your organization!"

Looking at the letter in front of him, Qiao nodded. Kids are just doing this silly thing. It's good to give them something to do.

(End of this chapter)