|
Godfrey Klemper Blog Entry |
|
April 22, 2022, 2:35:38 AM April 22, 2022, 2:39:47 AM 4/22/22: r/SketchDaily theme, "Free Draw Friday." This week's character portrait attempt from my weird anthro alternate-reality WWII storyline is Oberschütze (PFC) Godfrey Klemper, with a garrison cap (top drawing) and with a Stahlhelm (bottom drawing). He has a rather complicated story but to make it super brief, he had a really unpleasant childhood and enlisted in the Wehrmacht while underaged, made it up to sergeant, but then was demoted back to private first class and forbidden from progressing through the ranks again for reasons I won't get into here, and now he's super bitter about it. He's assigned to assist (or "babysit," as he puts it) another character who I just realize it turns out has been granted a higher but purely honorary military rank so yeah, that's kind of awkward. There's a LOT more to his story that I'll save for my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se. Regarding his design, he should really look angrier since either that or being zoned out are his permanent facial expressions. He also has a habit of letting his helmet slip down so others can't see his eyes though of course I can't draw that. TUMBLR EDIT: All righty! Since PFC Klemper's history suddenly started spilling out of my mind, I decided to mark him off next! Here's how he was described in my OLD, OLD character list dating back to around 2002: GODFREY KLEMPER: Pvt.; under Ratdog's command. Serves Ratdog much as Helmstadt serves Dobermann, but looks up to Ratdog almost with adoration. Also tries to please a bit more than Helmstadt does, to gain his superior's favor. (Ratdog often calls him "Goddie.") Somewhat fawning, but not a sycophant. Somewhat jealous of others who take up his attention but tends to sulk rather than grouse about it. Would literally lay his life on the line for his commander, and hangs on his every (albeit rare) word. Current storyline Goddie? *pukes a little* Anyway. You might have been able to tell from that description, or maybe not, that a romantic relationship is implied between these two, and you'd be right. Somewhere I have a scene with the two of them and by now, like most of my similar writing (holy crud I don't even wanna look at the Dobermann-themed stuff), it's hopelessly out of date. The basic details of the above are still correct but the background and the fine details have changed drastically and my brain just vomited out a bunch of new stuff about Klemper recently so here we go. Klemper's early home life is...well, crap, as to hear him describe it later on, his dad is a drunk who likes to beat him and his mother. Klemper explains that she never fights back, but he finally does one day, taking his dad's rifle and shooting him in the chest. In the scene I'm currently writing, he so far hasn't explained WHY he decides to kill his father on that particular day. It turns out his dad caught sight of him kissing another boy--that was it, no other funny business--but that was enough, considering this was the late 1930s-early 1940s. He gets the beating to end all beatings that day but it also goes further than usual; I won't get into the details here, but let's just say it's an attempt to "scare the gay" out of him. It kind of works, for a while, even though Klemper ends up shooting his father dead shortly after. Oh, right. Klemper is then ten years old. His mother (who, despite her lack of action to protect him, still loves and cares for him) suffers a lengthy illness and dies some time later; Klemper has to bury her himself, only to come home and find the cottage burned down. Some unknown party (turns out it's a group of misbehaving Nazis) has been wandering through the area looting and burning down rural homes and villages. With nothing else really to do, Klemper sets off on foot, just wandering and rummaging for food and belongings in the ruins he comes across. Along the road he locates a dying Wehrmacht soldier, who asks if he has any bullets in his gun; Klemper does. Afterward he takes the guy's helmet and identification, modifying the latter a little bit so it has his name; then he has the luck to come across another group of Wehrmacht soldiers who are doing some emergency recruiting (i. e., not paying too much attention to protocol). Well what timing! He hands them the papers and tells them he's sixteen, and bam, Klemper is now in the army. Oh, right. He's actually THIRTEEN. So, here we are, Klemper, child soldier. Aside from that though, he does pretty well, I mean, if you overlook the obvious PTSD he soon develops, as well as the methamphetamine addiction since his entire unit is hooked on the drug by higher-ups who need their men in constant fighting shape. So even though he rescues a few comrades and earns an Iron Cross (Second Class), then prevents the misbehaving Nazis from torching another village and earns another Iron Cross (First Class), and works his way up to Unteroffizier (sergeant), he's...kind of mentally not all there, with a weird tendency to sleep with his eyes open (when he sleeps at all), and zone out (thousand-yard stare) now and then. He gets rather attached to his commanding officer, Leutnant (Second Lieutenant) Dasch, maybe partly because Dasch is really homophobic and that's what Klemper has been taught is a good thing. So it's kind of like he considers Dasch a not-quite-as-scuzzy father figure. (I'll say before I forget, despite his homophobia, Dasch isn't a terrible person, and that'll become clear in a minute.) Everything is looking rather bright for Klemper, at least, as bright as it can look considering he's way too young and traumatized to be handling all this, when while out on his own one day, he stumbles across a wounded partisan hiding in an old trench. This is Elias Baswitz. All the half-conscious Baswitz sees at first is the silhouette of a German soldier in a Stahlhelm and greatcoat looking down at him and he aims his gun but is too weak to follow through. For whatever reason (maybe because he's not a crap person), Klemper decides to help Baswitz rather than kill or abandon him, and hangs out in the trench with him for some time, tending to his injury, protecting him from the weather, and getting to know him somewhat. He even avoids detection by the other members of his own unit as they pass nearby calling for him. Baswitz is curious why he's fighting for the Nazis at all; Klemper denies any such thing (in my version of events, there's the Nazified portion of the Wehrmacht and the un-Nazified portion, though the latter are in the minority, and always at the mercy of the former), but his Iron Cross has a big ol' swastika on it so it's kind of hard to separate the two. Klemper confides somewhat in Baswitz--the first time he's ever done so with anyone--and Baswitz touches his face sympathetically. Klemper then hauls off and backhands him hard enough to make his nose bleed, calling him a "Schwuchtel"--which, suffice it to say, is a very very not nice word. He also pulls his gun and threatens that if Baswitz touches him again he'll put a bullet in him. The next day or so in the trench is rather tense, to say the least, but when Baswitz gets sick with an infection, Klemper goes looking for penicillin and comes right back to keep tending to him. Now, remember I mentioned Klemper's dad trying to "scare the gay out of him" and it worked? That's what you just saw, and it was also the reason he glommed on to Lt. Dasch so hard. As he nurses Baswitz back to health a second time he realizes he actually does have feelings for him, thus his reaction. The two of them are briefly involved before having to part ways (Klemper asks Baswitz to shoot him in the arm to give him the cover story that he was held captive and shot trying to escape, and when Baswitz hesitates, Klemper ends up just shooting himself) (cue Baswitz: "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!"), and that's the last they see of each other. Baswitz returns to the partisans, Klemper returns to his unit, and both of them tell the same lie. Well...somehow, a grain of the truth gets out, and reaches the Schutzstaffel. Ah, the Schutzstaffel, who have ears everywhere, did you forget about them? They send an officer to question not just Klemper (who's recovering in a hospital ward) but Dasch as well, and the rumor is that not only was Klemper NOT a captive, and not only did he aid an enemy partisan, but he was inappropriately involved with Baswitz...who is Jewish...and male. So, yeah, that isn't good. Dasch, who is questioned first, goes to Klemper's room afterward and demands to know if the rumor is true; Klemper neither confirms nor denies. Dasch berates him--"You, of all people! Straight-arrow you!"--but after storming off to simmer a little bit, returns and orders Klemper to deny the rumor when questioned. He'll do what he can to minimize the fallout. This surprises Klemper, but he obeys, and the SS officer departs after questioning him, the rumor still unconfirmed. WELL...as Ratdog later puts it, "Since when do rumors determine the sort of punishment one gets?" to which SS Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Otto Himmel replies, "Welcome to the Third Reich." A rumor is good enough for the SS, who decide Klemper has to be removed from military service, and possibly punished or imprisoned (or even executed). Dasch pulls all the strings he can and ends up negotiating a compromise--Klemper escapes punishment and imprisonment, and is even allowed to remain in the Wehrmacht (possibly due to his status as an Iron Cross recipient and a good little Aryan soldier), but he's demoted back to private first class, and forbidden from progressing further through the ranks. He now finds himself no longer overseeing his own unit, but a part of it again, and considering that he was trying to work his way through the ranks to prove himself, this leaves him incredibly bitter and angry. Also he's still a moody teenager and is psychologically traumatized and hooked on speed, so, there's that. But it gets even better! Seeing no real hope for him as things currently are, Dasch requests a new assignment for Klemper, and he's assigned to assist a..."new recruit" of Wehrmacht Generaloberst (General) Schavich. (Schavich is a very old character of mine who is being revamped. I'm toying with the idea of changing his rather Russian-sounding name to Schavitz, which Google tells me is basically the same meaning, but haven't committed yet. His new background has recently been unfurling as well and he's really a skeezy guy, though his skeeziness isn't aimed at Klemper so I won't get into it here. He even hates the SS like Klemper does since they wouldn't let him join.) Schavich has recently gotten interested in a rogue sniper who's been picking off Trench Rats and other Allies one by one, and decides to invite him into the army, conferring upon him the honorary title of Oberleutnant (First Lieutenant). This is "Ratdog," whose first name is Adel but nobody aside from Klemper ever asks him for it and he never gives his last name. Ratdog's toddler son was run down by a motorcycle with sidecar, and a Nazi who claimed to have witnessed the incident says it was Trench Rats who did it. (That Nazi is a new character, Feldwebel (Sergeant First Class) Udo Eisen...who is Gen. Schavich's "cleaner" and personal chauffeur. Can you see where this is going?) Thus, Ratdog has taken it upon himself to kill every Trench Rat he comes across, and he's good at it. Schavich hates, hates, HATES the Trench Rat sergeant, Black Rat, for shooting out his eye, so enticing Ratdog into fighting for him is a big bonus, no matter what the awkward circumstances of how he first crossed paths with him. Ratdog agrees to the job, although the honorary rank doesn't mean anything to him either way. Here's the thing...Ratdog has some bad habits which aren't suitable for Wehrmacht soldiers. Namely, he hangs out in bars, gets drunk, and invites random guys (and the occasional woman, he's flexible) back to his new apartment with him. And he's not discreet about it. At. All. He quickly gains a reputation, but given his higher rank and sharpshooting skills, his habits are mostly overlooked. When Klemper is assigned to him to both help him navigate his way through military politics and maybe keep him out of too much trouble, he's absolutely livid--Ratdog is allowed to get away with practically everything AND gets a nice honorary military title out of it (a title he doesn't even care about!), whereas Klemper's entire career was ruined with one rumor (a true rumor, but still just a rumor). So yeah, he's really not enthused about this, but as Dasch convinces him, it might be his only way to keep his job, since the SS are still watching for any excuse to get him canned. (Himmel theorizes this is even why the two were paired with each other--they share the same vice.) Klemper introduces himself to Ratdog like so: *SS officers Jäger and Himmel are standing nearby* Klemper: "Herr Oberleutnant? Oberschütze Godfrey Klemper. I've been assigned..." *sees Jäger and Himmel* "...I've been assigned to babysit you." *Jäger cringes, Himmel raises his eyebrows* Ratdog: "Have you?" *looks back at Jäger and Himmel, then at Klemper* "Well then. Let's go." Aw, they're gonna be peas in a pod. Naturally, they don't get along a great deal at first, but start to warm to each other. They actually spend a night together (after Klemper knees him in the groin and elbows him in the nose and calls him Schwuchtel, first--Dasch notices Ratdog's state and laughs and says, "You made a move on him, didn't you?"), but Klemper rebuffs Ratdog when he tries again because he's fed up with his promiscuous behavior. Ratdog slowly starts to come around, because he realizes he likes Klemper more than that. The two of them start taking notice of unusual activities going on around them, one of which culminates in them blowing up a train (I forgot to mention, Klemper's good at blowing stuff up), another which implicates Schavich in some shady activities. (Klemper is also good at getting info from "invisible" people, like himself--in this case, one of Schavich's maids.) They also both have separate but very unpleasant run-ins with the OTHER really horrible awful perverted guy in the story, Unteroffizier (Sergeant) Kaspar Lange, the guy who victimized Silver Rat...and Boris...and Teal Rat... Oddly, the stronger and more experienced Ratdog doesn't succeed in fighting him off, while the much younger and frailer Klemper beats the s*** out of him before he can get very far...must be the drugs. So at this point in time, out of all of Lange's named victims, Klemper's the only one to avoid assault. Something I don't think is ever pointed out directly is how many similarities Klemper shares with SS Capt. Himmel. Not the gay stuff, no, but some personal and personality characteristics. Both started out poor; both were close to their mothers, not close to their fathers (in Himmel's case, his father died when he was very young); both were rather young, idealistic soldiers trying to prove themselves (Himmel wasn't a child soldier like Klemper, though) (EDIT, you know what, a closer look at my timelines of events has me suspecting that perhaps Himmel entered the military while underaged, as well!) yet quickly ended up traumatized by the experience; both earned the Iron Cross relatively young (while Klemper proudly displays his, Himmel hides his away and claims he lost it but Jäger just forces a replacement on him); both suffered the loss of someone close to them (Klemper his mother and, sort of, Baswitz; Himmel his wife and, sort of, his son); both have grown to be incredibly cynical and bitter about the war effort; and ironically, both of them hate the SS. (Eh, yep...for Himmel it's complicated.) And they both end up furtively assisting the Allies rather than the Nazis. Klemper can't stand Himmel at first since every SS officer is the enemy in his book, though Himmel seems to notice a kindred spirit and even refers to him as "Kamerad Klemper" rather than "Herr." (This really confuses Klemper, since in my story SS members only refer to each other as "Kamerad.") I wish I could say otherwise, but as the plot currently stands, Klemper doesn't survive the end of the war. 😞 He does first redeem himself in the Wehrmacht's eyes, though, and not only has his sergeant rank reinstated, but is promoted a few ranks to Feldwebel (Sergeant First Class). After the war, to commemorate him saving that village from getting torched so long ago, a statue and a little park are dedicated to him, naming him as their hero. (The person who provides a sketch of Klemper for the statue's design...? Himmel's son, Kolten.) [Godfrey Klemper 2022 [Friday, April 22, 2022, 2:35:38 AM]] [Godfrey Klemper 2022 2 [Friday, April 22, 2022, 2:39:47 AM]] |