Character SheetName: Rudolph Halliger
Rank: PFC
Age: 23
Gender: Male
Physical Description: A rather short and stocky young man, standing five feet, five inches, and weighing one hundred-seventy two pounds.
-Strength and Endurance: Beginning with a stocky frame that seems almost square in his width to his height, his heavy build was honed by his life raised on a farm, to working in a factory lifting and manipulating heavy blocks of steel and iron. Rudolph can generally be counted on to lift more than his fair share of any weight, without complaint.
-Mountaineering and Camping: Shepherding sheep in the mountains around Luthern, he is used to living making simple shelters and hunting small game as his father taught him. It is one of the things he misses most about working his family's flock, was the quiet time out in the woods.
-Trained Jäger: Many who pushed themselves through the brutal Alpine Warfare training did so with pure desire for the extra pay that would be theirs. Rudolph did it with grim determination and a grin on his face, challenging every fibre of his being to push harder. It wasn't for glory, but for the humble desire to know if he could do it, and if he could then he should do it.
-Mechanical intuitive aptitude: While technically uneducated, Rudolph displays an impressive ability to understand how mechanical objects work, especially if he can take it apart to inspect the interactions of the individual pieces to understand the whole. If he can see how it is supposed to work, he can generally get it working, unless something is broken beyond the point of repair and must be replaced. If he has the facilities, he can replicate parts as well.
History:Born in Grien, a small hamlet south of Luthern, to Wolf and Mihaly Halliger, a couple who tended a small sheep farm in the mountains. Rudolph was the second oldest of six children, his oldest sister, Maria, however contracted Polio and was born with a severely deformed right leg. Rudolph, as the eldest, able-bodied child, stepped into the role, helping his mother and father as he grew, helping to teach his younger siblings chores as they aged, and helping to take care of his sister. His duties to his family kept him out of school, though he learned to read and write from his younger brother Hirsch.
At the of twelve, he encountered something that would forever change his life, the Bauer's, the farmers whom Wolf (and most other farmers of Grien) bought winter feed from, had saved enough to get a tractor for around the farm. At his first sight of the raucously loud machine, Rudolph was entranced. He began spending time with Angelo Baurer, the head of the Baurer farm as they together figured out how to fix the machine when it was broken, and how to maintain it. Quickly the inquisitive mind of Rudolph overtook the elder's, and when the Baurer's bought the first automobile in Grien, he became their mechanic for it as well. At the end of his fourteenth year during the winter, Rudolph headed to Luthern, to the dealership of the Brozin tractors where he studied under the mechanics to learn more of the machines. By the time his sixteenth birthday came, he had built his family a cycle-car, a four wheeled vehicle with a wood frame, running a engine from a wrecked motorcycle he found in the Luthern junkyard.
Over the next two years, he spent much of his winters in Luthern, helping the mechanics around the shop, fixing things and learning more about the tractors, even solving problems. At the end of his second winter apprenticeship, he was greeted by Adolf Brozin, the owner of the company, with an offer: to work in the factory, making parts for the tractors, and the opportunity to rise from there. While Mihaly knew it was a chance of a lifetime, and would allow her son wealthy future, Wolf saw it differently. He wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. To take over the family farm in a few years, maybe marry Sofia Baurer, and raise their family on this land. The argument was bitter, and Rudolph left to chase his brighter future.
At the factory, he marveled at the machines that were used to make the parts and components, learning their names, their functions, and quickly how they functioned. Starting out as a shuttler, moving parts and raw pieces between sections of the factory, he saw and quickly learned the different positions, what they did and how they worked. He rapidly rose to machinist, cleaning engine block castings of flash before he mustered out for the militia.
In his basic training, Rudolph excelled, strong and fit from his life of farm work to machinist, able to endure the alpine conditions from his years of driving sheep through the rocky crags as a child. In anything physical, he was near the top of year's conscripts. As a rifleman however, he was slightly below average, but exceeding the requirements sufficiently. When put behind an M1904, he proved to be quite competent, and for the next several years through reserve training, was trained as a machine gunner. His commanders noted his raw strength in his ability to rapidly shift his gun emplacement for short distances when tactical flexibility demanded it.
Returning to the factory, the management assigned him as an assistant to one of their lead engineers, who was working on a new project, a diesel engine that would be used, hopefully in the company's first automobile. In 1935 however, Brozin Tractor answered a request by the government for prototype armored car, due to the increasing tensions with neighboring countries.
When the call for volunteer reservists came, Rudolph answered. When he returned to training, he answered another call for volunteers, for men and women interested in learning a new weapon system, the Gewehr M1939 Anti-Tank rifle. A monstrous rifle chambered for 20x105mm cartridges. While he may have be only a passable rifleman, and a competent machinegunner, it seemed he had found his place behind the heavy controls of the "Elephant Gun", attaining good accuracy with the violent rifle.
Psychological Profile:Rudolph is a stoic man, having grown up on a farm, and since nearly the day he could walk, he's supported his family and those around him with his strength and tenacity, frequently at the sacrifice of his own desires. However, after fighting for his own desire once, left him with a rift in his family, to whom he has yet to return to. He is friendly enough, but prefers to listen than to talk. To those he becomes close to, he is a stalwart friend. To those who cross him, he restrains himself from fighting unless necessary. To protect a friend however, he has few compunctions over where his actions may lead.
He is intelligent, and quick thinking, but low on education. In the field, he struggles to understand the big picture of the battlefield, to take in cause and effect chain of action and reaction on the large, or grand scale. On the small scale, he can focus, and understand how to effect changes.
Equipment: -Gewehr G34: Personally owned. Well kept, initials engraved on the underside of the tang. Can't be seen unless the action is removed from the stock.
-Gewehr M1939: Fresh out of the factory, and freshly trained with it. Weighs a stout hundred pounds, and is usually supplied with a pair of magazines.
-Jäger Uniform: As standard, except for a heavy woolen scarf his mother sent him, dyed a dark, earthy brown.
