Gercke was born in a small village on the border of Bavaria in what feels to him like a lifetime ago to both of his parents. Soon thereafter, two younger brothers had followed. He had acquired a passion for literacy as early as he could, due to -- with a belief that language is the bridge we all share -- it being his ultimate dream to be able to put the conflicts of the past behind the warring Germanic nation-states that all wished to conquer one another. Gercke's father sought to made him a tradesman in their lumber mill, but as the French had sought to overtake their village in his youth, his father was conscripted and never returned back to their home. His mother elected to continue his studies in private. As the French had come with an imperial aspiration, they had vanished almost as quickly as they had arrived.

Soon, however, it would all come to a head. With Gercke being the eldest man of his home, he had to take care of his mother and his younger brothers by plying the trade his father had come to teach him. It was not long thereafter that his brothers had contracted fevers, to which all of the money he had been saving to finance his personal studies had been dedicated were now flushed for the village doctor's care. It proved fruitless, however, and as much as he had wished to preserve his family's legacy, they were soon to pass as rapidly as his funds. The entire angle became unsustainable. The family business that Gercke worked so hard to maintain could no longer feasibly support him and his mother. His assets were liquidated for the two to be able to maintain their home lives for as long as he could manage until he would be able to find another career.


The Kingdom of Bavaria had not sought to engulf themselves in the war that was soon to overtake their neighbors, however they were quickly pulled into the side of the burgeoning Austrian forces upon the king's death. Gercke had never seen the conflict firsthand for this entire war, however his closest experience was the advancing Austrian army marching through his homeland. This left a sizeable impression on the young man, and as he was struggling to find work to support him and his mother, a war had made it impossible to find any means of subsistence. The two were barely able to keep their home supported and had to cater to both the Austrian advance and then later the Prussian encroachment. Neither armies took respect to the locals and had vandalized their abode on numerous occasions. Gercke's mother had taken ill due to the stress.


With Austria conceding defeat to the Prussians, Bavaria was spared harsh criticism for their lack of a role in the war and was soon thereafter joined to the confederating Prussian alliance. It was here that Gercke was finally conscripted. Thrown into the raging conflict headlong, he was given a rifle and his uniform as he was forced to leave home to join the effort. Having to leave his home behind gave him great pause for he knew that if he had left his mother, he was likely to never see her again. The two barely had time to say their goodbyes before he was sent off to fight the French.

Battle after battle had saw to the Prussian victories wholesale, but Gercke's letters from home had soon stopped. He had begun to lose his nerve with mounting anxiety and the approach to Paris. The young Bavarian man was on the frontlines day after day, and men around him that he had grown to call his friends would be shot and sent home or he would never see their faces after they had hit the ground. His battalion had come to be his new family, and he was losing them, too. After numerous pushes into French territory, Gercke and his comrades were expected to loot, pillage, and raze at their leisure. This did not sit well with him, and watching the people he had grown accustomed to turn into monsters further broke his resolve.

It was not too long after that during the siege of a village, his unit was directly struck by a cavalry attack that scattered them into the wilderness. Here, Gercke was pursued by dragoons upon routing. Evading nearly every one by concealing himself in a hollowed tree trunk den, one of the horsemen had found him and almost ran him through with his sabre until BANG! The smoke had engulfed the small inlet and he scurried out of it before long to watch the man he had fired at choking to death slowly before him. The French soldier looked up at him with an unparalleled fear that shook the broken Gercke to his core. Realizing, though, that this was his only opportunity, he spooked the horse to charge into the wood and replaced the uniform he had been given and took the dragoon's -- ill-fitting and soiled with blood and mud -- to feign as a wounded man and headed up towards the coast.

He was barely able to secure himself by stowing away aboard a small boat filled with refugees to escape to England where he and his fellow riders dispersed into the countryside. Though he had received looks for deserting, none ever knew his true allegiance to the Prussian army. Here, he pragmatically sold the uniform and equipment he had poached back in France for a ticket to escape to the United States with the hopes that he could escape the awful conflicts engulfing Europe.

Only having just arrived on the frontier, Gercke has assumed the moniker "Guilhartz" and seeks nothing but a better future than the one he left behind in the Old World. However, his innocence cannot last forever.