"How can you allow this travesty?" Johannes Dietrich demanded as Puss checked the bindings holding him against the wood support. "We did nothing wrong."
"The men went mad when a sniper murdered Colonel Kuster," Hermann auf der Mauer said.
Puss ignored the comments, but Traugott Nachtigall took offence at his silence. "You rear end mother-fucker, what do you know of war? I bet you've never even been in combat. What right do you have to judge us?"
For a moment he saw that eight-year-old girl again. He looked at the ex-captain, and then to his own officer. "The prisoners are secure, sir."
"Very good, Sergeant. Retire your men behind the line."
Spittle from ex-captain Nachtigall struck Puss and mingled with the blood of an eight-year-old Pole. He looked up at Nachtigall, who seemed proud of his small victory. Puss gestured for his men to leave before following them.
Grantville
In the glory days of 1633 and 1634, the Grantville office of the Armed Forces Press Division had boasted over a dozen staff members, but those days were long gone. Now, the permanent staff consisted of Lieutenant Johann Dauth, the three radio operators who maintained a 24/7 radio watch, and three enlisted women who rotated the position of front desk receptionist while doing their real job of composing press releases and running them off on the duplicator machine for distribution to the local media.
There was some kind of bug going around, and the office was down to a skeleton staff, meaning, instead of getting out of the office over lunch, Sveta had to stay in the office. She'd just settled her mug of hot soup on her desk and sat down when Lieutenant Dauth burst out of the radio room waving a printout.
"Magdeburg's just passed on a story from Scoop claiming USE troops are sacking a surrendered town in Poland."
"Scoop" was the nickname of twenty-year-old Ambrosius Weineck. He had made every effort since joining the Fightin' Flacks (as some called the reporters of the military's press office) to portray himself as the next Ernest Hemingway. He'd earned the nickname for producing a rather long list of "scoops" that weren't.
Her lunch forgotten, Sveta reached for the paper Johann held. A quick skim-and it was a very quick skim-Scoop must have outdone himself in the brevity of the story he filed with headquarters in Magdeburg. "It's a little light on any details. Have headquarters heard from Dirk and Werner?" she asked, naming the two competent reporters the department had with the 3rd Division.
"Not a whisper."
Johann looked ready to pull his hair out, and Sveta couldn't blame him. Either Dirk and Werner hadn't filed anything because there wasn't anything to report, or they were in the thick of it, getting the real story. There was however, another possible source of information. "What are the Times and Daily News getting?"
In theory, the press office shouldn't know what was in the stories the reporters working for the two main Grantville papers were sending over the radio, however, the office had the use of a computer, and the geek responsible for maintaining their computer system had cracked the newspapers' codes. With their computer and their own radios monitored 24/7, the press office was able to read the stories the reporters were filing well before the papers' editors did.
"They haven't sent anything yet," Johann said.
"So either Scoop's gone off half-cocked again, or they're busy chasing the story."
Johann nodded. "I'm sure the boss has already ordered Scoop to get some details."
"What do you want me to do with this?" She waved the printout.
Dauth sighed. "Try and work your usual magic on it so we've got something for a press release."
It was a tall order, but Sveta rolled a fresh stencil blank into her typewriter, and after reading the cable again, started typing.
****
Over the course of the day reports reached the office that confirmed Scoop's original story, and then some. Sveta was typing out yet another update press release when Johann walked quietly up to her desk. This was unusual, as throughout the day he'd announced each new development as he bounced out of the communications room.
She reached up for the papers he held, but Johann pulled them away. "Dirk's filed an interview with your husband. It's pretty graphic."
Having given her a warning, Johann obviously felt free to let her read the story. At first sight, it was a mass of red pencil where parts he didn't want her to include in the press release were marked. Naturally, she started to read those areas first. She bolted for the bathroom.
"Can you write it up, or do you want me to do it?" Johann asked from the bathroom door.
Sveta rinsed her mouth to get rid of the bile taste and splashed her face with water. "I can do it, but can I call John's family first to let them know he's okay?"
"Sure, make your calls, but keep them short. We may need to keep the phone free."
She asked the Fluharty Middle Schoolsecretary to pass on the message to Mama that she'd heard that John was okay after the recent fighting in Swiebodzin. She did much the same with the secretary at the SoTF State Technical College, where she left the same message for Papa. Then she settled down to work the terse filed cables from Werner and Dirk into press releases.
The standard press releases were easy to write, but translating the interview with John into something for general consumption was difficult, as she kept visualizing what John must have seen.
October, 1635, the south bank of the Odra river, near Zielona Gora
Puss was, as usual since Swiebodzin, keeping a watchful eye on the remnants of the Gray Adder regiment. He had been thinking about what happened. Not so much the actual rape, loot, murder and burn that the men had engaged in, but more the message General Stearns' reaction would be sending to them.
"Lieutenant, I've been wondering if the general did the right thing at Swiebodzin by punishing the officers."
"I wouldn't worry about them, Trelli. They had it coming," Lieutenant Heinrich Diefenthaler said.
"I wasn't thinking of the officers, sir. I was thinking of the men who weren't caught in the act. Shouldn't we be trying to bring them to justice?'
"To what purpose, Trelli? By his actions, General Stearns has ensured that such an event won't occur again."
"Why not?" To Puss the problem was obvious, but then, he'd read all of his sisters' college psychology textbooks and anything else he could find to try and understand Donetta Frost's motivations for the affair she had with him.
"I'm sure every officer in the 3rd Division is now planning on imposing stiff discipline so that their men don't run amok and get them strung up in front of a firing squad. But what about the common soldiers? All they've learned is that as long as they don't get caught, they can get away with murder. Heck, they could take advantage of the precedent, and use it to get rid of unpopular officers."
"Trelli, you have a nasty mind," Lieutenant Diefenthaler said. "A very nasty mind. It could become a downward spiral. The officers make themselves unpopular by imposing stricter discipline, so the troops retaliate by going crazy."
Puss nodded. That's exactly what he'd been thinking. "So, do we start searching out the instigators and bring them to justice?"
"I'll pass your concerns on to Captain von Frankenberg, Trelli."
"Thank you, sir." After Lieutenant Diefenthaler walked off, Puss returned to watching the men from the Gray Adder. The regiment was largely recruited from Mecklenburg, where the CoC columns had been involved in some pretty nasty fighting during Operation Kristallnacht. One could almost suggest that they had been predisposed to running amok and committing atrocities even before Swiebodzin. There had certainly been enough of that from both sides in Mecklenburg. All they'd needed was a trigger-like the death of their commander at the hands of a sniper-to send them over the edge.