In many ways, 2nd Special Platoon, 16th Armored Military Police Battalion was a victim of its own success.
That success brought about a temporary detachment out from the US Third Army area, and temporary assignment to US Fifteenth Army, to assist with the increasing problem of Soviet stragglers.
Even then, Hanebury and his men had licence to roam as they needed to, which had brought them even further south, in pursuit of a small band of Soviet soldiery causing problems with the supply line.
None the less, whilst they enjoyed the freedom of operation, the assignment was no bed of roses.
Lucifer was fuming… no actually… worse than fuming.
Respect for rank had stayed his tongue as the new Lieutenant Colonel of the 7th’s MP Battalion, fresh in from serving with a stateside training division, had inspected his special unit, and found it wanting.
Wanting in having the tyres blacked…
Wanting in having the paintwork immaculate and polished…
Wanting in everything pretty much…
The man even issued Hanebury with an ultimatum on the excessive weaponry carried by his vehicles, quoting regulations to justify his insistence at removing the additional means of waging war, in favour of the standard allocation of both weapons and ammunition.
Hanebury decided that he would do nothing in response to the written order that had been turned to ash in the brazier heating the unit’s coffee; just ignore the man, and go straight over his head to 7th Armored’s headquarters. He had a lot of stock there, given recent events, particularly as his boys had earned a bucket full of medals and praise for their work against the Soviet recon unit.
The unit had been assigned to the 7th US Armored Division purely administratively, but the bird colonel had decided that meant they were under his purview, and had hunted them down for inspection.
When the man had gone, Jim Hanebury withdrew to his tent, reading the letter from his Air Force cousin for the third time, using Arthur’s words to calm himself down sufficiently to appear approachable to his men.
Part of him envied the older man, roaming the skies and carrying the fight to the Japanese enemy.
But only for a moment.
Top Sergeant James Hanebury loved his boys, and his job, and besides, stooging around in the atmosphere was dangerous.
He smiled as he recalled the banter the two had exchanged the last time they had met, over two years previously.
Arthur was the man with the medals at that time, earned in the dangerous skies over Europe.
Since then, Jim Hanebury had acquired his own, with the 3rd Infantry and subsequently the 16th US Armored.
He looked forward to discussing the family bragging rights the next time he and Arthur shared a cold one down at Ellie’s Bar.
Folding up the letter, he slid it back into his pocket, silently wishing his cousin well, and calling upon God to keep him safe and away from danger, not knowing the danger was closer at hand for him than it was for Arthur.
The last of the Soviet soldiers was dispatched relatively silently, the noisiest part of the exercise being the rush of air as the unfortunate’s throat was opened from ear to ear. The large soldier scrabbled and grabbed at his attacker, ripping the sleeve of the man’s combat jacket, earning him a second slice of the blade, by way of revenge for a ruined uniform.
With few spoken commands, the assassins had closed on the slumbering soldiers, who had hidden in the woods above the road, dispatching all fourteen men in as many seconds.
Showing practised ease, the professional killers moved into action, some keeping watch, some taking weapons and food, and others dragging the bodies into cover.
Within two minutes, apart from the occasional trail of blood, the scene had been returned to nature and gave no indication of what had happened there.
A few hand signals were exchanged and the group blended back into the woods and were gone.
Malicious eyes surveyed the scene and assessed the possibilities.
The ambulance, a Dodge WC54, was going nowhere, the driver buried deep in the engine compartment, his curses reaching the ears of the watchers with ease.
An army medic and a nurse stood outside the vehicle, sharing cigarettes with two men, clearly sporting tokens of their injuries, the white bandages fresh and clean.
Occasionally, one of the two medical personnel would take a close look at the other two passengers, men whose wounds were more serious.
What interested the watcher was the medical bag, and what it probably contained, for they had no supplies of their own, and two wounded men in desperate need.
The leader made his decision, understanding a second attack, so close together in time and location to the first, was a risk, but one he was prepared to take for the prize of medicine.
A flat-handed signal, followed by a curved roll of his hand, sent a group of efficient killers down the hillside, using the blind spot created by the bulk of the vehicle to close the distance at speed.
Back at their start point, two men sat behind Mauser sniper rifles, just in case.
The remainder fanned out to provide security in case other vehicles came to the party.
The doctor, nurse and two wounded men were too busy laughing to notice that the stream of swear words stopped in mid-flow.
Spilling blood, the driver’s dead body was controlled as it flopped to the road, the killer wiping his knife on the man’s jacket before running his hands over pockets in the hope of finding tobacco.
The nurse laughed in a high-pitched wail, and immediately died quietly, her squeal of fear stifled with a dirty hand and a blade in her heart.
The doctor turned in time to see his killer lunge, but felt no pain as the blade slid up through his armpit and into vital places beyond.
The wounded men both made a grab for the trophy they had insisted on bringing along with them.
Neither man made it to the SVT automatic rifle.
The snipers shot them both dead.
One camouflaged killer slipped aboard the ambulance and sent the two seriously wounded men to their maker.
The whole group was up and moving quickly, lent urgency by the sound of the two shots still reverberating around the valley.
The leader, struggling with a twisted ankle, gritted his teeth and moved past the site as his men threw the bodies in the back of the ambulance, having checked for anything of use.
The medical supplies were already safely in the possession of the second in command, and within minutes the bird songs started again, the killers having again disappeared back into nature.
The group lay up on a height overlooking the area south of Bräunisheim, where they observed a US army medical facility at work, receiving and dispatching wounded in steady numbers throughout the day.
The need for medicines was still pressing.
There had not been enough in the bag… not enough painkillers, bandages, whatever…
The worst of the two wounded men was delirious now, the smell of his wounds carrying as far as his tortured groans of pain.
Two Russian prisoners, men who had been captured in the early stages of the new war, did their best to treat the injured men, but, in the case of Otto Jungling, SS-Sturmann, it was too little, too late.
A quick conference between the three senior men made two quick decisions. Firstly… they would move into the hospital and take what they needed the following night, just to ensure they didn’t run into heightened security. Secondly…