"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.
Grantville
Sveta's friends came bearing gifts. She met them at the door and shepherded them along to her room.
"How's the baby? Janie asked.
Sveta patted her bump. "It's started to move." She was reminded of the first time she felt her baby move a couple of weeks ago. Until then she'd been on tenterhooks. Too many well-meaning (or maybe, just mean) people had talked about the risk of losing a baby before the second trimester. Apparently, once a baby started to move, you were less likely to miscarry. Although, having sent that reassuring signal, it would have been nice if it could stop kicking every time she managed to drop off to sleep.
"Is it moving now?" Julia asked.
Sveta reached out and pressed Julia's hand against her abdomen.
"Oh, it kicked. That's so cool. Diana, you have to feel Sveta's baby moving."
"How are you feeling, Sveta?" Diana asked, letting Julia guide her hand.
"Remarkably well, much to the disappointment of the doomsayers.
"Mom was like that," Janie said. "A bit of morning sickness early on, then nothing for months." She sent Sveta a wry grin. "But I don't think you'll be able to avoid backache as you near term."
"How did your mother cope with that?" Sveta asked.
"She had Dad to give her massages. Oh, I'm sorry, Sveta."
Sveta waved away Janie's concern. She had a husband, but would he even want to touch her? She sighed and picked at one of Diana's cookies. "John's feeling overly concerned about money again." Sveta shook her head. "So what if we can't afford our own home? Lots of children continue to live with their parents after marriage."
"Not Americans," Julia said. "They want their own space, away from their parents."
"Space? Always this need for more space. What about the support of your family?" Sveta shook her head. "And anyway, why is John so worried? With the price people are paying for up-time guns, he's got a s
mall fortune in this room."
"You haven't suggested Puss sell some of his guns?" Julia demanded.
"Not yet." Then she noticed the horrified looks on her friends' faces. "What did I say?"
"Blasphemy!" Julia said.
"Double blasphemy," Janie agreed.
"Sveta, a West Virginian's guns are sacrosanct. Some of them are family heirlooms," Diana explained.
"There are families in Grantville where their guns are worth more than their houses, but they would never sell them," Janie said.
"So, no selling his guns?" Sveta asked.
"Not unless you want to really make Puss angry," Julia said.
"Or you're really desperate for money," Diana added.
Zielona Gora
Street fighting sucked. Puss sat with his back against the wall of a building and checked his weapons. He had a service issue Sharps carbine clone, and a pair of stainless-steel Ruger Vaquero Cowboy Action revolvers in .45 Colt he'd owned for years, a copy of a Gurkha Kukri knife one of his dad's friends had made out of an old leaf-spring, and a bag of grenades. The rest of his patrol was similarly armed, but with their own choice of fighting knife, and a pair of the service issue cap and ball revolvers in place of the Rugers.
The grenades had had proved a godsend in the battle so far. They were modeled more on the WW2 German "potato masher" than the American "pineapple" grenades, but they were miles ahead of whatever the Poles were using-probably the old spherical ball type where you had to physically light the fuse before using. At least the USE grenades could be ignited with a simple pull of a string.
Puss saw the signal from the captain of the company his patrol had been attached to as a sort of fire-support team. That meant they were ready to enter the street. He slung his carbine and raised his head to check on the target. It was less than thirty feet to the building. "Grenades."
Five men pulled grenades from the sacks each of them carried. Almost as one they checked the target, pulled the friction-igniter strings, and with covering fire from Captain Casper Havemann's rifle company, lobbed their grenades towards the target, before dropping behind cover.
Seconds later, the air full of dust and smoke, Puss and his patrol went over the wall they'd been hiding behind and, with more covering fire, ran for the building.
Puss was the first to reach the building. He dropped his shoulder to barge open the shattered door, and he was in the house. With a Ruger held before him in a two-handed grip, Puss advanced into the building. This was the part of street fighting he really didn't like. The enemy could be anywhere, and a grenade dropped from above was almost impossible to avoid.
They cleared the ground floor first, stopping only to tear down the smoldering drapes to prevent a fire. Then, with the rest of his patrol providing backup, Puss advanced up the narrow staircase. It was a bit like playing paintball back up-time, except hits were likely to hurt a heck of a lot more. At the top of the stairs he lobbed in a grenade-no sense taking risks. He followed up the blast, to find the space empty.
Puss smothered the smoking embers before they could catch anything alight while the rest of the patrol checked the other rooms. Other than the men on the ground floor, this house had been empty.
With the first house secure, a section from the infantry company flooded in and started to tear an opening in the attic space dividing wall. When they broke through Puss lobbed a grenade through the opening, and quickly followed the blast. With the top floor cleared the infantry followed a constant flow of grenades down the building until it was clear. In this way they made it to the end of the street without exposing themselves to fire from snipers.
The other side of the street had been taken out by another platoon of Captain Havemann's company, making the road in between relatively safe. Puss and his patrol sat on the steps of one of the row of houses they'd taken and took the opportunity to reload their revolvers and have a drink. They watched Captain Havemann led his headquarters section to the rubble at the end of the street, where he could plan the next step of their street clearance operation.
BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM!
All hell broke loose as the Poles fired a massive artillery barrage along most of the front. Cannon balls tore into buildings and rubble began to fall from the damaged walls. Debris from a critically damaged building fell onto the headquarters section. Two survivors of the collapse started pulling away at the rubble. One fell to sniper fire, but the other managed to pull Captain Havemann from the rubble and drag him to cover.
"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Puss could already sense the company wavering around him. Havemann was a man with a towering presence. Just having him walk along the line gave his men confidence. Unfortunately, the reverse applied if something happened to him.
"Take this and give me covering fire."
"What the hell?" Lenhard Poppler started to ask as Puss thrust his carbine at him. "You goddamned idiot!" he shouted as Puss sprinted towards the fallen officer.
Puss used a feet-first baseball slide to take cover beside Captain Havemann and the man who'd dragged him to cover. A quick glance at the size of the lumps of masonry covering the rest of the headquarters section told him that these two were likely to be the only survivors. The private was a weed of a man. How he'd managed to drag the captain, who was easily twice his weight, to cover was anybody's guess. The man was still bleeding, but he'd done his best to staunch the flow from the captain's injuries.
The Poles were intensifying their fire around where Puss was huddled, but contrary to what Corporal Poppler thought, he wasn't a complete idiot. He emptied out his bag of grenades and started lobbing them over the rubble. For a few seconds he had a screen of white smoke from the black powder grenades. "Go!" he screamed at the private, while he dragged Captain Havemann over his shoulder in a fireman's lift and sprinted back to Corporal Poppler.
Eager hands relieved Puss of his load, and he took his carbine back. "Who's in charge?"
Hermann pointed to a lieutenant taking cover in a doorway. The man was signaling everyone to pull back. Unfortunately, most of the men weren't taking any notice. They were looking at Puss. Right now, he was the person they were most likely to take orders from. Puss took his lead from the lieutenant and signaled them back. Over the next hour the company made a fighting withdrawal, until they were back where they'd started that morning.
Grantville
The knock on the door was a bit more impetuous than most callers to the Trelli residence used. Except of course, when the call was urgent. The household froze, knives and forks poised in the air. Slowly all eyes congregated onto Papa, who smiled ruefully around the table and laid his knife and fork on his barely-started dinner.
"I'd better see who that is," he said as he pushed back his chair and headed for the door.
The rest of the household was silent. Sveta could almost feel covert glances in her direction. An unexpected caller at this hour could only be bad news, and the most likely bad news was that something had happened to John. A sudden burst of activity from her baby just reinforced her concern.
Papa appeared at the dining room door. "It's Ernst Schreiber, from the Grantville Times, with a photographer. John's okay, but he's been a bit heroic, again."
Sveta looked past Papa. She knew Herr Schreiber from her work. She also knew what not a lot of people didn't-that Ernst Schreiber wrote the Times' famous, no, make that infamous, Rodger Rude column. "What do you want?"
"Sveta!"
"Sorry, Mama." She pointedly didn't include Ernst Schreiber in her apology.
"Just a few photographs of Sergeant Trelli's family and maybe a few words . . ."
Whatever Ernst had intended saying was lost in the ringing of the phone. Felix, already on his feet, answered it. "We know. Herr Schreiber, from the Times has just shown up-what was that? We should expect to hear from the Daily News as well? Thank you."
Felix Trelli hung up the phone. "That was your office, Sveta. Lieutenant Dauth wanted to warn you that Scoop has filed a story about John."
Ernst shrugged. "It's a good human interest story. Local boy haul's officer from the jaws of death, then leads the officer's command in a fighting withdrawal. The press office in Magdeburg has confirmed enough of it that we intend running the story."
If the press office in Magdeburg was confirming anything Scoop filed . . . Sveta swallowed bile at what that suggested. Suddenly there was a brilliant flash of light. Blinking furiously, Sveta tried to focus on Ernst's photographer. "Did you just take a photograph?" she demanded.
It was a bit of a redundant question, as Jacob Fiedler was already swapping out the spent bulb in the flash unit he'd just used. He nodded anyway.
"Don't even think about doing that again."
"That's not very nice, Frau Anderovna. Jacob's just doing his job. We just want a bit of human interest to accompany the main story."
"What is the main story, Herr Schreiber?" Felix asked.
Next day
"ST. GEORGE DOES IT AGAIN!" The headline in the Grantville Times blared out in seventy-two point letters.
Sveta stared at the photograph under the headline. Whoever it was who said a picture was worth a thousand words had something like that photograph in mind. Even after being screened so it could be printed in the paper, you could sense the urgency as the man ran out of the cloud of smoke carrying a man over his shoulders while helping another limp to safety. It was bad enough he'd earned a St. George Medal saving some people from a rabid dog, now he had to risk enemy fire to rescue some soldiers as well.
"Why would he risk his life like that?" she asked Mama.
"Because that's the kind of person John is."
Sveta was close to tears. She was learning to admire the man she was married to, and the silly fool seemed intent on getting himself killed. "I wish he would stop. He's going to get himself killed if he keeps this up."
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