Chapter 4: Basic
Friday, July 1, 1633
A basic training class started July 1. Families were allowed to watch from the edge of the parade field as the men reported to the military base on the south side of Saalfeld, called Camp Saale. Astrid knew from school that the seniors—those in twelfth grade, usually seventeen or eighteen years old—graduated in late May. Most of the boys—and a few of the girls—joined the New United States Army after graduation.
Many of the other recruits appeared to be mercenaries. Astrid was no expert, but they seemed to her to vary from individuals who appeared to be down on their luck to confident men who stood like they had a great deal of experience in the world.
Neustatter’s men marched in a column of twos. They carried no weapons or packs, and Neustatter had made sure none of them were wearing halstücher. Instead, the women were. Ursula and Anna wore their husbands’ halstücher, and Astrid wore her brother’s.
“Kader, halt.” Neustatter was not trying to draw attention, but his voice carried even when he was not trying to project it.
The formation dissolved, and the men stepped into the lines of recruits.
Within seconds, two soldiers in those green-brown-black uniforms appeared from . . . somewhere.
“Did I hear a command?” one of them roared. He seemed old to Astrid, but was still a strong man, although he moved with a bit of a limp.
“Did someone give you permission to speak?” the other demanded. This one was younger. Astrid thought he was about Stefan’s age, older than any of the rest of the men from the village. He stood right in front of Neustatter and leaned in. “Did I give you permission to speak?” he roared.
“Do you accept transfer of this detachment, late of Colloredo’s Regiment of Wallenstein’s army?” Neustatter’s voice was equally loud.
The drill sergeant’s face turned interesting colors, rather like Herr Augustus’ when he was about to explode.
The older drill sergeant immediately stepped in. “The New United States Army accepts transfer of this detachment.”
Then he announced he was Drill Sergeant Maxwell Huffman, and the younger was Carl Yost. Then they both hollered at the recruits for a while before marching them off.
Sunday, July 3, 1633
Captain Henderson Coonce hadn’t meant to get trapped at his desk. He’d arrived at the office before dawn with the intention of checking a couple personnel files before heading to sick call. He preferred to supervise it himself. A gym teacher up until the Ring of Fire, he had some experience with athletic training. Much of it was applicable to basic training and helped cut down on “broken private syndrome.”
He looked up in annoyance when a knock sounded at the door.
“Enter!”
To his surprise, Drill Sergeant Yost entered. The drill sergeants knew their business, and they’d all meet up at the mess hall shortly.
“Captain Coonce.”
“Sergeant Yost. What’s come up?”
Yost came to attention in front of Coonce’s desk. “One of the ex-mercenaries. Neustatter. He fragged his previous sergeant. We don’t need anybody like that.”
“No, Neustatter shot his captain in the back of the head after ordering Heidenfelder to cut the sergeant’s throat,” Coonce corrected.
Yost sputtered for a moment.
“You don’t think that’s a problem, sir?”
“Dan Frost tipped me off. Said I should give him a chance. And you know how Dan Frost is.”
“I thought I did.”
“He must think there were extenuating circumstances.” Coonce stood. “That’s what Eagle Pepper is for, right?”
“Roger that, sir.”
Saturday, July 9, 1633
Anna tossed her rag into the bucket and surveyed the ground floor of the rowhouse. She grinned. “It does not take as long to clean with all the men gone.”
“They barely had time to make a mess,” Ursula pointed out.
“Since everything is clean, we should go to the movies tonight,” Astrid said.
“What is tonight’s movie?” Anna asked.
Astrid consulted her notebook. “It is two episodes of a television show called The Dukes of Hazzard.”
“That sounds like it is about some up-time adel,” Ursula said. “I do not know that we need something like that.”
“It will be fun!” Johann declared.
Ursula sighed.
***
A few hours later, she was shaking her head as they left the high school auditorium. “Sheer anarchy!”
Johann was making vroom noises.
“Johann, stop that!”
“That was not about adel at all.” Anna spoke quietly to Astrid. “The woman who introduced the television show said that the up-time was not actually like that. I do not understand why it was so popular?”
Astrid thought about that. “The up-timers approved of the Dukes, their values. I think that is how they wished to be. I think it is the same reason that the John Wayne movies Neustatter likes are so popular.”
She kept thinking about it as they walked through Grantville, back to Murphyhausen. Somewhere along Route 250, Astrid figured out part of the answer.
“Anna, it is like the mysteries and westerns Neustatter and I read. The up-timers value justice and freedom and what is right more than order.”
“But . . . but . . . how does justice exist without order?” Anna asked.
“That is why everyone comes to Grantville, is it not? Even if we do not understand it at the time.”
When they arrived at their rowhouse, Astrid made a note to make sure Neustatter saw The Dukes of Hazzard so that she could talk to him about what it meant.
Friday, July 22, 1633
Three weeks into basic training, the men were worn out. They were cleaning the barracks—again. Hjalmar muttered, “I think the drill sergeants value order above justice.”
“Ja,” Neustatter agreed. His mouth quirked. “I am officially disillusioned.”
He noted which men laughed. Without exception, they were recruits who appeared to be successfully navigating the stress of basic.
“It is a game, you know,” Neustatter said.
“What do you mean, Neustatter?” Recruit Kessel had shadows under his eyes. Neustatter had seen him putting in his full effort consistently.
Neustatter waved his hand, taking in the eight men from the village. “We were in Wallenstein’s army. I saw the same thing there. The official rules were not the same as the actual rules.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hauptmann Trehar and Sergeant Wylich changed the rules all the time to whatever benefitted them. They were arschlöcher. Drill Sergeants Huffman and Yost change the rules on us when it is not in their benefit to do so. They are up to something.”
“Ja, well, Yost does not like you.”
“Drill Sergeant Huffman does not do anything by accident. We just need to figure out what his plan is. Observe, stay busy and do not get your buddies in trouble.”
***
Neustatter’s men and other former mercenaries were in a different basic training company than up-time high school graduates and down-timers who had not been in an army before. In the fourth week, the ex-mercenaries were assigned a field exercise. They fell into formation with matchlock muskets and packs.
“Welcome to Eagle Pepper,” Drill Sergeant Huffman told them. “This is a multiple-day field exercise, meaning we will not be coming back to the barracks for several days. You will use all the skills you have learned in a series of scenarios. Some of these scenarios include civilians. We have designed the scenarios to be similar to what we think you can expect in an actual campaign. You must achieve an overall ‘Go’ in this exercise to advance to phase two of basic training. Enough ‘No Go’s, and you will be recycled to the next basic training class. The cartridges you’ve been issued are black powder only. Black powder is still dangerous. No point-blank fire. Do not fix bayonets in any of these exercises.”
Neustatter immediately noted that Drill Sergeant Huffman did not ask if anyone had questions. Since the drill sergeants usually did that, not asking was deliberate. It suggested lack of information was part of this exercise.
Drill Sergeant Yost reorganized the class of recruits into different squads than they were used to. The eight men from the village all ended up in the same squad. Previously they’d all been in different ones. Neustatter understood why the drill sergeants had put them in separate squads. He did not understand why they were back together.
As they marched east on a dirt road, Ditmar muttered, “How do the up-timers say it? The fix is in.”
“You noticed.” Neustatter spoke quietly enough that only Ditmar heard him.
“You told us to start noticing things like that. The other thing I notice is that we do not have a chain of command, but we are in formation, so we will probably be fighting in line.”
“I understand why we have to be able to, but . . . ” Neustatter raised his voice just a bit so that his squad could hear him. “When we take fire, I will call ‘Teams!’ Ditmar, go right. Hjalmar, go left. Wolfram, hang back.”
They marched almost seven miles east. The road forked just past the village of Oberwellenborn, and the drill sergeants directed the column of recruits to the right. Further on, they turned left toward the village of Birkig. It was even smaller than Neustatter’s own village. There was even less farmland—some of the residents were probably half-farmers. The manor was larger than Herr Augustus’ hunting lodge. Even at this distance it looked well-cared for. The village did have a church, and the structure looked distinctly ancient. It was white with a black roof and looked at least as tall as it was wide. The slope of the roof changed partway down, becoming much steeper and giving the church a boxlike appearance.
As they got closer, Neustatter realized the crossroads did not line up. Nor was the main road straight. It came from Oberwellenborn in the west, arcing gently to the north before continuing on to Lausnitz at not quite the same angle. The road the recruits were marching along came up from the south, pointing directly to the church. It met the east-west road right where it straightened out after its arc. The church itself was on another road that came in from the north. That road curved west at the church and met the east-west road one house west of where the southern road did.
Neustatter counted six houses south of the east-west road, three to either side of the intersection with the southern road. It looked like there were probably three houses north of the main road and east of the church, with the area immediately south of the church between the two intersections forming the village square. Neustatter could not see the northwestern quadrant of the village clearly, but he thought that there were houses both along the main road and along that road from the north.
The recruits were almost to the nearest pair of houses at the intersection when a woman burst out of the brownish house on the left with two men who appeared to be soldiers right behind her. One brandished a sword, while the other held a matchlock.
“Halt!” Neustatter ordered.
Most of the recruits’ formation took that as an order and stopped on the next pace. The woman ran by them, and the two men ran off in the opposite direction.
“Teams! Detail . . . route step . . . pursuit!” Neustatter ordered.
Ditmar, Lukas, and Stefan ran off to the right side of the road in pursuit. Hjalmar, Otto, and Karl ran off to the left. Most of the formation broke ranks and charged straight down the road. Neustatter ran among them, periodically clapping a man on the shoulder and sending him after either Ditmar or Hjalmar’s teams.
They were right in the middle of the road that ran through the Birkig from east to west when a spatter of musket shots crashed out from the houses on the north side of the road.
“Cover!” Neustatter shouted. His men immediately turned back to take cover behind the houses south of the main road.
Ditmar’s group practically ran into an umpire. Umpires were NUS soldiers who controlled exercises like this. They decided who had been shot and what was allowable. The umpires wore bright yellow or orange vests over their camouflage uniforms.
“Dead, dead, and dead.” The umpire pointed at Ditmar, Stefan, and Lukas.
Lukas immediately began arguing and was told to shut up. He finally got on the ground, and the umpire moved out of the way.
Neustatter and Wolfram were no longer there.
At the next exchange of fire, the umpire declared Hjalmar’s team dead. Then two shots sounded inside the second house from the right, north of the road.
The umpire had almost reached the door when it opened, and one of the snipers was propelled out the door. Neustatter’s left arm was firmly around his neck. Wolfram forced another sniper out in the same manner. They marched them directly toward the house full of snipers. Two shots rang out, and the umpire ruled the hostages dead. They immediately slumped.
Neustatter brought up the matchlock in his right hand, grabbed the stock with his left, and told his dead guy, “You might want to cover your ears.” Then he pulled the trigger, and a hundred twenty-five grains of black powder made a suitably impressive noise.
Wolfram fired moments later.
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” the umpire ordered.
He took them back to the starting point, where Yost lectured them about safety violations for a while.
After the inevitable pushups, Drill Sergeant Yost announced, “Heidenfelder, you are in charge this time.”
They marched back down the road, toward the same brown house. Something about the house itself bothered Neustatter. Then the same woman ran out with the same two soldiers in pursuit.
“Fire!” Lukas ordered.
The umpire ruled two down. Lukas then maneuvered the men around the left side of that house, bypassing the house across the side road. That was where the unit that had ambushed Ditmar’s team last time had been.
And then shots crashed out from ahead and from both sides.
An umpire ruled Hjalmar, Ditmar, Wolfram, and Karl dead.
Stefan swore. “Ridiculous accuracy.”
But he complained on the run as he, Lukas, Neustatter, and Otto dashed for cover.
Lukas glanced at Neustatter.
“Break contact,” Neustatter offered.
“Neustatter, Otto, fire and run.”
They edged around a house north of the main road, fired, and ducked back ahead of the return fire. The umpire said nothing, effectively ruling they had not been hit. Neustatter and Otto dashed for the next house. More shots rang out, and these sounded different.
Lukas and Stefan fired and ran in the opposite direction, only to get caught in a similar crossfire.
Lukas was visibly angry on the way back to the starting point.
“Those were up-time weapons,” Neustatter told him.
“Not quite what you expected, was it?” Yost asked.
So the day went.
Saturday, July 23, 1633
Saturday started with more of the same. Neustatter was leading the squad first.
By now, they were not approaching on the road. They advanced across one of the fields at extended order—about six feet apart.
The woman ran out of the same house. This time Neustatter realized what bothered him about that house. It was nothing to do with the scenario. The roof was off-kilter. It wasn’t square to the rest of the house.
“Ditmar’s team! Ready, present!”
The same two soldiers ran out of the house in pursuit.
“Fire!”
The umpire said nothing.
“Hjalmar’s team! Fire!”
The umpire said nothing. Then snipers fired from three different houses. He pointed at Neustatter, Ditmar, and Hjalmar.
The three obligingly collapsed, but then Hjalmar and Ditmar traded looks. Hjalmar waited until the umpire’s back was turned, then pointed at first Otto, then Wolfram. Ditmar nodded in reply.
Sure enough, the umpire made Otto and Wolfram casualties on the next volley, although Karl was easily more exposed.
So the day went.
Sunday, July 24, 1633
Drill Sergeant Maxwell Huffman hitched himself onto a convenient crate in the headquarters tent. He needed a bit of a rest. He wasn’t as young as he had been when he’d been running around the jungles of Vietnam. He snorted. This sure wasn’t the GP medium tent he’d been used to in the up-time U.S. Army, either. This was a rain fly with delusions of grandeur. Blue, no less. It couldn’t possibly stick out more. The screen panels on three sides were rolled down and zipped together. The fourth side was currently open, although if that one annoying housefly didn’t quickly develop a sense it ought to be elsewhere, he was going zip the fourth side panel shut and indulge in a search-and-destroy mission. It felt like it was going to be a hot day . . . for Thuringia. It’d probably hit 80, which down-timers definitely classified as hot. Over the course of his military career, Huffman had spent far too much time at Fort Bragg to be impressed with 80 degrees.
The recruits—or those who wanted to, anyway—were off at church services. They were the only unit in the field this morning, so all three of Camp Saale’s chaplains—Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist—had been able to come by and hold services. He didn’t attend church himself, and he didn’t believe in leaving the field while the men were still out there.
This class of recruits was shaping up fairly well, although he had no intention of telling them that. Unlike most of the other instructors, he’d actually served a stint as a drill sergeant up-time. Like Harley Thomas, Archie Mitchell, and Sam Sloan, he’d served in the Vietnam War. He had a pretty good idea what to watch for in recruits. This batch had some men in fairly desperate economic straits, this year’s high school graduates, a few young idealists (overlapping the high school graduates in some cases), and a fair number of former mercenaries. Most of those had enlisted in ones and twos. There was one trio, and then there was Neustatter’s bunch. Huffman flipped through the former mercenaries’ evaluations from the first two days of Eagle Pepper and frowned at what he saw.
Huffman had been running the new recruit company through Eagle Pepper, and they were pretty bad at it. In all fairness, he didn’t expect anything else at this point. Dropping a field exercise on them in week four of basic training was probably a bit much. But the basic training cadre was less interested in properly executed fire and maneuver than they were in how the recruits dealt with the opposition force and the civilians in Birkig.
Most squads were doing about as well as could be expected. Nobody had attempted to massacre the village, rape the women, or plunder everything in sight. There had been a few threats against villagers or captured OPFOR soldiers, trying to obtain information about the enemy force. An umpire had stepped in twice, and Huffman had had a talk with those squads later on. He understood why they were frustrated, and he made sure they understood what they could and couldn’t do. He had no illusion that basic training by itself would be enough to prevent atrocities, but if continually reinforced in the line units, it would take hold.
The first thing he’d noticed about the former mercenaries was that the largest group of eight had received an overwhelming number of No Gos. What’s more, they were operating together as an eight-man squad. Long experience working together should be giving them an advantage, although operating two men short would tend to cancel that out. Their assessments shouldn’t be this bad, though.
He started paying careful attention to the comments. No attempted atrocities. This was all leadership and tactical stuff, and the cadre had already agreed that the recruits were going to be pretty tactically inept in week four.
Drill Sergeant Huffman pushed himself off the crate. It was time for the recruits to have to think on their feet. Services would be about over, but it would take Captain Coonce and Sergeant Yost a while to return from the Presbyterian services in Grantville. Yost faced a certain amount of pressure to show up. His wife Cheryl was a niece of Enoch Wiley, the up-time Presbyterian preacher.
“Attennn-tion!” he hollered as he walked into the camp of the new recruits.
Everyone shot out of tents, dropped cooking gear, and otherwise flew into formation.
“Fragmentary order,” Drill Sergeant Huffman announced. “Opposition forces have occupied a village in unknown strength on the NUS Army’s flank while the main battle occurs south of the Saale River. Continued occupation of the village of Birkig represents a threat to Camp Saale itself and potentially to Saalfeld, Kamsdorf, and even Grantville. Friendly forces consist of one training company reinforced by one company-equivalent of surviving veteran troops.
“Recruit company will advance on Birkig and drive enemy forces out of the village.
“Two platoons will proceed east on the right fork from Oberwellenborn and come in from the south while the other two approach directly on the left fork. The company will be reinforced by survivors of a unit which has been withdrawn from the front after heavy fighting. So rely on their guidance.
“Resupply of ammunition and food will take place in or just south of Birkig. There is no transportation. Standard medical and prisoner of war procedures.
“Challenge is freiheit. Countersign is feuerkraft. Recruit Haggerty, you are in command of the two western platoons. Recruit Carroll, you are in command of the two southern platoons. You have as long as it takes me to walk over to the other recruit company and back to choose your platoon leaders. Squad leaders will join you en route.”
“Company, fall out!”
Drill Sergeant Huffman turned and strode away. He wasn’t taking questions because the point of Eagle Pepper was to drop the recruits in a situation and watch how they responded, not to walk them through it. Plus, he was making up this scenario as he went.
***
“Attennn-tion!”
The former mercenaries-turned-recruits shot into formation with the same speed as the new recruits.
“Fragmentary order,” Drill Sergeant Huffman proclaimed. “Opposition forces have occupied a village in unknown strength on the NUS’ army’s flank while the main battle occurs south of the Saale River. Continued occupation of the village of Birkig represents a threat to Camp Saale itself and potentially to Saalfeld, Kamsdorf, and even Grantville. Friendly forces consist of one training company reinforced by you survivors of a veteran unit pulled off the front after heavy fighting.
“You will add weight to the training company’s attack.
“First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth Squads will reinforce two platoons on the right fork of the Oberwellenborn road. Third Squad, you are squad leaders for the new recruit squads. Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Squads will reinforce two platoons on the left fork of the Oberwellenborn road. Seventh Squad, you are squad leaders for the new recruit squads.
“Resupply of ammunition and food will take place in or just south of Birkig. There is no transportation. Standard medical and prisoner of war procedures.
“Challenge is freiheit. Countersign is feuerkraft. Recruit Haggerty is in command of the two western platoons. Recruit Carroll is in command of the two southern platoons.”
“First through Fifth, move out now!”
Half the training company got underway at once. Drill Sergeant Huffman turned to Sixth through Tenth Squad.
“Go!”
Max Huffman smiled to himself. He didn’t have time to warn the village of Birkig. That ought to create a good amount of confusion, but since the NUS Army literally had the whole village on retainer, he didn’t feel bad about it, either. The umpires and opposition force were camped just north of the village. They were old Grantville hands, mostly men who’d joined up after the Crapper or Jena. They’d fought at Eisenach, Wartburg, and Alte Veste. Any surprise would be brief.
He did, however, want to be in position to see this, so he started down the Oberwellenborn road himself.
On the road from Oberwellenborn to Birkig
The most common question muttered in the ranks was what is going on? It was closely followed by what now? and why?
Stefan Kirchenbauer had his own pessimistic take on it, of course.
“They are out to get us, Neustatter.”
“Could be.”
“Drill Sergeant Huffman is going to No Go us.”
“Could be.”
“I remember the last time you were answering everything like that,” Otto said. “You have a plan, do you not?”
“Nein,” Neustatter answered. “Drill Sergeant Huffman has a plan. We are the squad leaders. We will follow Recruit Carroll’s orders and those of the platoon leaders. Ditmar’s team, you get the platoon on the right. Hjalmar’s team, you get the platoon on the left. Take the first three squads. Wolfram, fourth squad in the right platoon. I’ll take the fourth squad in the left platoon. We’ll lead those squads around the east side of the village.”
They soon caught up to the two platoons of new recruits. Those platoons halted, and the recruit marching on the right flank of the lead platoon came over.
“Recruit Sara Carroll, in command of these platoons for this operation. Where are my squad leaders?”
“Right here,” Neustatter answered. “Third Squad, fall out.”
“Why is your squad two men short?”
“We do not know, Recruit.”
Carroll digested that for a moment. “Assign your recruits as my squad leaders.”
“Ja, Recruit. Squad, as ordered.” Neustatter’s men moved to their assigned squads.
“Our orders are to drive the opposing force out of Birkig. Challenge is freiheit, and countersign is feuerkraft.”
Neustatter nodded.
“Good, they gave us the same orders,” Recruit Carroll noted. “We have been moving straight in, but Recruit Haggerty has two platoons coming in from the west, so there’s a flanking movement. The enemy has been making stands near the church. Sometimes there are a couple snipers in nearby houses. If so, platoon leaders will detail squads to those houses.”
“Sometimes, Recruit Carroll?” Neustatter asked. “We encountered snipers every single time.”
“Hmm. Maybe the drill sergeants are giving you harder scenarios. We won’t know until we get there. If we just had some cavalry to get behind them.”
“We can arrange something similar, Recruit.”
“Go on. No, don’t. We don’t have time. If you have a way to get behind them, do it. Let’s move out.”
***
The two platoons came straight in and were quickly spotted by members of the opposition force. They raised the alarm, but it took over a minute before the OPFOR formation began to march.
Recruit Sara Carroll had long since ordered her two platoons to advance on the double.
“Fourth Squad, Fifth Squad, come with me,” Neustatter ordered. He cut to the right, and they stripped Wolfram and two squads off the back of the other platoon as they passed.
Carroll’s two short platoons should have been outnumbered, except that the opposition force had also spotted Haggerty’s two platoons coming from the west. They were approaching in a double rank, fifty men wide. The lines were bowing extensively and looked more like a snake than anything else.
The opposing force was not watching the east. Neustatter waved Wolfram further east and pointed at the outermost houses in the village.
Carroll’s platoons stopped, reformed, and fired a volley. An umpire tapped a couple men. The opposing force fired back, and a couple of Carroll’s men were ruled casualties. Haggerty’s platoons fired and reloaded black powder. The opposing force did the same. It turned into a slugfest, and the opposing force soon demonstrated their expertise with a superior rate of fire.
Then Neustatter’s squads gave them a volley in the back. The umpire designated no less than five casualties, and Carroll immediately ordered an advance.
A bunch of villagers panicked and ran out of their houses.
“Ceasefire!” Neustatter barked.
A quick-thinking opposing force member ordered his men to fall back alongside the civilians, using them as a screen. Neustatter’s squads had no shot.
“Charge!” Neustatter ordered.
“Fire!”
Wolfram’s squads were not screened. They caught the opposing force in the open, in a fair amount of disorder.
Carroll’s platoons pushed forward, and the “survivors” of that part of the opposing force began raising their hands. One of her platoons wheeled to the left and marched off to pin the rest of the opposing force against Haggerty’s platoons.
***
A few minutes later, Drill Sergeant Huffman had about four hundred soldiers gathered around. He began the after-action review.
“Recruit Carroll! Describe what you did and why.”
“Yes, Drill Sergeant! I sent the designated veterans to the recruit platoons as squad leaders. We approached on the double.”
When Huffman came to the opposing force commander—a first lieutenant in the NUS Army—he stood ruefully. “We got sloppy and were not expecting the attack. We saw them, but not soon enough. We had a higher rate of fire with the matchlocks, but not higher enough to matter. I posted snipers, but they simply ignored them.”
“I forgot,” Carroll confessed.
“Ignoring them turned out to be the right thing to do,” Huffman pointed out. “I don’t know how many of you noticed, but the umpires did designate a few sniper victims. However . . . ”
“Once we were engaged, we were not watching the east,” the lieutenant continued. “That was well done. It was pre-planned, I hope?”
“Ja,” Neustatter told him.
“Gut. I’d hate to think you just improvised the whole thing.”
After a few more minutes, Drill Sergeant Huffman ended the after-action report and sent the recruits back to their camp after designating the leaders for the next scenarios. They ran three more scenarios that day. Each time, the opposing force reacted much more quickly than before and managed to tangle up the advance with civilian hostages, well-placed snipers, and a few other surprises. But the recruits performed reasonably well, all things considered.
On their way back to their camp after the last exercise, Neustatter pulled his men aside in pairs.
“We did well. Enjoy it, but treat it as normal. Because it is what I expect of us.”
Headquarters tent
“What the hell was that?” Carl Yost demanded.
“What was what?” Max Huffman asked. At least Yost had waited until the two of them were in the headquarters tent with no one else around.
“Gift-wrapping Eagle Pepper for the recruits.”
“The first scenario?” Huffman asked. “I didn’t gift-wrap it. I just didn’t tell OPFOR they were coming. The recruits did pretty well, I thought.”
“They overran a line unit. That unit’ll be a mess now. Their snipers are already ineffective.”
Huffman shrugged. “Their snipers seemed okay to me.”
“They were bringing down squad leaders the last two days.”
“It’s not hard to do that when the scenario is one squad at a time. With two companies, there’s somebody ready to step up. And they did get Recruit Padberg on the third run-through.”
“Whaddya do? Tell the umpires to go easy on the recruits?”
“I didn’t speak to the umpires at all. I assume they did what they’ve been doing all along.” Max Huffman waited a beat. “Don’t you?”
“Obviously not.” Carl Yost turned and left.
“Did they have some instructions I didn’t know about?” Drill Sergeant Huffman stared after him for a moment. “Obviously so.” He repeated himself while debating whether he wanted to dime out a fellow drill instructor, “Obviously so.”
***
The Eagle Pepper exercise continued throughout the week, and the new recruits, the ex-mercenaries, and the opposing force all settled into their training. Old and new recruits, sometimes working together and sometimes not, did their best in each scenario. Sometimes it worked. Most times, it did not. Drill Sergeant Huffman didn’t care about that. They were up against veterans who’d broken Wallenstein’s army. He expected the recruits wouldn’t be able to catch them off guard again, and he was right.
The next weeks were spent in physical conditioning and honing skills. Here and there, a recruit recycled. Captain Coonce supervised the treatment of minor injuries and kept most from growing into major injuries. It probably didn’t seem so to the recruits, but they were quickly approaching week eight.
Monday, August 15, 1633
Meanwhile, Astrid had long since found out what Ursula wanted to know: recipes for bread without yeast and why it could be baked differently. But whenever she’d discussed the matter with an up-timer, there had always been a flicker in the up-timer’s eyes. It was as if she were a child again, asking a question that skirted close to the edge of propriety. Or brought up bad memories.
Neither of which made sense. After a few weeks of baking rye bread under Ursula’s supervision or baking flatbread under Ursula’s supervision or occasionally buying rugbrød at the grocery store, the question still nagged at her.
One Monday, she decided to do something about it and left for school early. Astrid went to the administrative center. The up-time secretary, Jenny Lynch, was at the counter.
“I remember you,” Miss Lynch said. “Although you will have to help me with your name.”
“Astrid Schäubin.”
“I do remember you were looking for a grocery store. How was it?”
“It is wonderful!” Astrid exclaimed. “They have the bread my mother used to make and so many different foods. Danke.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
“I have another question. One of our men, Karl, made a tray that fits on the cooking irons. Ursula thought we could use it to bake bread, but only bread without yeast. She sent me to find out why. The Home Ec teacher told me why, but every time I asked that question, any up-timer who heard it got this look in her eye. As if I had said something impolite or wrong.”
Now Jenny Lynch had a careful expression on her face. “What question did you ask?”
“Why bread without yeast can be baked differently.”
Miss Lynch frowned. “I do not see anything wrong with that question. Did you not know how to make unleavened bread?”
Astrid felt her eyes widen. “Every one of you says it that way. ‘Unleavened’ instead of bread without yeast.”
Miss Lynch shrugged. “Sure. It means the same thing. It’s just easier, and most of us know about unleavened bread from the Bible. Oh!” Her expression grew serious. “Astrid, you know that the Jews made unleavened bread for Passover, right?”
“Of course. Pastor Claussen taught us that.” Astrid frowned. “Something about this is a problem. We are not trying to make bread for communion or anything like that. Ursula just thought that we could use Karl’s tray sometimes instead of reserving space at the refugee housing’s brick oven.”
“I think,” Jenny Lynch said slowly, “that since you are here early, and since she’s teaching tonight, you should go talk to Miss Zibarth.” She gave Astrid a room number.
By now Astrid was completely mystified, but she thanked Miss Lynch and set out for the classroom. Astrid knew the classroom numbers were in sequence. She followed the numbers into a section of the high school she had not been in before. These classrooms seemed bigger than the ones her English and math classes were in, with high tables holding devices she had never seen before.
She found the room number Miss Lynch had given her. It was another of the big classrooms, although the tables were empty.
“Hello there!”
The woman who called that greeting to her was one of the most striking women Astrid had ever seen. She was tall, though perhaps not for an up-timer, and had red hair. She was even a little plump, so Astrid immediately pegged her as rich and important.
“Are you in the Introduction to Scientific Concepts class? Miss Hill is sick, and I am your substitute teacher.”
“Nein. I am looking for Miss Zibarth,” Astrid answered.
“That’s me.”
“Ich heisse Astrid Schäubin. A group of us have come to Grantville from our village, and Karl made a tray for the cooking irons that Ursula said we could bake bread on, but only bread without yeast. Whenever I ask an up-timer about bread without yeast, she calls it unleavened bread. I asked Miss Lynch about it, and she sent me to you.”
Astrid saw the other woman roll her eyes. She wondered why, but mostly she noticed that Miss Zibarth had green eyes. Well, sort of brownish-green.
“Jenny—Miss Lynch—means well. She sent you to me to, ah, broaden your cultural horizons.”
Astrid gave her a blank look.
“What do you know about unleavened bread?”
“In the Bible, the Jews made it for Passover.”
Miss Zibarth nodded. “We still do.”
Astrid blinked. Did she mean—?
“We don’t all look like Rebecca Abrabanel, you know.”
Astrid shook her head. “Who is that?”
Miss Zibarth smiled. “You are new to Grantville, aren’t you?”
Astrid was wondering how to respond to that when two young women came into the classroom.
“Guten Abend, Frau Zibarth,” one of them said. The other was hanging back and seemed hesitant. Well, Astrid could identify with that. But the girl darted a look at her as though she were afraid of Astrid.
“It’s okay,” Miss Zibarth said. “Leah, Reyna, this is Astrid Schäubin. Astrid, Leah and Reyna.”
“Guten Abend.”
“Guten Abend,” Astrid replied.
This time the other girl—Leah—glanced at Miss Zibarth, then to Astrid, then back to Miss Zibarth.
“I think you can speak in front of Astrid,” Miss Zibarth told Leah.
The girl gave her one more glance and then words poured out in a rush. “I told Reyna what you said, but she does not believe me.”
The other girl may have blushed. It was hard for Astrid to tell. Both Leah and Reyna had darker complexions than Astrid. She thought that must be nice. Every time she blushed, everyone in the room knew it.
Miss Zibarth lifted a bag with cloth handles from the floor to her desk and pulled out a thick book with a blue cover. Beckoning the girls forward, she opened the book.
Astrid saw it contained pictures. But they were not paintings.
“Have you seen photographs before?” Miss Zibarth asked.
Astrid shook her head and saw that Reyna was doing the same. But Leah was nodding enthusiastically.
“These were taken with a camera and recorded on film. The pictures were then developed with a chemical process. Up-time, we took pictures when our families got together or when we went somewhere that we wanted to remember.”
Miss Zibarth showed them the first page of pictures, and they showed her and some other people in Grantville. Or at least in places that looked very much like Grantville.
She turned the page. Astrid saw . . . something.
“These are airplanes.” Miss Zibarth smiled. “These are much bigger than the one Jesse Wood flew last week. A few hundred people could ride in this one.”
She turned the page. “What do we say at the end of the Passover meal?”
“‘Next year in Jerusalem,’” Leah whispered.
“This is where the airplane I was on landed,” Miss Zibarth told them. “Ben Gurion International Airport. It is—was—will be in Tel Aviv. In Israel.” She pointed to a flag flying in one of the pictures. It was white with a blue, six-pointed star and two blue stripes.
“The nation of Israel was reestablished in 1948. Jews from all over the world moved there.”
The girls’ eyes got very big.
Miss Zibarth flipped pages, showing them pictures of Jerusalem. Most of what she said went right past Astrid, but it obviously meant a lot to Leah and Reyna. Astrid marveled at the pictures of various buildings, but realized she saw people in the same matching shirts in several pictures. They were all young, fit, and alert.
“Adank, Miss Zibarth,” Reyna said. The two girls excused themselves.
“Zay gezunt, girls.” Miss Zibarth watched them go. “They’ll go tell their families.” After a moment, she asked, “What questions do you have, Astrid?”
“What security company is that in your pictures? The one with both men and women. I think those are letters on their shirts, but I cannot read them.”
“That’s Hebrew,” Eve Zibarth stated. “Tsva ha-Haganah le-Yisra’el. The Tzahal. The Israeli Army.”
“They seem important,” Astrid ventured.
“Israel had to fight for its survival. It’s no fun when almost everyone is out to get you and you don’t know whom you can trust. There were four wars in its first twenty-five years, sometimes at long odds.”
“Is that what you were not telling Leah and Reyna?”
Miss Zibarth looked at Astrid in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“The way you talked about the Jews going to Israel. You left something out.” Astrid saw that Miss Zibarth now looked sad.
“What do you know about the Holocaust?” Eve Zibarth asked.
Tuesday, August 16, 1633
Most of Monday night’s English lesson had gone right past Astrid as she thought about what Miss Zibarth had told her. She set out to Grantville High School after lunch on Tuesday, even though she did not have class.
The information she wanted would be in the library. Astrid already knew that; anyone who took a class at the high school was told how the library worked. But to look up information yourself, you had to pass the library class. Astrid was taking English, and the sequence was English-Citizenship-Library Research. If you couldn’t look it up yourself you had to pay a researcher. Astrid wasn’t sure spending money on this was a good idea. She was pretty sure she believed Miss Zibarth. She just wanted more information. Maybe there was already a research paper available for purchase. That would be less expensive than paying for original research.
When Astrid arrived at Grantville High School, she went straight to the library’s front desk.
“What can I do for you?” a librarian asked.
Astrid kept her voice down even more than she usually did in the library. “I am looking for information about the Holocaust. Also information about Israel in the up-time. Are there research papers available?”
“Probably,” the librarian told her. “But why not start with a book first? One of our pages can go get books off the shelf for you, and you can read them at one of the tables. Just leave them on the table when you’re done. Or put them on one of the carts.”
“Oh! Danke.”
Soon Astrid was seated at a reading table with a short stack of books in front of her. She saw other people with much taller stacks of books and assumed they were the researchers.
Astrid began reading. The first book was a history book, and it was at a more advanced level than Astrid’s English was. She could find the section she was looking for, but she couldn’t read enough of it to matter. Astrid switched to one of the other books. This one was about World War II. Again, she found the section about the Holocaust, but lacked the English vocabulary to understand much. She tried each of the remaining books with the same result.
Astrid pushed her chair back and deposited her stack of books on the nearest cart for reshelving, earning a smile from one of the library pages. She went back to the front desk, where a line had developed.
It sounded like the two people ahead of her in line were having trouble finding what they were looking for. Once the librarian had given them some suggestions, it was Astrid’s turn.
“Danke for the books,” she said, “but I cannot read that much English.”
“Oh! My fault,” the librarian said. “We do have a German-language book about World War II. Is Hochdeutsch okay?”
“Ja.” Astrid would prefer Plattdeutsch, but she would have a much easier time figuring out Hochdeutsch than English.
The librarian sent a page for the book.
“Both copies are out on the floor,” the short, bespectacled youth reported. “That happens a lot. I reshelve them almost every day.”
“Thanks.” The librarian turned back to Astrid. “In that case, your best bet is to get here first thing in the morning, certainly by eight o’clock.”
“Danke.” Astrid looked at the clock on the wall behind the desk—those were so convenient to have—and decided she would come back the next day.
Wednesday, August 17, 1633
The rowhouse in Murphyhausen was barely furnished: a table and chairs, enough sleeping pallets for everyone, and not a lot else, yet. They certainly didn’t have a clock. But as lifelong residents of a farming village, Ursula, Anna, Astrid, and Johann were used to waking early.
Astrid was out the door at the same time as Johann. She saw him aboard the school bus and then set out for the high school.
The library was already open when she arrived, of course. It closed for only one hour per night, for cleaning. Some of the researchers were already seated in what Astrid suspected were their customary chairs, with books piled around them. Some of them looked like they had been there straight through the night, finding somewhere to nap during the cleaning hour.
Astrid asked for the German-language book about World War II. A page returned with it, and she found an empty table and began reading. She saw the book had been published since the Ring of Fire and claimed to be a definitive summary of all the information available in the library on Germany in World War II. That seemed like a bold claim.
The book began with a summary of up-time European history from the Thirty Years War through the 1930s. The Thirty Years War had gotten much worse. A huge number of deaths and tremendous damage left the Germanies behind neighboring countries. Astrid read about the rise of Prussia, the Franco-Prussian War, World War I, and the Weimar Republic. Then she read about the Nazis and their policies. Austria. The Sudetenland. Kristallnacht. Poland. France. Russia, which had been controlled by another madman. Concentration camps. The number of people killed was so large that she didn’t have a frame of reference for it. When did she think about millions of anything?
She skipped the battles. She could come back to them if she needed to. The Americans and the English had come. The Russians, too.
The Germanies had been destroyed again. The madman had taken the easy way out and shot himself, a coward at the end.
Six million Jews murdered. Were there even six thousand in the Germanies today? Six thousand—that was a number she could think about.
There was an afterword, noting that President Stearns’ plan was to build a different Germany. Enough had changed that World War II and the Holocaust wouldn’t happen in their timeline—at least not like that. It started with treating people like people. Ending serfdom and slavery and second-class status. The afterword was signed by Rebecca Abrabanel.
Astrid wondered who she was. She was not one of the book’s authors. Compilers. Whatever. But she thought she’d heard the name before. Was that not the name Miss Zibarth had mentioned?
Astrid returned the book to the front desk.
“I have a question, bitte. Who is Rebecca Abrabanel?”
A pair of librarians were standing there, and their answers bombarded her quickly, from two directions. Mike Stearns’ wife. The National Security Advisor. Senator. Jewish.
Astrid blinked. She hadn’t known any of that.
“Is there a book about up-time Israel?” she asked. “In German?”
One of the librarians checked. “No, but there is a research paper available for purchase.”
Astrid grimaced, considering. The research paper might or might not be helpful. She wasn’t sure she ought to spend money on this. Really, she was just researching what Miss Zibarth had told her. Did it matter that up-time Israel had won wars at long odds?
Then she remembered what had happened last month. Wallenstein rebelled against the Holy Roman Empire. While he’d been defeating the Austrians, Holk had attacked Prague and lost to Hussites . . . and Jews.
Astrid counted out enough money for the paper. Then she returned to the same table, sat down, and began reading. Jerusalem. Latrun. The Six-Day War. The Yom Kippur War. Really long odds. Long enough odds that there should be movies about it.
She looked over at the front desk and considered whether she wanted to ask a librarian for a movie. Astrid saw with surprise that it was almost noon. Since Miss Zibarth had been substituting the other night, that probably meant she taught during the day.
Astrid’s next stop was the administrative center.
Jenny Lynch looked surprised to see her.
“Guten Morgen, Miss Lynch.”
“Good morning, Astrid. Did you find Miss Zibarth all right?”
“Ja. I have one more question for her. Where could I find her?”
Jenny Lynch glanced at the clock and gave Astrid a room number. “Be fast. Sixth period ends at noon. That’s in four minutes, and there are only five minutes between classes.”
Miss Zibarth’s classroom was farther away than the one she’d been teaching in the other night. Astrid arrived just as the bell rang, and the hallway immediately filled with students. She waited for the outgoing tide of students to abate and slipped into the physics classroom.
Miss Zibarth looked at her in surprise. “Astrid?”
“Guten Tag, Miss Zibarth. I read a book about World War II and this paper about Israel up-time.” She wasn’t sure whether that was a worried look or a hint of a smile on Miss Zibarth’s face. “Is there a movie about up-time Israel?”
“A movie?”
“Ja.”
“Why a movie?”
Astrid scrambled for the English word. “My boss—Neustatter—likes westerns. They tell him about up-timers.” She held up the paper on up-time Israel. “This . . . is a western.”
Miss Zibarth twitched, as if she were going to shake her head no. “It’s an eastern, actually. The customs are completely different, and that is part . . . ” She stopped. “I’ve never thought about it like that before. Okay, I can see some similarities to a western. But that doesn’t . . . The movie you want is called Entebbe. I don’t know if a copy came through the Ring of Fire or not.”
“Entebbe? Danke, Miss Zibarth.”
The bell rang.
Friday, August 19, 1633
Week eight was the second iteration of Eagle Pepper, and this one counted. The drill sergeants still didn’t expect the recruits to beat the veteran opposing force, but they did expect their efforts to be well-executed and within regulations.
Neustatter listened carefully to the operations order. The basic idea was to get a convoy of supply wagons past the enemy-held village of Birkig, this time coming down the left-hand fork. The Saxon border was just past the next village, so that part did not make much sense, but Neustatter understood that a scenario was a scenario. The recruit in charge, the platoon leaders, and the squad leaders had a plan, and all he had to do was carry out his part.
It had not rained for days, and the ground was fairly hard. The recruit in command opted to send the horse-drawn wagons wide around the village to the south. Sniper fire started at once, and umpires began designating casualties.
Eventually the recruit in command wheeled a platoon to fire volleys back. They immediately took a lot more fire, and the umpires picked out more men. The recruit in command called them back.
Then the opposing force started hauling villagers out of their homes and mimed shooting them. The recruit in command recommitted, sending two platoons this time. It turned into a massacre. Neustatter had fired off half a dozen rounds before an umpire tapped him. He took a dive and lost track of the action.
The recruit in command during the second iteration tried the same thing. He sent the wagons further into the fields, and one bogged down. The recruits still took some losses to snipers, but he refused to close with them, even when the opposing force started shooting villagers.
“You just got the entire village massacred!” Carl Yost roared at the hapless recruit. He swiftly reduced him to a stammering wreck. That recruit had, however, delivered two-thirds of his supplies and ninety percent of his men to units on the front lines.
The third iteration was a complete disaster. The recruit in charge opted to go straight through the village—and quickly discovered that the opposing force was quite willing to shoot at the horses. The horses didn’t like it one bit. That effectively stopped the wagons, even before the umpires started ruling some of the horses down. The recruit who succeeded to command gave the order to withdraw, and it turned into a rout. That led to an extended after-action review during which the drill sergeants expressed their belief that it had been something less than a tactical masterpiece.
“This wasn’t just a SNAB,” Drill Sergeant Huffman stated, referencing the German translation of a well-known up-time military acronym. “This was BIZUB.”
Neustatter hid an inner wince and suspected most of the other recruits were doing the same. Not just the “situation normal” screw-up but the “beyond all recognition” kind. Then he set that aside and started thinking about his own plan. He had a pretty good idea that he was going to be selected as the recruit in command at some point.
“We’re going to do this again,” Yost declared. “Recruit Neustatter, you’re in command. Recruit Beattie, you have First Platoon. Recruit Schneider, you have Second Platoon. Recruit Maurer, Third Platoon. Recruit Luchs, Fourth Platoon.
“Begin.”
“This is fubzubed,” Lukas declared.
Neustatter laughed at the German and English mangled into one acronym. “Fouled up beyond fouling up? Could be.”
He called the platoon leaders aside. Neustatter would not have trusted either Beattie or Schneider with even a squad. Neither was a bad soldier, but he did not see either as a leader. He did not know Maurer at all. Luchs tended to overthink everything.
The up-timers were addicted to operations orders. Neustatter kept it short.
“We have the same units we have had all day. Do not change anything. They have what they have had all day. Half our force will assault the village, while the other half guards the wagons through the fields south of the village. First and Fourth are with me in the assault. Luchs, you are my second. Beattie, you are third in command. Second Platoon, you will start on the left of the wagons and intercept any opposing force which comes out to attack the wagons. Third Platoon, stay with the wagons no matter what. Supply, command, everything else is the same. Any questions?”
“That is complicated,” Maurer said. “It is a good way to lose three-quarters of our force.”
“Could be.”
Neustatter ordered First and Fourth Platoons into columns. The recruits set out with three platoons stacked left of the wagons and only one on the right.
When they neared the village of Birkig, Neustatter ordered, “Attack!”
First and Fourth Platoons marched into line. They were on rough ground. They were excited. They had not done this precise maneuver before. It may have been a bit thin on polish, but the recruits pulled it off. At the same time, the wagons and the other two platoons veered off the road to the right.
The opposing force started firing. They had all the approaches covered but had to decide where to send the bulk of their troops.
“Fire by rank while advancing!” Neustatter ordered. “Platoon leaders!”
Beattie and Luchs took charge. The platoons halted momentarily. The first rank fired. The second rank passed between the men in the first rank, took three more steps, halted, and fired on command. First rank was back up and moving on command.
The opposing force threw its weight against Neustatter’s attack. They had to; Neustatter’s platoons were already less than a hundred yards from the westernmost house in Birkig. Two platoons engaged.
Luchs handled his platoon better than Beattie did. Fourth Platoon got a little ahead, firing faster, advanced a little bit further each time, and finally ended up forty yards from the opposing line. First Platoon was about ten yards to their left rear. The opposing force was all veterans. They were fast, firing three rounds a minute. And their platoon leaders coordinated their fire against Fourth Platoon, where the umpires declared many casualties.
Neustatter knew he would be designated a casualty soon. He looked across the fields to the southeast. Schneider’s Second Platoon was getting sucked into a battle against snipers that they could not win and did not need to fight. If Ditmar were in charge there, Neustatter would have told him to either ignore the snipers or commit to a full assault. Schneider had gotten caught in the middle. Further out, Maurer and the wagons were doing just fine. Unless the opposing force made their move in the next few minutes, the wagons were going to get cleanly away.
Unfortunately, he was going to lose three-quarters of his troops, just as Maurer had predicted.
But he would make sure the opposing force was in no condition to pursue.
“Beattie, left oblique! Bayonets!”
An umpire tapped him on the shoulder. Neustatter decided to forego the dramatic death scenes some of the recruits had begun staging. He sat down quickly so he could watch.
Beattie’s platoon angled left, not as sharply as it probably should have. The line, already at open order, got scrambled. The opposing force brought a fresh platoon up and mauled them.
And now the opposing force had three platoons committed to the western edge of Birkig and a fourth making short work of Schneider. That left absolutely no one engaging the supply wagons or terrorizing civilians. Admittedly, they would have all kinds of time for the latter once they defeated the recruits.
The drill sergeants whistled an end to the scenario. It took some time to gather everyone. Neustatter’s tactics had spread the recruits out a lot more than those of the previous recruit commanders had. Everyone gathered on the road that came into Birkig from the south, next to the house with the misshapen roof. That still annoyed Neustatter.
“Attennn-tion!” Yost ordered. “Recruit Neustatter, that was a disaster. Three quarters of your command is dead. What do you have to say?”
“What was the final casualty count for the opposing force, Drill Sergeant?”
“Forty-two percent,” Drill Sergeant Huffman stated.
“Your platoons were spread out outside supporting range of each other,” Yost went on. “Except for the two on the west side, which were poorly handled . . . ” He went on at length. “In short,” he concluded, “for someone who takes jobs escorting wagons, that was pathetic, Recruit Neustatter.”
Sometime later, after numerous pushups, Drill Sergeant Huffman ordered, “At ease. Take five, then fall in. We’ll march back to your camp and start the next scenario.”
Hjalmar wandered over to Neustatter. “I thought that was much better than our first three attempts.”
“Danke, but the drill sergeants did not think so.”
“Recruit Neustatter!” A path through the milling recruits appeared before Drill Sergeant Huffman as if by magic. “Recruit Schaub, give us a minute.”
“Ja, Drill Sergeant.” Hjalmar made himself useful elsewhere.
Huffman glanced around, ensuring that any recruits within ten yards cleared out. Then he asked, “Neustatter, what did you think of the scenario? Permission to speak freely.”
“Drill Sergeant, I know the mission was to deliver the supplies and the troops to units which had been fighting. It is not possible to achieve the mission. If this really happened, I would withdraw all the way back to Unterwellenborn and find another way to reach the rest of the army.”
Drill Sergeant Huffman gave him a sharp look. “Are you saying the only way to win is not to play?”
“Ja, Drill Sergeant.”
“Some scenarios cannot be won, Neustatter.” Huffman crossed his arms. “We got the idea from Jeff Higgins. Not the specifics, but the concept. He had some fancy Japanese name for it. I think he got it from Star Trek.”
Neustatter cocked his head and pronounced the words carefully. “Star Trek?”
“A television show. Science fiction.”
“I prefer westerns, Drill Sergeant.”
“Why am I not surprised, Recruit Neustatter? Back to my point. Some battles cannot be won, but must be fought anyway.”
“Recruit Neustatter!” came Yost’s voice. “Since you claim to do this professionally, why don’t you try again?”
Neustatter saw something in Huffman’s expression. “I understand, Drill Sergeant. Last week you said if we were not cheating, then we were not fighting properly.”
Huffman nodded. “I did say that.”
“Recruit Neustatter!”
“Ja, Drill Sergeant!”
Carl Yost marched the recruits back to their camp. Neustatter thought about what he was going to do. He could get the wagons past the village. That was easy. Go half a mile south of town, and OPFOR wasn’t going to bother him. The problem was that OPFOR would then kill the villagers. So that was really the primary mission: Drive OPFOR out of Birkig, quickly enough that they didn’t have time for atrocities. But the recruits couldn’t do that. That meant OPFOR had to want to leave.
Neustatter just needed to think of something stupid enough to get OPFOR to chase him.
Back at the camp the recruits refilled their cartridge boxes after the usual warnings about not blowing up themselves and their buddies.
Drill Sergeant Yost assigned Neustatter four platoon commanders. As soon as the five of them huddled up, one of them said, “I do not know what you did to piss off Drill Sergeant Yost, Neustatter, but he does not like you.”
“I wish I knew, too,” Neustatter admitted. “He told me my plan was too complicated. This one will be very simple. Two platoons ahead of the wagons, two behind. We veer into the field to the south of the village just like we have done almost every time. But not far. Not far enough. I want them to come after the wagons.”
“Then what?”
“We break and run south after dropping a slow match in each wagon.”
Another of the platoon leaders whistled. “Drill Sergeant Yost is going to kill you for ignoring the mission.”
“He will have to do it himself, because after the opposing force captures the wagons, they will explode. When you hear the explosion, turn around and charge. We run right over the rest of them. One fire at the minimum safe distance. We eliminate the opposing force.”
“You are wahnsinnig.” The platoon leader’s tone was conversational. “But I do want to see their faces when we do this.”
The recruits set out a few minutes later with the wagons halfway back in the column. Halfway to Birkig, Neustatter dropped back beside them and spoke to the teamsters.
“When the opposing force attacks, I will order a retreat. Jump off and run to the right because I am going to explode the wagons.”
“What?”
“You cannot!”
“Not for real,” Neustatter explained. “We will just drop slow matches in the wagons and all yell ‘Boom!’”
“Oh. All right, then.”
Neustatter found Karl and Ditmar. “Light an extra slow match.” After giving them their assignments, he conferred with each platoon leader.
The column left the road, and the wagons struggled through the field. Neustatter made no attempt to speed them up. He wanted slow targets.
Snipers started firing. Individual squads fired back. As casualties were designated, Neustatter and the platoon leaders began moving men to the other side of the wagons. As they reached the halfway point of their arc through the fields, two platoons of the opposing force marched out against them.
They traded a couple volleys, with Neustatter making sure the recruits were not at their best. When the opposing force advanced just a little, he ordered the retreat.
Platoons disintegrated as the men ran, trampling crops in their haste. The opposing force pursued. Neustatter tossed his slow match in one wagon. Ditmar and Karl did the same to the other two wagons.
When he was a hundred yards beyond the wagons, Neustatter ordered, “Halt!”
Some did. Stopping even a feigned rout was harder than Neustatter expected.
“Halt! Halt! Fall in! Fall in! Right here!” He physically grabbed a recruit and parked him there, then another. “NESS, put people in rank!”
“Hjalmar, hold out your matchlock!” Karl called. When Hjalmar did so, Karl grabbed the barrel. He extended his own barrel, and Ditmar took hold. Several recruits stumbled up against the barrels. Others diverted around them.
“Fall in!” Neustatter ordered. “First rank, dress right! Port arms! Load muskets!”
That did it. After seven weeks of basic, the recruits were conditioned to follow commands. Now those who were one or two orders behind hurried to catch up.
“On my order, you are going to shout BOOM!” Neustatter waited until he saw recognition in at least a few pairs of eyes.
“Sound off!” Neustatter ordered.
All the recruits shouted, “BOOM!”
“Charge bayonets!”
That command was purely notional. The drill sergeants had made it abundantly clear that the recruits were never to fix bayonets in a field exercise. The bayonets came out of their sheath for bayonet drill and to be cleaned. That was it. But simply declaring a bayonet charge was a different thing.
The opposing force veterans were still wondering what was going on when an umpire spotted one of the burning slow matches. He whistled to his fellow umpires, pointed, and started tapping men on the shoulder.
About ten seconds later, over a hundred recruits pounded past the wagons and straight at Birkig. The rest of the opposing force got some shots off. Neustatter lost some men. One of the opposing force platoons was spread out. Neustatter ignored them, sending all four of his platoons at the one intact opposing platoon. They wiped it out by sheer strength of numbers.
Then Neustatter lost what he considered to be far too many men rooting out the snipers. But they had done it.
“No Go!” Carl Yost proclaimed. “You failed to deliver the supplies which is the main point of the mission. The regiment engaged on the line ran out of ammunition, and they are all dead. The entire front is threatened with collapse . . . and It Is All Your Fault, Recruit Neustatter!”
Neustatter dropped into a position of attention and gave Yost the same blank look he had always given Sergeant Wylich.
“What are you going to do about it, Recruit Neustatter? That’s right—there is nothing you can do!”
“Platoon commanders!” Neustatter barked. “Search the bodies. Take their cartridge boxes and detail squads to find their main ammunition supply. Deliver their gunpowder to our troops.”
Carl Yost practically exploded.
***
Sometime later, back at their camp, Recruit Michael Jessup drifted over to Neustatter.
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Neustatter, but knock it off. We’ve done enough pushups.”
“I think we just beat the unwinnable scenario,” Neustatter told him. “Do you want to beat it again?”
“That depends.” Recruit Sara Carroll was nearby and answered. “Have you got a plan that doesn’t involve killing the horses?”
Neustatter blinked. “The horses? You are concerned about the horses?”
“Yes, I’m concerned about the horses! After basic, I’m going to train cavalry. You shouldn’t get in the habit of casually blowing up what few horses we have.”
Neustatter just stared at her for a moment. “You are going to join the cavalry?”
“No. We don’t have any cavalry except for Alex Mackay’s regiment and some dragoons Tom Simpson trained. I’m going to teach some of you how to ride so that the NUS has cavalry.”
Neustatter grinned. “I have an idea.”
“Neustatter!” came Yost’s voice. “Do you think you can get it right this time?”
“Ja, Drill Sergeant!”
Five minutes later, Neustatter sent his four new platoon leaders to find out if any of their men could ride bareback. Five minutes after that he had a dozen men—well, ten men and two women—who claimed to be able to.
“Recruit Carroll, take command of Fifth Platoon here, get those horses unhitched. Did you see the woods northwest of Birkig that no one has gone near so far today?”
“Yes I did.” Sara Carroll’s expression was downright devious. “Yes I did. May I assume you are going to start an open-field fight on the western approaches of Birkig?”
“You may indeed.”
“Let’s go, Fifth.”
Neustatter advanced with two platoons forward and one platoon in reserve. He’d sent the fourth arcing through the southern fields again, but much further out than any of them had bothered to go before.
The opposing force met his advance at the westernmost houses of Birkig with two platoons. Neustatter could see other men moving toward the eastern end of the village. They had seen the platoon he had sent out into the field. The opposing force’s fourth platoon was not in sight. Neustatter smiled to himself. They couldn’t see the wagons, so they were holding back a reserve to deal with them when they appeared.
The opposing force tried to fight from within Birkig as much as possible. A few of them took villagers as hostages. Neustatter brought up his third platoon. He needed all three to match the rate of fire of the two veteran platoons he was facing. The situation started to deteriorate, and then Sara Carroll’s cavalry rode out of the woods northwest of Birkig.
They did not have the pistols for a caracole, nor the sabers for a boot-to-boot charge. But they slashed through the village from north to south, behind the two opposing force platoons but still west of the roads that came from the north and the south. The NUS veterans reacted quickly. Their rear ranks about-faced in time and got black powder rounds off. This spooked some of the horses, and a couple threw their riders. Fifth Platoon’s one volley brought down a handful of men, but now half of OPFOR’s firepower was facing away from Neustatter’s platoons. He exploited the fleeting three-to-one advantage ruthlessly, and the umpires counted out a significant percentage of the opponents’ front rank.
The opposing force’s reserve platoon and the platoon on the east side of the village proceeded to wipe out Carroll’s cavalry. They moved up to reinforce the platoons opposing Neustatter, but almost immediately had to divert to counter the recruits’ fourth platoon, now closing rapidly from the south.
Neustatter’s three platoons took more casualties than he wanted facing the remaining opposing force. But then they thinned their line, pulling troops away to face the recruits’ one fresh platoon which was entering Birkig from their left rear. The opposing force commander ordered a withdrawal. He tried to hold the last four houses on the eastern side of Birkig, but Neustatter simply had more men now, and his lines extended far enough beyond the veterans’ that they were in danger of being outflanked. Finally, the opposing forces simply retired from Birkig.
“Neustatter!”
Soon the recruits all understood that they had not accomplished their mission. The supplies had not been delivered. The opposing force had escaped with several hostages. In spite of the desire to not blow up their own horses this time, they had gotten every single one of them shot. They’d lost almost half of their own force. They would have lost far more if the NUS veterans had had their usual weapons instead of the matchlocks they were using in their role as the opposing force. All of this was, of course, Neustatter’s fault.
“Do it again!”
Several recruits looked dubiously at the darkening sky.
“I said, do it again!”
***
“Drill Sergeant Yost is going to kick us out of the NUS Army,” Stefan stated when they got back to camp.
“Could be,” Neustatter acknowledged. “That would cost us the training pay we were counting on, but give us more days to take jobs.”
“You do not seem concerned,” Otto said.
“I am not. We either pass basic training, or we do not. We will get guard jobs either way once word gets around that we beat a veteran NUS unit twice in an unwinnable scenario.”
Some distance away, Yost roared, “Why are you recruits standing around? Get those teams hitched up! Neustatter, front and center!”
Neustatter looked at Stefan. “Three times.”
He quickly decided that Yost had given him the weakest leadership team yet. Well, he could work with that.
“Which one of you can find his way in the dark?” Neustatter asked.
Recruit Helmuth raised his hand.
“Your assignment is to take the wagons and two squads around Birkig to the north. Stay far enough from Birkig that the opposing force will not hear the wheels squeak. Cut east across the fields until you are past Birkig, then make a shallow turn to the right. When you hit the Lausnitz road, take it to the edge of Lausnitz. Then get some sleep. Post guards, of course—and remember that Saxony is right on the other side of Lausnitz.”
Neustatter started rifling through the supplies on the wagons.
“Do I even want to know what you are going to do, Neustatter?”
Neustatter did not look up from what he was doing. “I am not going to blow up the wagons, and I am not going to get the horses killed. Oh—one more thing, Helmuth. We are not going to use these mixed-up squads. Find your regular squad, the men you have trained with all through basic. Then find the squad that stood in front of yours in formation. Those are your two squads. We will start out first. Have a problem with a wheel or something. The drill sergeants will be watching us.
“Here, take this.” Neustatter handed what appeared to be a small strongbox to one of the platoon leaders.
“Why?”
“In case we need to bribe the opposing force’s sentries.”
“Neustatter, it’s empty.”
“So are our muskets.”
***
Several recruits looked dubiously at the darkening sky. “Neustatter, do you have any idea where we are?” one of the recruits demanded. “The drill sergeants gave up and left. They are just going to sit in Birkig and see if we ever arrive.”
“Ja. We are eight hundred yards southeast of Birkig, slowly wandering in circles,” Neustatter answered. “It took forever to get rid of them. Halt!”
It took a couple minutes to get the entire ragged formation stopped.
“Bring it in,” Neustatter ordered. “Reassemble in your regular squads. Then you have five minutes to decide who your squad leaders are and send them to me. NESS, front and center. Do you remember how I wanted to approach that village in Bohemia just before Krause screwed up?”
Otto’s smile was visible by the light of the full moon. “Ja. Sneaky.”
“That is what we are going to do,” Neustatter confirmed.
Two hours later, Neustatter was hoping that the opposing force had given up and gone to bed. He suspected the drill sergeants were going to be really upset with him. He wondered if they assumed the recruits were lost and sent out patrols.
If so, they’d find nothing, because Neustatter and three platoons were approaching Birkig from the east.
Up ahead, he saw Ditmar and Stefan freeze at the corner of the easternmost house south of the main road. They had spotted someone, probably a sentry. Neustatter moved forward slowly but steadily.
Ditmar spoke into his ear. “Two guards. Circle someone behind?”
“Ja. Lukas and Otto.”
Another couple minutes, and the two were on their way.
Ditmar completed his count and tossed a small rock in the general direction of the sentries.
One covered the other while he investigated. Lukas and Otto grabbed the backup man, holding a wooden stick against his throat.
“You are dead,” Otto whispered. “Understand?”
The sentry nodded.
The other sentry returned. He clearly expected trouble. Lukas and Otto let him get close, then he whirled back around at the sound of running feet. A whole squad was racing toward him. Lukas and Otto jumped him before he had time to sound the alarm.
Then Neustatter pointed at both the house Ditmar and Stefan had used for cover and the one the sentries had been near. Recruits entered both.
“Shh!” Neustatter told the family in one house. “We are here to get you out.”
The husband frowned. “That is not the scenario.” Clearly, he was an old hand at Eagle Pepper.
“I do not like the scenario, so I am changing it.” Neustatter grinned. “Do not make me change it further.”
They got four families evacuated before another pair of sentries spotted them.
Two of the recruits held up the strongbox while a third beckoned the sentries forward. They came, clearly bemused.
“Here is the deal,” Neustatter whispered. “Other than taking villagers hostage two or three times, you have been behaving like NUS Army throughout the Eagle Pepper exercise, but you are actually supposed to be mercenaries. Working for the Imperials, French, whoever. Not us.”
The sentries exchanged glances. “True,” one acknowledged.
“Supposed we cut you in. No, better, your army has a payroll, too, does it not?”
“You are wahnsinnig.” He turned to the other sentry.
“We are not supposed to make it easy.”
“Oh, it will not be easy,” Neustatter assured him. “But do you not like the challenge? How many of your men can we get to change sides before fighting breaks out?”
“You mean for us to do the fighting for you.”
“Nein. We need you to get us to each of your units in turn. No sense in any of your buddies getting killed, when everyone can join the NUS Army.”
The two, accompanied by Neustatter and a platoon, led them to where their own platoon was sleeping. Neustatter woke the man they said was the senior sergeant first.
“How would you like a better job, in a better army?”
The man just stared at Neustatter—or more likely, stared at his musket barrel.
“You should join the NUS Army. If you want your buddies to survive, you should convince them to do the same.”
The man laughed softly. “When I have been in the NUS Army for over a year, and you are in basic. Clever approach. We have not seen this one before. My men and I will throw in with you, just to see where this goes.”
The recruits had “eliminated” four sentries and convinced about fifty of the opposing force to change sides when the first musket was fired.
The opposing force and some of the villagers spilled out of houses.
One of the recruits’ platoons fired into a concentration of troops. Confusion reigned until an umpire got there. But though he ruled many of the opposing force down, the delay kept the recruit platoon from advancing.
A volley crashed out from the south fields, where Neustatter had left two squads. They reloaded and fired and sucked opposing force squads into countering them.
Neustatter had been working his way past one house at a time. He had a platoon, most of NESS, and the platoon of opposing force members which changed sides. They got him to opposing force headquarters in the house next to the church.
Neustatter beckoned the platoon leader and his own men near. “We were going to capture their strongbox,” he said, “but the plan is blown. Now we are going to rush their headquarters.”
He waved the opposing force members who had changed sides forward. “You are up front. Two ranks, close order. We will look like one of their platoons. When they fire, all of you hit the ground and leave it to us.”
The platoon got a lot closer than it should have. At twenty yards, someone missed a cue. The opposing force was fully alert now, and a squad outside headquarters fired at them.
Those who had changed sides took a dive. Neustatter’s platoon fired a volley which brought down most of the opposing squad, then they rushed the building.
Inside headquarters, the members of the opposing force refused to go down. So, the recruits began refusing to die, too. An umpire showed up after a few minutes to sort out the situation.
By then Neustatter stepped away from the yelling and pulled Ditmar aside. “Find Hjalmar. Go find our platoons and finish this. Opposing force has lost command and control.”
“So have we. No offense.”
“Go give whatever orders you have to in my name.”
The drill sergeants turned up with the umpires and started yelling. No opposing force reinforcements came to their headquarters. Neustatter found out later that the platoon that had changed sides had intercepted their buddies and cut them in on the deal.
Elsewhere, Ditmar located a recruit platoon and swept across the northeastern quadrant of Birkig.
Hjalmar got trapped at the brown house with the misaligned roof. “You guys want to join up?” he asked the squad that captured him.
“Nein. We control the west side of Birkig. Your platoons are there, there, there, and there.” The soldier pointed at his own headquarters, off to the north, to the east, and to the south.
Hjalmar nodded in acknowledgment. “All but the last are correct. Only two squads are to the south. Where do you think the other two are?”
The NUS soldier swore. “You dropped them on the way in to light up our withdrawal, did you not?”
Hjalmar went with that. “Could be.”
“Corporal,” the man barked. The other soldier turned to him at once. “Take one man with you and find out who is in charge of our men fighting on the east side of the village.”
“Why not start right here?” a voice asked.
The sergeant whirled around. “Am I glad to see you, Sergeant! They have snipers to the south and west.”
“Ja. It’s a good plan.” He gestured behind him. “Do you want in on the payroll?”
“What do you mean?”
A couple dozen muskets were suddenly leveled at his squad.
“We need to talk, Sergeant. Drop your weapons.”
That platoon proceeded to sweep up the remaining opposing force units on the south edge of Birkig. One platoon was trying to fight it out, but losing men steadily.
The umpires began whistling a halt to the battle. It took several minutes to reestablish order.
“First thing after a night battle,” Drill Sergeant Max Huffman intoned. “Accountability. Give me a recruit formation over here and an OPFOR formation over there. Umpires, check each house and make sure all the civilians are okay.”
A couple minutes later he spotted some very big holes in the recruits’ formation.
“Recruit Neustatter!”
“Ja, Drill Sergeant.”
“You seem to be missing four squads.”
“Two are in the fields seventy to one hundred yards south of Birkig, Drill Sergeant!”
“And the other two?”
“Immediately west of Lausnitz with the supply wagons, Drill Sergeant!”
“Are you sure about that, Recruit Neustatter?”
“I told them to get some sleep but post sentries, Drill Sergeant!”
Max Huffman burst out laughing. He grabbed the first umpire to return and sent him off to find them.
“While we are waiting to see if they really are there, let’s start with your approach. . . . ”
Sometime later, Huffman summarized, “You feigned incompetent navigation to the point that the opposing force and everyone else lost interest, reorganized your force, and then proceeded to buy off as many opposing force members as possible?”
“Ja, Drill Sergeant!”
“Apparently you convinced about sixty of them to join you, inflicted about fifty casualties, and captured another fifty. One opposing platoon was still in action and had been reinforced to about forty men, but it was clearly losing the fight.”
“On the other hand, your recruits suffered about forty casualties. Assuming those last two squads are where you think they are. Comments?”
“Nein, Drill Sergeant!”
“OPFOR?”
Their captain, who had been designated a casualty within his own headquarters stood. “This was the worst we have ever been beaten in one of these scenarios. It worked only because we are playing mercenaries.”
“Ja, Hauptmann,” Neustatter acknowledged.
Eventually one of the umpires returned with two squads of recruits and the three supply wagons in tow.
“Report!” Drill Sergeant Huffman ordered.
“They were a bit further north than planned, Drill Sergeant,” the umpire stated. “Sentries were alert, and some of the rest even managed to sleep.”
Drill Sergeant Huffman shook his head. “Recruit Neustatter, take this formation back to camp. A direct approach this time, if you please.”
“Ja, Drill Sergeant!”
Drill Sergeant Huffman joined Drill Sergeant Yost as the recruits marched by. The opposing force went back to their tents, and the villagers to their homes.
“Any idea what time it is?”
“About 0300,” Yost replied. “OPFOR has an hourglass in their camp. It’s probably off by a few minutes, but it’s 0300 or a bit later.”
“Thanks. That feels about right.”
“Might have to rethink Recruit Neustatter.”
“Oh?”
“Wasn’t sure what Dan Frost was doing, sending us someone who fragged his chain of command,” Yost admitted. “Talk about a clear and present danger! Tonight, though . . . He accomplished the mission. With twenty percent losses, to be sure, but he did what we told him to. Got the wagons through, liberated the village, flipped a third of the enemy force, and pretty well destroyed the rest. You know they’d’ve gotten to the front with twenty more men than they started with?”
Yost stared off into the night for a minute before continuing. “I didn’t want a wild card who might frag our chain of command. But I don’t think he will. Neustatter’s a cowboy, not an anarchist.”
“Should fit in pretty well,” Huffman agreed.
“’Spose I ought to leave him in the ranks tomorrow. Got a pretty good idea what he can handle. Need to check out the rest.”
Max Huffman nodded, pleased that Yost had come to this conclusion himself. “I suppose.” He sighed. “I suppose we ought to rack out for a couple hours before we go wake them up.”
Tuesday, August 23, 1633
After a few days of alternately assaulting Birkig or trying to sneak past it, the drill instructors marched the recruits straight into the village.
“Fragmentary order!” Drill Sergeant Huffman proclaimed. “There has been an incident on the Saxon border. Saxon forces in unknown strength have seized the villages of Lausnitz and Bucha and are now marching west toward Saalfeld and Grantville. Your two companies on maneuvers have been ordered to buy time for organized defenses at Camp Saale and Grantville.”
Because it was basic training, Neustatter refrained from rolling his eyes. Ja, this was where a salient of John George’s Saxony came closest to Grantville. Ja, it was only ten or eleven miles from the Saxon border to the Ring of Fire. But it was a very bad approach. Any Saxon army marching the length of the salient would first have to march through the Vogtland. That meant dealing with both rough terrain and a certain amount of civil unrest. Neustatter knew that from having fought through the area before.
It almost meant a virtually non-existent supply line. That meant foraging, and Neustatter had certainly heard what had happened to Tilly’s foragers on the day of the Ring of Fire and for some days afterwards. Any attacking force that bogged down long enough to have to forage within the NUS would rapidly get cut apart. Any attacking force that went straight for Grantville would have to cross the Ring Wall under fire. There were only so many roads, and when the first radio call went out, those passages would be held in force. If the Saxons did not have multiple agents in Grantville sending home exactly that information, then their spies weren’t worth worrying about in the first place.
On the other hand, training was training. Neustatter had learned from westerns that the larger storyline didn’t have to make sense in order for him to learn something from this fight, simulated though it might be.
“Your companies will defend Birkig for three hours and then evacuate the village . . . ”
Neustatter listened to the rest of the order and started thinking about how he would defend the village. Drill Sergeant Huffman called out the names of the platoon and squad leaders.
Unverdrossen was his squad leader this time. He’d struck Neustatter as reliable. Their platoon was one of three on line, covering the road from Lausnitz. They barely had time to get into position when OPFOR came marching down the road.
Well, someone had to go first, Neustatter allowed. But this is a bad plan.
An umpire tapped him on the shoulder after five exchanges of fire. He hit the ground. Nobody had said anything about casualties looking around as long as they stayed down, though, so Neustatter steepled his forearms and rested his chin on his hands.
He’d had fleeting impressions that they were facing more than the usual two companies of OPFOR. Sure enough, as the recruits fell back into Birkig, he saw there were three distinct company formations. And artillery was coming up.
That was . . . ridiculous. Neustatter didn’t know if Saxony was copying Grantville’s light three-pounders. They ought to be. But sending them across the Vogtland and down this salient? He had his doubts as to whether the Saxon army could handle that. The NUS Army could, though, and that’s who OPFOR really was. Neustatter watched carefully to see what they did with the cannons.
OPFOR simply pushed the recruits back, with umpires designating several casualties when the artillery fired. Whoever was in command of the recruits really was holding them together well, but that was all he was doing. No one tried to use any of the houses. Finally, after being pushed past all but three of the houses in Birkig, the recruit companies scattered. They had not lasted anywhere close to three hours.
When the drill sergeants sounded their whistles, Neustatter got up. He took his time, making sure to arrive at the formation in the middle of the pack.
“Recruit, you just lost Birkig! The Saxon army is marching on Camp Saale, and they have no idea the Saxons are coming!” Drill Sergeant Yost hollered.
If they do not know that, they are too dumb to live, Neustatter thought sardonically. Ja, that was very close to a No Go for execution, but this is another unwinnable scenario.
The drill sergeants pointed out some additional problems. Not all the problems, though. No one said anything about how both forces had left their flanks hanging . . . interesting.
“Recruit Leyser!” Drill Sergeant Huffman designated the next recruit commander.
Leyser pulled his company and platoon leaders together for a quick planning session. Neustatter saw that Karl was one of the squad leaders this time. He waved to get his attention, then pointed two fingers toward his eyes. Next, he pointed one index finger left and the other right. Watch the flanks.
Karl made an exaggerated nod in reply, tapped his head, and made an open-clawed gesture with his fist. Neustatter was not sure where that one had come from, but it meant “team”—half a squad.
Neustatter nodded back and made circles with his thumbs and index fingers in front of his eyes. Post lookouts.
“Companies!”
Leyser decided to actually use the buildings in Birkig. Most of them, anyway. The squad Neustatter was part of knocked on a door and was soon barging into the second house in the northeastern quadrant of the village. Neustatter was peripherally aware of a farmer and two teenaged sons. The household was poor, with only the most basic household goods. Something about that bothered him, but he had a “Saxon” army to think about.
When that “army” appeared, its three companies took some casualties before its northern and southern companies began bypassing houses. This was hard on the center company. Neustatter could see more men down each time he stepped in front of a window to fire. But the artillery was unlimbering now, and these houses were not proof against three-pounders.
They ought to be, Neustatter thought. A couple decent fortifications out here, and it would not matter if Saxony did attack.
Halfway through his cartridge box, it occurred to Neustatter that something had to be up. Nothing suggested itself, though, so he loaded (powder only), stepped up to the window, and fired.
Two rounds later, the door suddenly opened, and something smoking furiously was tossed inside. An umpire entered a moment later and counted half the men out. “Saxons” poured in right after that. They had the presence of mind to shout “Bang!” and the umpires ruled everyone else down.
And that is why I had a bad feeling about it, Neustatter realized. Not enough windows. No communication with other houses.
The third iteration of the exercise began early in the afternoon. Neustatter understood the drill sergeants wanted as many repetitions as possible. During the brief lunch break, Neustatter had found Hjalmar and quietly passed along his conclusions. He noticed one of the other recruits listening in, the up-timer Beattie.
Neustatter stared back at Beattie.
“Communications,” Beattie stated.
“Ja.”
“If we had that, we could do Drill Sergeant Willcocks’ interlocking fields of fire,” Beattie stated.
A couple nearby recruits laughed. Drill Sergeant Willcocks wasn’t exactly easygoing, but he could get caught up relating up-time military history with only a little encouragement. Neustatter appreciated the insights into the up-time military mindset, and in all fairness, some of what Willcocks taught them would be very useful in one or two more generations of weapons. Whether it would take one or two more generations of people for that to happen was an interesting question.
“Ja, we could—and we could do other things,” Neustatter added in a slow drawl.
He rose abruptly and spoke to Hjalmar.
“Talk to anyone from NESS. Tell them to talk to the civilians. They are obviously used to recruits and OPFOR bursting into their homes. Ask if we can borrow some clay bowls. Mirrors, polished brass, anything that will reflect light.”
Hjalmar nodded. While Neustatter made his way back to his own squad as unobtrusively as possible, Hjalmar found a need to check one of the tents. He made sure to pass Otto and Wolfram on his way back.
Meanwhile, Neustatter had found Karl. “We need to be able to signal each other.”
A drill sergeant yelled at him to go sit down. Before Neustatter had come up with a complete plan, the drill sergeants called everyone into formation. They named the company, platoon, and squad leaders, who had a brief planning session, and then the recruits marched into Birkig to take up defensive positions.
“Lämmerhirt.” Neustatter quietly got his fellow recruit’s attention. “If we are in a house, drop one or two men at the door as lookouts.”
“We have a plan, Neustatter.”
It was not a bad plan, Neustatter observed a little later. It just was not going to be good enough to hold Birkig. Abandoning shoulder-to-shoulder formation entirely was a bold step to take, especially since the recruits had heard “the conditions do not exist yet to fight like we did up-time” over and over.
This group of recruit leaders had tossed a squad in each house and put the other squads between the houses, lying down, kneeling, and hiding behind outbuildings. In theory, that gave them three hundred sixty-degree coverage. However, the “Saxons” were coming from the east. The squads guarding the west were largely wasted.
Lämmerhirt’s squad was in a house just east of the center of Birkig. They heard the battle start, but could not see anything. Eventually the men could see something: an enemy company marching around the north flank of the village.
“Fire when you have a target. Then step aside for the next man,” Lämmerhirt ordered.
The squad leader had not put a man at the door. Neustatter grabbed Jahn, a slightly older man who had been solid all through basic.
“We should take the door.”
Jahn thought it through. “See what is happening. Take good shots. When they close in, come inside, either side of the door.”
Neustatter smiled. This man understood.
Shooting from outside drew attention, and a “Saxon” platoon started marching toward their house. Neustatter saw a squad in the open pull back into the village square in the middle of Birkig—the open area just south of the church. They actually formed a rank and put a volley into the flank of the “Saxon” platoon.
That platoon’s commander did the right thing and ignored them. He had four men counted out, but the other two platoons in his company were firing volleys at the house. The umpires were starting to assign casualties to the defenders.
Neustatter grabbed the man who actually lived there. “Do you have bowls?”
“I sent the good ones away for the week.” The man handed him one made of clay.
“I will try not to break it.”
Neustatter ran outside, unwrapped a powder charge, and lay the paper in the bowl. He poured two more charges over it and lit a second slow match from the one burning on his matchlock. He tried to contact the next house over with hand and arm signals, but either they did not see him or they could not understand what he meant.
The “Saxon” platoon rushed the house. Jahn dropped back into the house. Neustatter tossed the slow match in the bowl, dove inside, and slammed the door.
About a minute later, the door flew open. Neustatter mimed a butt stroke at the first man through. Jahn did the same to the second. By then, Neustatter had his matchlock leveled and shouted, “Bang!”
The umpire gave them the first four before ruling they had been overwhelmed.
The “Saxons” proceeded house to house. Lämmerhirt’s squad wandered outside to watch. They saw an argument break out a few houses away. Umpires physically separated men.
“Wonder what that’s about?” one of the men asked.
Neustatter spotted Recruit Beattie. He had a pretty good general idea but he would make a point of getting the details—because he had every intention of reusing whatever that squad had just done.
The drill sergeants yelled at the recruits, made them do pushups, and quickly assigned the next group of unit leaders. While they were working out a plan, Neustatter quietly talked to Beattie.
“I simulated a bomb. Got one OPFOR. Jahn and I took down four more at the door.”
“Good work. We got half a dozen. They got mad because we dropped a table on the first two. Wasn’t intentional. They were faster than we thought.”
Neustatter kept a straight face. “A table?”
“Yeah. On one end. We pushed it over when they forced the door and put men behind it.”
“Gut job,” Neustatter told him. “Clay bowl. Two or three charges. Toss a slow match.”
“Beer Keg here reminds me of something,” Beattie stated. “TV shows up-time.”
“TV?” Neustatter prompted.
“There is a whole defend-the-town plot,” Beattie told him. “Lots of people have done it. Magnificent Seven. A-Team. MacGyver. Improvised defenses. Find shovels. There’s not time to use them this time. Maybe tomorrow. Dig traps.”
“Fall in! Fall in!”
Neustatter did not have time to ask about digging traps, but it was not too hard to work out. Dig holes for people to fall into. It was not unknown in sieges. He really did not want anyone to break an ankle out here, but maybe there was a way to dig safely.
This time the defense plan was radically different. One company defended the eastern end of Birkig. The other set up in nearby woods north of the village.
The “Saxons” came straight in, as before. Neustatter’s squad was in one of the houses south of the Oberwellenborn-Lausnitz road, so he did not see exactly what happened on the northern edge of town. The volleys made it easy to guess, though. The enemy’s northern company had probably gotten hit hard, and if the recruits were in the woods, they could probably hold their own against the enemy’s superior rate of fire. The enemy’s central company would be clearing one house at a time. Neustatter hoped the OPFOR commander was switching his companies around each time the exercise was run. Otherwise the men in that center company were going to be exhausted from carrying the weight of the battle every time.
Recruit Hans Frenzel was leading Neustatter’s squad this time. Frenzel generally caught on once he’d seen something once. As soon as they entered the house, he issued a stream of orders.
“Neustatter, Jahn, you have the door. Herr Bauer, do you have any clay bowls? Maurer, take three men and flip that table over.”
When a “Saxon” platoon rushed the house, the squad was ready. Neustatter and Jahn fired, ducked back inside, and reloaded. Other men switched off at the windows. When a group of OPFOR burst in the door, Frenzel had a team behind the upended table, and that went badly for the “Saxons.” Eventually another platoon put enough weight of simulated fire on the windows that the umpire started announcing casualties. And then a couple of the enemy got close enough to lob simulated grenades inside.
Moments after that, the artillery fired. After a few minutes, the umpire ruled that the house had been reduced to rubble.
Frenzel’s squad was jubilant. For the first time, an enemy charge had failed to carry one of the houses. They had forced the artillery to set up.
And then when the drill sergeants whistled the exercise to a close, they found out they had lost badly after all.
“The first OPFOR company is under half strength and needs to reorganize. The second OPFOR company took heavy casualties but eventually drove you out of the woods. But the third OPFOR company bypassed Birkig to the south and marched on Camp Saale unopposed. Right down the road!” Drill Sergeant Yost roared. “No one knows they are coming!”
Privately, Neustatter had his doubts about that. But if the drill sergeants wanted Camp Saale warned . . .
There were pushups, and then the drill sergeants marched the recruits back to their encampment for the night.
Neustatter lay awake thinking.
Communication. That was the key. Communication between their own units and with Camp Saale. If they got a message or a messenger to Camp Saale, they did not have to hold. Weapons that were not obsolete matchlocks would be nice, too. Cannon. OPFOR had brought them up at need, after their infantry was committed.
Neustatter sat bolt upright in the tent. OPFOR was thinking like up-timers. They were using the artillery as their hammer—and why not? But down-time armies put the artillery ahead of the infantry. He’d seen Wallenstein do that often enough. If they did that, they would walk right over the recruits. Plus, it was reasonable to assume that if the Saxons did attack in this direction, given the terrain, their infantry would outpace their artillery.
But the artillery was hanging back with no one else guarding it.
Neustatter thought back. Ja, they unlimbered, and then the horses took the limber to a safe distance. That is how everyone did it. Okay, what did that tell him? Just that the horses and the cannons were separated. If they took one, the other would be less effective, too.
Neustatter wanted both.
He thought about how to get recruits behind the cannon. Three squads, he decided. Any more than that missing from the main defense would be noticed. But with the recruits holding multiple houses, it would be easy to overlook three squads.
Likewise, they could not send an entire company to the woods. If nothing else, they needed some of those men on the south side of Birkig to keep that third “Saxon” company from just marching right by.
Neustatter lay back down, thinking. Two platoons in the woods. Five in and around the houses, with enough men in position to fire south. That OPFOR company would have to engage them. Sure, anyone could march right past men firing just gunpowder and pretend they were not a threat, but the umpires would penalize them. If the recruits fired on them, OPFOR would engage them.
Three squads behind them, taking the cannon and limber. Nein, one cannon and limber. They did not keep the two cannons together. And the recruits would have to come at them unseen. That would be difficult because OPFOR started only a few minutes away. There was nowhere to hide except the houses . . .
Matchlocks at advance arms with the slow matches turned away . . . nein, that was not necessary. If they waited until there was smoke in the air and acted like OPFOR, they could do it—as long as they had a starting point.
Oh! There was that one building no one had used or even bothered to check. Because it was off-limits . . .
Neustatter smiled to himself and went to sleep.
Wednesday, August 24, 1633
As soon as he woke up, Neustatter was out of bed, preparing for the day. While the recruits were cooking breakfast over fires, he pulled a few men aside.
“Maurer, Jahn, Frenzel, do you want to win today?”
“What do you have in mind?” Frenzel asked cautiously.
Neustatter told them. The four split up. Neustatter found the fire watch.
“I need to find these men.” He rattled off a list of names. “Out front.”
The drill sergeants had summoned one or more recruits to the front of the encampment often enough that the fire watch asked no questions. They pointed him to the right cookfires.
As soon as the recruits he wanted were out in front of the encampment, Neustatter walked over.
“At ease. Do you want to win today?”
“Neustatter, this is another of those unwinnable scenarios,” Sara Carroll pointed out.
“Ja, we cannot hold Birkig for three hours,” one of the down-time recruits stated. “Our best effort yesterday was almost one hour.”
“What if we gave Carroll a horse and she rode to Camp Saale?” Neustatter countered. “Who cares about three hours then?”
“How are we going to do that?”
Neustatter knew he had to keep this meeting short and unnoticed. He looked at Recruit Recker. “Karl, I need you to get the lock off the church door.”
Karl laughed. “I see. I cannot do it without smashing the lock. Or pulling the hasp off the door.”
“I can.” All of looked at the man who spoke. Neustatter had decided Recruit Bracht was solid enough to be in on the planning, but he had not expected this.
“Look, I joined the NUS Army to get away from some things.” Bracht shifted his weight uncomfortably.
Neustatter nodded. He’d gotten that impression.
“But in a good cause like this, I can probably pick the lock. I need to go back to my tent.”
“Bracht’s squad, Carroll’s squad, one more, in the church.” Neustatter spoke quickly. “Two platoons in the woods. Everyone else in Birkig, but do not defend the furthest four houses to the east. Get the farmers to help with bowls, tables, whatever. Beattie, those up-time TV shows—do that.”
“Fall in!”
They did not have enough time to explain the plan to the first set of recruit leaders that morning.
“Next time,” Neustatter mouthed. “Talk to the villagers.”
The first attempt fared no better than the previous day’s. The recruits in charge tried to do too much. The first two houses were solid strong points with squads inside and supporting ranks outside. It turned into a set-piece battle on the eastern edge of Birkig. OPFOR used its extra company, greater experience, and the two three-pounders ruthlessly, and soon the recruits’ formations were retreating through the village. They’d inflicted casualties, too, but a force half again as big as their own could trade casualty for casualty and still win. And they weren’t—as the recruits fell back, the casualty ratio turned decisively against them.
Neustatter found himself next to Stefan as the recruits reassembled afterwards.
“That was a disaster,” Stefan proclaimed.
“I have an idea,” Neustatter told him.
“An idea like the other night?”
“Ja. Next time, run up to the four houses closest to the Saxons. Get those villagers out of the houses and bring them west of the church.”
“What if you are not in charge? Are you just going to take over?”
“Could be.”
Neustatter considered Stefan’s question. The plan was going to have some bumps in it. He could minimize that if he were in charge. On the other hand, he understood why the drill sergeants would not like someone from the ranks taking over. It was not something he would be able to do if someday the actual Saxons came across the border, and he and the rest of NESS were activated.
“Stefan, also spread the word that there is a plan in the works. Any leader can use it.”
“It is your plan.”
“Some of it. That does not matter. Needs all of us to pull it off.”
Stefan nodded an acknowledgment. Not agreement, but it would do.
Neustatter spoke with several more recruits.
“Do you want to be in command of the next exercise?” one recruit asked him. Neustatter considered Gottlieb Seidelman a solid recruit. He wore his hair long and was fastidious with his appearance but could definitely hold his own in the field.
“I want to win more,” Neustatter told him.
“Define ‘win.’”
There were reasons most of the other recruits considered Seidelman something of an intellectual, Neustatter reflected.
“You are right. We are not going to hold Birkig. Not long enough. But our real mission is to warn Camp Saale.” Neustatter watched as Seidelman mentally checked that logic.
“Go on,” Seidelman told him.
“We take one cannon and its limber horses.”
A slow smile spread across Seidelman’s face. “I am in.”
The drill sergeants ordered the recruits to fall in, pointed out where the defense of Birkig had gone wrong, and named the next group of recruits to lead companies, platoons, and squads. Beattie was one of the squad leaders.
One of the company commanders, Recruit Mirus, held up a hand as the others gathered around.
“I have heard rumors there is a plan in the ranks. Is it a good plan?”
“I think so,” Beattie stated.
“Brief the plan, Beattie.”
Beattie told them what he knew. “I have not heard the whole thing.”
“Who knows?”
“Neustatter, Carroll, Bracht.”
“Whose squads are they in? Go get them—quickly.”
The three squad leaders quickly returned with Neustatter, Carroll, and Bracht.
“I hear you three have a plan,” Recruit Mirus stated. It wasn’t quite a challenge.
“Ja,” Neustatter acknowledged. “Give up the eastern half of Birkig. Fortify the houses in the west. That sucks the artillery in close. Put three squads in the church—OPFOR will not check. They sortie and take one cannon and limber. We turn the cannon on OPFOR and cause as much chaos as we can. Carroll takes a limber horse and rides for Camp Saale.”
Mirus exchanged glances with the other recruit leading a company. Recruit Kessel made a face. “We need a force in the woods, and we need to fire on any OPFOR who go south.”
One of the platoon leaders spoke up. “If you are thinking about breaking the rules and hiding men in the church, why not put a lookout in the steeple?”
“Keep a platoon in reserve . . . ” Mirus mused.
“If we had cover facing south . . . ”
“Tables.” A squad leader pointed at Neustatter and Beattie. “You were using tables yesterday.”
“Take those from the houses we abandon,” Neustatter suggested.
“Which units are in the church?” Mirus asked.
“Carroll and Bracht’s squads and one more,” Neustatter stated.
“Why Bracht?”
“I have lockpicks.”
That raised some eyebrows, and then there was another exchange of glances between Mirus and the other recruit in charge of a company this time, Kessel.
“Do it,” Kessel said.
A few minutes later, two companies of recruits marched into Birkig under the watchful eyes of drill sergeants and umpires.
“Details, post!” Recruit Mirus ordered.
The companies scattered. Kessel and a few others had questions about what they could and could not do, so neither of the drill sergeants saw Bracht approach the church. Umpires did see two platoons move into the woods. They did not see Stefan, Neustatter, and their squads race to the easternmost houses.
Stefan hammered on a door.
“The Saxons are approaching! Get your family away now!”
The surprised farmer looked at him. Evidently this was not the usual approach.
“Do you have a table and bowls?”
The squad carried off the table. A bemused farmer followed them with several bowls in his arms. They carried the table to the western side of the village, where it joined three others in a loose barricade between two houses. A couple squads set up behind them.
“Church is in session,” a recruit murmured to Neustatter.
“Dank. Look at the steeple every few minutes.”
“Contact!” someone sang out.
Neustatter did not bother to look. The “Saxon” army had always shown up quickly. That was one of the primary reasons this scenario was unwinnable.
“They halted,” someone reported. “Call it seventy yards from the first houses.”
That was about where musket volleys started being truly effective.
Neustatter realized he could cripple their chain of command with one squad of up-time rifles. Well, they did not have any, so he set that thought aside.
“They are advancing.”
Recruit Mirus knew what he was doing. As OPFORs central company passed the second pair of houses, he ordered, “Fire!”
Recruits in between and inside the third pair of houses immediately did so.
At the same time, the other two OPFOR companies were passing north and south of Birkig. A volley of fire told the recruits in the village exactly when the northern company encountered the two platoons of recruits in the woods. The southern company made it a little further, and then the squads behind the tables and in the southernmost houses opened fire.
“Someone is in the steeple!”
“Ja.” Neustatter fired over one of the tables, crouched, and reloaded. “Is he signaling?”
“Ja! Looks like ‘retreat.’”
Mirus already had runners racing toward the third pair of houses in the east. They evacuated in good order. The umpires ruled a few men down, but fewer than the “Saxons” had already lost. The squad that left one house even managed to bring a table with them. They fell back quite a way, past the village square and the church, before flipping the table on its side in the middle of the road.
The recruits held firm at the houses on the west side of Birkig, and it was a relatively hot and humid day, at least by down-time standards. Clouds of gunpowder smoke drifted slowly, obscuring targets for both sides. OPFOR brought up its artillery, just like before. OPFOR was not paying close attention to what they believed to be a “Saxon” platoon outside the church. They were in close order, at advance arms. This put their muskets upright at their right sides, barrels against their shoulders, all supported by thumb and index finger around the trigger guard.
The first cannon set up, fired. A big gout of smoke rolled toward the nearest house.
“Forward march!” a recruit ordered. Two recruit squads approached the OPFOR cannon. It was a simple maneuver to grab the stock of the matchlock with the left hand, flip the right hand around, and level the piece. “Fire!”
“Charge!”
The other squad fired at the limber and charged.
The situation was confused. Protests broke out. Four recruits quickly unharnessed the pair of horses from the limber, leaving the dispute to their comrades. Sara Carroll and another recruit mounted up, bareback, and rode south. They reached the road to Oberwellenborn, turned west, and rode for Camp Saale.
Like all NUS Army troops who trained at Camp Saale, the two squads that took the cannon had received rudimentary artillery training. That is, they could load and fire a cannon slowly, without injuring themselves. In their excitement, they cut a few corners and fired into the back of the center “Saxon” company. There was an umpire there. He quickly ran around to the back of the formation and tapped men as casualties.
The recruits fired the cannon a second time before the other “Saxon” cannon was spun around by its crew and fired at them. An umpire ruled their captured piece out of action and most of them down.
Half the center company was down, though, and the rest was unable to do much besides fix the recruits in place.
The “Saxon” southern company wheeled and approached the line of tables. By great good fortune, a length of slow match in a bowl burned down far enough to ignite several powder charges. About five hundred grains of black powder flashed, sending a puff of smoke into the air. An umpire gave them one casualty, maybe for effort. But the southern company halted. These were veterans. They’d lost Birkig to the recruits a few nights ago, and once they encountered one bowl full of gunpowder, they quickly spotted the rest.
Neustatter fired again. He knew this part was a losing proposition. OPFOR had at least two-to-one odds in their favor here.
To the north, that OPFOR company held back and did not get sucked into the woods. They traded volleys at range, with the veterans in the open field, losing more men than the recruits in the woods. Finally, the OPFOR company commander dispatched one of his platoons to attack Birkig from the north.
There were recruits waiting. Just two squads, each in a house, but they put up an effective defense. The third squad assigned to that area had already reinforced the troops behind the tables.
Recruit Kessel walked that line. “Slow your fire,” he told them. “Slow your fire.”
“Why?” someone asked.
“The Saxons are already firing faster than we are. Let them run out first.”
The OPFOR officers were thinking, too, though. Their remaining cannon repositioned to where it could fire at one corner of the brown house with the funny roof without taking return fire from the windows. Eventually, the recruits had to abandon that house as the umpire ruled there was more and more damage.
OPFOR ruthlessly exploited the new gap in the line and started to roll up the recruits. At the same time, the southern company formed up to charge.
“Rest of the bowls . . . now!” Kessel ordered.
The recruits lit very short lengths of slow match and placed the bowls on the outside of the table barricade.
“Final fire at thirty yards!” Kessel shouted.
Neustatter took a quick look around. He spotted the Birkig farmers clustered behind a house and beckoned them.
“You men must know how to fire a matchlock.”
“Well, ja. We have watched you recruits often enough.”
Neustatter gestured toward the “casualties.” “Pick one up.”
The southern OPFOR company charged. A couple of the bowls flashed over at more or less the right time. Most did not. The volley from recruits and farmers inflicted some casualties, but the veterans overwhelmed them. It took a while longer for the veterans to secure each house and Bracht started picking them off from the steeple.
Finally, the drill sergeants whistled the exercise to a close.
“Fall in!” Drill Sergeant Huffman ordered.
Once the recruits were all in formation, he let them stand there for a couple minutes.
“All right. You broke the rule about the church being off limits. Having said that, you thoroughly exploited that advantage. You did not hold for three hours. Call it one and a half. But you did warn Camp Saale.” He held up a walkie-talkie. “We had to send a truck to intercept Recruit Carroll. She would have reached Camp Saale in time. Eighty percent casualties, not optimal. On the other hand, the enemy’s advance guard is pretty shot-up, too.
“Now, let’s discuss your plan . . . ”
They ran the defense of Birkig twice more that day, neither time as successfully. Part of that was because OPFOR was acting like the NUS Army unit that it was, rather than as Saxons.
When they finally broke for dinner, Ditmar sought out Neustatter.
“I like that plan.”
“Dank.”
“You should get credit for it.”
Neustatter shook his head. “The other day, I told Stefan that it did not matter if Drill Sergeant Yost gave us a No Go, that clients would hire us because we beat an unwinnable scenario.” He waved down whatever Ditmar was about to say. “It is true. But I was thinking of the Army as a means to an end. I still want the clients—we will need the business, ja? But we are defending the New United States. We have to be successful, and it does not matter who gets the credit.” He waved Ditmar down again. “Nein, it does not. Everyone who matters knows. The drill sergeants were so careful not to mention it that they obviously know. Und if Mirus and Kessel had not commanded well, the plan would not have mattered.”
“Warn Camp Saale and Grantville. Before the Saxons get to our families and others,” Ditmar stated.
“Ja.”
Ditmar nodded, slowly. “Next time, we probably ought to get the farmers and the unit out of Birkig.”
“Ja. One of several errors,” Neustatter acknowledged. One corner of his mouth turned up. “Do you know who knows we did well? OPFOR. The next two times they approached slowly and professionally and made sure they did everything right.”
Friday, August 26, 1633
Families were invited to watch the recruits graduate from basic training. Ursula, Johann, Anna, and Astrid walked to Camp Saale with a lot of other families.
Two blocks of recruits marched in wearing those mottled uniforms. Astrid learned that sort of pattern was called “camouflage.” The men marched in step, turned as one, and halted all together. They listened to a couple speeches, then the recruits were promoted to private. Someone gave a command, and with a great shout, the formations broke up. The men immediately sought out their families.
“Hjalmar!”
“Astrid!” Hjalmar threaded his way through the crowd and gave her a big hug.
“You look good,” she told him. “Tired, but good.”
“There is a reason for that. Basic does not let you get enough sleep on purpose, and we had field exercises this past week. Some nights we barely slept at all.”
A soldier standing nearby overheard Hjalmar and laughed. “That is entirely your fault. Well, Neustatter’s and the rest of y’all’s.” He held out a hand. “Private Beattie, Ma’am.”
“Astrid Schäubin.”
“A while ago—I have no idea what day it was—Neustatter was leading an attack at dusk. Does he hurry it up so we can be done? No. We wander around until it’s so dark the other side has given up and gone to bed. Then he attacks.”
Neustatter was close enough to hear that.
“But the defense later was your fault, Beattie.” Neustatter was grinning as he said it.
“You started that, too.”
Hjalmar explained while the others bantered back and forth. “Some of the field exercises are supposed to be unwinnable.”
“Why?”
“So you know how you will react if that ever happens. So the drill sergeants will know if you break under pressure. Neustatter does not like losing.”
Astrid had a notion how Neustatter might respond to an unwinnable scenario. “What happened?”
“We won. Three times straight. That was attacking the village. A couple days later, the drill sergeants made us defend Birkig. Beattie mentioned some television shows. When he explained, Neustatter ran with it. And Beattie here is going to be an engineer. Do you remember what Neustatter did with the clay bowl and gunpowder?”
Astrid nodded.
“Picture an engineer doing that with everything in a village. We lost—the veterans were not going to let us win again—but their casualties were a lot higher than they expected. And everyone who led the defense afterwards did the same sort of thing. We even started getting the villagers to help us.”
“It sounds like basic training was a game,” Astrid observed.
“For Neustatter, yes,” Hjalmar agreed. “With many pushups and much running and a lot of yelling.”
“Drill Sergeant!”
The greeting was loud, intended to warn everyone nearby. The men quickly came to attention.
“At ease.” The drill sergeant was older than Astrid expected. He looked tired, too.
“These your people, Neustatter?” he asked.
Neustatter introduced them to Drill Sergeant Huffman.
“Neustatter, if the active-duty regiment gets deployed, I’d like you and your guys to consider serving your two weeks of annual training as opposing force for Eagle Pepper.”
Neustatter grinned. “That sounds like fun. The villagers might not want me back, though.”
“Are you kidding?” Huffman demanded. “You’re their favorite right now. Look, the NUS Army has the entire village on retainer. That means we pay them to be part of Eagle Pepper, and we pay them for the crops we trample. I don’t know if you noticed, but there were not any babies and toddlers in Birkig.”
“Huh.” Neustatter was lost in thought for a moment. “That does seem strange, now that you point it out.”
“Why do you think we made you clean the barracks right before Eagle Pepper?” Huffman was clearly amused that they had slipped something past the recruits. “As soon as y’all got out in the field, we moved all the mothers and little kids into the barracks for the week.”
Neustatter just blinked. Astrid giggled. They must have all been really short of sleep to miss that.
“Someday, we might need to defend Grantville again. If that happens, Neustatter, I want to turn this whole area into Black Rock. Rose Creek. Matewan.”
“Drill Sergeant, after the Croat Raid, I do not think anyone wants to attack here,” Neustatter pointed out. “But, ja, if that is what you want—The Magnificent Seven Thousand—we can train that plan.”
“Good.” Huffman clapped Neustatter on the shoulder. “Good job, Neustatter. Remember what you’ve learned. I imagine you’ll have a chance to apply it, sooner or later.”
“Ja, Drill Sergeant!”
Another drill sergeant approached a few minutes later. This was Drill Sergeant Carl Yost, and Astrid could tell by how Hjalmar stood that some tension lay between him and NESS.
“Neustatter. Schaub.”
“Drill Sergeant Yost.”
“Keep both eyes on the mission, Neustatter, but keep protecting the villagers, too.” Yost cocked his head. “Something like that have anything to do with your former captain?”
“Protecting my men, Drill Sergeant.”
“Took me a while, but I figured it would be something like that.” He nodded. “Neustatter.”
“Drill Sergeant.”
“What was that all about?” Astrid asked.
“That, Miss Schäubin, was an apology,” Neustatter said. “Or as close to one as is safe for a drill sergeant to give.”
She did not understand, even when Neustatter and Hjalmar tried to explain it to her on the way home. But she did not need to. Hjalmar, Ditmar, and the others were home. It felt like it was time to write to the village. Astrid wrote most of the letter to Pastor Claussen, and over the next couple days everyone added their greetings.