“Was your source a local?” Tanner asked.
“Don’t ask. Now, what do you have planned?”
“What I have is an under strength and chewed up company of a hundred and twenty men led by a first lieutenant who commands because his captain got badly wounded. The company has its quota of machine guns and I managed to get two M5 tanks attached to it.”
The M5 was a lighter tank with only a 37mm cannon. It was no match for most of the newer German tanks. Tanner thought they would do quite well against the damaged walls and canvas coverings at the compound.
Tanner continued. “There are three ways in and out of the compound; therefore, I suggest that we don’t split the force up. Each part would be too small to defend itself and would be vulnerable if the bad guys decide to fight their way out. I want to hit them up front and hard and if some of them escape down the other roads we’ve identified, then so be it. You can scoop them up some other time.”
“Sounds fair. How soon can your men be ready?”
“They are ready to go right now. Let them take a leak or whatever they want and we can roll in fifteen minutes. It’s about an hour to the compound and it’s just after 0800. The sooner the better, is my suggestion.”
* * *
It took closer to two hours to get the column on the road and moving. The tanks did not slow them down. They could do almost forty miles an hour on a decent road and this dirt road had not been bombed. Sergeant Hill had placed himself on heavily wooded high ground overlooking the target and every few minutes radioed in that nothing seemed out of the ordinary. There was a gated entrance several hundred yards down an access road from the main road, but it didn’t look like much of a barrier. One man was stationed there to deter anyone from coming in.
As they approached the cutoff, the column slowed and then stopped. They made one last call to Hill. “Nothing’s happening,” he said. “It’s as quiet as a church on a Tuesday afternoon.”
“Go,” Tanner ordered and the column made a left turn onto the narrow and tree lined access road.
In a couple of moments they could see the gate and an astonished man in an American uniform staring at them. He unslung his rifle and opened fire. Tanner had the sickening feeling that the sentry didn’t realize that the trucks and tanks approaching him were American. White stars and the letters “USA” were on the sides but not the front.
Two more men ran out of the church, paused and looked at the trucks and opened fire. Tanner breathed a sigh of relief. The men shooting at them might be Americans, but they certainly weren’t friendly. A few bursts from truck-mounted.30 caliber machine guns sent them running.
The column of trucks stopped and American soldiers poured out of them. They formed up and, along with the tanks, moved on the buildings. Several defenders came out, saw the overwhelming force that was coming at them, and threw up their hands. Others ran towards the road at the rear of the compound, pursued by machine-gun bullets and 37mm shells from the tanks.
The skirmish had taken seconds. There were no casualties among the attackers and only two among the defenders. One man was dead and another slightly wounded.
Tanner ordered a platoon and one tank to go down the rear road and try to capture those trying to escape. As he and Fulton had agreed, their pursuit would not be too vigorous. If someone got away, they could be rounded up later. The big thing was to break up whatever was going on in the compound.
The church came first. It was the largest building and they gasped as they saw the piles of military supplies stacked to the ceiling where pews might have been. Everything was there: rifles, pistols, ammunition, machine guns and even uniforms. They could equip their own army if they so wished.
In another building they found rations, enough to feed a good-sized town for a week or more. In one of the smaller buildings they found a cache of medical supplies including the rare and expensive super-drug, penicillin. This infuriated Fulton, who wondered how many GIs had gone without the precious medicine because it was sitting here waiting to be sold to the highest bidder.
Hill had joined Tanner while Fulton and his cadre of military police tried to make sense of their find.
“So who are these guys, sir?” Hill asked.
“My money is that most of them are American deserters. Some of the ones we caught were so dumb that they were still wearing their dog tags. They’ll be breaking rocks at Leavenworth until they’re ninety. I will also bet you that some supply officers at bases here in Europe are going to start crapping their pants when they find out about this raid. A lot of it can be traced back to specific units, which means that men got paid off to let this stuff disappear. Some stockades are going to be crowded.”
“I wonder if anybody got hurt or killed during the thefts,” said Tanner.
“Same here,” said Fulton. “If they’ve committed murder, I hope they hang. What I wonder now is who the buyers were. I can think of a lot of countries that would like to get their hands on all these supplies. French and Italian communists come to mind, and I wouldn’t rule out Jewish refugees who want to start their own country in Palestine. And hell, maybe the Arabs who want to stop the Jews. Anybody who wants to start their own war is a likely buyer.”
“Over here!” a soldier yelled. He was at a smaller outbuilding the size of a two-car garage.
The soldier looked shocked and stepped aside as Tanner entered. It took a moment for him to realize what he was seeing. Several dozen pairs of eyes stared back at him. They were all women and they were all naked. They were also tied up with their hands behind them. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see that their thin bodies were covered with sores and bruises. They moaned with fear when they saw him.
“Anybody here speak English?” he asked. Nothing for a second, then a woman about forty said she did. “Who are you and why are you tied up?” Tanner added. He was going to untie the women but not until he had a good idea what was going on.
“We are their slaves,” the woman said and spat on the dirt floor. “We are all good women from this area. We were kidnapped by the men you chased away, and used for their amusement. Some of us had husbands and fathers murdered by those scum.”
Fulton’s men arrived and, with Tanner’s agreement, began freeing them. The women began searching for articles of clothing they could use to cover themselves. “Fulton, would it matter a whole lot if they took some of the uniforms?”
“Sounds good to me. Why don’t you tell them?”
Tanner did and the women raced to the church and rifled through the boxes of uniforms. On their way, a dozen or so GIs were treated to a view until one of their officers told them to go away.
Fulton lit a cigarette. “I wonder how high and how far the rot goes. There are rumors of theft and corruption so vast in this army that this is only a drop in the bucket. Of course, the kidnappings and rapes put a different face on it. This is no longer just plain stealing for profit.”
“And don’t forget the murders these women say these bastards committed,” Tanner said. “I originally wanted them to go to jail, now I hope they all hang.” And thank God that Lena was safe with the army, he thought. It could easily have been her in that building with those women. Jesus, what a war.
A few moments later, the older woman, their spokesperson, approached Tanner. She was now wearing an ill-fitting uniform. “You will want to see what is parked in the trees. There are at least a dozen ambulances, all with the Red Cross on their sides. They used some of them to transport the women to places where their bodies would be sold. There are, however, a number of them that have not been opened and, until you arrived, their German guards hadn’t run away. It was a bargain made in hell. German soldiers pimping German women out to American criminals.”
Fulton looked shocked. “Can you take us to these vehicles?”