Modern armored troops only have a tiny percentage of their personnel commissioned, and I had expected that all the Serbian forces would be organized in this fashion.
The truth was that I had never asked, so the professor never told me.
Yes, their armored troops had a command structure like ours, but their infantry, set up for police and garrison duty, had a hierarchy that was almost as stupidly top heavy as that of Hitler’s army. Then, too, most of the Serbs had brought their wives or girlfriends along with them to the party.
And there were cooks, waiters, entertainers, waitresses, bus boys, bartenders, musicians, and other hangers-on there as well, not one of whom really deserved to die.
I felt rotten about the situation, but it was too late to do anything about it.
Damn it, it wasn’t like they had been invited here. I never told them to invade somebody else’s country in the first place.
I had the professor give us a quick replay of the scene of a few months ago, where the Serbians were raping the refugees before putting them into tanks. I worked at getting angry all over again, and some of my guilty feelings evaporated. Not all, but some.
The Croatians on the general staff didn’t act the least bit downhearted. Even Mirko laughed on seeing the carnage we’d caused, and Conan was positively ecstatic.
It didn’t seem to bother the troops that we had guarding the club, either, except that some of the men regretted the waste of so many attractive women. Not so much their deaths, since they seemed to all be Serbians, but the fact that we could have found better uses for them. They even made jokes about it.
The situation disgusted me, but there was nothing that I could do about it.
I could control my troop’s actions, but not their attitudes. Hates that are centuries old never seem to go away.
Then the long wait continued. The civilians in the concentration camp barely noticed the change in guards and went to sleep shortly after dark, which was fine. We couldn’t be sure what their reaction to being freed would be, and we didn’t want them making any noise until the rest of the camp was secured.
Another two thousand of our own troops decanted themselves, cleaned up, and dressed in Serbian colors. Soon, they were among the empty tanks and guns of the division that was on leave.
Using Serbian codes, the professor told each war machine that it was to be given some electronic maintenance, and machines are very good at obeying orders.
As a Croatian troop came to each of them, it obligingly opened up, and the memory module was removed, rendering the machine close to comatose, barely able to close itself back up as ordered.
Some twelve thousand memory modules were brought back to our division’s area, to be stacked neatly awaiting reprogramming.
Occasionally, through the night, people on one errand or another approached the officers’ club. These people were quietly detained when possible, or quietly killed when all else failed, and in either case taken to an empty barracks that had been found in the concentration camp.
Serbian infantrymen returning from town were simply allowed to go back to their barracks. Many were warned to get a good night’s sleep, since they had a long walk ahead of them in the morning.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
MORE LIES, MURDER, AND A WEDDING
Two hours before dawn, the Serbian armored division, the one that had a full complement of troops, was mobilized, courtesy of the professor.
They drove off into the desert north of the base and began an elaborately choreographed series of maneuvers and war games. Tomorrow we would worry about just what to do with them. For today, there were other problems.
An hour before dawn, the senior sergeants of every Serbian infantry company were phoned by what they thought were their officers. The general staff had decided that the troops were getting entirely too soft, and that a thirty-kilometer march on Sunday morning was just the thing to toughen them up.
They would have their men fall out at dawn, with full field packs and personal weapons. Heavy, antiarmor weapons could be left behind, but rifles were required.
They would start immediately, escorted by a few tanks, and march north until ordered to stop. Breakfast would be served on the road at eight. Any questions?
Of course, there were thousands of questions, and even more complaints, but the professor was adamant, and by and large, orders were obeyed.
Bleary-eyed, hung over, and profoundly unhappy, almost a hundred thousand Serbian troops marched out into the desert. Some of them even marched in step. I noticed that they all wore black uniforms, and didn’t feel a bit sorry for them.
In a few hours, automatic trucks caught up with the straggling columns, and unloaded just enough field rations, bottled water, and medical kits. After an hour’s rest break, the black-shirted troops were ordered to continue the march.
Many of them noticed that their officers were not with them, and complained loudly about this flagrant abuse of rank, but it got them nowhere. The sweating sergeants yelled, and the troops slogged onwards.
Meanwhile, back at Beach Head, the Croatians were busy.
The Serbian infantry camp was completely searched and some six thousand men, sick or malingering, were arrested.
The officers’ housing area was likewise combed over, and another nine thousand people, mostly women, children, and servants were taken into custody.
Then the rest of the huge Serbian base had to be searched, and another thousand people, from janitors to mistresses, were interned.
And finally, the inmates of the concentration camp were informed of what we had done. Most of them were wildly enthusiastic, but a surprising number of them simply couldn’t believe that they were free.
They were told that they were liberated, but not out of danger. They were still far behind enemy lines, but that we had a plan to get them back to the rest of New Croatia. They were to meet with us at four in the afternoon on the parade ground, and everything would be explained to them then.
In the meantime, we had other uses for the concentration camp, and since they were obviously in need of clothing and other necessities, they were welcome to loot the Serbian Officers’ Housing Area to satisfy those needs. Additional food and medical help would be available at the chow halls and the base hospital.
The prospect of loot quickly motivated the most downhearted of them, and the camp was soon emptied.
It was soon filled again, with Serbians of various sizes, ages, and sexes. That is to say, with all those Serbs who were neither dead nor out obeying orders in the desert.
There were a small number of Serbian officers who had escaped the carnage at the officers’ club, and with my permission, the professor put one of them in charge of the people in the concentration camp. He was given a phone to request whatever he needed, and the camp was surrounded by thirty of our tanks to keep people from escaping. Since we only had one tank with antipersonnel weapons, this meant that any escape attempt would have to be met with rail gun fire, and the death toll would be huge. The officer seemed to be the sort who would do the sensible thing and simply keep order in the camp.
Conan was convinced that most of the former internees could be talked into joining the Croatian forces, or at least getting into a tank as the safest and easiest transportation back to our own lines.
A check with the computers in the enemy warehouses showed that there were plenty of helmets and spinal inductors around, so we put the program into action.
Since Conan was so enthused with the program I put him in charge of it. We’d all agreed that he would have to go out and talk to the people in person. Words coming out of a speaker on a war machine just wouldn’t have the right effect.
Conan spent the early afternoon cleaning up and getting ready for his four o’clock speech.
“It’s strange,” Kasia said as we watched the speech on the display screen in the war room. The computer was translating it into Kashubian subtitles for our benefit. “Intellectually, I know that that’s Conan out there, but what I see is a stranger, an old man who is talking in a language that I don’t understand.”
“I think that we’ve been spoiled by Dream World, love. It makes me worry if we will have much trouble getting used to the real world again.”
“Well, if it slows down your worrying about the present situation, it’s all for the better. We’ll make it.”
“You always were the smart one.”
At six, I found that the Serbian infantry was thirty-five kilometers from the base. I ordered them to bivouac there, and automatic trucks delivered enough supplies to last them the night. They still thought that they were getting orders from their own officers, relayed to their earphones from the dozen tanks we had accompanying them.