Ed's Journal, August 30th, 2000
Five days to Krakow.
Hey kids, I hope all the little Eds I've had since I came back home forgive me not writing. It has been a very busy week with ups and more ups! Here's the tale for the history books. Marginalia -brag much
Game plans completely changed. Instead of raiding the camp and using it as bait to take the POW column, we ambushed the column and used those guys to take the camp. Both ops went off like we actually knew what we were doing.
The column ambush occurred on August 23rd. There were minimal casualties among the prisoners, we captured 5 guards, and 2 ran off to live another day. Doc pulled another screaming charge with gun blazing. She took a few rounds and decided to pass out. Otherwise, no one on our team was hurt.
The ranker in the column is an old friend of Llyellan's. Gunnery Sergent Walters and him served back in Sarajevo. The Gunny ran mortar tubes for the marines before getting shuffled to the 5th. He's also done his duty by keeping the men in the column organized and disciplined.
I'm not trying to minimize their condition. Most of the men were in sad shape from hard work, ill treatment, and little food. But given the chance, those who were capable of fighting shook out into squads and fire teams with minimal oversight from us.
Of the two hundred in the column, about fifty were combat troops and capable. Another fifty were rear-echelon types. They'd had their Basic and then some since the war started, but they weren't solid. The remaining ninety or so were wounded or shell-shocked.
We took the 24th to lay plans for the camp and let the men rest and get some decent food in them.
On the 25th, we loaded the worst of the casualties into the OT's, wagons, and truck. and made our way to the camp. We made a large loop around it to the north, to avoid their OPs and patrols, and traveled late into the night.
I waited with the main assault force while Leo, Llywellan, and ten picked men, all heavily armed with M203s and light machine guns, infiltrated the camp. They eliminated the watch tower guards on the north side, cut their way through the fence, and used the deep shadows on the east side to get to the center of camp. They signaled Gunny when their charges were placed. Marginalia - always put 2 men in a watch tower
Gunny's team dropped two 120 Mortar shells into the barracks #1, walked it south into barracks #2, and dropped two more. Marginalia -120's make a big crater The infiltrators blew the mortar pit to hell with a satchel charge and Leo rocketed the parked BMPs in case they had crews. The other member of their team put 40mm HE into the other guard towers and engaged the standing guard on top of the bunker. Once the bunker was suppressed, the grenadiers eliminated their fighting position.
There wasn't much to do when the main force arrived. Almost all of the camp guards inside the wire were killed when their barracks blew, we took two prisoners out of the roving guard. The men outside the wire decided not to come back..I figure some took a look and decided they had pressing business elsewhere. The camp commandant, inside the bunker, was the last hold-out. We gave them a choice, come out in the next five minutes or we'd burn them out with their own fuel stocks. The commandant took his own life. His second in command and their women came out.
Cap had all the prisoners, including the women, stuffed into the camp's punishment cells for their own safety.
I wish I could write that we all then went back to Krakow and were happy
Marginalia - this is in the logs, I don't need to do it
There were only about 100 prisoners in the camp, we had been told there should be around 300, our missing 200 had been sold. The commandants records showed he'd been paid a hefty price; gold, tank parts, and luxuries, by a Col. Czarny. The men had been marched off to Warsaw as slaves less than two weeks ago. Two fuckin' weeks. Marginalia -they'd planned to restock by taking the column and killing the guards "restocking" he called it
While Cap was chasing that down, several fights had to be broken up among the newly freed prisoners. Many of the prisoners were accused of collaboration with the enemy, having betrayed escape attempts, and other crimes against the rest of the prisoners. Cap had the men separated and those accused put under guard. After giving us instructions to loot the camp and strip the fields, she began questioning the men, accusers and accused both, and combing through the records with Leo.
On the 27th, she called us together with NCOs from the liberated troops. She told us of the statements she had gathered and the records that collaborated it. She told us of other statements that she had received and what wasn't collaborated by the camp records. Forty-two of the man we had just freed were guilty of collaborating with the enemy, willful treason, and had received special compensation for it. Eight others were guilty of serious infractions or abuse against other prisoners. Four men of the column had committed similar crimes.
Her face was tight when she told us. Stress, anger, grief? Probably all three. We didn't have the means or the manpower to bring such a group to proper authority. The sergeants were to have the men draw lots and form firing squads. The forty-two were to be executed. The other twelve would be dishonorably discharged and abandoned with the soviets we had captured. The results of her summary courts-martial were entered in the unit log. Sentence would be carried out immediately.
We marched them out of the camp into the southern fields, already stripped by us solider locusts, and formed them into a line. All of the men not required for base security were formed up. The charges wee read, shots fired, and men fell. We left hem there, unburied and unforgiven
Marginalia -fuck them all for making us do it
The soviet prisoners and their twelve friends were loaded into a truck. The OTs escorted them an hours drive west. They were abandoned in a small nameless village. They get to live. I hope never to see them again.
We finished inventory and requisition on the afternoon of the 28th. Cached what we could in the surrounding woods and spillt the rest. Our column, 268 strong, marched out of the morning of the 29th.
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