Secondly, almost as soon as they were formed the various major units of the army began changing. To give one example, Mike's Third Division had ten regiments instead of nine. The oddball was Jeff Higgins' Hangman Regiment, which Mike had created to maintain discipline in the division after some units ran amok following the capture of the Polish town of Swiebodzin.

Jeff's regiment was an oddball in more ways than one. Instead of having the usual artillery company-which the artillerymen themselves invariably and stubbornly insisted on calling a "battery" and to hell with what the T/O said-he'd had Captain Thorsten Engler's flying artillery unit attached instead. Like the cavalry, the flying artillery were not part of the table of organization of the divisions, but were under Torstensson's direct authority.

Now, he'd have most of a regular artillery unit attached to his regiment as well-which would make it grossly oversized according to the T/O. Jeff's sergeants had been assiduously recruiting ever since Zielona Gora had given the Hangman the reputation of being the division's toughest regiment as well as the one which would be disciplining any miscreants. As a result, most of the regiment's companies were oversized also, with an average of one hundred and twenty men instead of the neat one hundred stipulated by the army's powers-that-be. Jeff and all of his officers were firmly of the opinion that the bigger the gun, the better, so most of that added personnel had been assigned to heavy weapons units. Jeff had been able to provide them with the heavy weapons they needed because he now had a close relationship with David Bartley; who, despite being the youngest quartermaster officer in the division, was easily its smartest.

And now, he'd be adding still more heavy weapons units to his regiment, swiped from Hlavacek's Teutoberg Regiment. So what? Jeff saw nothing wrong with hauling coal to Newcastle, and Hlavacek would make up the loss soon enough through recruitment. Unlike most armies in the here and now, the USE army regularly met its payroll. There were always men willing to sign up, even leaving aside the ones-most of them, actually-who joined for ideological reasons.