"Who took the honey out of my jar!?"
Oberscharfuehrer was angry and his squad was lined up and standing at attention. Everyone knew who the thieves were but no one said a thing.
"Muller 17 and I looked at each other, and then stepped forward." They knew their entire squad would be punished if the responsible culprit didn't step forward.
They were given punishment exercises which included crawling through the mud, climbing over the haystack, running around some houses and so on. Worse was they were given the night watch that interrupted their deep sleep. That was to change. On Nov. 1, 1942 they in Ukraine and near villages with Germanic names like Marienheim or Gustavsfeld.
They saw Russian messenger dogs that scurried between the villages. Someone started shooting at the dogs but missed. This caused the Russian soldiers in the village to return fire.
"Muller 17 (so named because there were so many Mullers that each Muller was given a number to distinguish him from the others) and I hit the ground, then suddenly Muller 17 pointed in front of us and said: 'Look, there lies Oberscharfuehrer Scrhamm.'
"I looked in his direction and saw the one who had tormented our lives over the past few days.
"'Shall I shoot him through his legs?', Muller 17 said with a big grin on his face, and before I could say or do anything he aimed and shot.
"Nobody, except me, saw him do that.
"The bullet went right through the leg of Obserscharfuehrer Schramm.
"With all that shooting around us, nobody would ever know we did this.
"Shortly after the shot, we heard somebody shout, 'Two volunteers to get Obescharfuehrer Schramm out of there.
"Muller 17 and I looked at each other, we grinned, and volunteered to transport Schramm out of there.
"When we reached him, I could see the bullet went through his right thigh."
They put Schramm on a tent canvas and dragged him on the ground 20 meters back before they could safely lift him and carry him to a motorcycle sidecar.
But wait, there's more.
"Months later, when he came back to our unit, his attitude completely changed. In his mind we were the ones who saved his life, when he was wounded. Nobody else volunteered to get him out of that firefight, only the two of us did, and we got his eternal gratitude for that. Never again did we have to do night watch, never did we have to do dirty jobs or dangerous assignments."
So much for fragging within the SS.
Sharpshooting and sniping stories from my recent research may be found here:
https://www.thehighroad.org/index.ph....36853/page-20