by Sven Hassel
‘Well, if I’m to understand you correctly, sir—’
‘If you are to understand me correctly, Stabsfeldwebel, just remember this: that unless you want to end up in the forests of Minsk fighting partisans, you will behave with circumspection and do nothing that might bring this man Bielert down on our heads . . . If you want to hit tie prisoners around a bit, I’ve already said that’s all right by me. God knows they deserve it, and in any case I should be the last person to interfere with a man’s pleasures . . . But use a bit of discretion, that’s all I ask. There are plenty of parts of the human body you can bash to your heart’s content and nobody any the wiser. Remind me to show you when we start on the interviews . . .’
In the corridor, the guards had lined up all those who were to have the honour of being presented. First of all, die new-comers. And to start with, a forty-eight year old lieutenant who had been sent there on a charge of refusing to obey orders. His introduction to Rotenhausen took exactly three minutes and four seconds, and he was then carried away almost senseless by two Gefreiters. There was hardly a mark on his body.
‘Well, you didn’t last long, did you?’ sneered Stever, jabbing the groaning man in the belly. ‘Three minutes! Hardly a record, is it? We had a Feldwebel here once, he held out for two hours. Still on his feet at the end of it. Rotenhausen had to give up and take a rest in the end, before he could get strength enough to finish him off.’
Lt. Ohlsen was in the corridor with all the other guests. They were standing in a line with their faces to the wall, their hands clasped behind their necks.
Two heavily armed guards marched up and down, ready to fire on the least provocation. It had occasionally been known for a prisoner driven to desperation or blind rage to leap at the Major and attempt to throttle him. No one, of course, had ever survived such a foolhardy attack. They always ended up as lifeless bodies in one of the discipline cells, down in the cellars, trussed like chickens with a label tied round one ankle.
Stever yelled out Lt. Ohlsen’s name. Ohlsen jumped round, marched into the office where Rotenhausen conducted his interviews and sprang smartly to attention.
The Major was enthroned behind the desk. Before him lay his riding crop. Stahlschmidt stood at his elbow. He was holding a rubber truncheon, coated with the crusted and coagulated blood of ages past. Stever stood inside the door, just behind the prisoner.
‘Heil Hitler,’ remarked Rotenhausen.
‘Heil Hitler,’ responded Ohlsen, tonelessly.
The Major smiled. He leaned forward and picked up a sheaf of papers.
‘I’ve been reading through your file,’ he told Ohlsen. ‘To me, your case doesn’t look to be too good. In fact in the light of my past experience I can confidently predict that you will be sentenced to death. Probably decapitated . . . unless you’re lucky, which I doubt. If you are lucky, of course, you’ll be shot, but I shouldn’t hold out too much hope if I were you. I have a feeling for these things.’ He looked across at Ohlsen. ‘Death by decapitation is both dishonourable and unaesthetic. There’s too much blood, and a headless body is not a pleasant sight . . . absurd and revolting at one and the same time . . . Do you have any comments you wish to make? Do you want to ask me for anything? Do you wish to lodge any complaints?’
‘No thank you, sir.’
‘I see.’ Rotenhausen leaned back in his chair and squinted at Ohlsen. ‘The prisoner is not holding his head straight,’ he observed.
Stahlschmidt at once stepped forward with his right arm raised and his fist clenched. Stever moved in to help with the butt of his sub-machine gun.
‘Better,’ said Rotenhausen, appraisingly. ‘But still not quite right . . .’
A pain ripped its way through Lt. Ohlsen’s body. It came so suddenly and was so intense that he felt it must surely be tearing his inside to pieces. He staggered and swayed and only just managed to remain on his feet.
Rotenhausen turned with raised eyebrows to Stahlschmidt.
‘He moved!’ he said. ‘Don’t they teach people how to stand to attention these days?’
Stahlschmidt bunched his fist again. Stever moved in with two ramrod blows from the butt of his sub MG hard into the kidneys.
Lt. Ohlsen fell forward on to his knees. Tears sprang from his eyes and he felt as if red hot pokers were being rammed up the muscles of his back.
Rotenhausen shook his head.
‘This is too bad,’ he remarked, gently reproving. ‘Does the prisoner now refuse even to stand up? Must he grovel on the floor in that obscene fashion?’
He nodded at Stahlschmidt. Lt. Ohlsen lay on the floor, screaming. Stever was hitting out with the frenzy of a maniac. Stahlschmidt concentrated on kicking. After a few moments a thin trickle of blood oozed from the prisoner’s mouth. Rotenhausen at once banged on the table with his crop.
‘Obergefreiter, get that man on his feet!’
Stever dragged him up. Lt. Ohlsen groaned then shouted as new pains tortured his broken body. Thoughts of his son suddenly flitted through the dark mists of his mind and he muttered to himself.
‘Is the prisoner daring to complain?’ asked Rotenhausen, outraged.
They didn’t know what he was doing, but they beat him up a bit more, just to teach him a lesson. They then disposed of him, throwing him back senseless into his cell.
From the new prisoners they passed to the old; to those who were to be transferred to Torgau. Each man had to sign a declaration to the effect that he had been well treated and had no complaints to make.
One brigadier general refused to sign.
‘I suggest, for a change, that you listen to my point of view,’ he said, very cold and calm and reasonable. ‘I’m being sent off to Torgau for a maximum period of two years. It might very well be less, and it certainly won’t be more. If I choose to tell the authorities of the things I’ve seen in this prison – two cold blooded murders, just for a start – you’d be sent down for about twenty-five years. Now just reflect a moment what that means. It means, first, that after I’ve served my sentence I shall be transferred to a disciplinary regiment. I shall almost certainly be given back my old rank of brigadier general and end up in command – they’re short of experienced officers, so they’ve really no alternative. And once I’m back in a position of authority, I can promise you I shall move heaven and earth to have you people sent to my division.’
His words fell into a shocked silence. Stever looked hopefully for guidance at Stahlschmidt, but Stahlschmidt made no move. It was plain from his expression that for once he was nonplussed. He had met stubborn prisoners, foolhardy prisoners, prisoners who tried insulting him or even attempted physical violence; but never in all his career had he encountered one who dared to threaten. Prisoners were not in a position to threaten, and he wished Major Rotenhausen would explain as much to the Brigadier General.
Rotenhausen lolled nonchalantly in his arm chair. He took his time lighting a cigar, then picked up his riding crop and flexed it gently across his knee. He looked up thoughtfully at the Brigadier General.
‘Do you really suppose,’ he drawled, ‘that a man of your age would last six weeks in a disciplinary regiment? I guarantee that after you’d been there three days you’d be looking back on your spell with us as one of the cushiest times of your life.’
He smiled. The Brigadier General met his eyes and Rotenhausen looked away.
‘I’ll make you an offer,’ he said. He took his pistol from its holster, leaned across and laid it on the desk, within the General’s reach. ‘There you are. It’s all yours. Take it and use it.’
There was a long silence. The General made no movement. Rotenbausen suddenly rose from his arm chair, walked round the desk and cracked his whip only inches away from the General’s face. Stahlschmidt caught his breath. If the idiot went berserk and the General arrived at Torgau with purple bruises all over his face and half the bones in his body broken there would be hell to pay. Let Rotenhausen talk his way out of that one, if he could. At least Stahlsch
midt would have had no part in it.
‘You’d like it, wouldn’t you, if I were to beat you black and blue?’ Rotenhausen threw back his head and laughed. ‘Just suit you fine, wouldn’t it? Then you really could go bleating to Colonel Vogel at Torgau about the nasty way we’ve treated you here . . . Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but we’re not such fools as all that. In fact, we’re not fools at all, as you’ll very soon discover. We go strictly according to the rule book here. There are other ways of breaking a prisoner’s resistance besides using violence.’ He turned to Stever. ‘Obergefreiter, in ten minutes’ time I want the prisoner standing ready in the courtyard in full combat dress. Fifty kilos of damp sand in his rucksack, and try to find a couple of nice sharp stones to slip in his boots. And while you’re about it, make sure they’re old boots – old and stiff and preferably half a size too small. All right?’ He smiled, and Stever nodded enthusiastically. ‘We’ll start him off with a couple of hours’ gentle exercise. See how he gets on.’
‘Yes, sir!’
Stever’s round, amiable face split wide open with a grin of anticipation. Stahlschmidt laughed aloud, appreciative of the joke. Not quite such an idiot after all, old Rotenhausen!
Only the Brigadier General remained impassive, giving no hint as to his thoughts. He was not a young man and it seemed unlikely he would survive two hours of Rotenhausen’s ‘gentle’ exercise, with or without boots that crippled him and a rucksack full of sand on his back. Even if, by some miracle of willpower, his heart held firm, Rotenhausen would almost certainly invent some new diversion to finish him off. And the General knew that under Prussian military law Rotenhausen was well within his rights. There was no rule against killing a man by such treatment.
‘Prisoner . . . about – turn!’ Stever held the door open and jerked his head at the General. ‘Forward – march! At the double! One-two, one-two . . .’
As the unfortunate General disappeared down the corridor at a fast trot, Major Rotenhausen picked up his cape and swung it carelessly over his shoulders, put his pistol back in its holster, settled his kepi on his head, tilting it saucily over one eye. He had studied the effect in the glass and he knew that it made him look dashing and fearless.
‘Come with me, Stabsfeldwebel. I’ll teach you the best way to deal with a recalcitrant prisoner without incurring any awkward complications or giving rise to too many questions. It’s all a matter of technique.’
Stahlschmidt snatched up his own cape and followed the Major from the room. He automatically set his kepi on his head at the same rakish angle as Rotenhausen. He always wore it like that and it was more than possible that Rotenhausen had copied him. It occurred to Stahlschmidt in the nick of time, however, that the Major might just think it was the other way round, and silently cursing he re-adjusted it, so that it sat at the regulation angle low on his forehead. He knew that he looked the complete idiot, like an ape done up in its Sunday best, but better that than incurring a jealous scene.
Rotenhausen strode in front of him. He had thrown his cape over his shoulders and had drawn on a pair of gauntlets. The gold braid of his epaulettes gleamed in the darkness of the prison. Stahlschmidt regarded him with contempt.
‘Bloody Prince Charming poncing off to a masked ball,’ he thought, scornfully, and he began to imitate Rotenhausen’s walk, tossing his own cape over his shoulders and gesticulating right and left to an imaginary crowd.
They went out into the covered courtyard. Stever had performed a quick-change act on the General, and they were already standing there waiting.
‘Just looking for a couple of suitable stones, sir,’ panted Stever, who had obviously thrown himself heart and soul into the job and was more exhausted than the prisoner.
‘Very well, Obergefreiter. It’s good to see such enthusiasm, but no need to kill yourself.’
‘No, sir.’
While Stever crawled about in search of his stones – ‘Nice and sharp,’ said Rotenhausen, pleasantly – Stahlschmidt inspected the General, checking his kit, testing the weight of his rucksack.
The stones were found and accepted and inserted into a pair of dilapidated boots: the uppers were stiff and unyielding, the soles were into holes. They were at least one size too small. The General was scarcely able to cram his feet into them, and the red-faced Stever had to expend yet more energy heaving them on.
Rotenhausen took his place at the top of the steps and prepared to conduct the proceedings. Stahlschmidt stood beside him, while Stever positioned himself at the far end of the courtyard, his sub-machine gun at the ready.
‘Keep your eyes skinned, Stabsfeldwebel.’ Rotenhausen rubbed his gauntleted hands together and smiled. ‘Should anything untoward occur during the course of the exercise, should the prisoner suffer a heart attack or a stroke, let us say, it will be no fault of ours.’
‘Naturally not,’ agreed Stahlschmidt.
‘Of course, a man has to be physically in first-class shape to stand up to such rigours. I myself should certainly not care to endure it. But then, there is no question of my entering a disciplinary unit and fighting at the front. And nor, might I add—’ and Rotenhausen grinned, showing all his top teeth and fillings – ‘do I possess quite the same foolhardiness of spirit as the prisoner.’
He turned to face into the courtyard, standing legs apart and hands on hips, and began barking out the first of a long string of orders. Right turn – stand to attention – left turn – running on the spot – forward at a run – faster, faster, faster! – knees up, up I said! – no flagging, keep it up – halt! – down on your stomach – forward crawl! – twenty times round the courtyard . . .
The Brigadier General was sweating under his heavy load. His eyes beneath his helmet were bulging from their sockets, as he gasped for breath and fought to carry out each fresh order as it came. He knew only too well that the least hesitation, the least sign of weakness, would give Rotenhausen the opportunity to pounce. He would doubtless be shot for refusing to obey orders. The Brigadier General had served forty-three years in the Prussian Army. At the age of fifteen he had entered the military academy at Gross Lichterfelde. He had worked his way up, he knew all the tricks in the book, he knew his own rights and he knew those of others. And at die moment, Major Rotenhausen was within his rights.
‘Prisoner-halt!’
The General staggered thankfully and incredulously to a stop. But there was to be no respite. Down in a squatting position he went, and round the courtyard he began painfully to hop like an arthritic frog. His body cried out in protest but his brain refused to listen to its urgent appeals. He went on hopping, and the stones in his boots cut his feet and the unyielding leather, a size too small, stubbed his toes and rubbed blisters on his heels.
Stahlschmidt was openly laughing at the sight. Stever shouted words of encouragement each time the General passed him at the end of the courtyard.
The hopping came to an end and the jumping began. Long jumping, high jumping, jumping on the spot; jumping feet apart, jumping feet together; jump up, fall to the ground, crawl forward; jump up, fall to the ground, crawl forward; jump up, fall to the—
After twenty minutes of this treatment, the General quite suddenly fainted. It was against the rules to shoot an unconscious man for refusing to obey orders, but it took Stever barely two minutes to revive die prisoner.
The exercise continued as if the interruption had never been. Rotenhausen finished his first cigar and lit another; he finished the second cigar and lit a third; and then the Brigadier General began to break. At first they noticed only a low moaning as he toiled round the courtyard. It seemed that he was moaning in spite of himself, without even realizing it. Later, the moaning raised its pitch and grew in intensity. Later still it became a wail, which rose and fell and died away and came again and again with ever increasing urgency. And then the wail became a shriek of protest, a shout of agony, a long inhuman scream of a man tortured beyond the limits of his endurance and reason.
All over the p
rison men woke up and heard this mindless call of despair and ran with dread to the windows of their cells. Only a few, those who had been inmates for a long time, remained in their bunks and resisted the temptation to respond to the summons of the tortured man. They knew what was happening out there. They had seen it before. Special Training, they called it . . .
The cry was broken now at intervals. And at each interval there came a long, shuddering breath and a rolling rattle in the throat. Stever was in the centre of the courtyard, his sub MG pressed hard against the General’s abdomen, just above the navel and just below the dome of the diaphragm. Stever knew what he was doing. You left no traces that way. You might rupture the stomach, perhaps, but who was to say that that might not have occurred spontaneously during the normal course of a rigorous exercise? And since when had rigorous exercise been frowned upon in the Army?
Rotenhausen was no longer smiling. He was enjoying himself too much and concentrating too hard to smile. His mouth was drawn back over his teeth in a thin and twisted line. His eyes shone with the gleam of the fanatic.
‘Prisoner! On your feet!’
With Stever assisting with his sub-machine gun, the General staggered upright. He swayed forward as if he were drunk. Stever ran alongside him round the courtyard, jabbing him gently with the butt of the gun.