by Sven Hassel
‘Certainly,’ said Ohlsen. ‘We had 250 men in addition to the reinforcements you just mentioned. Say 300 men in all.’
‘And I think no one would call that a small company,’ murmured Dr. Beckmann. ‘On the contrary, rather on the strong side, would you not say?’
‘I wouldn’t argue with you,’ agreed Ohlsen.
‘Suppose you tell us something of the armaments you had?’
Lt. Ohlsen sighed. He vaguely began, now, to see where the Prosecutor’s questions were leading him. He looked across at the judges. One had his eyes closed again, and the President was drawing ranks of dinosaurs on his blotting pad.
‘We had two anti-tank guns, 7.5 cm., two mortars of 8 cm. and three of 5 cm. – they were Russian, by the way. Then we had two heavy machine guns, four heavy flame-throwers, four light flame-throwers. All section leaders also had sub-machine guns. Some men had rifles. And the sappers, of course, had mines and grenades and that sort of thing.’
Dr. Beckmann listened to this recital with his head on one side.
‘I congratulate you. You have a very remarkable memory. That is exactly how your Company was armed. I have only one comment to make, and that is that your allocation of sub-machine guns was very much higher than average. You had over one hundred, in fact, and yet despite this you behaved in a manner which can only be described as gross cowardice.’
‘That is not true,’ muttered Ohlsen.
‘Oh?’ Dr. Beckmann raised an eyebrow. ‘I beg to differ, Lieutenant . . . Who was it who gave the order for the Company to retreat? Was it one of your men? A non-commissioned officer? Or was it you yourself, the head of the Company?’
‘It was I who gave the order,’ admitted Ohlsen, ‘but only because by that time the Company had been wiped out.
‘Wiped out?’ repeated Dr. Beckmann. ‘You have a very bizarre notion of the meaning of that expression, Lieutenant! In my book, it is used to signify annihilation – total destruction. And yet your presence here today proves beyond any possible shadow of doubt that the Company most certainly was NOT annihilated! And your orders, Lieutenant, if I may recapitulate a moment, your orders were quite definite, were they not? Neither God nor the devil nor the entire Red Army. . .’
Lt. Ohlsen looked without much hope towards the judges.
‘Do I have the permission of the court to relate the events that took place on 2nd February, 1942 ?’
The sleeping judge woke up and looked about him in alarm: things were happening again and he was not aware of them. The President finished off the last of his dinosaurs and glanced at his watch. He was hungry and bored. He had sat through too many of these trials, they were trivial and irrelevant and a total waste of his judicial intelligence. It was high time such matters were dealt with backstage, by the office staff, without going through all this absurd rigmarole in court. And as for Beckman – he glared at him over the horseshoe table. What did the fool think he was playing at, dragging the case on into, his lunch hour in this tedious fashion? All this nonsense about cowardice in the face of the enemy. Nobody wanted high drama when the outcome of the trial had been settled beforehand.
‘You have the court’s permission,’ he grudgingly allowed. ‘But kindly be brief.’
‘Thank you. I’ll make it as short as possible.’ Ohlsen looked back again at Beckmann. ‘After four days and nights of continuous fighting my Company of three hundred men had been reduced to nineteen. All our heavy guns had been destroyed. We had run out of ammunition. Only two light machine guns were still in working order. It would have been suicide to hang on with nineteen men and no weapons. We were fighting at odds of five hundred to one. Both before and behind us were the Russians, and we were under constant attack. To have stayed on when there wasn’t a hope in hell would have been an act of lunacy and an act of sabotage . . . throwing away nineteen lives for no purpose at all, when they could still be of value to Germany.’
‘An interesting hypothesis,’ admitted Dr. Beckmann. ‘But may I interrupt you one moment, Lieutenant. The order of the day from the Führer himself for all troops in the Wajsmo area was to fight until the last man and the last bullet, in order to stop the advance of the Soviets. And you – you, a mere lieutenant – you dare to call that an act of lunacy and sabotage? You dare to insinuate that our Führer, who is under the direct protection of God, is a lunatic? You dare to sit in judgement upon him? You, who are so insignificant that your life could be extinguished this very moment and no one in Germany would even notice, you dare to set yourself up against the Führer and countermand his orders?’
Lt. Ohlsen watched with a mild and detached curiosity as this self-contained and precise little lawyer worked himself into a rage of fanatical self-righteousness on the Führer’s behalf.
‘Herr Oberkriegsgerichtsrat,’ he at last calmly interpolated. ‘I can assure you that I had no intention of implying that the Führer was a lunatic, nor of countermanding his orders, which I imagined were to be taken as a form of encouragement to the troops rather than to be followed literally down to the last man and the last bullet. When I said an act of lunacy, I was referring to myself. I was taught that an officer should use his own initiative where the situation calls for it, and in my opinion it called for it then. You have to remember, if you will, that our position had altered radically since Colonel von Lindenau first told me to hold the—’
‘We are not interested in what your position had or had not done!’ cried Beckman. ‘We are interested only in the fact that you were specifically ordered to fight to the last man and yet you pulled out with nineteen! Why did you not get in touch with your regiment?’
‘Because the whole combat area was in such a shambles that we weren’t able to contact the regiment again until four days later.’
‘Thank you.’ The weary voice of the President droned into the court. ‘I think we have heard enough. The accused has admitted giving the order to retreat from his position near Olenin and the branch railway. The charge of cowardice and desertion is quite clear.’ He looked directly at Ohlsen and tapped on the table with his pencil. ‘Do you have anything else you wish to say?’
‘Yes, I do!’ rejoined Ohlsen, heatedly. ‘If you will take the trouble to look in my papers you will see that I have received many decorations in recognition of deeds requiring courage over and above the call of duty. I submit that this is proof in itself that I am not guilty of cowardice. On the occasion we were talking of I was not concerned with my own safety but with that of my few remaining men. Nineteen of us – and 270 of our comrades lying dead in the snow all round us. Many of those 270 had shot themselves rather than fall into the hands of the Russians. Of the nineteen that were left, every single one was wounded – some badly. We had run out of ammunition, we’d run out of food. We were eating handfuls of snow because there was nothing else to slake our thirst. Several of the men were suffering hideously from frost bite. I was wounded in three different places myself, and yet I was one of the more fortunate ones. Some of the others couldn’t even walk unless they were supported by a companion. And because I valued their lives, I gave the order to retreat. We destroyed everything of value before we left. Nothing fell into the hands of the Russians. We blew up the railway line in several places – and I repeat, it was not a branch line but the main line from Moscow to Riga. We also planted mines before we pulled out.’
Dr. Beckmann laughed sardonically.
‘A likely tale! But whether it’s true or not, the fact remains: you disobeyed an order to stay at your post and you are therefore guilty of cowardice and of desertion.’
Lt. Ohlsen bit his lip and remained silent, realizing the futility of further protestation. His eyes flickered briefly over the crowded courtroom, but he felt it to be hostile towards him, and he knew – as he had known from the beginning – that the verdict had been delivered long before the case had even come to trial. In the back row of spectators he saw a thin sliver of a man, dressed all in black with a red carnation in his buttonhole: Kriminalrat Paul
Bielert, come to witness his final downfall.
The President had also caught sight of Bielert. The flint eyes behind the spectacles flickered and danced, sweeping the court like twin radar beams. The man was openly smoking a cigarette, despite all the notices forbidding this activity. The President leaned forward to tap on the horseshoe table and have him arrested, but just in time one of his fellow judges sent him a warning look and whispered a name in his ear. The President frowned and sat back again, breathing heavily and indignantly and not daring to lift a finger.
Dr. Beckmann, also, had remarked the arrival of Bielert. He developed a sudden series of nervous twitches, awkwardly shuffling his feet and dropping half his papers to the floor. It always bode ill, when the chief of IV/2a appeared on the scene. The man was dangerous and you never knew where or when he was likely to strike next. And was there anyone who could stand up and say, in all confidence, ‘I have nothing to fear?’ Dr. Beckmann certainly could not.
There was an affair he had been mixed up in four years ago-but surely no one could now discover the details of it? He had been uncertain at the time as to the wisdom of it – but Bielert would hardly go digging that far back? And besides, they were all dead except him. All those who had been in it with him – even Frau Rosen had been hanged in the end. There was no one save himself who could know anything of it Only you never could tell with Paul Bielert. Four years ago he had been a mere Kriminalsekretär of no importance whatsoever. Who could have prophesied that he would rise to such heights in so short a time? Of course, the man had had the good sense to be a friend of Heydrich’s. That had been a shock, when they had discovered that.
Dr. Beckmann pulled out his handkerchief and with trembling hand mopped at his brow. On its way back to a pocket his hand paused involuntarily to clutch at his throat Dr. Beckmann stared in rabbit-like fascination across the court and into Bielerts eyes. A cold seizure took hold of his spine. What was the man doing here? Why had he come? They were trying no one of importance, every case was straightforward and routine. So why was he here? In whom was he interested?
Dr. Beckmann shook himself out of his petrified stupor, put his handkerchief away and attempted to square his hunched shoulders. Who was the rude uneducated little man, after all? No one. Simply a no one. A rat that had crawled out of a sewer and still had the odour of putrefaction clinging to him. This was a court of Prussian law and he, Dr. Beckmann, was a barrister at law. And a former university lecturer. A respectable citizen, ranking far above Bielert in the social and intellectual hierarchy.
He decided on an instant to take the bull by the horns. Forcing his lips into what seemed to him a smile, though anyone else might well have taken it for an arrogant leer, he nodded at Bielert across the courtroom. Bielert stared back coldly at him, eyes glittering, narrow lips compressed, cigarette smoke curling from his nostrils. Dr. Beckmann slowly froze. With the arrogant leer still painted meaninglessly on his lips, he turned back to the judges’ table. He could feel the hard eyes boring into his neck.
He realized suddenly that the court was waiting for him to speak. He sprang forward and shouted defiantly, determined to demonstrate his patriotism beyond any possible shadow of doubt.
‘I ask the court that the accused be sentenced to death by decapitation under article 197b and Article 91b of the Military Penal Code!’
Dr. Beckman sat down and began with abrupt industry to search through his papers. Heaven knew what he was searching for. Composure, perhaps. He wished only to impress Bielert with his devotion to duty.
The President rose and walked with his fellow judges out of the court and back to the ante-chamber. They seated themselves comfortably round the table, where a thoughtful minion had left a carafe of red wine. The President pushed it to one side and called for beer. Someone else wanted sausages, and sausages were accordingly grilled and delivered on a tray with cutlery, plates and mustard.
‘Well—’ the President stuffed his mouth with hot sausage and swilled it round with beer – ‘in my opinion we should grant the request of the Prosecutor and have done with it.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Kriegsgerichtsrat Burgholz, mopping beer off his chin.
There was a moment’s comparative silence while they all concentrated upon their sausages. The youngest of the three judges, Kriegsgerichtsrat Ring, made a half-hearted attempt to speak up on behalf of Lt. Ohlsen.
‘I confess I have my doubts about the decapitation,’ he murmured. ‘It seems unnecessarily harsh, and it’s hardly an aesthetic way to kill a man. Besides, we should surely take into account the fact that the prisoner has never previously shown any inclination towards cowardice? In view of his decorations and so forth, could we not perhaps show a certain amount of clemency and change the sentence to death by shooting?’
The President narrowed his eyes as he held up his beer mug and stared into the depths of it
‘I think not,’ he said. ‘You must remember it’s not only cowardice the man’s guilty of. He has also plotted against the Führer and made dubious jokes about him. If we allowed that sort of thing to go unpunished, I shudder to think what the outcome would be.’
Burgholz cleared his throat and affected an air of indifference.
‘What – ah – what were these dubious jokes, anyway?’ he asked. He picked up his fork and drew tramlines through a pool of mustard. ‘They can’t have been so very bad, surely?’
‘That is a matter of opinion,’ said the President, gravely.
He looked over his shoulder towards the door, opened his file of papers, selected a sheet and pushed it secretively across the table to his colleagues.
Ring was the first to laugh. He smiled, and then he sniggered, and finally he threw back his head and bellowed. Burg-holz at first áttempted a more suitable reaction, drawing his brows together and pulling down the corners of his mouth, but Ring bent forward and pointed out one particular gem and Burgholz was soon laughing so much his belly bumped against the edge of the table. Even the President gave a sly smile behind his hand. Ring beat in a frenzy on his thighs. Burgholz overturned a full mug of beer. The tears rolled down their cheeks.
‘Upsetting your beer is surely not as amusing as all that, gentlemen?’
With reproof in his voice, the President stretched across and took back the offending sheet of paper. The other two rearranged their faces into lines more becoming to a judge.
‘Of course not, of course not,’ murmured Burgholz, blowing his nose.
This document,’ continued the President, ‘is an outrage of obscenity and propaganda at its most dangerous and vile. In my opinion it is our bounden duty to accept the Prosecutor’s plea for death by decapitation. An example must be made of this man. We must act according to the best interests of the State, and not according to the emotional dictates of the heart.’
And picking up his pen he wrote the word ‘decapitation’ at the foot of a document and signed his name with a legal flourish. He pushed pen and document across the table to his colleagues. Burgholz signed at once, without even pausing for thought. Ring hesitated, drummed his fingers on the table, frowned and sighed and finally with great reluctance wrote his name. Each letter seemed wrung from him by force. The President watched him with growing dislike. This man Ring was coming daily to be a bigger thorn in his flesh. He would have to see what he could do about having him transferred to a more dangerous theatre of war. The Eastern front, perhaps.
The document signed, they relaxed in their chairs and drank a few more beers, ate a few more sausages. Burgholz opened his mouth and gave a gentle, rolling belch. He looked up in mild surprise as he did so, staring wonderingly at his two colleagues as if trying to decide which of them was the culprit.
The President called in the clerk of the court and dictated the verdict and sentence with all the solemnity called for by the occasion. The three judges then picked themselves up and proudly goosestepped through the door and back to the court, followed by the clerk at a respectful distance. The press-gan
ged audience at once shot to its feet. Only Paul Bielert remained seated, leaning against the wall and smoking.
The President looked across at him and scowled. The insolence of the man was beyond all credibility. But the Gestapo were full of their own importance these days. It was their hour of glory and they were making the most of it in a power-crazed frenzy of terrorism. Their hour would soon pass, reflected the President, as he seated himself. The Russians and the Americans were stronger than anyone had ever suspected, and the time was not far ahead when the Gestapo would find their power evaporated and themselves in the position of their present victims. One day, thought the President, rolling a hand back and forth across the table, as if he were kneading a breadcrumb, one day he would have the pleasure of condemning Paul Bielert to a death by decapitation. It never crossed his mind that he himself might by that time be removed from the bench. Who, after all, could attach any blame to a judge? A judge did not make the laws, he only carried them out.
He looked again at Bielert, and this time there was a thin, sarcastic smile on the man’s lips. With an uneasy frown, the President turned away. He began speaking very quickly, in a flurry of words.
‘In the name of the Führer Adolf Hitler and of the German people, I hereby pronounce the verdict of the court in the case of the accused Lt. Bernt Viktor Ohlsen of the 27th Tank Regiment.’ He paused a moment and took a deep gulp of air. Bielert’s glassy eyes were still upon him, and for a moment the President had a queasy sensation at the pit of his stomach, as if – absurd idea! – it was his own sentence he was pronouncing. ‘After considering the matter, the court considers that the prisoner is guilty on all counts in the original indictment and is in addition guilty on the extra charges of cowardice and desertion. He is therefore dishonoured and shall be sentenced to death by decapitation. All his worldly goods shall be seized by the State, and the expenses of the trial shall be at the prisoner’s own charge. His name shall henceforth be expunged from the registers. The body shall be buried in an unnamed grave. Heil Hitler!’