by Sven Hassel
Limping and with faces drawn with pain the two officers report to the armourer’s workshop for temporary light duty, a duty any prisoner at Torgau would prefer to avoid.
After a couple of weeks with the armourer they are sent to the convalescent squad, which drills from early morning to late at night.
On the wall at one end of the parade ground is painted in large white letters:
GELOBT SEI, WAS HART MACHT†
The worst thing of all in the military prison was that Iron Gustav‡ was there. Torgau’s feared Hauptfeldwebel, who sneaked around on rubber soles like an avenging angel in infantry uniform. The prisoners and the permanent staff feared him equally. Experienced men, who had spent a long time at Torgau, on one side of the cell doors or the other, contended that if Iron Gustav looked at a man for more than three minutes the unhappy person would just drop dead. A glance from Iron Gustav’s icy blue eyes was enough to freeze the blood. Another unusual thing about this little, strongly-built, iron-hard Feldwebel was his voice, which sounded like the cracking of dry sticks. He always used as few words as possible. But every word contained as much as a whole book. Even a mentally defective deaf mute could understand the words that shot from Gustav’s tight mouth. He never shouted, as did other Unteroffiziers. If you were not standing close to him you could not hear what he said. But that wasn’t necessary.
There is a story about a totally paralysed Unteroffizier who was lying in the infirmary here. The Army Medical Commission from Berlin had declared him completely paralysed. It had, therefore, been decided to pardon him and send him home. This was so shockingly unusual that even the prisoners rattled the bars of their cells when they heard about it. The day before the paralysed soldier was to be discharged, however, Iron Gustav decided to go up and see this strange person who was leaving Torgau in such an irregular fashion.
With the peak of his cap well down over his eyes he silently entered the ward, and stood looking at the paralytic, who in a few seconds, at the very sight of Iron Gustav, had become even more paralysed than he was before.
Iron Gustav’s lips parted and fired three words at the paralysed Unteroffizier:
‘Attention! Qui-ick march!’
What an entire medical commission had not been able to cure, with all their medical knowledge, Torgau’s Hauptfeldwebel cured in thirty-one seconds.
The completely paralysed man sprang out of bed like a mountain goat, ran out of the ward, across the parade ground and into the prison office, where he cracked his paralysed feet together and shouted in a loud voice:
‘Prisoner 226 reporting k.v.22 from the infirmary!’
Since then Iron Gustav has always visited the incurable cases, which the doctors have given up.
Iron Gustav can not only cure human beings. He can also get horses and mules back on their feet, when the veterinary surgeons are helpless.
When the punishment companies return to Torgau late in the evening Iron Gustav is waiting to meet them, dressed in a pure white tunic. He wears this tunic, winter and summer. A soldier is never too cold or too warm, he says. The weather is of no consequence to him.
They say he never notices whether it is winter or summer.
The punishment companies have always to finish the day’s duty by marching round Iron Gustav, singing loudly:
‘Es ist so schön, Soldat zu sein!’
It is the only song Iron Gustav is fond of.
On Saturday morning their stay at Torgau is ended for Oberst Frick and Oberleutnant Wisling. They are collected while the punishment company is on duty.
Three military policemen are waiting in the prison office. Silently they leave Torgau. In the evening they arrive in Berlin, and are handed over to the military armed guard on the station.
The Rail officer, a Rittmeister, considerably older than Oberst Frick, feels at something of a loss. If they had been other ranks he would have known what to do with them. Into the cells until they were picked up. Instead he offers them cigars and a glass of wine, even although hospitality is against regulations.
At 22.00 hrs the air-raid signal sounds. Everybody goes to the shelters. Ill at ease, and obviously embarrassed, the Rittmeister tells them that in the case of an attempt at escape he will be forced to fire on them.
‘I’m sorry, but those are the orders,’ he explains, showing them his weapon, a 6.35 dress pistol hardly capable of hurting anything at a distance of more than half a yard.
Right over the railway station a target marker blooms like a Christmas tree, and the air shakes with the sound of bomber motors.
They move closer to one another in the shelter. The Rittmeister has placed himself between the two prisoners and addresses them as ‘comrades’.
Then the bombers arrive. Railway lines are twisted into unrecognisable shapes, heavy goods wagons fly through the air like tennis balls. A railwayman is thrown clear across the goods station and is smashed to pieces against the 1914–18 War Memorial.
Burning phosphorous flows down the streets. Human flesh melts away in it. People are stifled in cellars. There are many casualties in Berlin that night.
The Flak-guns roar and bombs explode. Now and then a bomber is hit and explodes in the air in a giant rain of stars high above the city.
In the air-raid shelter the Rittmeister is telling Oberst Frick what he likes about the music of Sibelius.
Oberleutnant Wisling sits with his eyes closed and dreams of the past. He thinks about his time at Potsdam, when he was attending War School I, and remembers the pretty, and willing girls on the benches at Sans Souci. He shivers and curses himself. Now everything is over for him, and merely for disclosing his real feelings that ice-cold night up on the Arctic Circle.
He should have kept his mouth shut like Major Pihl and the others, and then he might have had a chance of living through the war. Now there was no chance for him. The stupidest man in the army even, would know where this was leading. The only uncertain thing was whether they would shoot him or hang him. They didn’t often behead military personnel. Only civilians. Shooting or hanging was better, anyway.
Oberst Frick, who had been given his monocle back when he left Torgau, polishes it thoughfully, before replacing it in his eye. He inspects the Rittmeister, who looks very old and does not seem to fit his uniform.
‘Sibelius is, of course, a great composer, but I am afraid I have little understanding of that. I am a professional soldier. I was fourteen years of age when I entered the Cadet School, and I have never had time to occupy myself with music.’
A long, piercing howl breaks into their conversation. The air raid is over. It is the All Clear sounding.
Round about in Berlin fires are burning. An acrid, evil-smelling smoke rolls down over the city.
‘There they go, those bloody air-gangsters, back home again,’ rages an elderly Home Guard with the party insignia on his chest. ‘Kill innocent women and children, they can do that all right!’
Nobody bothers to answer him.
C’est la guerre, the little Legionnaire would have said.
For a brief instant Oberst Frick thinks of escaping. It would be the easiest thing in the world to knock the old Rittmeister down. There is panic everywhere in the burning city. There would be time enough to get safely away before they could pull themselves together enough to come in pursuit. He had many friends in Berlin, and even if discovery might cost them their lives, he felt sure that they would help him. Just one night at each place, down to Osnabrück and into Holland, then contact the Dutch Resistance. One of his friends had done it. He deserted from Germersheim during outside duty. Once a man can get out of sight with the Dutch Resistance he has a good chance of surviving.
He looks around for a weapon and decides on the Rittmeister’s desk lamp.
Oberleutnant Wisling looks at him with slitted eyes. They understand one another immediately. There are no guards between the Rittmeister’s office and the great station hall, which is crowded with hurrying people. If they can get that far, they’re
safe. It would be like jumping into a swamp, the mud would close around them and hide them.
Then out of one of the exits and away into the burning streets.
Over the back of the chair hangs the Rittmeister’s belt and pistol holster. We must take that with us, the Oberst thinks. He nods to Wisling, who gets up as if to stretch his legs. He reaches for the lamp shaking with tenseness. He has his hand on it when the door flies open and a young, steel-helmeted Leutnant enters, followed by five infantrymen armed with machine-pistols. They come with all the soundlessness of a Tiger tank on the attack.
The Leutnant is energetic and active. His pale-blue eyes shine from a dirty smoke-blackened face. He salutes carelessly with two fingers to the brim of his helmet and nods towards the two officers who are staring at him in amazement.
‘This them?’ he snarls, brutally.
‘Yes,’ answers the Rittmeister, crushing his cap on to his head in sheer confusion. ‘These are the two gentlemen who are waiting for you.’
‘Gentlemen, that’s a good one!’ grins the Leutnant, pulling out his heavy P.38 and pointing the muzzle at the two prisoners. ‘But if that’s the way we’re doing it. Okay by me! Gentlemen,’ he trumpets through his nose, weighing the pistol in his hand, ‘it is my duty to warn you that on any attempt to escape this will go off! Do not think that you can commit suicide by attempting to escape from us! You would not be the first I have hit in the lower end of the spine.’ He smiles like a snarling wolf. He is obviously accustomed to dealing with prisoners.
Odd that he’s not with the Military Police, thinks Oberleutnant Wisling, looking at the Leutnant’s white infantry lanyard, but then he recalls that the infantry is home for both the best and the worst of officers. If you are looking for a true gentleman you can always find one in the infantry, and if you are looking for a thoroughgoing scoundrel you can always find one of those there too.
‘Shall we be getting along,’ grins the Leutnant, bobbing impatiently at the knees.
‘In all friendliness, of course! Double up now, gentlemen! Let’s get this over with. We prefer not to be in your company longer than necessary.’
Outside the railway station a lorry with a tarpaulin cover is waiting for them.
‘Into the coach,’ orders the Leutnant, harshly.
‘Where are we going?’ asks Oberst Frick.
‘Shut it,’ snarls a young soldier, giving him a blow with the butt of his weapon.
At a breakneck pace the lorry drives through Berlin. It swings through the gates of the pompous General Command building in Bendlerstrasse, where they are taken down into a cellar. An Oberfeldwebel greets them with rough kindliness. He is also an infantryman. They have to hand in all their personal property: Belt, braces, bootlaces. It wouldn’t do for them to hang themselves and cheat the court martial.
‘Open your mouths an’ we’ll smash ’em in for you,’ promises a brutal-looking old soldier with an S.A. emblem on his breast pocket.
Ten minutes later they are fetched again and taken upstairs.
A fat major of Jägers, sitting arrogantly behind a desk, introduces himself as prosecuting officer at their trial. He eyes them for a moment as if they were cattle he was thinking of buying. He flips over a few pages of the documents which lie in front of him and leans back in his chair with a satisfied expression.
‘Gentlemen, I have decided to do everything in my power to ensure your being sentenced under paragraph 91a.’ He snaps his fingers. ‘That means to say that we intend you to be executed, and that I feel almost certain that I shall be able to see to it that you swing. You have been responsible for the perpetration of an infamous crime up there on the Arctic front. If the rest of the Army were to follow your example we’d soon lose the war. But, thank God, there are only a few of your kind in the great German Army. Hang you will!’ He passes his hand gently over the gold party badge on his chest.
‘Did you know that a man can take up to twenty minutes to die on the end of a rope?’ he asks with a sardonic grin. ‘Where you are concerned I hope it will take twice as long. It is my duty to attend every execution with which I am concerned as prosecuting officer. I do not normally attend but in your case it will be a very great pleasure. Guard!’ he roars, in a voice that rings through the office.
Startled, the two infantrymen tramp into the office, convinced that the prisoners must have attacked the prosecutor.
‘Remove these two scoundrels from my presence,’ yells the Major, hysterically. ‘Get them out of here, throw them in the worst cell we have!’
The cells in the cellar at Bendlerstrasse resemble cages at the zoo. Thick vertical bars separate them from the corridors, along which guards perambulate continually.
‘Pigs, dirty pigs,’ whispers an artillery Hauptmann in the cell next to Oberst Frick. His face is beaten up and swollen. One eye is completely closed.
‘What in the world has happened to you?’ asks the Oberst, quietly. His body begins to tremble.
‘They beat me,’ whispers the artillery officer. ‘Smashed my teeth in, sent an electric current through me. They want me to confess to something I never did.’
‘Where are we?’ asks Oberleutnant Wisling, curiously.
‘Third Army Court Martial Unit, section 4a, directly under the jurisdiction of the J.A.G.,’ a Stabszahlmeister replies. ‘Don’t expect anything good! Its short and not sweet here. I’ve been here three weeks. It’s like living in a railway station. You get the impression that half the Army’s up for court martial. There’ll be nobody left soon. They say we’re short of soldiers and yet we’re shooting our own quicker’n the Russians can.’
‘What have you done?’ asks Oberst Frick, looking at the supply officer.
‘Nothing!’ answers the Stabszahlmeister.
A muffled laugh comes from the cell opposite them.
‘There’s no place like a gaol to meet innocent men,’ jeers an Obergefreiter.
‘Why are you here?’ the Oberst asks a naval officer, the captain of a corvette, who is sitting in his cell, humming, seemingly without a care in the world. His left eye has been shot away leaving only a raw hole.
‘For singing,’ smiles the naval officer, amusedly.
‘Singing?’ asks the Oberst, doubtfully.
‘That’s what I said.’
‘They can’t gaol you for that,’ says the Oberst.
‘Can’t they, though,’ answers the sailor. ‘They can gaol you for a lot less than that.’ He begins to sing, softly:
Wir werden weitermarschieren23
wenn Scheisse vom Himmel fällt.
Wir wollen zurück nack Schlicktown,
denn Deutschland ist der Arsch der Welt!
Und der Führer kann nicht mehr!
‘The gentlemen with the oak leaves on their collars didn’t like my lyric. So now they’ll probably have me hanged.’
‘Impossible,’ cries the Oberst, unbelievingly. ‘People do not get hanged for such nonsense!’
‘In this case they do,’ smiled the naval officer. ‘I sang it standing on the bridge of my submarine when we came back from a foray and ran into the U-boat base at Brest. They’ll hang my first officer, too. He asked a high-up officer in the SS who had come out to welcome us back, whether Grofaz† was still alive.’
‘Was he drunk?’ asks Oberst Frick, wonderingly.
‘No just inquisitive. What a party we’d have had if somebody had put a bomb under Hitler while we were out fighting the Jack Tars.’
The piercing howl of an air-raid warning siren breaks off the conversation.
A Feldwebel rushes down the corridor.
‘All prisoners on the floor with hands folded at the back of their necks! When you’re lying down you’re safe from shrapnel. Anybody getting to his feet will be shot down without mercy!’ he roars.
Immediately after, the building is shaken by an explosion. The lights go out and the whole prison is in darkness. Every so often the light from a flare illuminates fearful ashen faces.
An op
pressive silence descends on the prison. Then the roar and crash of exploding bombs. It sounds as if they are dropping them in quick succession in the neighbourhood of Spree. Plaster rains from the ceiling. It is almost as if it were snowing. There is a tinkling of broken windows. Flaming phosphorous gutters.
Berlin groans in its death throes. The heavy Flak-guns on Bendlerstrasse thunder incessantly.
‘Help, help, let me out! Mother! Mother!’ it is the shrill voice of a child.
‘Shut up, you little bastard,’ roars a harsh, commanding voice. ‘Stay down on the floor!’
Two shots are heard. A lamp flames. A suppressed oath, and all is quiet again.
It is the hour of death. Death outside the walls. Death inside them. Everywhere death is hastening by. In movement, or crouching in a corner, one can feel his cold shadow pressing close to one.
Some get accustomed to it, become phlegmatic. Others break down under it and end in the melancholy madhouse. Some again are silenced by a rifle shot. Throughout the city nerves are tautened to breaking-point, in prisons, infirmaries, air-raid shelters, streets, submarines, in the oil-stinking interiors of tanks, in training barracks. Wherever one may look, death and fear rule supreme.
A long howl on the siren proclaims the end of the raid, but the respite is only for a few hours. Then the bombers, with the white star or the red-white-and-blue rings, are back again.
Berlin is burning.
Fire engines thunder through the streets. Their task is hopeless. Day in and day out the Berlin fire services fight the flames lighted by the incendiary bombs.
An uneasy, irritable noise is heard from the corridor. Keys jingle. Iron strikes against iron.
‘Damnation! The lousy bastard’s hanged himself!’
‘Save us the trouble,’ says another voice, harshly. ‘We ought to put the lot of ’em up against the wall and knock ’em over with an SMG!’
At eight o’clock the first of the prisoners go before the court martial. Late in the afternoon a platoon comes to remove the prisoners who have been sentenced. They are taken away never to return. Nobody knows what happens to them.