by Sven Hassel
The Jehovah’s Witness clicked his heels together.
‘Only the overalls,’ he said. ‘I have no objections to wearing the overalls.’
‘No objections to wearing the OVERalls?’ repeated Sergeant-Major Matho, outraged.
The whole room had by now come to a standstill. In all my years in the German Army, I had never met anything quite like it. I began to have a sneaking respect for Jehovah’s Witnesses. They might have belonged to the lunatic fringe, but it seemed they could hold their own with a Prussian NCO.
‘No objections to the OVERalls, did you say?’ Matho suddenly picked up the discarded greatcoat and shook it as he would a rat. ‘What’s the matter with the rest of the uniform? Don’t you like the colour or something? Don’t you care for the cut of it? Great balls of fire!’ He tossed the coat back to the floor and sent it flying across the room with one almighty kick. ‘What do you think this is, a Paris bleeding fashion show? You’re here to fight a war, not ponce about the place complaining the clothes don’t suit you! You’re willing enough to sit on your great fat arse all day long, guzzling the Führer’s bread and sausages, and then you have the bloody nerve to start grizzling and bloody moaning because you don’t like the look of the bloody uniform!’
‘Sergeant, it’s not the look of it. It’s the whole principle of warfare.’ The Jehovah’s Witness turned earnestly to face the enraged Matho. ‘I happen to be a Christian. Thou shalt not kill . . . I am forbidden by my faith to take up arms or to wear a uniform. It is as simple as that.’
The man turned to go. Matho was up those stairs behind him so fast his hair started to singe. He grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him round and gave him a kick in the backside which sent him crashing over the railings and headfirst to the ground. Swiftly and silently, the room was vacated. We knew only too well what was coming next. We had no desire to stand and watch. We herded like cattle into the corridor outside. Behind that closed door, in the room that stank of musk and dust and human sweat, the grim scene was played to its inevitable conclusion. We heard Matho’s voice rising to an hysterical shriek, cursing the bible, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the church in general. We heard his victim’s replies, low but clear:
‘I cannot help it. I am a Christian. I will not take up arms, I would rather die.’
And we knew, and he knew that he would never come out of that room alive.
We heard Matho unclasping his heavy leather belt and doubtless shoving the buckle under the man’s nose as he said the familiar, meaningless words: ‘Gott mit uns.’
God was with us. The Holy German Army and the Sainted Führer fed his ungrateful children on bread and sausages, and still this maniac stood his weak snivelling ground and refused to fight.
We heard the first loud crack of leather as the belt whipped out and lashed its buckle across the victim’s face. It wasn’t only Matho, there were half a dozen other sergeants there to help him in his task. They took it in turns, competing among themselves to see who could cause the most damage, or who could produce the longest and the loudest scream of agony. It took almost thirty minutes before a blessed silence fell at last over the room and we knew that the suffering had finished. There was only a lifeless form left for them to kick around the floor. Now they could not inflict any more of their insane tortures. They opened the doors and called us in to dispose of the body. There was an eye hanging out of its socket half-way down a cheek. There was a scarlet pulp where the nose had been. The mouth was torn to shreds and the gums split open. We picked up the remnants of vainglorious humanity and threw it out of the window. After the floor was mopped, we continued with the business of the day.
It was all quite normal and in order. Just one more dead body to be picked up and buried in a nameless grave. He probably died under the influence of drink. Fell out of the window in an alcoholic stupor. It was amazing the number of inmates at Sennelager who fell out of windows in alcoholic stupors. It happened every day of the week – nothing to write home about. His wife, if he had a wife, would wear out her shoe leather traipsing from one bureaucratic blimp to another. But no one would be able to give her any satisfactory answers. Probably no one would even try. People were disappearing all the time in the German Army. Who should trouble his head about one murdered Jehovah’s Witness?
We put the matter from our minds and went along to hear the Captain make his traditional speech of welcome to the newcomers – or what was left of the newcomers. Fischer was in the infirmary and the Jehovah’s Witness was dead, and God knows how many more had expired during the night or would vanish during the course of the day.
‘You are here,’ said the Captain, with his pleasant smile, ‘by the grace of God and the Führer. This is your chance to repent and be forgiven. To wipe out the sins of the past and to start again with a clean slate. It is our job, here at Sennelager, to train you to be good and useful soldiers: it is your job to co-operate with us and to show your willingness to serve the Führer as loyal citizens of the Fatherland. There are several ways in which you can do this. Just to give you one example, you may volunteer for special missions when you reach the front line . . . Naturally,’ he concluded, with a deprecating movement of one elegant hand, ‘we shall expect rather more from you than from your fellow-soldiers. This is only natural. This is only right and proper. You have a past to atone for, and you—’
‘Sir!’
A big, burly chap, who, as rumour had it, had been a successful pimp in Berlin before the war, shot up his hand and interrupted the Captain in his full flow of eloquence.
‘Sir!’
The Captain allowed himself only a faint wrinkling of his alabaster brow by way of showing his displeasure.
‘Yes, my man? What is it?’
The jolly pimp sprang to his feet. He must have known as well as anyone that the chances of survival in 999 battalion were pretty remote. He had nothing to lose by making a nuisance of himself and annoying the Captain.
‘Sir, can I ask a question?’ he said.
‘Of course you can,’ said the Captain, smoothing out the wrinkles from his brow. ‘Ask whatever you like. Just try not to take all day about it.’
The man’s question was really very simple. He wanted to know what would happen if a criminal such as himself had his head blown off while he was fighting for the Führer and proving himself a good and loyal citizen of the Fatherland. Would it atone for his past misdemeanours? Would he then be deemed worthy of re-entering the Army as a fully-accredited soldier?
He asked his question in a tone of the most earnest sincerity. A genuine seeker after knowledge. Eager and willing to have his head blown off for the Führer and the Fatherland, so long as he could only be assured that it would reinstate him in the eyes of the Army.
No one dared to laugh, or even so much as smile. Hofmann’s glittering eyes were everywhere at once, but he encountered only a most solemn silence. It seemed as if everybody was hanging in mid-air awaiting the captain’s reply to this most burning of questions.
The Captain tapped his boots impatiently with his riding crop.
‘My dear man, if one dies like a hero, then naturally one is treated like a hero . . . Full provision is made for such a contingency. Article 226 of the Penal Code states quite clearly that anyone falling on the field of battle is granted an automatic pardon. You need have no fears on that score. I trust I have answered your question and set your mind at rest?’
‘Oh yes, indeed, sir. You have indeed, sir. I just wanted to make quite sure that I knew what I was doing before I went and did it.’ The man smiled, cheerfully. ‘Didn’t want to cook my goose; sir, without knowing whether I’d still be alive to eat it afterwards . . . If you see what I mean, sir?’
Over in his corner, Hofmann had taken out his notebook and pencil and was scribbling rapidly. Tiny opened his mouth the merest crack and slid his words out sideways like a second-rate ventriloquist.
‘Shouldn’t care to be in your shoes, mate . . . you’ve not only cooked your bleeding goos
e, you’ve gone and burnt it to a bleeding frazzle!’
The days that followed were tough and brutal, as was the normal pattern of Sennelager, and five more of our volunteers came to grief. One collapsed and died on a route march; one failed to move fast enough when a grenade went off by mistake; and three others panicked at their first encounter with a tank during a training period and were promptly run down and churned to mincemeat to serve as an example to others.
Shortly afterwards, there were several abortive attempts at desertion. Every single man who tried it was recaptured within the first six hours and brought back to Sennelager to be handed over to Lieutenant-Colonel Schramm, the camp executioner.
Schramm was a butcher merely by force of circumstances. Neither by temperament nor by talent was he fitted for the task. He had lost a leg under a tank at Lemberg, which had effectually ended his active career as a soldier. And instead of promoting him to a full colonel and giving him a comfortable job behind an anonymous desk, the authorities, with their malicious wisdom, had seen fit to reward him for his services by posting him to Sennelager. The first execution carried out under his command had given him a shock from which he never fully recovered. By the third and fourth he felt that he was losing his reason. But he had a wife and three young children, and he knew what both their fate and his would be should he refuse to obey orders. So he took to the bottle and had been drinking steadily ever since. He drank before executions to steady his nerves and come to terms with his conscience; he drank during executions to give himself the courage to go through with it; and he drank after executions to forget what he had just done. Since executions ran at the rate of three batches per week, it may be surmised that the Lieutenant-Colonel was very rarely observed to be sober. He used to limp round the camp using his sabre as a walking stick, never saying a word to a soul. Frequently on execution days it happened that he was too drunk to move without support and had to be escorted there and back by the execution squad. No one would ever have dreamt of reporting him to the Camp Commander. Schramm was regarded with pitying contempt, and yet was a general favourite among all the men.
Whenever you saw him in the blurred grey light of early morning, limping across the courtyard with his flask of kummel in his hand, you could be sure that an execution had been arranged. He used always to snatch a few minutes’ extra drinking time at a point mid-way between the ammunition stores and the officers’ mess, where he was safely out of sight of von Gernstein and his prying binoculars. He would sit down on a low wall, rest his chin on the hilt of his sabre, and stare into space thinking God knows what uncomfortable thoughts before pushing his flask back into his pocket and hobbling on his way with his artificial leg creaking with every step. When he arrived at the camp prison he was inevitably offered a large glass of beer; which just as inevitably he accepted. Some time later he would appear with the firing squad and make for the courtyard where the executions took place.
Once an execution was over, he obliterated all traces of the victims from his memory. There was a story told in the camp, and we all believed it, of how the Adjutant had asked him one night in the officers’ mess ‘what sort of show the General had put up?’
‘General?’ said Schramm, looking bewildered. ‘What general?’
‘The one you shot this morning, old boy,’ said the Adjutant. ‘Major-General von Steinklotz.’
‘Von Steinklotz?’ said Schramm. ‘I shot Major-General von Steinklotz?’
He plainly thought he must be suffering from drunken delusions. Amid roars of delighted laughter, he finished off his kummel, staggered out of the mess and fell flat on his face. He was taken home to his wife by a couple of sympathetic lance-corporals, who undressed him and put him to bed without his ever knowing a thing about it.
On two occasions at least he attempted suicide. The first time he hanged himself from the rafters of the attic in his home, but his wife discovered him and cut him down. The second time he took an overdose of drugs, but was flushed out with a stomach pump and sent back on duty. Now and again, in his more lucid moments, he would sit down in the officers’ mess and play the piano. He was an excellent pianist, but rarely sober enough to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time.
Colonel von Gernstein had also lost a leg on active service. He lost two, as a matter of fact, but it was difficult to notice. One thought at first that he was just a bit ungainly in his manner of walking. He had a stiff neck, as well, and was unable to turn his head without also turning the rest of his body. His spine was supported in a steel jacket. His mouth was a thin mauve line, lipless and puckered. He’d left half his face behind at Smolensk, in a battle between German Tigers and Russian T34s. Von Gernstein had been the only survivor to crawl out of the hatch of a burning tank. But he had paid dearly for the privilege. His right eye was fixed for ever in a sightless glassy stare, and one of his hands was a withered talon. And yet it was impossible to feel sympathy for the man. His character repelled you, and after five years of war we had seen far too many obscenities inflicted on the human body to be easily moved to pity.
According to his batman, von Gernstein used to sit up till four o’clock in the morning playing poker with Death and the Devil. He swore that one night he caught a glimpse of them, Death was dressed all in black from head to foot with the cross of the Hohenzollerns round his neck and the Devil in the uniform of an SS Obergruppenführer. A fanciful tale, but some of the more credulous among us actually believed it to be the truth. Many were the rumours of von Gernstein communing with the Devil, von Gernstein holding black masses, von Gernstein resurrecting the dead . . . It was certain, however, that there was some mystery about the man. The light burned in his quarters throughout the night, and always at his private door were parked two big black Mercedes, which arrived every night, punctually at midnight and left again at dawn.
Porta and I one bold, fine day, stoned half out of our senses, risked our lives taking a look inside the Colonel’s quarters. For once even Porta was deprived of speech. It was like coming across Aladdin’s cave in the middle of the Sahara Desert. There were thick pile carpets and Persian rugs all over the floor; Old Master paintings hanging nonchalantly on the walls; rich velvet curtains at the windows and a glittering chandelier winking at us from the middle of the ceiling . . . It scarcely seemed possible that such splendours could exist within the squalor of Sennelager.
One night, I remember, I was on guard duty with Gregor Martin and Tiny. We were standing near the garages and we were watching the thousand flickering lights of the chandelier in the Colonel’s apartment. Quite suddenly, Gregor yelped like a startled dog and dropped his rifle. I jumped backwards with a muffled squawk of terror, and Tiny turned tail and went galloping off with a shout into the night. For there, in profile at the window, there before our staring eyes, was the dread figure of Satan himself . . .
We stood transfixed, Gregor and I. Even when the figure slid out of sight we were unable to take our eyes off the window. Gregor sagged at the knees and clawed about the ground for his rifle, his head tilted back at an angle and his gaze rigid. Tiny, back at the guardhouse, had obviously made his point with some force, for it was only a matter of seconds before Sergeant Linge appeared on the scene demanding to know what all the panic was about. Gregor straightened his sagging knees and extended a tremulous hand towards the window. He opened his mouth and made a croaking sound like a toad with a fishbone stuck in its throat.
‘It was the Devil—’
‘The Devil—’
‘In uniform—’
‘Uniform—’
‘Uniform?’ Linge looked from one to the other of us. ‘What the hell kind of uniform?’
‘SS,’ moaned Gregor.
‘Obergruppenführer,’ I added, feeling it was about time that I made some kind of original contribution to the proceedings.
Linge looked exasperated.
‘For Chrissakes,’ he said. ‘All SS Obergruppenführers look like the Devil. Tell me something new!’
‘This one had horns,’ said Gregor, on a note of sudden and desperate inspiration. ‘Bloody great filthy horns . . . two of ’em, sticking out of his forehead . . . And what’s more,’ he added, with a touch of defiance, ‘he was drinking smoke.’
‘Drinking smoke?’ said Linge.
‘Sulphur,’ I said. ‘Sulphur and brimstone, that’s what it was.’
By this time, the area around the garages was swarming with soldiers coming to our support. Linge clicked his tongue impatiently against his teeth.
‘Hogwash,’ he said, sharply. ‘Balls and bloody hogwash. I never heard such a load of flaming nonsense in all my flaming—’
‘Look!’ said Gregor. ‘There it is again!’
The figure passed across the window and disappeared. Gregor turned and ran, and I wouldn’t swear to it, but I rather think Linge followed him. At all events, when I came to my senses I found I was alone. The whole area was silent. Still as the grave, and twice as sinister. Only the pinpoints of light still flickered and winked in von Gernstein’s apartment, and somewhere on the other side of the windows stalked Satan himself in devilish profile . . .
Twice on my panic-stricken dash across the open courtyard my helmet tumbled off my head and went clattering on to the flagstones, and twice I had to crawl trembling on hands and knees in search of it before I eventually reached the shelter of the guardroom and flung myself, gibbering, through the door. Linge was there, with a face like a bowlful of tripe. He was muttering to himself in a sort of manic frenzy, and he clawed at me as I ran past him.
‘Mum’s the word!’ he said. ‘Don’t tell a soul! You haven’t been near the place all night! Remember that: you haven’t been near the place!’
‘Oh sure,’ I said, sourly. ‘Next thing I know, you’ll be telling me there wasn’t any Devil—’
‘Fuck the Devil! You haven’t been near the place!’
In a sudden frenzy, Linge kicked out at a tin helmet lying on the floor. It sailed up into the air and flew gracefully out the window, which happened to have been closed at the time. There was a shower of broken glass, a dull thud and a yell of angry pain.