The shed was small, but well-organized, the smell of dirt and manure lingering in the air. Gardening tools of various types hung from wooden pegs on the western wall or leaned in tidy stacks near the two corners of that wall. There was a small table on the far wall directly across from the door on which sat a ledger and a pencil. Along the entire length of the eastern wall was a metre-high stack of sandbags, each bag about twenty-five centimetres long. Horcoff noticed Neumann looking at the sandbags.
“Ah yes, Corporal Aachen’s weightlifting sandbags. When the other gardeners noticed how well they kept the weeds out of my beddings they had to have their own,” Horcoff walked over and hefted one in his hands. “The Canadians were quite happy to give us our own supply once we explained what we needed them for. The guards have asked for a share of our spoils, but that’s a small price to pay because we’ll more than triple our harvest due to the lack of weeds.”
The general turned to face Neumann. “But I’m guessing you don’t care much about gardening. Still, this is a suitable and quiet place to talk in private. So please, Sergeant, feel free to tell me your concerns.”
Neumann gave the shed a quick once-over and then looked at the general. “I believe I may have determined who killed Captain Mueller.”
“I don’t understand,” Horcoff said, perplexed. “I thought Lieutenant Neuer killed him. Wasn’t he the one that tried to kill Corporal Aachen in the shower?”
“He was part of the group involved in that incident, yes. But he wasn’t the instigator.”
“And have you determined who that instigator is?”
Neumann nodded.
“So he is the murderer then?”
Neumann shook his head.
“How could that be? He instigated an attack on Corporal Aachen which was almost identical to the attack on Captain Mueller.”
“While he admitted he was behind Aachen’s attack, he denied being involved in Mueller’s murder.”
“Of course he would deny that. He’s lying.”
“No, he wasn’t. I’m sure of it.”
“You sound quite confident of that, Sergeant,” General Horcoff said. “Who is the person we are talking about, anyway?”
Neumann hesitated, but then told the general.
“Heidfield! The man is a criminal, no doubt about it, regardless of how he fought on the battlefield,” the general scoffed. “He was involved in such activities in Africa and hasn’t changed his ways. In fact, it seems lack of battlefield action has made him an even more notorious criminal, especially considering his actions against Aachen and Mueller.”
“Sergeant Heidfield did not kill Mueller. I interrogated him myself.”
“I’m sorry, Sergeant Neumann, I don’t mean to disparage your abilities but in the end, you are only a village policeman while Sergeant Heidfield is from Berlin. His urban sensibilities and criminal sophistication are far above your abilities.”
“Heidfield is nothing but a small-town crook with big-city fantasies. He hid nothing from me,” asserted Neumann, his voice rising slightly.
“I beg to differ, Sergeant. You may be a good policeman but you are also a good man, too good in some cases. There are others in this camp, who would be much more … compelling in their interrogations of Heidfield. And no doubt they would be able to use their skills to get a confession out of him. It wouldn’t be pretty but they would get results.”
“Which would be incorrect and allow Mueller’s actual murderer to go free.”
“I insist you allow me to report your findings to command so that they can deal with Sergeant Heidfield. You, of course, will get credit for weeding him out in the attack on Corporal Aachen and leading us down this path. But leave the interrogation to the more experienced.”
Neumann took a step towards the general. “I may not be Gestapo. I may not be willing to use various forms of thumbscrews on people. But my interrogation techniques get much better results, more honest results. Heidfield did not kill Captain Mueller.”
“Please, Sergeant Neumann, this should not be a question of professional competence. You must allow—”
“—When did you join the Legion, General?” Neumann asked, cutting off Horcoff and taking another step forward. “Was it directly after the war, or a few years later?”
Horcoff froze, staring at Neumann with disbelief. “I beg your pardon?” he asked after a moment. “What are you talking about?”
“You became a legionnaire sometime between the wars, didn’t you? Civilian life wasn’t what you expected, especially for someone of your standing. You were probably blamed in some way for the Fatherland’s defeat in 1918 so you decided to redeem yourself through the Legion. Which is understandable—many veterans of the First World War did so.”
“This is preposterous, Sergeant Neumann. You have really crossed the line here. The incident with Corporal Aachen has severely affected your abilities. And only because of that am I willing to forget this conversation and—”
“—and then when Rommel came to Africa and was looking for men experienced in desert fighting, he turned to German legionnaires, especially ones he probably knew from the previous war. And again, here was another chance to redeem yourself, to fight for the Fatherland again, this time for victory. Also understandable.”
“Sergeant Neumann, you are bordering on insubordination if you—”
“But you decided to keep your Legion past a secret from the rest of us. Rommel no doubt knew but didn’t care. You could effectively lead men, you could fight. Most of the legionnaires could. But only he knew, or a few others, like Colonel Ehrhoff, who also didn’t care. But Captain Mueller. He must have known, somehow. Possibly you served together—”
“—I was not a legionnaire!” Horcoff shouted. “I am no soldier of fortune out for faded glory. I am a general of the Wehrmacht. A winner of the Iron Cross First Class with two clusters. I’ve been in briefings with the Führer himself. And if you continue in this manner, I will have you brought up on charges.”
Neumann looked at the general who was gripping the sandbag quite tightly with his fingers. “When they shipped us out from North Africa after we were captured, there were a number of troop ships. Most of them carried soldiers like me and Aachen, members of the Wehrmacht,” Neumann said. “However, there was another ship, a single ship that carried other soldiers—Italians, some Vichy French who refused to fight for Free France, and a group of Wehrmacht soldiers who were different from the rest. Legionnaires who had fought for our side. Men like Colonel Ehrhoff and the group in his hut. Mueller was also on that ship, but he wasn’t really part of the group. He had been a legionnaire, but retired after his five years and went back to teaching. Only when war started again did he sign up.
“And then there’s you, General Horcoff. You were on that ship as well. You said so yourself. You mentioned Italians and how their cooking and lazy attitude bothered you. But the only ship that had Italians was also the one that had legionnaires. No other ship of German prisoners had Italians. Only yours. Which means you were a legionnaire.”
Horcoff stumbled back against the stack of sandbags, face white.
“And that’s been the common theme in all of this: the Legion. Mueller was a legionnaire; Pohlmann, who came to view Mueller’s body and ran, deciding to escape rather than face an interrogation from me, was a legionnaire; Ehrhoff is a legionnaire and remains one, as do all his men. The only other legionnaire left is you. But for some reason you don’t want to be considered a legionnaire; you want everyone to think you are a regular Wehrmacht general. But why, General? It’s not a big problem. Rommel knew who you were, the Leader probably did as well, but they didn’t care. All they saw was an experienced German soldier, experienced in desert warfare, who was willing to fight for their country. There was no reason to—”
Horcoff sat down hard on the top of the stack of sandbags, blinking quickly, sweat forming on
his brow, looking like an old man about to have a heart attack. Neumann stopped his tirade and leaned in close. “General Horcoff? Can you hear me?”
Horcoff’s breath came out in staccato gasps. He looked at Neumann but a second later his eyes rolled back in his head. His breath stopped for a second.
“Are you okay? General Horcoff? Can you hear me?”
After several seconds, Horcoff finally let out a long gasp. His eyes returned and looked at Neumann. He looked as if he was about to faint. But a second later, life had returned and with it, a look of anger, like an animal readying to attack.
Neumann raised his arms quickly as the general swung the sandbag in an arc towards the sergeant’s head. Though he managed to partially block it with his forearm, the blow hit him on the top of his head, filling his vision with a spray of sparks, followed by a short-lived blackness. Neumann quickly regained his bearings, but his vision was blurred and his head and his forearm throbbed with pain. He took two stumbled steps backward, but the general moved forward, swinging the bag again. This blow caught Neumann on the shoulder, dislocated the joint, and then bounced up, grazing his head just above the ear. This time he was knocked to the side, colliding into the wall, and knocking a number of tools off their pegs to the dirt floor.
Neumann raised his injured forearm again, but Horcoff’s third blow came low, connecting fully with the side of Neumann’s body where the ribs curved toward the back. The bag burst, sand erupting, spraying all over Neumann’s body and throughout the shed. The sound of his ribs breaking echoed in Neumann’s head and that was quickly followed by an explosive pain that radiated in and around his entire torso. His breath was knocked out of his lungs and he collapsed to the dirt, his body jerking for oxygen and every jerk an eruption of agony.
In a daze, he tried to get away from the attack, his arms and legs scrambling against the dirt and the side of the wall. Yet he only managed to trap himself in one of the corners farthest away from the shed’s door. He banged against the wall, but quickly those attempts became weaker and weaker. He looked at Horcoff approaching as he lost the ability to move his arms. He could not raise them and protect himself. Neumann closed his eyes and waited for the next blow.
34.
You’re a fool, Sergeant Neumann. A complete fool.”
General Horcoff stood over the sergeant, his back facing the door, shaking his head. “I thought Captain Mueller was foolish but you … well, Sergeant, I expected better of you. I expected you to be smart enough to realize that it was good enough to have Lieutenant Neuer take the blame for Mueller’s death. But you had to push harder, to discover the truth. No doubt something to do with honour.”
Horcoff dropped the expended bag of sand on the ground beside Neumann and started looking about. “Unfortunately, honour, as you and I used to know it, has been dead for a number of years. It’s been disassembled and demolished like my grandfather’s manor by that short, little piece-of-shit corporal from Austria.” As he talked, Horcoff glanced over the various gardening tools hanging from pegs, like a farmer searching for a substitute for a lost ax to euthanize an injured animal—something to put it out of its misery.
“I know it’s traitorous to say such things about the Führer, to criticize his actions because he was a great man who put the Fatherland back in its rightful place as the ruler of Europe,” Horcoff said, reaching out for various gardening tools, picking up one or two, before setting them back on their pegs. “But Hitler is a terrible strategist. He has no concept of the proper tactics, of how to implement a military plan of action to achieve the proper results and honour. All the military victories of the Reich, the ones he takes credit for, are the result of brilliant plans of his great generals, Rommel and Guderian, while our greatest blunders, Russia and now this invasion of the continent, are his fault entirely. He is only a corporal, a smart one to be sure but not smart enough to realize that he should allow his generals to plan and fight the wars instead of him.”
Neumann looked about, groaning in pain as he did, his eyes searching for something to use. Underneath a small pile of sand, he found a pair of shears. He struggled to tuck them into his hand. Horcoff noticed his movement and reached down to slap him once across the face. Neumann’s head snapped back and his eyes faded away for a moment or two. The general took that moment to grab the sergeant’s hand, pry open his fingers, and remove the shears. He tossed them aside.
“Still acting foolishly, Sergeant? Still think you can win this battle? Unfortunately, you are dead. They will find your body and wonder who killed you. Many will assume you were punished by somebody for letting Neuer escape or for asking too many questions. And though they will wonder, they will not pursue it. Your death, and of course Mueller’s, will be seen as warnings, telling them not to ask questions, telling them not to speak out.”
Neumann blinked. “Mueller,” he groaned as he slowly and painfully tried to push himself up. But Horcoff pushed him down with a boot to the chest.
“Yes, I killed Captain Mueller; he left me no choice. Somehow he found I had served with the Legion before Rommel came to Africa,” Horcoff said. And then he laughed. “The captain wanted us to be comrades of all things. He even belonged to a cadre of former legionnaires who did not join with the larger group in the camp but still were honoured to be associated with the Legion. And he asked me to join them. He was keen on telling his fellow members about me. Well, I couldn’t have that. I spent too long removing that association from my record, proving that I was a true German, a genuine member of the Wehrmacht who had put aside his past to fight for the Fatherland. Reputation will be everything once we win this war and move forward with the thousand year Reich. Only true and loyal Germans will be part of the Reich, all the traitors will be removed. I couldn’t let Mueller ruin that.
“I asked him to meet me before sunset that morning, here in the shed, so we could discuss it in private,” Horcoff sighed and shook his head. “But he didn’t understand. He said the war was over, Germany had lost. Hitler had ruined the country.”
Horcoff turned around and grabbed another sandbag from the pile. “I must admit those words angered me and I panicked, striking him with the only thing I had on hand,” he said, hefting the bag. “An amazing piece of weaponry, this thing. We used a similar type of bag, filled with rotten fruit, to punish any revolutionaries we captured in Algeria, most of them hapless Blacks or smelly Arabs. We would beat their bodies so they would turn to mush on the inside but on the outside, nothing. So their compatriots or families would find them dead but with not a single mark on them. Many of them believed we had a secret weapon that could kill a man from the inside. Like them, Mueller tried to protect himself but I just beat through his defenses just like we used to do in Algeria.
“Once he was unconscious, I realized I couldn’t leave him in the shed to wake up and tell everyone what I did. Fortunately it wasn’t light yet, so I stuffed my handkerchief in his mouth to keep him quiet in case he woke and took him to his classroom where I hung him from a pipe to make it look like a suicide—another German soldier distraught over the invasion of the continent and the state of the war.”
Horcoff slapped the top of the sandbag with his open hand, a cloud of dust flying off of it. “But you, Sergeant, I will not hang. I’ll kill you here, leave you, and one of the other gardeners will find you. They’ll assume that you were killed by those angry at you for letting Neuer escape. And since I’ve been a strong supporter of you, no one will suspect me this time. Even if they do for some reason, no one will be asking questions anyway because they’ll realize that if someone can get to you, they can get to anyone. That’s the one good thing about German soldiers: they know when to shut up and not ask questions. Except for you of course, which is why you are in this position.”
Horcoff slung the bag over his shoulder preparing to bring it down on Neumann. The sergeant looked up, eyes wide with fear. “Goodbye, Sergeant Neumann. I’m sorry this has to h
appen because you were a good soldier and an excellent squad leader, but you let foolishness get the better of you.”
Horcoff grunted and started to swing the bag down. But a body came flying into the shed, tackling the general like a rugby player. The sandbag flew out of the general’s hand and crashed to the ground on top of Neumann’s boot. It burst apart, the sand exploding into the air like a cloud.
General Horcoff crashed against the back wall of the shed, his arms flailing, the front of his face erupting into blood as his nose hit the wall. Several teeth burst out of his mouth and his breath gushed out in a loud “Ooofff.”
Through the cloud of dust, the general and his tackler crashed to the ground, the general’s body limp. His attacker jumped to his feet, grabbed the unconscious and bloody general by the scruff of his neck, dragged him across the floor of the shed, and tossed him out the door. There was a sound of a struggle outside, of several other men shouting in alarm. The attacker then turned to Neumann, bending down on one knee. He took the sergeant’s head in his hands and slowly turned it this way and that.
“Are you okay, Sergeant?” a voice asked. It was a voice he did not recognize. Neumann groaned in pain.
Through blurred vision, Neumann saw the prisoner. He had seen the face before but it took him several seconds to realize who it was.
“Pohlmann,” he groaned, the burst of pain hitting as he breathed. “I … thought … you escaped.”
“I just pretended to escape because I was worried I might be next, and hid in the camp. It’s a big place—lots of great hiding places,” Pohlmann said with a nod.
“I … wanted to … talk to you…”
“I know. And I thought about coming to you to talk but knew if I showed myself too much, the Canadians would find me. But I was still able to keep an eye on Horcoff.”
“Horcoff … you knew?”
“Not directly. I thought he might be involved because I was the one who told Mueller about Horcoff being in the Legion and knew they were meeting that morning. Mueller told me about it, was pleased the general agreed to meet him.” Pohlmann paused for a moment. “You see, Sergeant, before we were captured Horcoff ordered me to destroy his file, which had information about him being in the Legion. Which is why I ran away from you … sorry Sergeant, I was worried I might be next, that you were working for the general, you were so close that I…” Pohlmann trailed off.
The Traitors of Camp 133 Page 24