The Generals

by Per Wahlöö

  Lieutenant Brown: Captain Schmidt.

  Major von Peters: Alone?

  Lieutenant Brown: Yes.

  Major von Peters: It’s getting tiresome having to repeat it, Brown, but it should be ‘Yes, sir’. Is Schmidt in uniform?

  Lieutenant Brown: Yes, sir.

  Major von Peters: Well, that’s something.

  Colonel Orbal: Then let’s start, shall we? Summon the parties.

  Captain Schmidt: At Saturday’s session matters prior to national liberation were dealt with. Does the presidium consider that that part of the commission calls for further study?

  Colonel Orbal: No, no.

  Captain Schmidt: We come then to the time of the formation of the militia before the liberation; this moment—perhaps I needn’t point this out especially—has considerable judicial significance, as this extra-ordinary court martial is not bound to pronounce sentence in cases which arose prior to it.

  Major von Peters: You needn’t point out so bloody much, Captain Schmidt. It’d be better if you kept to points of prosecution.

  Colonel Orbal: Yes, so that we get somewhere.

  Captain Schmidt: I shall proceed with the case for the prosecution itself in a moment. At first I should just like to be rid of one more formality. I hereby submit that the militia began to function as a military unit the moment the independent State was proclaimed and that Velder from that moment in time, that is 0530 hours on Independence Day, was subject to military law.

  Major von Peters: That seems absolutely obvious. Get to the point.

  Captain Schmidt: The first section of the case for the prosecution covers the period of the first thirteen months of Velder’s service in the militia. During this period he committed offences on thirty-two occasions. All these fall within the framework of military penal regulations, and they must be judged all the more seriously in consideration of the fact that the tense and critical situation during the nation’s first year made the position comparable to a state of emergency. In all these thirty-two cases, the main evidence consists of Velder’s own confessions. To avoid any unnecessary waste of time, I do not intend to call upon the accused for each separate charge.

  Major von Peters: Why not?

  Captain Schmidt: Mostly because in that case the session would probably go on for years.

  Colonel Pigafetta: That would undoubtedly be highly undesirable.

  Captain Schmidt: There are also some practical reasons. The preliminary investigations have not taken over three years for nothing. Concerning each and every one of these thirty-two charges, Velder has confessed and rendered full accounts of them. These he has sworn on oath, they are witnessed by interrogators from the General Staff Judicial Department and have been perused by experienced psychologists. The completeness and truthfulness of these confessions are beyond doubt.

  Commander Kampenmann: I seem to remember that the accused pleaded not guilty to the first charge.

  Captain Schmidt: That did not concern this part of the case. Of the separate offences in this series of crimes, some are more or less of the same kind. They concern various kinds of insubordination and more serious breaches of duty. I here present the material to the presidium of the court with the recommendation that the accused be given the opportunity of pleading guilty to these offences all in one go, so to speak.

  Colonel Orbal: Aha. I see. Do you plead guilty to these thirty-two offences?

  Velder: Yes, sir.

  Colonel Orbal: Then that’s that.

  Major von Peters: One moment, this is quite a list of sins, I must say. Velder!

  Velder: Yes, sir.

  Major von Peters: The fact that you simulated a fainting fit on Saturday does not mean that you needn’t observe elementary discipline. Stand to attention.

  Velder: Yes, sir.

  Major von Peters: So you’ve been guilty of absence without leave seven times by just not turning up on duty. In most cases you’ve quoted various personal reasons for your behaviour.

  Velder: Yes, sir.

  Major von Peters: Four times, you were so drunk on duty that your fellow-soldiers were forced to lock you up so that you wouldn’t do yourself any harm, it says here.

  Velder: Yes, sir.

  Major von Peters: You’ve fallen asleep while on guard-duty a number of times, I see, and sat fishing during guard-duty. On eleven occasions when on guard-duty, which no doubt you remember, you’ve brought women with you into military areas and …

  Velder: Only one, sir. I mean, it was the same woman each time.

  Major von Peters: Don’t interrupt me, man. Are you insane? And you’ve had intimate relations with them in guard-posts and ammunition depots and various other places. On one of these occasions you were surprised by your Section Leader. You had on that occasion undressed and left your own and the woman’s clothes lying in the guard-post alongside arms, ammunition and map-holders, while you had sexual intercourse with each other on the beach three hundred yards away.

  Colonel Orbal: I say, I haven’t read all that. Hand over those papers.

  Major von Peters: On this occasion you seem to have excused yourself by saying it was a warm night and you felt like a bathe.

  Velder: Yes, sir, that’s correct.

  Major von Peters: We have been given an admittedly confused answer, but at least an answer to the question of how it came about that Velder became a soldier. But can anyone tell me why the hell this man wasn’t executed there and then? Or at least dismissed the service?

  Captain Schmidt: To enlighten you on that matter, and on a number of other relevant questions, I request to be allowed to call a witness.

  Major von Peters: Who?

  Captain Schmidt: A person called Roth, who was the accused’s leader in the militia during the first thirteen months after the liberation.

  Major von Peters: Have this witness called, Mateo.

  Colonel Orbal: What? What did you say? What’s this all about?

  Colonel Pigafetta: A witness, who is to be summoned.

  Colonel Orbal: Oh, yes, of course. Call him in.

  Lieutenant Brown: Mr Roth, you are now to bear witness. Do you swear by Almighty God to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

  Roth: I do.

  Lieutenant Brown: I should remind you that this is a court martial and perjury is a punishable offence.

  Roth: Hullo, Velder. It’s been a long time, indeed it has. Hardly recognised you.

  Major von Peters: No fraternising with the accused, please.

  Captain Schmidt: You’re no longer in military service, are you?

  Roth: No, I left the militia after thirteen months, when the danger was over, so to speak, and became a farmer again, just as I was before. I had a farm quite near here, fourteen miles west of Oswaldsburg, and still have. Great big place. Now of course, it’s mostly army supplies.

  Major von Peters: Is there anything wrong with army supplies?

  Roth: Well—wrong—you know—as things are, one can’t grumble.

  Captain Schmidt: How did it come about that you became Section Leader in the militia?

  Roth: Group Leader it was called. Now did that come about? Well, someone has to do these things, don’t they? I was an experienced hunter and a good shot, and that was enough.

  Captain Schmidt: Can you, in your own words, tell us about the formation of the militia and the circumstances within the force?

  Commander Kampenmann: Especially in connection with your relations to Velder.

  Roth: The militia came about more or less … well, if not exactly at random—but anyhow very hastily and in a strange way. The whole idea of liberation, and all that, was said to be pacifist and—yes, sorry—anti-militaristic. We were short of arms and had no trained men, and there was never any question of being able to offer any resistance if the mainland lot decided to start bombing and landing troops from the sea. We simply had to rely on them being completely foxed over there, at least for a few days. Then our proclamations and international pr
essure would do the trick, and that’s what happened, too. We relied on the armed forces not daring to do anything until they’d got clearance from the politicians and that that would take at least a couple of days before the politicians had had time to realise what had happened. We’d reckoned all that out, and we were right, too.

  Captain Schmidt: You keep saying ‘we’ all the time—I suppose you mean the Liberation Committee.

  Roth: Well, at that time, we all felt very much welded together as a group, all of us. What I said just now about not offering resistance was only in reference to the Army, of course. There was one thing we were much more scared of, and that was the police. There were several towns on the mainland only a few hours away from here, and we could almost certainly reckon on the police there not standing about with their hands in their pockets while we annexed a bit of the country for ourselves. In some way or other, we had to repulse purely police actions—otherwise a hundred or two hundred policemen could just come ashore and arrest us and put an end to the revolution within a few hours. So the only answer was to form a militia. They say that the members of the Council—or the Liberation Committee as it was called right at the beginning—drew lots out of a hat for who should be chief of the militia. The woman, Aranca Peterson, was there too, but it was Oswald who won … so to speak.

  Major von Peters: General Oswald, if you don’t mind. And listen to me …

  Colonel Pigafetta: Calm down, von Peters, and let the witness tell his story in his own way.

  Roth: He wasn’t in fact a general then. About half of the soldiers that were here on the island joined us, about fifty men, and some of the policemen. Then we started at about midnight, opening the stores and arming ourselves. The division into groups had been done beforehand roughly. Most of the two thousand five hundred, who belonged to the so-called inner section, had dropped in during the week. At about three in the morning, we’d managed to get hold of members of the resident population who were considered to be directly in opposition and dangerous, and collected them up into a temporary camp. That was easy, as there weren’t many of them, and the lists had been ready ages beforehand. No one offered any resistance. Not a shot was fired.

  Commander Kampenmann: Was the accused already under your command at the time?

  Roth: Command—oh—well. Velder was in my group. He had volunteered because he was big and strong and could handle a machine-gun. In the morning at half-past five, the declaration of independence and our appeal to the United Nations for a peaceful settlement went out over our own and a lot of foreign radio stations—our own, incidentally, was extremely temporary. The militia was to be in place by then, and it was, too. But it didn’t look up to much. We probably had altogether about four hundred men, pretty well armed, they were, ten machine-guns and four or five artillery pieces which had been brought ashore during the night. I still don’t know who gave them to us, for that matter.

  Colonel Pigafetta: We know. That’s enough.

  Roth: Oh, do you? Wherever that boat came from, it had laid a whole lot of mines too, but they weren’t much use. Not then, anyhow. But they were afterwards, of course, when they tried to blockade us and we mined the coast. Anyhow, the militia were sort of divided up amongst the three harbours, the largest lot placed in and around Ludolfsport, as it was called then. It was only a little fishing village, then, of course, but boats of up to five or six hundred tons could tie up at the quays. We had about two hundred men and two guns there—ordinary 12.5 centimetre howitzers. Two fishing trawlers, each with a machine-gun mounted on the foredeck sailed out of the harbour and anchored there as guard-ships. Oswald, that is General Oswald as he has become, was there and directed the whole thing as well as was possible. There weren’t many orders as such given, anyhow I didn’t hear any, but that didn’t matter because everyone knew what they were supposed to do. At about ten, just what we’d expected to happen happened. A tug and two big motorboats came in towards the harbour, all of them packed with uniformed police. The trawlers, which had the new national flag flying, hailed them, but they went on all the same, and so they opened fire from the trawlers with their machine-guns. One of the police-boats seized up almost at once and stopped, and then the guns began to shoot at the tug. We had a good gunner—and the second shot scored a hit in the stern. The tug began to sink at once, but thank God it swerved out of the channel and got stuck on one of the sandbanks with its stack and bridge above the water, so we could pick up most of those who’d been on board. The motor-boat that was still untouched began to pull away with the other, but it was a slow business, it was, and after a bit of chitchat, Oswald sent off one of the trawlers and took all the policemen prisoner. After an hour or so, he changed his mind and let the motor-boats go again, after we’d taken the police’s arms off them, of course. They only had pistols and tear-gas grenades, anyhow. They’d shot at the trawlers from one of the motor-boats and a fisherman had got a bullet in his shoulder, but that was all. And the police didn’t do too badly anyhow. Five or six copped it, perhaps, when we sank the tug. We got it up again, as a matter of fact, a few weeks later, and it wasn’t badly damaged.

  Captain Schmidt: And then?

  Roth: Then there wasn’t any more fighting. Their planes flew backwards and forwards above us, but quite high up, and we didn’t shoot at them, because we’d appealed to all the international organisations and all the great powers to find a peaceful solution, as it’s called. And they didn’t shoot at us, either. After a few weeks, when they were still at the height of the jawing at the United Nations, they stopped flying over, too.

  Commander Kampenmann: To what extent did Velder take part in all these events?

  Roth: He was in my group. We lay protected behind sandbags on the pier, covering the harbour entrance. That wasn’t actually necessary any longer, as no one ever got that far. But two or three years later, he and I both got a medal. Everyone who’d been at Ludolfsport at the time got one.

  Captain Schmidt: What were the circumstances within the militia during the period that followed.

  Roth: The only important task we had was passport and immigration control. My group did mostly guard-duty, event-free mostly. The militia was also responsible for internal order and other purely police matters. That was even more uninteresting, because all that happened was an accident or two, usually in connection with the big building projects.

  Captain Schmidt: What was your opinion of Velder as a soldier?

  Roth: We didn’t regard ourselves as soldiers.

  Captain Schmidt: How did he behave? Did he obey orders? Was he reliable?

  Roth: Don’t know what to say, really. He didn’t exactly obey orders, but he would have done so if it’d been necessary. I think.

  Colonel Pigafetta: That last comment was an important addition.

  Captain Schmidt: Did Velder seem to you more undisciplined than the others in the group?

  Roth: We—ell, he was full of life. Perhaps more so than the others; than me, for instance. But he was … I mean, I thought he was a good guy.

  Colonel Pigafetta: Why did you leave the militia?

  Roth: I wanted to do something useful. More useful, I mean. At the time, it looked as if the militia had done its job once and for all and could be dissolved, which was what was intended in the first place—except the personnel who saw to immigration control, of course. The development work was in full swing. Oswaldsburg and Ludolfsport were being built up into large cities by our standards, and hotels and restaurants and casinos were springing up like mushrooms out of the ground round Marbella.

  Commander Kampenmann: And the brothels. You forgot them.

  Roth: Yes … but we didn’t see anything wrong with that then. Anyhow, all labour was wanted for production, for development. I was a farmer, and liked farming too. I could be most use there, I thought. At that time, the population was increasing at a rate of between eighty and a hundred people a day.

  Colonel Orbal: Were you the person who caught Velder naked on the ground with a n
aked woman when he should have been on guard-duty.

  Roth: Yes … but how …

  Colonel Orbal: What do you mean … how?

  Roth: I mean, I’ve never told anyone about that …

  Colonel Orbal: What were Velder and that woman up to?

  Captain Schmidt: Answer the colonel’s question.

  Roth: Well, you know … the usual.

  Colonel Pigafetta: Have you ever been in prison yourself?

  Roth: Yes, I was interned for three months during the war … the disturbances, I mean. Then they wanted to send me to a political rehabilitation camp, but I managed to persuade them that I only minded about my farm and could be most use there. That was true, too. Farming here certainly isn’t what it used to be, and then it was even worse. Lots of mouths to feed and with all those half-finished factories …

  Colonel Orbal: About that business on the beach …

  Major von Peters: Cool off, for God’s sake, Mateo.

  Colonel Orbal: What? Why do you sound so strange?

  Captain Schmidt: No more questions.

  Lieutenant Brown: Has the Defending Officer any questions?

  Captain Endicott: Yes. My first question is: were there any service regulations for the militia?

  Roth: No.

  Captain Endicott: Did it often happen that other militiamen behaved in the same irresponsible manner, so to speak, as the accused?

  Roth: Yes.

  Captain Endicott: Were you punished?

  Roth: No.

  Captain Endicott: No more questions.

  Lieutenant Brown: The witness may leave.

  Roth: Goodbye.

  Colonel Pigafetta: Endicott, I know you’re under orders to defend this man, but that doesn’t mean that you have to behave like some film or television hero. Be careful not to exaggerate.

  Major von Peters: Thank God we’ve got rid of that swine. Christ, what an affair! How can such people be allowed to go free? In our country? I had to keep myself well in check. Hardly dared say a thing. If he’d answered me in that insolent way, I’d have shot the wretch on the spot.

  Captain Schmidt: The question of how Velder became a soldier can now be considered to have been investigated. I am prepared to submit the first part of the case, which consists of thirty-two charges, to the court.