The Generals

by Per Wahlöö

  Major von Peters: Granted.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: Turn the accused so that he can look me straight in the eye. That’s right. Thank you. Corporal Velder, do you admit to cowardice in the face of the enemy?

  Velder: No.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: So you do not admit that you left your post at a critical stage because you were afraid? You do not admit your cowardice?

  Velder: No.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: It should be ‘No, sir.’ Have you forgotten that already? Look me in the eye!

  Velder: Yes, sir.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: You know perfectly well that you’re not only a villain but also a cowardly villain, Velder. Do you admit it?

  Commander Kampenmann: Lieutenant Bratianu, we have already seen far too many examples of the consequences of this kind of questioning.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: I understand, sir. For that reason—I emphasise, only because of that reason—I will refrain from further questioning on this point and hand over this part of the case for this extra-ordinary court martial to consider, with the plea that against his own denial, the accused be found guilty of having shown cowardice in the face of the enemy.

  Major von Peters: Yes, that’ll probably be all right.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: I return now to the accomplishment of Velder’s high treason. In order not to give the accused the opportunity to sabotage the procedure of this court martial by malingering, I will allow him to take up his testimony in the same so-called narrative form as before. Captain Endicott, would you be so kind as to see to it that the accused speaks as clearly and concisely as possible.

  Captain Endicott: I shall try to.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: Thank you. And now, Velder, go on with your account of how you betrayed your friends, your superiors, your General and your country.

  Colonel Orbal: That Endicott, what’s he up to again now? Looks very peculiar.

  Major von Peters: Fiddling about, as usual. He’d have made a good social worker, too. Or member of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: Begin, Velder.

  Velder: We drove along the road towards Ludolfsport; the northern or old road which was one hundred and twenty kilometres long. When we’d passed the inn and the place where the road should have been barricaded, Janos Edner said that we should take the road past the ruined church, where I’d let the men bivouac, and fetch the trucks loaded with blockade materials. I did as he suggested. When we got there, the guards were indeed in their places. The rest of the men were asleep inside the ruin. When Edner saw their equipment, he changed his mind again. He then said that we should take both vehicles and men with us—none of the men seemed to suspect anything unusual and they hadn’t attempted to use the radio equipment that had been left behind. I got the vehicles going again and ordered the men to embark. We took both the radio transmitters into our armoured car, drove back to the old road and continued eastwards with the whole convoy.

  The only place where we saw any soldiers was in Brock, a village which lies forty kilometres west of Oswaldsburg. There was a road barrier there too, but the second-lieutenant in command thought that we were on our way to Ludolfsport with reinforcements and let us through without question. It was only twenty kilometres to the next village and in between the two communities ran the border between the Central and the Eastern Provinces. And the border between the first and second military areas too, for that matter. We could now hear quite a bit of radio traffic from the area ahead of us, but we couldn’t really make out what was happening. Everyone seemed to be up and about and carts and cars had been overturned across the road. Quite a lot of people with white armbands were guarding the barriers and a number of them were armed, but not many. Janos Edner and I got down and talked to one who seemed to be a leader. He was a building worker in reality and he told us that the inhabitants of the village had been given the alarm just before two o’clock. There had been some fighting there with a small Army detachment, which had come to occupy the village, but the officer commanding it had been killed almost at once and then a number of the soldiers had changed sides and the others left. We also saw several soldiers with white armbands. I ordered my men out of the vehicles and lined them up without arms. They seemed quite bewildered. The man who was leader let them choose between going over to the People’s Front, as he called it, or being taken prisoner. Six of them went over. The others were taken away, where to I don’t know. Perhaps they were shot. There were already a number of dead, seven or eight, I think, lying on the ground.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: See to it that the accused is not so long-winded, Captain Endicott. This court martial has other things to do besides listening to this swine.

  Major von Peters: Quite right, Bratianu.

  Velder: Aranca Peterson asked what had happened in Ludolfsport, and the leader replied that he didn’t know, but that Stoloff, who was really a building expert, had taken over leadership there. He also said that the telephones were working and it was possible to get through. After some difficulties, Janos Edner managed to get Stoloff on the line. What they said I don’t know, but the end of it was that we left all the arms behind, the trucks and material, the jeep and the other armoured car too, and drove on to Ludolfsport, a distance of about fifty or sixty kilometres still. That was myself, Janos Edner, Aranca Peterson, Danica Rodriguez, the nurse and the two kids. Danica Rodriguez drove, while Edner and I worked on the radio. Now and again on the way, we met carloads of armed civilians. They were wearing white armbands and were driving westwards. There weren’t all that many, of course, but I must have seen between twenty and thirty carloads of volunteers like that. The children had grown frightened and were fretting and crying.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: This is intolerable. There’s a short official account of the tragedy in the second military area, Appendix V VI/7x. Read it out, Lieutenant Brown.

  Lieutenant Brown: Appendix V VI/7x, compiled from a summary of events in the Eastern Province and other military areas on the night of the thirteenth of December, provided by the National Historical Department of the General Staff. Marked Secret according to paragraphs eight, eleven and twenty-two. The text is as follows:

  The developments in Ludolfsport and the Eastern Province, which were to lead to a series of serious disturbances, were due to unfortunate circumstances. In Ludolfsport, considerable enlargement of the harbour facilities had been going on for several months and at the same time a whole new section of the town was being constructed. This work was being done by the same specially trained men who had earlier been responsible for all building activity in the country. Thus about two thousand five hundred of these building workers, most of them housed in the harbour areas, were to be found in the town.

  A certain Boris Stoloff, a close co-operator with Joakim Ludolf, the enemy of the people, and much earlier seconded as organiser of the building industry, was also in Ludolfsport. At 0143 hours on the night of thirteenth of December, the aforementioned Stoloff received a radio-telegram which clarified the Army’s and General Oswald’s intentions to him and described the course of events in the South-Western Province. Stoloff was then in his work-room in the harbour area and within a few minutes was able to raise the alarm in the barracks where the workers were billeted, as well as to those working on the nightshift at the time. The crews of several ships in the harbour also joined the Red revolution. This hastily gathered up mob had no modern weapons at their disposal except those on the patrol-boats and at the coastguard stations, but on the other hand they had unlimited access to explosives, detonators and tools. The tele-centre, situated on the outskirts of the harbour area, was taken over by members of the Coastguard Service and when a few minutes later, regular troops reached the building, they were met with heavy fire and were forced to retreat. When at 0200 hours Colonel Milton Fox advanced into the town at the head of units from the Second Motorised Infantry Reginment, the regular troops were attacked from all quarters by hordes of rebellious workers, armed with bundles of explosives
and even mines they had taken from the coastguard depôt in the harbour. The staff-car carrying Colonel Fox was blown up and not only the driver but the Chief of Staff was also killed. The colonel himself was wounded at the hands of the rebels, together with two other senior officers. He was taken to Boris Stoloff’s office in the harbour, where he was later murdered. For two hours, there was confused street fighting. Robbed of their officers and inferior in numbers—many civilians and even women armed with axes and kitchen knives had now joined the murderous Red hordes—the loyal soldiers never succeeded in gaining control of the streets or of strategically important buildings. When the troops withdrew towards military headquarters and the barracks area south of the town, they found their retreat cut off and the roads partially blown up. During the early hours of the morning, the garrison was surrounded by hastily armed civilians.

  Despite courageous resistance, the garrison area fell into rebel hands a few hours later. Similarly, events developed in other towns and villages within the second military area, where the soldiers who had been sent to protect the people were attacked and in many cases brutally murdered by guerillas and groups of gangsters. Between five and six in the morning on the thirteenth of December, the traitors Janos Edner and Aranca Peterson arrived at Ludolfsport, where they at once took the lead in the Red revolution. The following day, military stores were plundered.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: Did you hear that, Velder?

  Velder: Yes. Some of it is quite wrong. The soldiers left behind in the barracks didn’t offer any resistance. Most of the ones left behind were members of the old militia. They took their own officers prisoner themselves and went over to the People’s Front. Colonel Fox wasn’t murdered. He was badly wounded and died of wounds in the hospital in Ludolfsport.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: Hold your tongue, you monster! No more infamous lies! Stop trying to drag you superiors and dead comrades through the mud!

  Colonel Orbal: Goodness, what a noise. Both out of doors and indoors. I think that’ll do for today.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: Yes, sir. The charges against Velder in points seventy-eight to eighty-two can now be considered gone into and the accused proved guilty. After one more brief questioning, I am prepared to commit the case to the court.

  Major von Peters: Excellent, Bratianu.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: As today’s proceedings end with this committal of the case to the court, I cannot see any objection to a brief interrogation of Velder.

  Colonel Orbal: No, just go ahead. But don’t go on for too long.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: Velder! So you admit to desertion and high treason.

  Velder: Yes.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: Answer in the regulation manner.

  Velder: Yes, sir.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: Do you also admit that your treachery and cowardice cost the lives of hundreds of your friends?

  Velder: No, sir. What happened that night in Ludolfsport happened before we got there. It would have happened whether we’d gone there or not.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: Don’t argue with you superior.

  Velder: No, sir.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: Keep quiet until you are spoken to.

  Colonel Orbal: Why does he swing his head about like that? Is he in pain?

  Lieutenant Bratianu: Keep your head still, man. Do you regret your betrayal?

  Velder: Yes.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: It’s still ‘Yes, sir.’

  Colonel Orbal: Heavens, how he yells!

  Lieutenant Bratianu: You say yes, but I don’t believe you. Turn towards the presidium of the court and say that you regret it.

  Velder: I beg your pardon …

  Lieutenant Bratianu: Beg your pardon! How can you use such words? Your crimes are unpardonable. They cannot even be expiated with death. Say: I am a swine.

  Colonel Orbal: What a row!

  Lieutenant Bratianu: Answer, man!

  Captain Endicott: The accused is unconscious.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: Really? You’re not being taken in, now?

  Captain Endicott: No.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: In that case I shall commit the case to court. Colonel Orbal! Major von Peters! Colonel Pigafetta! Commander Kampenmann! Justice Haller!

  Major von Peters: Smart demeanour.

  Colonel Orbal: That’s good, Bratianu. The parties may leave. Push that creature away, Brown. And Endicott, if you must fiddle about with those hypodermic syringes, for God’s sake do it somewhere else.

  Major von Peters: Bit of luck Bratianu came in on it. Schmidt would have gone on nagging about this for three more days.

  Commander Pigafetta: Interesting young man, that Bratianu.

  Colonel Orbal: This session of this extra-ordinary court martial is adjourned until tomorrow at eleven o’clock.

  Eleventh Day

  Lieutenant Brown: Permanent members of the presidium present: Colonel Mateo Orbal, Army, also President of the Court Martial; Major Carl von Peters, Army, and Commander Arnold Kampenmann, Navy. Colonel Nicola Pigafetta and Justice Tadeusz Haller both report absence. Colonel Pigafetta is replaced by his personal substitute, Major Tetz Niblack, who consequently represents the Air Force. Officer presenting the case, Lieutenant Arie Brown. The prosecution is presented by the Prosecuting Officer, Captain Wilfred Schmidt, Navy, and the accused is assisted by Captain Roger Endicott, Air Force.

  Colonel Orbal: What’s wrong with Pigafetta?

  Major Niblack: They say he’s ill.

  Colonel Orbal: Seriously?

  Major Niblack: Not as far as I know. He was reckoning on taking his place in the presidium again by tomorrow.

  Colonel Orbal: Oh, I see. Nothing serious.

  Major von Peters: And Schmidt’s back again. We’ve that pleasure yet again.

  Commander Kampenmann: I’m afraid that you’re rather alone in your penchant for Lieutenant Bratianu. I for one don’t share it personally, anyhow.

  Colonel Orbal: Nonsense. Bratianu’s a first-rate young man. He’ll go far.

  Commander Kampenmann: I don’t doubt that at all.

  Colonel Orbal: Is there anything really wrong with Pigafetta? I mean, he’s not seriously ill?

  Major Niblack: No, not really.

  Colonel Orbal: Perhaps he couldn’t stand that windows business. The draught, perhaps. Yes, I expect he couldn’t stand that.

  Major Niblack: Windows?

  Colonel Orbal: We’ve got ventilation problems, you see.

  Major Niblack: Oh, I heard something about it in the mess.

  Colonel Orbal: I’m not really satisfied myself, either. It’s a bit better, and the air does circulate, but there’s such a bloody noise from outside. From your aeroplanes. That noise, we must get rid of it.

  Major Niblack: It would seem a trifle difficult to eliminate that on an airfield.

  Colonel Orbal: I’ve just had a couple of conversations on the matter, one with the Commanding Officer of the Engineers and the other with Major Carr of Stores. They’ve agreed on a compromise solution. We have a type of small portable fan, fan model eighteen for office tables, it says in the stores inventory. Major Carr promised to send over a dozen. Have they come, Brown?

  Lieutenant Brown: Yes, sir.

  Colonel Orbal: And have you got them fixed up?

  Lieutenant Brown: Yes, sir.

  Colonel Orbal: Well, let’s have them on, then.

  Lieutenant Brown: They’re already working sir.

  Colonel Orbal: Oh, are they? Carr said in a note he sent me this morning that these fans model eighteen don’t solve the central problem, i.e. the circulation of the air. They are only able, as he so rightly pointed out, to circulate the air that’s already in the room. But he had considerable expectations that they would make conditions more endurable, anyhow, giving an illusion of circulation of air, he wrote. We’ll have to see. We must observe how they work.

  Major von Peters: Call in the parties, now, Mateo.

  Colonel Orbal: Time enough. What’s the point, for that matter, of
Schmidt and Endicott standing here babbling on, if the presidium is paralysed by lack of oxygen? I’ve also noticed that Velder smells bloody awful. Put him further to the left, Brown, not right in front of me.

  Lieutenant Brown: Yes, sir.

  Colonel Orbal: That’s right. Well, now we can let the parties in.

  Captain Schmidt: As the charges appertaining to Velder’s desertion and high treason were clearly dealt with yesterday afternoon and have been handed over to the court for consideration, I request to be allowed to continue with the prosecution.

  Major von Peters: What else could you do? Begin again from the beginning?

  Captain Schmidt: I shall, therefore, go on to charges numbers eighty-three to and including one hundred and one, concerning rebel activities, terror, murder and accessory to murder, on nineteen different occasions. This complex includes the criminal activities committed by Velder during the time he collaborated with Janos Edner and Aranca Peterson. As the evidence mainly consists of the accused’s own confession and statement, I request that Corporal Erwin Velder be called as witness.

  Major von Peters: Yes, if that’s necessary. Granted.

  Captain Schmidt: Is Velder capable of continuing his story?

  Captain Endicott: Yes. He’s had several injections.

  Captain Schmidt: Velder, describe you activities with the traitors Janos Edner and Aranca Peterson.

  Velder: We got to Ludolfsport soon after five o’clock on the morning of December the thirteenth. There was a lot going on there, people with white armbands everywhere in the streets. They were both men and women. Only a few were in uniform and most of them weren’t armed, either. We first stopped at a hotel in the middle of the town where the nurse and the children were accommodated. Then I went on with Janos Edner, Aranca Peterson and Danica Rodriguez to a building in the harbour area where Stoloff had set up his headquarters. Everything was humming there, people coming and going, and cars full of people, all sorts of people, leaving the harbour area at regular intervals. Stoloff was sitting in his shirtsleeves at a table on which there were three telephones and a radio-transmitter. On the wall in front of him hung two large maps, one of the whole island and one of the town of Ludolfsport. He gave us a short summary. Said that there seemed to be no doubt that the Army had acquired full control over the first and third military areas, i.e. the Central and South-Western Provinces with Oswaldsburg and Marbella. On the other hand, the coup had failed completely in Ludolfsport, where the fighting was now over. The situation was more or less the same in the rest of the Eastern Province, with two exceptions. One was the lighthouse and pilot-boat quay on the point fifteen kilometres north of the town, which had been taken by a heavily armed Army unit, now ensconced on the point. And the other was the barracks and buildings of the military area’s headquarters ten kilometres south of Ludolfsport. The latter worried him less, he said, because by questioning prisoners he had found out that there were only a few soldiers left in the barracks and also that these troops were mostly units of the old militia, whom Colonel Fox had judged as less useful and reliable. He also told us that the majority of the regular units had been broken up in the street fighting and that about ten per cent of the soldiers had voluntarily gone over to our side. In that particular case, it was almost exclusively a matter of men who had been in the militia for a long time. What worried him most, he said, was the shortage of arms and means of transport. As people were armed, they were divided into groups and dispatched west along one of the three roads, that is, the big motorway, the old road to Oswaldsburg—the one we’d come along—and the northern coastal road, which was however still cut off by the lighthouse and the pilot-boat station. The area south of the motorway—the autostrad divided the Eastern Province into a northern and southern part—consisted of flat land with scattered farms and a sparse network of small roads. Shortly before six, a message came through that the groups of armed citizens who had been sent forward along the motorway had met strong resistance from regular troops about five kilometres beyond the boundary of the Central Province. Those who tried to get along the old road were stopped at about the same line. A moment later the radio in Oswaldsburg broke silence with a message saying that Oswald had proclaimed himself Chief of State and head of the government with Haller as Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Justice and War, and that everyone was exhorted to obey the Army’s orders. Stoloff really had done a lot. He’d also been in touch with Ludolf, who was expected on a special plane at Ludolfsport at about seven that morning. At about eight, a message came through that military area headquarters had fallen into our hands. At first, disturbances had broken out between different groups of soldiers in the barracks and then some of the troops had come over to us. The others capitulated. On the other hand, the point by the lighthouse was still held and the soldiers there could cover the northern coastal road. The Army units at the lighthouse kept up resistance for four days, until their ammunition and supplies ran out.