The Generals

by Per Wahlöö

  Captain Schmidt: Anything like a decision seemed to be lacking at this meeting, a decision on a sort of over-all plan, didn’t it, Velder?

  Velder: Very true. Very true. The discussion on principles went on for a long time, but then a number of very practical important points were decided very rapidly. As I said, we controlled the whole of the Eastern Province, plus a roughly five kilometres wide strip of the Central Province. Now this area was divided into a northern and a southern sector, the autostrad from Ludolfsport to Oswaldsburg making a natural boundary. The northern sector was put under the command of Janos Edner and the southern under the command of Joakim Ludolf. As the autostrad reached the sea a few miles south of the town and then swung northwards along the coast, Ludolfsport came to lie in the northern sector, in Edner’s area, that is. Gaspar Bartholic was made adviser or Chief-of-Staff to Edner, and Stoloff was given the same assignment with Ludolf. That Aranca Peterson was to be with Janos Edner was taken for granted, and Danica Rodriguez had worked with them since before the liberation. I didn’t hesitate, either. I felt greater solidarity with Edner than with Ludolf then. And perhaps more than anything else, I had confidence in Janos. There was always something about Ludolf I didn’t really understand. At the same time, the People’s Front was officially proclaimed. As long as Oswald was in power and the threat of a Fascist dictatorship remained, all antagonisms and open differences of opinion were set aside. The war, if there was to be one, would naturally need a common strategic plan, but otherwise the sectors were to function as administratively independent parts of the country. The members of the new militia and people in the province in general would as far as possible have to decide for themselves which sector they wanted to serve, live or work in. The leaders of the two sectors had to decide for themselves to what extent they needed to acquire help from outside or purchase things from abroad. The People’s Front in itself would function as a common political leadership. Existing material resources would be shared equally between the sectors. The common aim was at first to defend the Eastern Province and secondly to liberate the two other provinces from military dictatorship. The People’s Front was declared to be the nation’s official government and everyone under arms in both the northern and the southern sector was to be considered to belong to the same civil-military organisation, the government militia. All through this council of war—it went on until late into the evening—reports were coming in from different parts of the province. By the evening, Stoloff’s experts had already succeeded in achieving an almost continuous barricade from north to south, in other words, from coast to coast. A thousand yards west of it, Oswald’s men—some civilians, who were presumed to have been conscripted, as well as soldiers—were building a similar barricade. Hardly a single shot was fired along the border and in both west and east the situation appeared pretty calm. In less than twenty-four hours, the country had been cut into two in the middle, as if by a razor. I still remember a thought that struck me when I left Stoloff’s room after the council of war. Twenty-four hours earlier, the thought of a military dictatorship would have seemed more alien than a trip to the moon. And now the nation had already fallen into three parts, under the leadership of three people, who in practice were all equipped with dictatorial powers. Edner, Ludolf and Oswald. And this wasn’t just something I thought about just then. It was those three people who were to be known as ‘The Three Generals’.

  Major von Peters: I can’t stand this another minute. Lunch break, now, please. If one can get any of Pigafetta’s filthy swill down after listening to all this.

  Colonel Orbal: Excellent idea. The session is adjourned for two hours.

  * * *

  Colonel Orbal: Well, what are we waiting for?

  Major von Peters: Niblack, of course. He’s probably still sitting in the mess talking a lot of balls. What does Pigafetta mean by landing us with that gas-bag?

  Colonel Orbal: You shouldn’t be so critical, Carl. I think Niblack is a sympathetic chap.

  Major von Peters: Sympathetic?

  Colonel Orbal: For an airman, of course. That business of those hens, or whatever they were, biting each other to death was quite a funny story. On the other hand, I don’t notice those fans doing the slightest bit of good.

  Major von Peters: I wish this circus were over so that we could go back to ordinary duty. Sitting here wasting day after day on a swine like Velder.

  Colonel Orbal: Apropos Velder, yes. What was that thing he had round his neck? The thing that looks like a primus stove?

  Commander Kampenmann: A specially constructed microphone, meant to strengthen his voice.

  Colonel Orbal: Oh, Christ. Though you can hear him better. Couldn’t they put in the same kind of thing on Bratianu, but to have the opposite effect. Voice-softener. Then he’d be perfect.

  Major von Peters: Don’t keep knocking Bratianu. Although Schmidt has systematically been holding him back, Bratianu has already saved us several days.

  Colonel Orbal: I was only joking, Carl. Here’s Niblack at last, anyhow. Call in the parties, Brown.

  Captain Schmidt: After the division of the revolutionary Eastern Province into two sectors, Velder then took up his duties with the traitor Janos Edner, to whom he served approximately as adjutant. This relationship between them can be considered to have existed from the thirteenth of December to the fifteenth of March the following year. I presume that members of the presidium remember or are aware of the general political situation immediately after the division of the country.

  Major Niblack: No, I’ve no idea whatsoever. I was in South Africa at the time. Interesting assignment, as a matter of fact.

  Captain Schmidt: In that case I will refer to the summary in Appendix V VI/47. May I ask the officer presenting the case to read out the text.

  Lieutenant Brown: Appendix V VI/47, concerning the disturbances in December and at the turn of year, compiled from accounts based on both home and foreign sources. The text is as follows:

  After the murder of Colonel Fox and his officers, the Reds established a veritable régime of terror in Ludolfsport and the Eastern Province. Some diplomatic pressure and action from abroad was exerted to persuade General Oswald and the national government to recognise the demarcation line as a state boundary, which de facto would also have meant recognition of the sovereignty of the rebel Eastern Province. That the aim of this pressure was to bring on a weakening and collapse of the nation was without doubt. The Chief of State and the government also refused categorically to make any concessions. The apparent calm reigning along the demarcation line for the next few weeks was due to the military situation rather than to the political situation. The resources of the national Army, already limited before the take-over of power, had partly been used up during the rebellion in the Eastern Province, and General Oswald’s staff considered it inadvisable to complete the mopping-up operations before reinforcements had been brought up to the demarcation line. By the third week in December, ten classes of men had been conscripted and an intensive training programme begun. At the same time, the government, through agreements with friendly nations, was assured of deliveries of arms, and many volunteers from these countries, among them a number of experienced and well-qualified officers, hastened to the assistance of the National Freedom Army. The revolutionaries, however, were not inactive either, and soon a steady stream of material and men was coming in from various socialist countries, who now saw their chance of sowing false doctrines and getting a foothold on our island. At this stage, the friendly democracies offered General Oswald an alliance agreement, according to which an expeditionary corps with the official title of Peace Corps would be sent to support the National Freedom Army. In return, General Oswald and the national government promised to allow the small islands off the coast to be used as air and naval bases for a period of fifty years. This agreement was ratified on the ninth of January and a fortnight later the first units of the Peace Corps landed in Marbella. Only a week later, an international non-intervention agree
ment was made according to which neither troops nor heavier war materials were to be put at the disposal of either party. Practically all nations concerned signed this agreement.

  Captain Schmidt: Thank you, Brown. Velder had now established his high treason by joining the revolutionary movement in the Eastern Province. We shall now hear his own account of the events up to the fifteenth of March. Is the accused ready?

  Captain Endicott: Yes. You can begin now, Velder.

  Velder: The situation along the front was unchanged and completely calm all through December and most of January. Janos Edner set up his headquarters about thirteen kilometres east of the demarcation line, in a one-time manor house halfway between the autostrad and the northern road. At this place, the Army had earlier set up a secret commando centre with ten underground rooms, connected by a system of passages. They were built of logs and concrete and the ceiling lay about a foot below the surface of the earth. Gaspar Bartholic, Aranca Peterson, Danica Rodriguez, myself and a few others worked in this place during the following months. Janos and Aranca insisted on having the children and their nurse with them. At first we all lived together in the old farm buildings, but when Bartholic had nagged on about this every day for a week, Edner and his family moved down into the bunker and soon after that we all followed suit. Meanwhile a lot of things were happening; you could say activity was feverish. The line of defence was swiftly extended to a depth of five or six kilometres with a system of mines, trenches and anti-tank and barbed-wire obstacles. The plans were mostly drawn up by Edner, Bartholic and myself, as was the general plan for defence. During those first months the spirit and atmosphere were very good in the northern sector. Everyone was convinced of success, but no one was really clear about how that success was going to be achieved. Some wanted us to attack at once, and others thought that fighting wouldn’t be necessary at all, but that everything would gradually be regulated by negotiations. Not until a long time later did we understand that we ought to have attacked at once, on the very first day.

  Major Niblack: May I put a question in here? How did the rebels finance all this activity?

  Captain Schmidt: Joakim Ludolf and Boris Stoloff had been more farsighted than anyone had imagined. Not only had they secretly shared out the gold reserves—which were quite considerable—between Ludolfsport and Oswaldsburg, but they had also made sure of comprehensive aid from outside.

  Velder: When you think how ill-situated we were geographically; I mean, that the countries which might help us were so far away, then the aid deliveries started coming tremendously quickly. After only a few weeks, at least one ship a day was being unloaded in Ludolfsport. And by now the northern and southern sectors were operating so independently of each other that in fact we didn’t even know that Ludolf and Stoloff had had a channel cleared through the minefield south-east of Ludolfsport and that the majority of their material was being unloaded there at night directly on to the shore. And it was by no means meagre quantities in question.

  Major Niblack: I thought that this Stoloff who is often mentioned was a fortifications engineer. Is that correct?

  Major von Peters: Yes, indeed.

  Captain Schmidt: It was also the case that most of the very considerable deliveries Ludolf and Stoloff demanded and received from their so-called friends abroad consisted less of troops and offensive weapons than of technical experts, building materials, machines, provisions and defensive aids. Without being conscious of it themselves, Ludolf and Edner, and thus the planning for the southern and northern sectors respectively, obviously started out from wholly different tactical judgements. Let Velder continue, now, Captain Endicott.

  Velder: Also, quite a lot of volunteers came over during those first months. A very peculiar mixture of people, idealists of many different kinds. And adventurers of course. Some of them were sent back by the control authority that Aranca Peterson had set up in Ludolfsport. But all the same, a number of agents and spies Were of course smuggled in behind our lines. Of trained regular troops, we only got a few specially trained people who came directly under Gaspar Bartholic’s command. Janos Edner was on the whole not very pleased with these additions to our personnel. Practically every man in the province had voluntarily joined the militia and he considered we had enough people under arms. In some ways he was right, too.

  Colonel Orbal: Push the accused away a bit, Endicott. He stinks like an open grave.

  Velder: Ludolf refused to have anything to do with these volunteers, except a few individuals who had special recommendations. On the other hand, he had women in the militia, amongst them Carla, my younger wife, who had managed to flee over the demarcation line. I didn’t know that then. She was just one of many women on active service in the southern sector.

  Colonel Orbal: That’s quite correct. I saw some of them. Real Amazons. Looked hot stuff, too. Most of them were dead when we saw them. We—we just had the Women’s Army Auxiliary. Society females. General Winckelman once really made a mess of things. He came into the tent in the middle of the night and saw one of them on the bed. A report-auxiliary, he thinks. So he just rips off her clothes and gets going, from behind first and then from in front, and in the middle of the third …

  Major von Peters: Cool off, Mateo. Not while the court is in session …

  Colonel Orbal: What’s the matter with you? Court’s in session—what sort of shit’s that? We’re all men here. Well, in the middle of the third Victoria-jerk, suddenly a signal rocket explodes outside and what does he see floating above the camp bed but his old woman. He’d gone into the wrong tent in the dark and she’d come out from town to screw his pay out of him. He was impotent as a eunuch for three weeks, or so he said. And that damn well doesn’t surprise me.

  Major Niblack: Very funny. I remember a similar episode in Angola …

  Commander Kampenmann: Perhaps we could go on now.

  Captain Schmidt: The accused said something about what he called specially trained men who came directly under the command of Gaspar Bartholic. I would like him to describe more fully what these persons’ special training consisted of and his own co-operation with them and with Bartholic.

  Velder: Bartholic’s men were sort of commandos, specially trained for swift raids into enemy territory. They operated in groups of four to ten men, and now and again we sent such patrols over to the other side of the demarcation line. I was the person in headquarters who knew the terrain best, so I used to help show them suitable look-out spots and terrain where the patrols could move forward without risking discovery. They mostly used rubber dinghies and outflanked the enemy via the sea. Their total strength consisted of about three hundred men. We hadn’t much use for them, so they were fairly soon transferred over to the southern sector.

  Captain Schmidt: I need hardly point out to the presidium that these ‘special troops’ in fact were professional terrorists, gangs of murderers trained in the art of killing. This is just to establish Velder’s role as organiser of this murderous terrorist activity. I can give you innumerable examples of this cruel and ruthless activity.

  Major von Peters: To hell with that, Schmidt. We probably know more about that than you do.

  Captain Endicott: I think it’s necessary that the accused be given another injection now. I’ll soon …

  Colonel Orbal: No, Endicott. Under no circumstances. You must carry out those unpleasantnesses before the beginning of the session or during the lunch break. You must see that …

  Velder: Optimism was, as I said, great. We knew that Oswald had got reinforcements, of course, but we didn’t know how great they were or what they consisted of. Hundreds of people came over the demarcation line on to our side, but they seldom had much useful information. It seemed as though Oswald and Haller had succeeded in transforming the country on the other side into a police state, where everything was forbidden or barricaded off and where the individual knew nothing about what was happening. With us, almost everyone knew practically everything, and that was wrong too, of course. And th
e mood was positive and confident of victory, but far too many thought just like Aranca Peterson, that some sort of miracle would happen and we’d be victorious without having to fight, however that was going to happen. When we discovered that Ludolf and Stoloff were putting down mines and fortifying even the stretch facing the autostrad, that is, his own border against us, then we realised that we didn’t know very much about the situation in the Eastern Province either. All through January, Oswald’s Army did nothing. At regular intervals, sometimes almost every day, he and Haller showered us with hatred and threats over the radio and in leaflets and on their own television, which naturally we couldn’t see even if we’d wanted to. In some way, we were broken by the calm and the waiting. I still don’t know how it happened. A week or two after the signing of the international non-intervention agreement—it must have been pushed through by those who really wanted to break us, because Oswald didn’t seem to be suffering from any shortage of supplies either then or later, as those who supported him circumvented the agreement or simply ignored it—well, a week or two after that, the seventh of February it must have been … no, the eighth, that’s it … on the evening of the eighth, there was a conference at headquarters. Ours, that is, in the northern sector. Ludolf and Stoloff came in a caterpillar-track armoured car of a type we’d never seen before. And Ludolf was wearing a general’s uniform, very simple and severe, of the overall type, but a general’s uniform. The conference went on all night. Edner and Bartholic produced a plan we’d been working on for some time.

  We said—I spoke too, in fact—that we were now as well equipped as we could be and this was the moment to strike. From this moment, the scales could not be reckoned to weigh in our favour and now the time factor was in Oswald’s favour. Our plan of attack was carefully worked out; it entailed encircling the Army’s western flank from the sea and then breaking through the front in the centre and driving a wedge in the direction of Oswaldsburg. Bartholic went through it all on the large map-table. We knew roughly how the Army was grouped, and the special commandos were to be sent in soon after midnight to destroy the communications network and try to liquidate staffs and centres of command. The small Air Force we had would have the same assignment, but that wasn’t much to bank on. We were prepared to throw in everything we had at once. All on one card. Edner interrupted the discussions by pointing out that we could reckon on support from large groups of inhabitants in the occupied provinces. Aranca Peterson wasn’t at this meeting, and as far as I remember, it was the only important meeting she’d voluntarily absented herself from during all the time I’d known her. She was so intensely opposed to the idea of us being the first to resort to force that she didn’t even want to listen, but went to bed. Ludolf and Stoloff didn’t say a word the whole time.