The Generals

by Per Wahlöö

  A short while later, the military area staff at last reported that reinforcements would soon be arriving and that road communications were to be cleared at once. Everything seemed to be vague and worrying. It was raw and cold out, but the mist was beginning to lift a little. The next time Colonel Zarco came back, he was absolutely beside himself with rage. By then he’d surveyed the situation and knew more about it than the commandant did. ‘You’ve lured us into a deathtrap,’ he cried. ‘The town’s in the middle of the front line! And you’re retreating all along it!’ The commandant, who had gradually become very worried indeed, said that Colonel Zarco’s own troops must be thrown into the fighting. Then Colonel Zarco said: ‘Two-thirds of my men are still on the transport ships, trapped like rats in a sealed tin. The ones who have disembarked are exhausted after a crossing in very bad weather. And many of them haven’t been issued with their equipment. My officers don’t know anything about the situation here, there’s no transport, no maps, nothing. But we’ll fight to the last man all the same.’

  The situation was quite hopeless. Of the storm-troopers who had landed, most of them were sitting or lying on their packs. They understood nothing of what was happening, and neither did their officers. The last active attempt made was that two tugs tried to tow one of the transports out into open water after severing the anchor chains. At almost exactly the same moment, two batteries of field artillery the militia had captured began to shell the harbour from the hills west of the town. The transport ship in the outer harbour was hit almost at once and began to burn. That wasn’t surprising, as the harbour lay quite open and any gunner could score with almost every shot. It was about as difficult as hitting a barn with a rifle at a distance of fifty yars.

  At eleven o’clock, Colonel Zarco came into the control-tower for the last time. By then one of the transport ships had keeled over at the quay and the other was drifting round the outer harbour basin on fire. He was very formal and said icily that the situation was hopeless and that he had decided that he would rather allow his men to capitulate than to see them slaughtered to no purpose. He then made radio contact with Army Headquarters and requested permission to capitulate. At headquarters, this request clearly hit them like a bomb. They still didn’t seem to have realised what was happening and repeated again and again that Zarco should counter-attack with units from the National Freedom Army. Finally the Chief of State himself came to the microphone and said that not even a square yard was to be lost. Five minutes later, all resistance ceased and the militia stormed the harbour area. Colonel Zarco was killed by machine-gun fire from an armoured car ten steps from the harbour office building. Most of the troops on the quay and in the warehouses did not even have time to give themselves up. Some tried to entrench and offer resistance, but everything was too late. Thousands of gallons of oil and petrol, which had poured out of the transport ships, caught fire and washed over the men swimming in the harbour basin. The militia took practically no prisoners.

  Major von Peters: Schmidt, what the hell do you mean by forcing us to listen to this kind of endless harangue?

  Captain Schmidt: The case for the prosecution intends to demonstrate the results of the evil deeds the accused planned and cooperated in executing. The massacre in Oswaldsport is in my view the most serious and terrible of Velder’s crimes, although he himself sat secure and safe in a bunker many miles away while it was all happening.

  Colonel Orbal: What did this sergeant, Scott or whatever his name is, do?

  Captain Schmidt: Alaric Scott, who had for many years been infected by Communist ideas, disarmed the officers in the harbour office building and hung a red flag out of the window.

  Colonel Orbal: Where did he get that from?

  Captain Schmidt: I’m afraid I don’t know.

  Colonel Orbal: Well, it doesn’t really matter, but I just wondered. Peculiar.

  Colonel Pigafetta: Just as well to have a lunch break, then you can think about the matter in peace and quiet, Orbal.

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

  * * *

  Colonel Orbal: Dreadful food you give us, Pigafetta. Greens with everything. It’s not good. Builds up gases. I was farting half the night. No, give me a beefsteak and beer …

  Major von Peters: Let the parties in now, Brown.

  Captain Schmidt: I intend to allow the accused to continue his testimony.

  Major von Peters: Yes, but just see to it that he’s brief about it.

  Captain Endicott: He is prepared.

  Velder: The first attack force, then, captured Ludolfsport at eleven o’clock, several hours earlier than had been calculated. At five o’clock in the afternoon, the second offensive force captured Brock and cut off the main road between Oswaldsburg and Ludolfsport at a point only forty kilometres east of the capital. From the radio traffic we heard, we realised that the enemy had been taken completely by surprise.

  Colonel Orbal: Yes, it came as a damned shock, I must admit. Our headquarters were only a little way away from there. General Winckelman was absolutely flummoxed. I remember he said to Me: ‘Everything’s going straight to hell.’ Our forces were more or less intact, but the tactical situation was shot to bloody pieces. But I said: ‘It’s just a matter of holding on, Henry.’ And he said: ‘Mateo, you’re wonderful.’ Yes, that’s what he said. But I’m not supposed to be sitting here telling this story. Go on, Velder.

  Velder: In the afternoon, Ludolf issued a communiqué, the only one he wrote throughout the war.

  Captain Schmidt: Appendix V X/101x. If you please, Brown.

  Lieutenant Brown: Appendix V X/101x, concerning the disturbances. The communique issued by the enemy of the people, Joakim Ludolf, on 19th November at 1000 hours. The text is as follows:

  The Socialist Government Militia this morning went into attack along the whole of the front line. Ludolfsport was surrounded during the morning and soon after ten o’clock three brigades of the Socialist Government Militia advanced into the town, which was rapidly cleared of Fascist troops. A large prey fell into the hands of the victors. Later in the day, militia units that had broken through into the Central Province liberated the important village of Brock. The advance continues.

  Velder: Yes, that’s how it was worded. From seven o’clock in the evening onwards, we had firm signal-communications with both the offensive forces and a complete picture of the situation. Everything was going exactly according to plan. When the position at Brock had been consolidated and built out, some of the motorised units continued northwards. They set off at about ten in the evening and between them and the sea, the north coast, that is, there was no more than twenty kilometres of largely undefended plain. The intention was that from now onwards Brock would constitute the central point for operations and that the offensive should be developed from there in four different directions, first and foremost to the north, as I said. Other militiamen were advancing to the south-west to cut off the autostrad, at the same time as some units were advancing westwards, along the old road to Oswaldsburg. In the fourth direction, the old road to the Eastern Province’s northern sector, we put in the comparatively weakest groups. They were stopped soon after midnight too, by the river, where the Fascists had blown up the bridge and dug themselves in along the banks. Then soon after one o’clock …

  Captain Schmidt: Yes, just go on.

  Velder: Soon after one o’clock, a message came from the militia forces on their way northwards from Brock. The officer in command there said that the advance had been delayed by the rain turning to snow and both men and equipment were beginning to suffer from the wet and cold. Half an hour later, the pilot-boat station on the north-eastern point reported sleet and rain and that the temperature had dropped to thirteen degrees. I was the one who received that message. I read it out and when I’d finished, the others stared questioningly at me. It didn’t match up with the weather forecasts at all. Stoloff at once set people to work investigating the matter. Gradually we got a vague
statement from the meteorologists that a current of cold air had suddenly changed direction and was pressing an area of rain and snow southwards. The change of temperature was probably temporary, they said, and anyhow there was no risk of the weather clearing. There was a strange atmosphere in the operations centre that night. Every hour that went by was decisive, and yet I personally felt quite relaxed, and Ludolf and Stoloff seemed much the same. Not even this question of the weather worried us seriously. At nine in the morning, two important things happened practically simultaneously. First, the Fascists’ resistance collapsed totally in the area south and south-west of Ludolfsport. Five kilometres of the autostrad line, that is the stretch between the original break-through position and the sea, were taken and the troops there capitulated. A minute later, a radio message came through from the forward northern groups of the second attack force. ‘Have reached the sea. Northern coast road cut off.’ This meant that we’d cut Oswald’s Army and all the Fascist-occupied part of the country into two. I remember that I lost control and began walking up and down like a madman saying: ‘Now we’ve got them. Now they’re in the clamp.’ Ludolf took his pipe out of his mouth and said calmly: ‘Yes. It looks like it.’ Stoloff poked his ear with his pen, which he always did when he was thinking. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it really does look like it.’ That was all that was said just then. But what we didn’t know was …

  Colonel Orbal: I’ve been listening to all this. It was a tricky morning, I must admit. At ten o’clock, General Oswald personally came to headquarters in Marbella, although it was such bloody awful weather. Both he and General Winckelman were fearfully pessimistic; the western flank in a state of dissolution and a whole Army division cut off and no one knowing a thing. In Oswaldsburg and in other places, the police had become quite hysterical and were shooting people out of hand. They probably thought that every single person was a Bolshevik and was going to desert. But in actual fact things weren’t so bad. Just hold on. I said so, too. I threw in reserves to form a front between Oswaldsburg and Brock and held back the elite units as barricade battalions, that old system, you know. If the forward line retreated, then they were shot by their own people from behind. So it paid to make a stand. But the Chief of State wasn’t very happy that morning. I remember him standing in front of the map and talking to himself, as he usually did. ‘The bastard,’ he kept saying, over and over again. I suppose he meant Ludolf.

  Major von Peters: Don’t sit there chattering, Mateo. Let Velder go on instead. What was it you didn’t know?

  Velder: We didn’t know that the temperature had fallen to below thirty degrees and that snow-storms were raging all along the north coast. The roads and the fields were already impassable. This message came at midday, on the twentieth. Ludolf stared at the telex strip for a whole minute at least. Then he handed it to Stoloff and said one single word. ‘Unique.’ And it was true, too. We had studied the meteorological statistics of the last fifty years and nothing like it had ever happened during that time.

  Colonel Orbal: What the matter with him? Is he crying?

  Captain Endicott: I don’t think so, sir.

  Colonel Pigafetta: Some kind of emotion, clearly.

  Colonel Orbal: Looks funny.

  Major von Peters: Don’t stand there staring, Endicott. Get the man going.

  Captain Endicott: Get on with your account, Velder.

  Velder: There’s nothing else to say. That was the end. Of everything. The snow came down all day, the temperature just fell. Everything went all to hell. First the engines froze up, and then the men. They had no winter equipment. And winter came two months too early. It snowed for three days. Everything seized up; the whole operation was paralysed. Then came the air-raids from bases in Marbella and simultaneously the counter-attack started.

  There was nothing wrong with the other side’s winter equipment. Men and women on the northern coastal road froze to death at their posts, to no purpose, as on the forth day the Fascists retook the road along the shore and opened communications between the Central and Eastern Provinces. The rest of the second offensive force was stuck in Brock and the area round about. Oswald sent in reserves all the time from the west and as I said, their equipment was better suited to the conditions. The militia south of Brock began to be pushed back from the autostrad. On the night of the fourth day, Stoloff said: ‘Gentlemen, Plan B has failed. The time has come to abandon it.’ We’d been awake all the time, more or less, keeping upright on pills, like most of the militia in general. I remember that I was in a strange condition, feeling as if I were neither awake nor asleep. There was only one thing left to do; let the second offensive force withdraw from Brock while a retreat route was still passable. This was so obvious that the question didn’t even warrant discussion. The fourth was a difficult day, with clear cold air and a good view. The Fascists began to use their Air Force seriously and their artillery hammered us continuously. During the night, militia from Brock retreated and evacuated the area west of the river and north of the autostrad. We managed to hold the retreat route open and disengage some of the units involved in the fighting, but the price was high. Everyone and everything north of Brock was lost. In the last stages, we put in demolition units. All Brock was razed to the ground and all buildings within the area over which we had had control were destroyed. Many prisoners were shot, and other people too, for that matter.

  Captain Schmidt: Were you also involved in giving those orders?

  Velder: Oh, yes. We often discussed at length whether it hadn’t been a foolish thing to do. It created antagonism to us in fact, even among people who were really sympathisers, or at least neutral. But there was no place for neutrals any longer. We didn’t need to discuss the retreat from Brock, as I said. But General Ludolf and Colonel Stoloff held different opinions on what we should do about Ludolfsport. Stoloff considered that the most rational thing to do was to withdraw the militia from there, although we had full control of the town and the surrounding area. He said that our powers of resistance would be greater if we returned to the old positions and concentrated all our militia units on the fortress and the outer defence belt. Ludolf, however, wanted the town held, and that’s what happened. He had no special motivation. We got a harbour, of course, but now we lacked the means of getting it working, and the blockade also meant that it wasn’t any use to us. By this time, the airfield had been made useless by artillery fire and attacks from the air. We did make some use of the four or five serviceable planes we captured there, however. Before they were shot down, they relieved militia groups in Brock and covered some of their retreat. As soon as it was decided that we were to hold the captured area, Stoloff left headquarters and set off for Ludolfsport to plan its defence and start new fortifications. Then Ludolf and I composed an order of the day, which was sent out that same evening.

  Captain Schmidt: A copy of this order has been found and kept. Appendix V XI/15.

  Lieutenant Brown: Appendix V XI/15, concerning the disturbances. Order of the day issued on the evening of the twenty-fifth of November by the enemy of the people, Joakim Ludolf. The text is as follows:

  The attempt to crush the Fascist régime has failed. The reasons for this are circumstances which lie outside both our own and the enemy’s control. During the first stage of the offensive, the Socialist Government Militia liberated Ludolfsport and the surrounding area and all of the east coast, including the lighthouse and the pilot-boat station on the north-eastern point. The town of Ludolfsport and its surroundings will be held and thus included in the fortification system of the southern sector. The village of Brock and parts of the Central Province were also taken. These areas have now been evacuated. The Socialist Government Militia’s losses in dead, wounded and missing constitute twelve per cent of its total strength. Losses were overwhelmingly in the groups operating in the Central Province and round the village of Melora in the South-Western Province. These losses cannot for the time being be replaced. Large quantities of materials were lost during the fighting in th
e Central Province, but more than double this quantity was captured at Ludolfsport. Fascist losses in men are three times as great as our own. No one can be blamed for the fact that a decisive victory was not achieved. During the fighting, every man and woman in the southern sector did his or her best. Ludolf. General. Leader of the Socialist Government Militia.

  Velder: When the order had been issued, we talked together for a while. I was very tired and the thought of how extremely close we’d been to victory ground round and round in my head. I remember talking and talking, going through the operation on the map. Ludolf was watching without moving a muscle. Finally he said: ‘Yes, it was close.’ Then we separated—for the first time for more than five days. Although none of us said so, we knew that our chance had gone for ever. Plan B could be filed away and would never have a successor. The cold wave only lasted for a week, anyhow. Then the temperature rose to fifty degrees, which was normal for the time of year, and the snow vanished. We suffered much from the thawing snow and Stoloff found it difficult to carry out the fortifications round Ludolfsport. He himself always regarded them as provisional anyhow. He used mostly captured Fascists on the work and most of them were killed by their own people in the air-raids.

  Captain Schmidt: Were you involved in making that decision, too? To use people, whose liberty you had unlawfully taken, as slave workers?