The Generals

by Per Wahlöö

  Velder: Yes. We regarded them as prisoners-of-war.

  Commander Kampennmann: What happened then?

  Velder: The fighting had given us a pretty good idea of Oswald’s dispositions. We knew it would be some time before he took the offensive. Naturally we predicted that he would first strengthen his positions all along the front. He had been considerably shaken and was taking no risks. The only thing we could do was to wait and make ourselves even more inaccessible than we already were. Absurdly enough, the winter was very mild. That was lucky for us, as although our stores were large, they were by no means inexhaustible. We were very isolated during January and February, first and foremost from the outside, as most of our agents had been killed during mopping-up operations by the Army and the police in Oswaldsburg and Marbella in December. From the little we could find out, it was clear that Oswald was stocking up, that large reinforcements were coming in to Marbella, despite the non-intervention agreement. But we were also isolated from each other. Every fort, or defence unit as we called them, lived its own life. This was good from some points of view, for solidarity, for instance, and it was easy to limit epidemics. We avoided deficiency diseases, thanks to our medical stores which were very comprehensive and well run. But everything became abstract in some way, almost ghost-like, to use a silly expression. Our whole existence was hardly an existence at all.

  Captain Schmidt: Well, now, only one matter remains to be dealt with, namely the accused’s participation in the so-called Plan C. Before Velder’s testimony, I will refer to a brief summary of military developments and activities up to the end of March and the beginning of April. Appendix V XII/10. If you wouldn’t mind reading it, Lieutenant Brown.

  Lieutenant Brown: Appendix V XII/10, concerning the disturbances. Compiled from summaries put together by the National Historical Department of the General Staff. Marked Secret according to paragraphs eight and eighteen. The text is as follows:

  After the rebels’ desperate sortie at the end of November, which amongst other things gave the terrorists control over the town of Oswaldsport (Ludolfsport) and all of the east coast, General Oswald ordered his Army Staff to plan a mopping-up operation, which in one blow would liberate the country from the Red hydra. On the third of January, it was decided that this operation would come under the personal command of the Chief of State and that it should be started on the twentieth of March. The timing was chosen with consideration of weather conditions; it was reckoned that the spring, with its warm and dry weather, would create favourable circumstances for an operation on a large scale. During January and February, both the National Freedom Army and the Peace Corps were replenished with materials and especially trained storm-troopers. Apart from artillery, the first phase of the action included the largest concentration of air power that had hitherto been used against the guerillas. At 0500 hours on the twentieth of March, the rebels’ positions were assailed with rockets and artillery fire, while simultaneously large parts of the southern sector were attacked with napalm bombs.

  Captain Schmidt: Thank you, that’s enough. We will now return to the accused’s part in the so-called Plan C.

  Velder: On the morning of the twentieth of March, the Fascists’ offensive began. For us, it came as almost a relief. We had been waiting for so long and we no longer had any expectations that anything would change for the better. So it felt in some way as if … yes, it was liberating when the reports of the first air-raids began to come in. A fortnight earlier, Stoloff had presented a surprising alternative. We had just carried out a thorough check on stores and concluded that it would take Oswald another eight months to starve us out, when Stoloff suddenly looked up from his statistics and said: ‘What if we should capitulate.’ Ludolf asked: ‘When?’ And Stoloff said: ‘Now, immediately. It would be the most astonishing thing to happen to Oswald in the circumstances. We three and many others would naturally be shot—but he can hardly kill everyone. Then he’d have a considerable Communist minority round his neck. If, on the other hand, he is allowed to complete this mopping-up operation, then it’s true he’ll lose a lot of men, but on the other hand he’ll be in the same favourable position as Franco was after the Spanish Civil War. All useful forces had been killed or had given of their best during the fighting, and it’ll be years before the country will have an active Socialist opposition.’ Ludolf thought for a moment before he replied: ‘It wouldn’t work. They’d never accept it.’ I asked: ‘Who wouldn’t accept it?’ He looked up at me in surprise and said: ‘Everyone here in the southern sector. The party members. The militia. They’d probably remove us the moment we attempted to betray the idea.’ And Stoloff said: ‘It wouldn’t be betraying the idea, but the other way round, but that would be difficult to explain off the cuff. Consequently you’re right. Naturally, we’ll fight;

  Captain Schmidt: I would like to ask a question here. You used the words party members. A political party existed in the southern sector, then?

  Velder: Oh, yes. We all joined. Stoloff functioned as party leader. Well, later on it struck me that this discussion on the possibility of capitulation had nothing to do with the question of saving human lives. It was more a matter of how one could do the greatest possible damage to the enemy.

  Captain Schmidt: Let us return to Plan C.

  Velder: Plan C had always been Ludolf’s baby. It was well prepared from the very beginning. But Plan C did not come into action when the offensive started. The offensive, yes. We at once noticed that Oswald wasn’t leaving anything to chance this time. He had six or seven times as many men as we did and was superior in nearly everything, anyhow when it came to materials. On the afternoon of the twenty-first, many observation posts in the outer defence belt reported ‘that it looked as if everything was on fire, even concrete blocks and the ground itself,’ and in some places we were already having trouble with the ventilation. The storm-troopers attacked systematically, but were in no great hurry. It took them a week to drive the militia out of Ludolfsport and the coastal strip in the east, which we’d taken four months earlier. On the thirtieth, the eleventh day, that is, we had to abandon the outer defence belt completely and withdraw all living personnel to the forts in the fortified lines. The line along the river might possibly have been held for a few days, but we judged that pointless. Then the Fascists worked their way forward to the first fortification chain, but the first permanent support-post did not fall until the seventeenth day, that is, on the fifth of April. That was fort forty-six, up in the north-west, quite near the coast. Stoloff had always considered our weakest point was just there. During the next eight days, they took ten more forts, all in the first fortified chain and most of them along the east coast, where according to the old pattern they took the defence line from the north. Stoloff’s support-posts were so constructed that it didn’t make any difference from which direction they were attacked. The moment a fort fell, all the connecting passages leading to and from it were automatically blown up. And in the operations centre, we removed a numbered red metal disc from the map. In principle, survivors were to retreat to the nearest intact fort before the stores were destroyed and the tunnels blown up. By the eighteenth of April, they had taken twenty-two support-posts, still in the outer defence belt. But it was slow and the price they paid was high.

  Colonel Orbal: Yes, I’ll say it was. The whole of that damned bit of country was like an anthill, a conglomeration of caves and mine-workings and underground passages and buried warrens on several levels. And everything you touched exploded. We practically had to dig the rabble out, just like you dig moles out of a lawn.

  Commander Kampenmann : A kind of défense à outrance, in other words. Reminds me of Iwo Jima. There, thirty-five thousand Japs had …

  Colonel Pigafetta: It would be extremly kind of you if you would hold your lectures on military history somewhere else, Kampenmann. My time is in fact extremely valuable, although no one seems to realise it.

  Major von Peters: Bravo, sir. Go on, Velder.

  Velde
r: On the thirty-fourth day, they took support-post twenty-eight in the second fortified chain and the day after that support-post nine, which was in the inner fortification chain. Support-post nine lay less than ten thousand yards west of the central fortress, in other words, headquarters, and there were no permanent defence installations in between. Well, passive ones, of course. This constituted a break-through and technically speaking we were defeated at that moment, despite the fact that the militia still held thirty-two forts out of sixty-five. Things had moved a little more quickly for the Fascists at the end, and a day or two went by before we found out why. Their artillery had begun to use gas shells.

  Colonel Orbal: Yes, that was stroke of genius, that was. General Winckelman’s idea. And the Air Force were chucking down napalm at the same time. Then it was just a matter of holding out. Well, go on.

  Velder: When we discovered what it was all about, we rapidly fixed up relatively serviceable filters, and there were plenty of gas masks. Though it was worse with napalm, really—that stole our oxygen out of the air. On the thirty-fifth day, communications between the defence units began to break up. We could only reach the forts in the west and south-west by radio. On the surface of the ground, everything was on fire. Thirty-two support-posts were still intact, the central fortress plus eleven in the third and innermost chain, fourteen in the second, and six which were still holding on in the first line. Funny.

  Major von Peters: Funny? What the hell does he mean?

  Velder: I happened to think about number sixty-five still holding on after thirty-five days. Sixty-five lay to the south in the first line. That’s where Carla, my younger wife, was. She had taken part in the raid on Melora in November, but was one of those who had come back unscathed. I’d found that out, actually. I thought of writing a letter to her, but I never did.

  Major von Peters: What on earth has that got to do with Plan C? You really must pull yourself together, Schmidt, and bring the accused to order.

  Velder: At that moment, on the thirty-fifth day, that is the twenty-third of April, General Ludolf brought Plan C into action. It had been sketched out by him and worked on technically by myself and Colonel Stoloff. Briefly, it meant that all openings, tunnels and connecting passages were to be blown up and blocked, and that all communications between the remaining forts were to cease. The militia received just one single order: ‘Resistance by all means in all situations.’ Originally the words ‘to the last man’ had been included, but Ludolf struck them out, thinking they were silly and unnecessary. At half-past eleven on the night of the twenty-fourth of March, everything was cut off. After that I don’t know what happened outside the central fortress.

  Major von Peters: We know. It’s enough for a long time.

  Captain Schmidt: This so-called Plan C, worked out by Velder on orders from the enemy of the people, Joakim Ludolf, as we all know, led to the murder of thousands of people.

  Colonel Orbal: Yes, I’ll say it did. They fought like crazy rats. Not least the women, and they’re said to have been most dangerous on their backs. Anyone stupid enough to undress and go to bed didn’t live for long. Sooner or later one falls asleep.

  Captain Schmidt: I consider the accused’s participation in this so-called Plan C now proven. With that, the case against Erwin Velder is now complete and I request a break for half an hour before the final summing-up, which from our side, anyhow, will be extremely brief. Then I shall be prepared to hand over the case as a whole for consideration by this extra-ordinary court martial.

  Colonel Orbal: Oh, so you’ve finished now. Good.

  Commander Kampenmann: What happened after the twenty-third of April, Velder? How and when were you taken prisoner?

  Major von Peters: For Christ’s sake, Kampenmann. Haven’t you had enough? It’s almost over now.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: I protest. The question is irrelevant. It has nothing to do with the case. The case for the prosecution is not concerned with crimes that Corporal Velder committed after the twenty-third of April.

  Commander Kampenmann: I asked the accused a question and am waiting for it to be answered.

  Colonal Orbal: But in heaven’s name, Kampenmann, why?

  Major von Peters: You’ve done nothing but interfere and be awkward all through the session, Kampenmann. You and Schmidt have lengthened the whole thing with your dilly-dallying and pointless comments.

  Lieutenant Bratianu: I adhere to my protest.

  Commander Kampenmann: One moment, gentlemen. I have asked the accused a question and as I said, I am waiting for it to be answered. To you, Lieutenant Bratianu, I would first like to say that if you had read the court martial regulations—which you previously made a great show of being an expert on—then you would also realise that you are in rough waters with your protests. You are right to protest to the presidium over the questions put by the representative of the defence, in this case Captain Endicott. What the presidium asks is a matter with which you have no right to interfere. Secondly, you have no right to speak at all as long as the Prosecuting Officer, in this case Captain Schmidt, has not handed over to you. In quite general terms, I should like to point out, still strictly according to the regulations, that neither the President nor the other members of the court, and naturally least of all the parties has the right to object to the formulation of any question which a representative of the defence forces, in this case myself, wishes to ask.

  Colonel Orbal: Oh, God, now you’ve got him worked up, Carl. Now it’ll never come to an end.

  Colonel Pigafetta: Although I am reluctant to admit it, you are in fact right, Kampenmann. I have also read the regulations.

  Commander Kampenmann: May I now have an answer to my question? Velder, what happened as far as you were concerned from and including the night of the twenty-third of April to and including the evening of the eighth of May, when according to information, you were taken to the military hospital?

  Velder: As I said, we were quite isolated. So I only know what happened in the central fortress. There we did the only thing we could do, and that was to wait. All defence measures had already been taken. From certain points of view, the central fortress was more difficult to hold than some of the other forts, as in its capacity as headquarters, it was not just constructed as a defence post. On the other hand, the units there were especially well trained. During the first week, the silence was the most remarkable thing. Then we heard the fighting coming closer, like distant thunder. We also began to feel the vibrations in the ground. Explosions of different kinds, of course. That was the situation on the forty-third day. We celebrated the first of May then, for the second year running.

  Major von Peters: Is there no limit to this madness? Celebrated the first of May?

  Velder: Yes. Stoloff made a statement. On the third of May, we made contact with the enemy for the first time. The day after that, the Fascists blasted their way into the western sector. They were thrown back, but the next day we had to leave the western section, which was devastated. We were having great difficulties with ventilation. Despite all the filters and complicated air-spaces, the fans sucked in quantities of smoke and gas. During the following days, the sixth and seventh of May, the attacks were reinforced. The storm-troopers blasted their way in bit by bit, then attacked through the breaks with flame-throwers and grenades. By the morning of the eighth, only one of our three lighting systems was working and we realised our prospects of surviving that day, which was the fiftieth, were not particularly great. Everything went quite quickly at the end. At nine o’clock, it seemed as if most of the militia in our sector had been killed. Ludolf, Stoloff, myself and an orderly were in the operations room, which was the best protected. We were armed with machine-pistols and Stoloff was just hooking hand-grenades into his belt. Ludolf and I were standing about five yards away from him, near the map wall. I know I looked at the clock and saw that it was ten minutes past nine. There was an awful lot of smoke in the room and it was hard to breathe. At that moment a grenade exploded, presumab
ly in the air space above us, however it had got through to there. I can’t have lost consciousness at once, because I know I saw Stoloff fall.

  Commander Kampenmann: Yes, go on.

  Velder: When I came round, it was quite light in the bunker. Later I realised that it was daylight seeping in through the roof, and that the floors above had been blown away. Stoloff was dead. He had had his head practically torn off by a stick of explosive and his body was lying on the concrete floor about five yards away from me. Several soldiers in gas masks and asbestos suits were in there too. The wound in my neck was hurting badly and I lay still. But I think I saw Ludolf moving. After a few minutes, I realised that the soldiers were waiting for something and after a short while a tall officer in Army uniform did indeed come into the room. He looked at me and the general and said: ‘These two are alive. Get them up.’ Now I remember too that it was quiet everywhere, so all resistance in the central fortress must have ceased. The next time I woke up, I was lying on a blanket on the ground, alongside some kind of tracked jeep. That was the first time for a long time that I had had fresh air in my lungs and I came to quite quickly. Ludolf was standing by the jeep in his dirty khaki uniform, his hands on his hips. Three storm-infantrymen in Peace Corps uniform were standing with their machine-guns cocked. Someone had put a dressing on the wound on my neck. After perhaps a quarter of an hour, that tall officer came back. He was a captain and had a narrow black moustache. I don’t know what his name was.

  Major von Peters: Captain da Zara.

  Colonel Orbal: That’s right, da Zara.

  Velder: He was very friendly and had an elegant manner. He helped me to my feet and into the back seat of the jeep. ‘I’ll take these two gentlemen to headquarters,’ he said. Ludolf was made to sit beside me in the back seat. The officer sat beside the driver. A soldier was standing on the back bumper, as guard, I presume. We drove along a twisting uneven road which had apparently been cleared through the minefield. Far away, we could hear occasional explosions, so I presume that some support-posts were still holding. It took two hours to get to the old road between Ludolfsport and Oswaldsburg. It was hot and I looked at my watch, which was still going, strangely enough, and I saw that it was two o’clock. No one in the jeep said a word. At about three we passed Brock. They had repaired the road but the village lay in complete ruins. Ludolf looked about him indifferently. Then we swung southwards, crossed the autostrad and continued along the main road to Marbella. In some way, it was as if the country had changed character and you didn’t recognise where you were. There weren’t many soldiers on the road, but we met a number of police patrols and lots of gendarmes cycling in pairs. We drove past a lot of low grey metal barracks, which looked like some kind of emergency housing, and smoke-blackened workshops. Near Marbella, we passed a large area which appeared to consist of marked-out allotments. It was a fine day, as I said, and lots of people were standing there, poking about in their potato patches, or whatever they were. Ludolf looked at me at that moment and frowned slightly. I remember exactly what he looked like, red-eyed, deathly pale, with lumps of pus on his eyelashes. Like myself, he found it difficult to see and was peering in the light. We never got to Marbella, because the jeep swung down a side-road to the right just outside the town and ten minutes later we reached headquarters. It was a row of low grey …