by Sven Hassel
The President turned gravely to regard the condemned man, standing stiffly to attention before him.
‘Does the prisoner wish to say anything?’ He repeated the question three times, with no response from Lt. Ohlsen, whereupon he shrugged his shoulders and gabbled out the statutory advance rejection of any appeal that might be contemplated. ‘All right’ He nodded to the Feldwebel standing at Ohlsen’s side. Take the prisoner away.’
As Lt. Ohlsen was being marched back through the tunnel, they met the next prisoner coming down. Twenty-three minutes later the President pronounced his fourth sentence of death that day and left the court room. He exchanged his judicial robes for his pearl grey uniform and made his way home to a dinner of tomato soup and boiled cod. Four death sentences. It was raining outside, a persistent drizzle, and he had passed four death sentences and was going home to eat tomato, soup and boiled cod. A typical day in court. Four death sentences. A persistent drizzle. Tomato soup and cod. The President buttoned his coat and walked briskly towards the waiting car.
Oberfeldwebel Stever was waiting for Lt. Ohlsen down in the cells. The heavy door clanged shut behind them. Stever groaned as he pushed back the bolts.
‘Well, so what’s it to be?’ he asked, as he straightened up. ‘Another case for the chopper? That makes the third today, and the one that’s just gone down there, I reckon he’ll be the fourth. Not that that’s anything to get excited about. A month ago, we had sixteen in one day . . .’ He looked at Ohlsen and grinned. ‘Don’t take it to heart, Lieutenant. It’s happened to better men than you . . . In any case, we all have to come to it sooner or later, one way or another. And you won’t be the first or the last to go like that . . . And if the Padre’s to be believed, it’s a better world you’re going to and Jesus will be there to meet you.’
Lt. Ohlsen looked at him.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘Is the padre to be believed or isn’t he?’
Stever hunched his shoulders uncomfortably.
‘You know more about that than I do . . . I haven’t really thought about it too much. I suppose when the time comes I’ll have to . . . But as for all this stuff about Jesus and suchlike – well, yeah, I suppose it’s always possible.’ He scratched his head and frowned. ‘You can’t say you don’t believe in it, like, just in case it does turn out to be true. But the old Padre, he believes in it all right.’ Stever paused to assume a suitable expression and a priestlike voice. ‘ “Mm – pray and the Lord will hear you,” he says. “Mm – the Lord will receive you . . .” He always says “mm” before everything. They call him Mm-Müller in the prison. A filthy old shit, mind you – always blowing his nose in his cassock – but I suppose he knows what he’s doing.’
‘I hope so,’ said Lt. Ohlsen, quietly, ‘because I intend to say my prayers with him.’
‘Go on?’ Stever cocked an eyebrow. ‘Well, I don’t blame you. I mean, you can’t afford to take any chances really, can you?’
‘It’s not a question of taking chances.’ Lt. Ohlsen shook his head and smiled. ‘I happen to believe in it’
‘Go on?’ said Stever, again. ‘What are you, if you don’t mind me asking? RC or something else?’
‘I’m a Protestant.’
‘Well—’ They readied the door of the cell and Stever flung it open – ‘it’s all one to me, to tell you the honest truth. The minute I set foot in a church I get the feeling they’re all just a load of great gabbling idiots. Don’t do nothing for me . . . know what I mean? Still, that’s not to say that when my turn comes I wont feel a bit different.’
‘Very likely,’ agreed Ohlsen, with a faint smile.
He walked across to the window and looked out between the bars at the falling grey drizzle.
‘Look here,’ said Stever, consolingly, ‘you’re OK for the rest of today. They won’t have set it up yet. They have to get the bloke down from Berlin and I don’t think he’s even arrived. In any case, he has to have a gander at you first – work out how he’s going to . . .’ Stever trailed into silence and demonstrated the meaning of it by raising an imaginary axe above his head. ‘Know what I mean? It’s a skilled job, after all. Not something anybody could do. Not if they want a good clean cut, that is . . . Anyway, there’s the Padre’ll have to come and see you, as well. It won’t be old Müller, though, he’s the RC. It’ll be the other bloke. Dunno his name, but he’ll be along all right, don’t you. fret . . . Then there’s the nosh. They’ll give you a good nosh-up, give you a good send-off . . .’ He winked. ‘Don’t want to meet St. Peter with a rumbling belly, do you?’
He raised his hand in a sign of farewell and closed the door behind him. Lt. Ohlsen began a distracted pacing of the cell. Five steps one way, five steps another. He tried walking the diagonals. He tried walking round the perimeter. He walked in squares, he walked in circles, he traced geometrical patterns all over the place.
The hours slowly passed. It was still raining when he heard the garrison clock strike six. He braced himself to expect a visit from the executioner at any moment.
All night he had listened to the striking of the garrison clock. The hour, the quarter hour, the half hour, the three quarters, the hour, the quarter hour, the half hour, the three quarters, the hour, the—
Despairingly, he began thumping his head against the wall. No use listening to clocks, no use thinking, no use anything any more. His life was over. Let them come and take him when they liked, and the sooner the better. He felt that spiritually he had died on earth already.
Morning came and prison life pursued its normal course. A company of young recruits swung past his cell, singing at the tops of their voices, and Lt. Ohlsen watched them go by and tried to remember if he himself had ever been young. He knew he must have been, everyone was young once, and yet he couldn’t remember it. Before the war, it must have been. He tried to work it out in his head. He was born in 1917, and now it was 1943. He was twenty-six. Twenty-six didn’t sound very old when he said it aloud, but it certainly felt very old.
They fetched him from his cell for the exercise period. He was treated differently now. He wore the red badge of a condemned man on his breast and he took his exercise with the other condemned men, fourteen of them, marching endlessly in circles. They all had red badges, but some had a green stripe across them, which meant they were to be hanged, and others had a white stripe, which meant they were to be shot. Some had a black spot in the middle. The black spots were due for decapitation.
While the condemned men were marching in circles, Stever was standing at the door of the prison whistling. It was a faint approximation of a dance rune he had heard at the ‘Zillertal’. With one finger he beat out the measure on the butt of his rifle.
‘Du hast Glück bei den Frauen, bei ami . . .’18
After a while, even Stever realized that the tune he was whistling had parted company from the tune he had heard at the ‘Zillertal’. He looked at the exercise party and his whistling abruptly changed course:
‘Liebe Kameraden, heute sind wir rot, morgen sind wir tot.’†
The prisoners broke into a trot. Single file round the courtyard, three paces between each man. Hands clasped behind the neck. Let them have no chance of communication before they died.
Stever suddenly took an interest in the proceedings. He slammed his PM firmly against his shoulder and bawled at the top of his voice.
‘Get a move on, you load of lazy sods! Pick your feet up, put some vim into it!’
He encouraged the men passing by at that particular moment with sharp jabs in the ribs from his PM. The prisoners picked their feet up and began running. Some of them inadvertently shortened the gap between them and the man in front.
‘Keep your distance!’ screamed Stever, flourishing his PM above his head. ‘What do you think this is, a reunion party?’
The PM came crashing down on the nearest head. The condemned men quickened their pace and kept their distance. Stever began beating the rhythm with his foot.
‘Out of time! O
ut of time!’ he shrieked. ‘Watch the beat, can’t you? No use running hell for leather like a pack of mad dogs, you’ll never manage the return journey . . . and who knows? Some of you might be reprieved at the last-minute and then you’ll need to be in good nick if you’re going to survive in a disciplinary company . . . work you bloody hard there all right! One two three, one two three, one two three . . . keep it up there! No flagging!’
Several of the prisoners had turned their heads to look at him, the last despairing gleam of hope flickering even now in their eyes. Was Stever tantalizing them or could he have heard something? There was such a shortage of manpower, it could be that the country was no longer able to afford executions. Already they could have formed two or three divisions from the number of men that had been killed for crimes against the state . . .
‘All right don’t kid yourselves!’ bawled Stever. ‘Germany can manage without—’
He broke off in some confusion as Stahlschmidt appeared and took up a position by his side.
‘What are you shouting about? Are you holding conversations with the prisoners? Are any of these men talking?’ He turned to watch them running past, and suddenly shot out an arm and pointed at one. ‘That man there! He was speaking! I saw his lips move! Bring him to me, Sergeant!’
Obergefreiter Braun, standing guard with his rifle, waded into the circle of running men and collared an Oberstleutnant who had the white mark of the firing squad on his chest. Stahlschmidt gave him a few sharp cuts across the back of the neck with his riding crop and pushed him back again.
‘Swine!’ yelled Stever. ‘Get a move on, keep your legs up, keep your distance! What do you think this is? A game of musical bumps?’
Stahlschmidt shook his head.
‘Obergefreiter, you have simply no idea . . . Just watch me, and perhaps you’ll learn something.’
He swaggered into the middle of the ring, cracked his riding whip and opened and closed his mouth a few times, as if testing the mechanism. At length a fierce strangulated shout filled the air:
‘Prisonaaaahs! Haaaalt! Form twos!’
The prisoners fell over themselves in their eagerness to obey the order. Stahlschmidt flexed his knees a few times. It was . good to be a Stabsfeldwebel. He wouldn’t be anything else, not even if they offered him the rank of general. He had had every grade of prisoner pass through his hands save a Stabsfeldwebel. It seemed to him, therefore, by a logical process of deduction, that Stabsfeldwebels were in some way exempt from the punishments that were meted out to more ordinary mortals. Even if that matter of the two visitors on the forged pass was ever brought back to the light of day . . . but no, that was not possible. Bielert surely had more important matters to occupy his mind?
Stahlschmidt opened his mouth and shouted again. The prisoners began to march forward in a rigid double line, their heads turned to the left. They marched in this way for nearly ten minutes, until one of their number fainted. They then went on marching for another five minutes on exactly the same course, backwards and forwards over the limp body.
‘Obergefreiter,’ said Stahlschmidt, casually, before he left, ‘if that man hasn’t recovered by the time the exercise period’s finished I shall expect you to do something about it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Stahlschmidt walked away, leaving his subordinate with an unconscious prisoner on his hands. The man in fact came to his senses a few minutes later and stood leaning against the wall vomiting blood. Stever looked at him angrily. Why couldn’t he take his punishment like everyone else? Why did he have to crack up at the last minute? It seemed likely that for once Stahlschmidt had gone too far. The man was a Gestapo prisoner, and the Gestapo were sensitive over their prisoners. They didn’t object to anyone having a bit of fun, but there would be hell to pay if one of their men died before he could be executed. Herr Bielert was most punctilious over such matters. Stever had heard it said that he had once arrested the entire staff of Lübeck Garrison prison for a similar mishap. And Stahlschmidt had already shit in his copybook once over the business of the forged pass.
Stever watched the prisoner vomiting for the fourth or fifth time and wondered if it might not be a good idea to pay a visit to Herr Bielert. Tell him a few of the facts about Stahlschmidt. After all, none of it was Stever’s fault and it would be grossly unfair if any of the blame should be heaped upon his shoulders. He, after all, was nothing but an Obergefreiter, and Obergefreiters only carried out orders.
The following Sunday, Lt. Ohlsen heard the sounds of hammering in the courtyard, and two or three hours later Stever paid him a visit. He went straight to the window and began conscientiously to test each bar. He winked at Lt. Ohlsen.
‘Just checking,’ he said. ‘Just in case you’re thinking of sawing your way through them.’
‘With what?’asked Ohlsen.
‘Who knows?’ said Stever, darkly. ‘Prisoners get up to some very odd tricks.’
Lt. Ohlsen looked across at the bars on the windows.
‘Has anyone ever actually succeeded in cutting his way out?’
‘Not yet, but there’s always got to be a first one, hasn’t there? And I don’t want that first one to be in MY block. They can do what they flaming well like in anyone else’s, but not in mine . . . Here.’ He pulled out two cigarettes, lit them both and handed one to Ohlsen. ‘Hold it down low, so no nosey parker looking through the door can’t see it. I don’t mind risking my life for any poor bleeder what’s going to make the long journey, but I don’t see any point in asking for trouble . . . know what I mean? And there would be, if they caught you at it. Not supposed to fraternize with the prisoners, we’re not . . .’
Lt. Ohlsen lay down on his bed and smoked his contraband cigarette. Stever looked out of the window into the courtyard.
‘Hear that racket going on out there? You know what they’re doing? Had a look, have you? You can’t see much from here, of course, but I daresay you can make a pretty good guess.’
‘Mm-hm.’ Lt. Ohlsen shook his head, wearily.
Stever grinned. He made a quick, decisive chopping gesture across the back of his neck.
‘They’re getting it ready. Party of sappers out there putting it up . . . Not just in your honour, of course. There’s ten of ’em due for it altogether. All going off on the same day . . . They usually do it like that. Wait until there’s a whole bunch, it saves money. They have to get the executioner down from Berlin, see. Him and his mates. They reckon it ain’t worth bringing ’em down more than once a month.’ Stever turned back to the window. ‘They brought the coffins today, as well; nothing fancy, but not bad. Not at all bad. Nothing to worry about on THAT score . . . And the baskets. They brought them and all—’
‘Baskets?’ queried Ohlsen.
‘Yeah . . . for the heads.’
There was a moment’s silence, and then the Lieutenant gave a rather ghastly smile. His face was white and his lips seemed almost mauve.
‘So they’re putting it up, are they? They’re putting it up at last . . .’
‘Yeah, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be today they’ll call for you,’ said Stever, in rallying tones. ‘I remember one time, they put the thing up and it stayed up for two bleeding months without nothing happening. That was on account of the SD not agreeing with what they said at the trial. Judges wanted to let the bloke off and the SD was out for blood. They got him in the end, of course. They always do . . . It was a colonel, I remember. Peppery old sod. He was in this same cell as what you’ve got. Number nine . . . We always keep this one for people like you.’
‘Like me?’
‘Well – you know.’ Stever smiled apologetically. ‘The ones what have had it in advance, like.’
‘You mean you already know what the verdict’s going to be when a prisoner first comes here? Even before he’s had his trial?
Stever glanced round the cell, looked over his shoulder, peered out of the window again and moved confidentially close to Lt. Ohlsen.
‘I
didn’t ought to tell you, really. It’s something I’m not officially supposed to know myself. But I don’t reckon as you’ll be with us very much longer, so—’ He winked. ‘Just keep it under your hat . . . When a prisoner’s delivered to us from the Gestapo, we get his papers as well. And down at the bottom, on the left-hand side, there’s a little mark . . . The judge has a duplicate set with the same little mark on it. And all the little marks mean something special, see? In your case, the little mark meant—’ Again, he performed his execution mime. ‘The Gestapo had already decided what they wanted, so we knew what was going to happen to you before ever you went for trial.’
‘And suppose the court had decided differently?’
Stever shook his head.
‘They hardly ever do. Not worth their while. Wouldn’t get them anywhere.’
‘No, I suppose it wouldn’t,’ agreed Ohlsen, bitterly.
‘Mind you,’ said Stever, ‘we don’t leave none of these papers lying around. Anything secret, it goes up in smoke the minute it’s finished with. Even carbon paper. Even typewriter ribbons. They’re all destroyed. And as far as I’m concerned, I don’t know anything anyway. I tell you—’ He nodded his head, sagely – ‘if ever the time comes when this place falls into enemy hands – and I reckon it will, sooner or later – I got it all worked out, what I’m going to say. Me and the Vulture, we been over it together several times . . . I’m only an Obergefreiter, I don’t know nothing, I just did what I was told to do . . . Which, of course, is true,’ said Stever, virtuously. ‘And I defy anyone to say it isn’t . . .’
