Court Martial

by Sven Hassel

  The infantry private sags against the ropes, his chest a mass of blood. The Westphalian lies unnoticed in the heather in a faint. The steel helmet has fallen from his head and is filling up with rain.

  ‘Rifles – load!’ orders the Old Man, looking away from the posts and out over the heath.

  Locks rattle and a new cartridge is pushed home.

  ‘Ta-ake aim!’

  The spotlights turn on to the next post.

  The Luftwaffe Feldwebel looks white as chalk in the sharp light. Even the blood-red drill of his prison uniform looks white.

  ‘Fire!’

  The rifles crash again, and the echo is thrown back from the earthwork at the opposite end.

  The Feldwebel is tied so tightly to the post that he remains upright against it. His face looks horrible. A bullet has cut away part of his upper lip and smashed his teeth and gums.

  The lights go off, and for the third time the command sounds through the rain.

  ‘Load! Ta-ake aim!’

  The fingers of light settle on the Oberst, who stares into them with a jeering smile on his face. In that blaze of light he cannot see his executioners.

  ‘Forgive us our trespasses,’ mumbles the chaplain, hypocritically.

  ‘Fire!’

  The shots roar.

  The Oberst sinks forward, hanging like a broken branch against the ropes.

  It is getting darker. The lights go out and the rain is getting heavier. The wind whirls withered leaves across the execution place.

  Tiny curses, a long vicious oath out into the rain.

  The Major turns his head sharply and looks at him.

  Tiny merely shrugs his shoulders.

  The JAG officer goes over to General Wagner and says something to him, inaudible to anyone else.

  The Major gives a sign to the Old Man.

  ‘Ta-ake aim!’ orders the Old Man.

  The lights go on again.

  The General smiles proudly.

  ‘Fire!’ the Old Man’s order cracks above the sound of the rain.

  The rifle muzzles swing about. Four in a row is too much. The shots come raggedly.

  The General screams. Not one shot has been mortal. A couple of rifles clatter to the heather. Two men have fainted.

  The Major shouts hysterically.

  ‘Fire! Fire!’

  The Old Man looks at him uncomprehendingly, doesn’t know what to do. The whole squad has gone to pieces.

  Porta and Tiny turn on their heels and go quietly off, with their rifles across their shoulders, like two duck-hunters on the way home.

  Some flashes cut the night.

  ‘Turn off those lamps,’ screams somebody or other.

  An Oberstabsarzt arrives at the double. The badly wounded General cries out nerve-shatteringly.

  ‘Do some bloody thing, then,’ shouts Barcelona, beside himself.

  The Major looks confusedly at him. He is deathly pale. Then he pulls himself together, tears the blue-black Walther pistol from its holster, runs to the post and presses the barrel against the wounded General’s neck. There is no shot, only a click.

  The Major reels, staring at the pistol His eyes have taken on a strange sheen. This is too much to bear, even for a hard-boiled MP officer.

  The Old Man straightens up suddenly.

  ‘Take aim!’ he roars, madly.

  The half-dazed squad takes aim.

  The post can only be vaguely distinguished in the darkness. Nobody thinks to turn on the lights. The Old Man has his back to the post and is looking at the squad.

  ‘Fire!’ he shouts in a piercing voice.

  The shots sound, but irregularly.

  The Major gives out a long shrill scream and falls to the ground.

  There is wild confusion amongst the witnesses. A group of staff officers with two Generals in the lead rush forward.

  ‘Clear rifles, safety on, order arms!’ orders the Old Man with well-trained Feldwebel precision.

  The Generals come to a halt directly in front of the squad. They look confusedly first at us, then at the executed General hanging against his bonds, his chest shot to pieces. Then at the Major collapsed in a great pool of blood by the side of the post. His face is smashed and a large part of the neck has been blown away.

  The Old Man cracks his heels together and carries his hand to the brim of his helmet.

  ‘Herr General, orders carried out!’

  ‘Thank you, thank you,’ pipes the Infantry General, in confusion. He is still not quite certain what has happened.

  The other General looks at the dead Major again.

  ‘It was entirely his own fault,’ he shouts defensively. ‘According to regulations it is forbidden to walk in front of a firing squad! This must be regarded as a regrettable accident!’

  ‘What about the mercy shots?’ asks the medical officer.

  An Oberstleutnant suddenly has a pistol in his hand. With firm steps he goes from post to post. Each time he stops a short wicked report is heard. The last is the General.

  The Oberstleutnant looks down at the Major for a moment, before returning his pistol to its holster.

  Two medical orderlies arrive with paper bags under their arms. With difficulty they push the bodies into the bags.

  ‘Give us a hand, can’t you?’ they shout, irritably, to Porta and Tiny, who are standing talking to two Pioneers by the nearest lorry.

  ‘Not our job,’ Porta refuses sharply, ‘We aren’t garbage men!’

  ‘Arseholes,’ the orderlies shout at them.

  ‘Want to try your luck?’ asks Porta, cutting the pack into four in front of the Pioneers.

  One puts down five marks, carefully, the other two marks.

  ‘What the hell?’ shouts Porta, contemptuously. ‘Think this is a sewin’ bee or somethin’? No bets under a ton here!’

  ‘You must be nuts,’ answers one of them, but puts down a hundred mark note as he says it.

  Porta turns over the talon.

  ‘You see,’ he grins, as the Pioneer wins, ‘easy ain’t it?’ He pushes two hundred marks over to him.

  When they have won four times in a row, Porta suggests they put the lot in. ‘Five hundred to one I’m offering,’ he says with a false grin.

  But the Pioneers daren’t. They put down four hundred marks and win again.

  ‘Sorry you didn’t now, ain’t you?’ says Tiny slyly, patting a hundred mark note.

  ‘Too bloody right I am,’ says one of them, disappointedly, throwing everything he has in. Much more than he has already won.

  ‘You goin’ to, as well?’ asks Tiny, giving the other soldier a shove.

  He nods darkly and empties his pockets.

  ‘What about you?’ he asks, looking at Tiny.

  ‘I feel funny about it,’ says Tiny laying down a hundred marks.

  Porta turns the pile. Ace of Spades.

  The pioneers have a ten and a five. Tiny has a king.

  ‘That’s the way it goes,’ sighs Porta, raking in the money. ‘Why didn’t you take a chance the round before? You’d have been rich men now. Well so long, then!’ he says going towards the other lorry into which the squad is scrambling.

  The orderlies throw the last of the bodies into the prison wagon. Doors bang and soon the vehicles have disappeared over the hill.

  As soon as we arrive back at the barracks we are issued schnapps and a special food ration.

  Chief Mechanic Wolf comes over to us. With his usual big boss manners he lights a huge cigar and blows the smoke into our faces.

  ‘Wish it’d been you we’d turned off today,’ says Porta in a friendly voice. ‘I’d have shot your balls off personally!’

  ‘Windy, are ye?’ grins Wolf, wickedly. ‘I’d be too, in your boots. Seems you lot’ve all got bonces full o’ sawdust, you probably ain’t realised yet how far you are up shit creek! When this war’s over an’ they reckon up accounts you lot’ll most likely wind up gettin’ shot!’

  ‘What are we to understand by that?
’ asks the Old Man sharply. ‘Who’d want to shoot us?’

  ‘The Yanks maybe,’ grins Wolf, happily, ‘not to mention Ivan!’

  ‘Shut up you wicked sod, you’ve got an imagination like a sick rat,’ shouts Porta, uncertainly.

  ‘Those bastards do the same thing themselves,’ protests Gregor, angrily.

  ‘Course they do,’ smiles Wolf, devilishly, ‘but who’s gonna tell ’em that when they’ve won the war. Winners are always in the right. The losers’ve got hold of the shitty end of the stick! Wait and see! They’ll tear your balls off for not refusin’ to carry out that execution!’

  ‘They can’t do that,’ protests Tiny loudly. ‘I’d like to see where I’d be if I was to’ve told that Major I wasn’t goin’ to do it.’

  ‘He’d’ve shot you up,’ grins Wolf pleasantly.

  ‘The other side knows that too,’ says Barcelona uneasily, shivering already at the thought of peace which was turning from being a longing hope into a terrible threat.

  ‘Course they know it,’ answers Wolf maliciously, showing his strong well-cared for teeth in a broad smile. ‘But that won’t worry ’em. They’ve got to have somebody to take revenge on an’ superfluous bastards like you are just right for the job!’

  ‘They’re not like that,’ protests Gregor, with fear in his eyes.

  ‘Heard the enemy radio?’ smiles Wolf, knowingly, ‘if you had then you’d be prayin’ for this war to last a hundred years!’

  ‘They must be crazy,’ says the Old Man, worriedly.

  ‘No more’n we are.’ Wolf screams with laughter. ‘I’m just glad I ain’t been an executioner. Christ Almighty! But, if it’s any consolation to you sons, I’ll be there when they shoot you! I’ll feel sorry for you, but you wouldn’t ask me, would you, to break down altogether when they send you to Valhalla with, twelve orifices in your bodies!’

  ‘Looks like we’re going to have to do all we can to win this bloody war,’ says Barcelona thoughtfully, pushing away his food.

  His appetite has gone.

  ‘From the day of my bleedin’ birth, I’ve ’ad a kind of a intuition that life was as crazy as it was soddin’ wicked,’ says Tiny with conviction. He orders beer and schnapps and promises the canteen Gefreiter a beating up if he isn’t back with them in two shakes.

  We drown our fears in buckets of beer and vodka. Then we start mixing red wine in our beer and get there quicker.

  It is late when we leave and walk singing across the barracks square.

  Tiny leads us in the beeriest bass anybody has ever heard.

  ‘Er wollte mal, er konnte nicht, ar hatt’ ihn in der Hand,

  da ist er voll Verzweiflung die Stube lang gerannt.

  ‘Er wollte mal, er konnte nicht, da Loch war viel zu klein . . .38

  By order of OKW39 the delinquent was shot 27.12.1944 at 06.55 hrs. The sum of 100 reichsmarks was paid to Mrs Vera Bladel for assistance in the arrest.

  Reinold, Major, Geheime

  Two medical orderlies hold the bloody body firmly against the table. They press a first aid pack over his mouth to stifle his cries. All narcotics have been used up long ago. The Russian nurse hands the surgical instruments to the staff doctor.

  ‘Hold the leg tightly,’ he orders in a hollow voice.

  Soon after the amputated leg is thrown on to a heap of other amputated parts.

  ‘Dead,’ the medical Feldwebel confirms, and looks up at the corpse-pale staff doctor, who makes a curt hand movement. The dead armoured corps soldier is thrown out, like a sack of garbage, on to an already sizeable pile of bodies. Early tomorrow morning they will be buried in a mass grave amongst the fir trees.

  An ambulance column stops outside the kolchos which has been turned into a main first-aid post. A horrible smell, like that arising from a slaughter-house, billows around the ambulances. Groaning soldiers are dragged into the kolchos. A medical NCO sorts them out. The hopeless cases are pushed to one side. The others are carried into the operating room. But the majority are hopeless.

  30 OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht) = Army High Command.

  31 Z.b.V. (Zu besonderer Verwendung) = Special duty.

  32 PK (Propaganda-Kompanie) = War Correspondents.

  33 Blitzmadel = Signals girl.

  34 Fried Egg in silver The German Cross in silver (Fried Egg because of its shape).

  35 ‘Sie ging, etc.’

  Freely translated.

  She walked from Hamburg on to Bremen,

  Where the Flensburg train was due to pass.

  Hola-hi, hola-ho, hola-hi, hola-ho!

  This life she wanted soon to leave, then

  Across the rails she lay, poor lass!

  Hola-hi, hola-ho, hola-hi, hola-ho!

  The brakeman, who was never faulted,

  Braked mightily - but, Oh! Alas!

  Hola-hi, hola-ho, hola-hi, hola-ho!

  The train rushed on could not be halted

  A sweet, young head rolled in the grass . . .

  36 BDM (Bond deutscher Madels) = German Nazi Girls Association.

  37 Liebe Leute, etc:

  Dear friends now would you know

  What happened to an ensign:

  A night with a lovely girl

  or twenty-five bottles of beer . . .

  38 Nacht und Nebel (German) = Night and mist (slang for secret liquidations).

  39 Er wollte etc.

  Freely translated.

  He wanted to, he could not, he held it in his handl

  He ran around, and up and down, the room so fine and grand!

  He wanted to, he could not, the hole was much too small . . .

  FLIGHT

  In the course of the night the majority of prisoners, both the red and the green, are taken from their cells and marshalled in long rows.

  Again and again a count is taken. The guards become more and more hysterical when the numbers do not agree with the books.

  ‘Do you think they’re going to mow us down in rows?’ says an Unteroffizier in a whisper to the man alongside him.

  Nobody answers. Nobody knows. Everyone fears the worst.

  From all over the huge prison, prisoners stream, chased along by sharp orders, which echo back from the walls. After a long night of nervous waiting they are led at the double to the regimental stores where a dirty uniform without badges is thrown at them.

  A demoted Unterfeldwebel grins sarcastically as he points to twelve roughly patched holes.

  ‘The former owner died suddenly,’ he states, drily.

  ‘Punishment battalion,’ mumbles a former Oberfeldwebel in green drill, as he accepts a uniform with large bloodstains on it.

  ‘Death battalion,’ a former Artillerie-wachtmeister in scarlet corrects him. ‘Grave unit at the front line. The ones Ivan doesn’t knock over are shot for fun!’

  ‘For fun?’ asks a green-clad Leutnant, narrowing his eyes.

  ‘I said it, for fun,’ answers the artilleryman. ‘Their papers say – shot whilst attempting to escape – of course!’

  ‘Those three chaps who escaped last week were brought back by the “watchdogs” yesterday,’ explains a Staff-Feldwebel, running a finger across his throat. ‘They were crucified on the fence last night.’ After a short pause he goes on. ‘Nails through their hands and ankles, and they were left hanging there to argue about which of them was Jesus and which the robbers!’

  ‘Is that true?’ asks an Oberstleutnant, who only missed being condemned to death by a hair.

  ‘I saw it myself,’ answers the Staff-Feldwebel, with a dry laugh. ‘They made us march past them singing “Edelweiss”, The sight of them was enough to make us lose any desire to make a try for it.’

  ‘That crucifixion’s the reason we’re here,’ says an SS officer in scarlet. ‘Somebody’s passed it on to the little doctor, and he doesn’t like it. He knows how it’ll be used if it gets to London. Propaganda soup! Even the SS Reichsführer’s had to stand to attention before the little doctor cripple. The crucifiers were shot
this morning, and we’re being moved out at top-speed, so they can invite a commission of neutrals to inspect the place. They’ll open the doors and show them nobody’s being crucified here. Lies, all lies, the doctor’ll say.’

  ‘Preserve us,’ mumbles a Leutnant in scarlet. ‘How will it all end?’

  ‘The thousand year Reich’s complete downfall,’ answers the Staff-Feldwebel, convincingly. ‘But none of us are going to see it. They’ll knock us off at five minutes to twelve, and they don’t even trouble to conceal it.’

  ‘Why don’t you escape?’ asks a rat-faced Gefreiter.

  ‘You try, grins the Staff-Feldwebel, eyeing him up and down, contemptuously.

  ‘Shut it, you dirty lice,’ screams a guard Unteroffizier, throwing a bundle of equipment at a former Oberst.

  ‘You’ll soon’ve shut up, for ever an’ ever amen,’ grins the weapons Feldwebel, diabolically, hitting a former Major in the stomach. ‘Believe me, you nothing, fourteen days from now your arse’ll be cold as the balls on a dead polar bear.’

  The permanent staff whinny happily, not because they are particularly bad men, but simply because they are glad to have their safe job at the depot.

  The whole lot’s gonna get liquidated,’ states a beery Obergefreiter, kicking out at the nearest prisoner, an elderly man whose hair is quite white. ‘What kind o’ shithouse were you ’fore you got here?’

  ‘Herr Obergefreiter, sir, I was a Generalmajor!’

  ‘Did you hear him?’ howls the fat Obergefreiter, enthusiastically. ‘He was, God help us, a Generalmajor! But now you’re only a shitty private, son, so get movi’ off an’ get yourself shot for Führer Volk und Vaterland!’

  ‘My tunic’s too small,’ protests a former Rittmeister from over by the window.

  ‘Cut down your rations the next three weeks,’ the depot Feldwebel suggests, practically. ‘Then you’ll fit it!’

  ‘He ain’t gonna live that long,’ grins the fat Obergefreiter. ‘’E’ll’ve been off to Valhalla this long time, ridin’ a blind nag.’

  The Rittmeister pulls in his stomach despairingly, and manages with great difficulty to get his tunic buttoned. But he is unfortunate enough to lose two buttons in the process and to run into the arms of the duty officer without them.