Court Martial

by Sven Hassel

  ‘Hell man!’ screams the young Leutnant. ‘What’re you doing, you missing link you, running around half-naked so even a blind vice squad cop’d be ashamed. Knock the wind out of him,’ he orders the duty NCO.

  Twenty minutes later the old Rittmeister drops dead of apoplexy.

  In the course of the day the newly-uniformed unit is taken to Stettiner Bahnhof and locked into two large warehouses close to the goods yard.

  An SS-Sturmbahnführer with the T-Division death’s-head embroidered on his black collar-dogs tells them that they will be shot down without mercy if they make the slightest attempt to escape.

  A little later they all realise where the trip is taking them. SS-Sonderbrigade Dirlewanger, the most infamous and horrifying military unit that has ever existed. Its commander, SS-Brigadeführer Dirlewanger, a former sexual criminal, was taken out of gaol and given command of this death unit, which operated mainly in Poland and the Ukraine under such sadistic circumstances as to be completely indescribable.

  A cordon of heavily-armed SD40 guards surround the warehouses. Every so often vicious machine-gun bursts rattle across the goods yard.

  Shortly after the tower clock has chimed four, an air-raid signal sounds, and several bombs fall close to the railway area.

  ‘Let’s get to the cellars,’ shouts a former Feldwebel, hysterically, ’or do you want us to get slaughtered here?’

  ‘Why not?’ grins the guard, swinging his machine-pistol round in a way which cannot be misunderstood. ‘Swine like you don’t deserve any better!’ He is a very young soldier, the most dangerous kind, particularly for prisoners. ‘On your back, dung. Get your thievin’ fingers behind your neck! Move an inch an’ I’ll let the shit out of your head for you!’

  The Feldwebel obeys the order to lay down, certain that the young hooligan would be only too happy to make his threat good.

  Oberleutnant Wisling glances at his neighbour, a demoted staff M.O.

  ‘What about making a run for it?’ he whispers without moving his lips.

  ‘How could we?’ answers the M.O. staring straight in front of him. Try to go out of that door, and your escape’d be over before you’d gone two steps!’

  ‘We don’t use the door,’ whispers Wisling. ‘We’ll wait till the transport moves off, when there’s always some confusion.’

  Dr Menckel draws a deep breath.

  ‘It’s hopeless. But if it’s to come off at all it’s got to be here in Berlin.’

  ‘You’re right. When we get to the Dirlewanger Brigade, escape’ll be impossible,’ says Wisling. ‘There we couldn’t even desert. The guerrillas make a quick end of anybody coming from Dirlewanger’s murder brigade’

  ‘Fall in!’ roars a Feldwebel in a ringing voice, rolling the heavy door to one side. ‘At the double, you wicked lot! Move, you bastards!’ Those who are closest to him get a blow from the butt of his weapon.

  Unteroffiziers chase up and down the column of threes counting away for dear life. Three companies have been made up to make things easier but, as usual, the tally doesn’t agree. Now there are a couple too many. Then there are a few missing.

  The SS-Sturmbalinführer from T-Division rages and swears. Prisoners who get in his way are felled brutally to the earth.

  A little way off a locomotive shunts and whistles along, hauling a long train of cattle wagons. The openings are blocked with heavy barbed-wire. Through the open doors the floor of the wagons can be seen, covered with a thin layer of straw. Typical prisoner transport wagons of the new era. They even move horses better.

  ‘Our train, I think,’ mumbles the Staff-Feldwebel with a death’s-head grin.

  ‘Muss i denn, muss i denn

  zum Städtele hinaus,’

  hums a tall, powerful Obergefreiter with a face covered with the scars of shell splinters.

  ‘Fifty men to a wagon,’ orders an SS officer, pointing to the cattle trucks.

  The Unteroffiziers tally the men in. The first party is already on its way across the tracks, covered by machine-pistol muzzles.

  ‘There’s our chance,’ whispers Wisling, pointing guardedly towards the fence to the right of the warehouse. ‘It’s a six or seven foot jump. Then we’ll be under cover. Come on,’ he hisses, pushing the doctor roughly, as the two guards turn round, called back by the SS-Obersturm-Bahnführer by the water tower.

  Like lightning they go down and crawl in under the warehouse.

  ‘Bloody quick thinking!’ cries the big Obergefreiter with the scarred face. ‘It’ll cost you your coconuts though, when they get you again!’

  But they don’t hear his remark. At breakneck speed they cross the coal heaps and crawl under a shunting train. Menckel stumbles, but Wisling pulls him back before the wheels can cut him in two.

  A railway shunter looks down at them from his brakehouse, swinging a lamp up and down. The wheels scream and whine. The train stops with a rattling crash and begins to back. Shortly after the locomotive passes, spurting steam, and they disappear in the heavy mist.

  ‘We’re saved,’ whispers the doctor breathlessly. ‘God in heaven! We’re saved!’

  ‘Not yet,’ mumbles Wisling, beginning to run down towards the canal.

  Shouted orders are heard not far behind them. They go rigid with fear. Are they on their track already, these blood-thirsty carnivores.

  Shouts sound in the dark. An Mpi rattles viciously in two short bursts. Shadowy figures hasten down the rows of goods wagons.

  ‘Quick,’ pants Wisling, catching Menckel by the arm.

  They jump over a low gate, and sneak along the subway terminus. Some railwaymen look at them curiously. From the block station somebody shouts something, but when an express comes thundering along they realise that it was merely a warning to them to get off the line before they were crushed under the hurtling train.

  ‘That would have been the right train for us,’ says Wisling with a smile, pointing at the destination boards on the coaches. BERLIN —WARNEMUNDE — GED SER— KOPENHAGEN. ‘From Copenhagen to Sweden is only a short journey.’

  The Swedes would send us back as deserters,’ says Menckel, gloomily. ‘In Fort Zitta there were three the Swedes had turned over.’

  ‘We could say we were Jews,’ thinks Wisling, optimistically. ‘Many do. They don’t send them back.’

  When they turn the corner by the double turntable they see a chilly SS guard, leaning up against the door of a warehouse.

  ‘That’s our man,’ says Wisling in a hard voice, picking up a piece of rail from a heap of scrap.

  The guard is half asleep on his feet with his collar up around his ears. The wind whistles past the brim of his steel helmet. He shivers and sinks deeper into his greatcoat. It is a cold, wet night.

  A cigarette glows revealingly in his cupped hand. Each time he takes a draw at it he turns his head in towards a corner so that the glow will not betray him to anybody sneaking around checking on the sentries.

  Under cover of the heavy darkness Wisling creeps silently closer to him.

  From the other side Menckel comes tip-toeing with a piece of wood as a club in his hand. As the sentry turns again into the doorway, and the cigarette glows brighter, Wisling brings the steel rail down with all his might.

  The SS soldier slumps down with the back of his head smashed in. Not a sound comes from him. Killed on the spot. The cigarette rolls along the wall and the wind sweeps it away over the tracks, where it fizzles out in a puddle.

  ‘God preserve us,’ groans Menckel, pulling the dead man’s greatcoat away from his face and revealing a boy not more than eighteen years of age. ‘What times we live in!’

  ‘He’d have shot us dead on the spot if he’d seen us first,’ answers Wisling, roughly.

  Menckel puts on the greatcoat and the steel helmet. Wisling takes the tunic and buckles the belt carrying the 08 around his waist.

  Menckel slings the Mpi on his shoulder. The absence of a belt is not too noticeable. Sometimes a soldier will wear his greatcoat loose ov
er his uniform without a belt, especially in rainy weather like this particular night.

  ‘There’ll be the devil to pay when they find him,’ says Wisling, nervously. ‘There’ll be a hell of an alarm set off immediately!’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better to drop him in the canal?’ suggests Menckel, shuddering. ‘Then they’ll think he’s deserted. It could be several days before he turns up in one of the locks. There are so many bodies floating around just now.’

  They take one end each, swing him a couple of times to and fro like a sack, and send him flying out into the muddy waters of the canal where he disappears with a loud splash.

  ‘I’ve got friends here in Berlin,’ says Menckel, as they cross Uhlandsstrasse. ‘We can hide with them and get some civilian clothing before we continue our flight.’

  ‘Yes, we need civilian clothing more than anything,’ says Wisling. ‘Uniforms are no good when you’re on the run.

  The air-raid warnings begin to howl again. Even before they have finished sounding, flak is going up and nervous fingers of light waver across the gloomy heavens.

  An air-raid warden shouts at them in a rough voice, but becomes servile at the sight of the SS uniforms.

  Explosions shake the houses, and yellow-red flames lick up towards the sky. A fire engine roars through the dark, deserted street. An entire wall crashes down across the road.

  A stick of bombs falls in a neighbouring street, splashing fire over the walls.

  ‘Phosphorus,’ confirms Wisling, covering his eyes.

  By Lüneburger Strasse an amphibian with four MPs turns the corner. The flames of phosphorous reflect from their shiny headhunter badges.

  Wisling springs lightly into a doorway, pulling Menckel with him. They cock their weapons, fully determined to shoot their way free, if it comes to it. Capture means certain death, and in all probability a slow and horrible one.

  The amphibian’s motor purrs like a wheedling cat, and comes slowly closer. The spotlight by the windshield searches along the walls of the houses, down cellar steps, in gateways. The MPs know where to look for their prey.

  Restraining their breathing, and with weapons ready, Wisling and Menckel press themselves up against the soot-blackened wall, and stare in terror at the amphibian which has stopped right outside the gateway in which they are hiding.

  One of the ‘watchdogs’ swings his boots over the side. His grey raincoat is shining with water. He cocks his Mpi noisily, switches on the field lamp on his chest, and is half-way to the gate when a shouted order recalls him. In one jump he is back in the amphibian which swings round and with motor roaring races back in the direction of limburger Strasse.

  An Mpi barks, long and wickedly. A scream echoes between the dark houses. A few short, shouted orders, a loud, satisfied burst of laughter and everything is quiet again.

  A carpet of bombs falls over by Charlottenburg. Phosphorus spurts towards the sky. The ghostly ruins throw long shadows in the cruel light of the flames.

  The covered bus-stop at Litzenburger Platz is thrown high into the air, balancing on the tip of a tongue of flame, and two human bodies are thrown fierily from the traffic control kiosk as the rest of it falls, in a rain of pulverised brick dust, back to the ground.

  A writing-desk sails through the air, completely unharmed, and is shattered to tiny pieces against the Hercules Bridge. A red telephone flies onwards. A conductor’s black cape glides across the street and lands, softly as a bird, on the murky waters of the Landewehr-Kanalen. Bombs carpet the Lüneburger Strasse, where Wisling and Menckel stand in hiding. The shrill whistle of their stabilising fins cuts into the very marrow of their bones.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ gasps Menckel. ‘If we stay here we’re finished!’

  As fast as they can go they run across the Spree Bridge at Helgoland-Ufer. An aerial torpedo falls in front of them and sends a whole row of houses up into the air.

  Through the roar of the explosives the strange grating sound of the incendiary bombs can be heard. It ends with a sound like a tin full of paint hitting a concrete yard.

  In seconds the whole street is ablaze. Phosphorus flows down into the cellars. People run, burning, panic-stricken, through the night directly into the sea of flame. They sizzle and shrink to charred caricatures of humanity.

  High above the burning town rumble the heavy Wellington bombers. Inside them, youthful airmen work like automatons unloading their deadly cargo. Not one of them thinks for a moment of what is happening down there in the blacked-out city, where thousands of human beings are burning to death. They are looking forward to getting back to their bases, somewhere in Scotland, where bacon and eggs and a nice hot cup of tea are waiting for them.

  As soon as the first bombing wave has released its load, and turned noses towards the north, a new wave of Wellingtons comes in from the north-west and again Berlin is carpeted with bombs. Fifteen-sixteen-year-old boys serve the flak-guns. They work until they drop or until fragmentation bombs or incendiaries put an end to them.

  The queen of the guns, the 8.8 cm flak gun, thunders unceasingly. One attack in depth silences the four flak batteries by the Zoo. Nothing is left of them. They are reduced to dust. A few moments ago they were spitting out shells defiantly. Now a great bonfire of phosphorus roars in their place, engulfing everything.

  An SD patrol turning in from the riding path is thrown into the air and disappears into the furnace.

  An old man with two artificial legs lies under a bridge and watches the terrible scene through a crack in the concrete. When he is found the heat has melted him down to the size of a monkey. There is nothing left of his artificial legs. They throw him up on to the corpse wagon in company with other shrivelled-up mummies, as they do every morning in Berlin.

  ‘We’ll be there soon,’ mumbles Menckel hoarsely, pushing into a half-collapsed ruin.

  They catch sight of an SD patrol at the far end of the street, slinking along the walls of the houses in search of victims.

  ‘Where the devil did they get to?’ whispers Wisling, furiously. The patrol has disappeared as if it had sunk into the earth.

  ‘I think they’re in that gateway over there keeping an eye on us,’ Menckel says, pressing himself hard against the wall.

  ‘If they cross the street and come towards us, we open fire,’ says Wisling, going down on his knees. There is a narrow niche in the wall into which he can press himself.

  We’ll never make it,’ stammers Menckel, holding his Mpi at the ready.

  ‘Think we ought to put up our hands and let them hang us on the nearest lamp-post,’ growls Wisling, jeeringly. ‘Those boys won’t give us a chance. They ask one question: Papers! And if you haven’t got any you get it in the back of the neck or get to dangle from a lamp-post with a card on your chest saying:

  ICH HABE DEN FÜHRER VERRATEN!41

  ‘They’re nothing but crazy murderers,’ whispers Menckel in a voice shaking with rage.

  ‘What’s it matter?’ smiles Wisling. ‘I do believe every one of us is more or less crazy just now. Even our escape is crazy!’

  A stick of bombs falls with a roar in the street next to them. The flame of the explosions lights up clearly the faces of the SD patrol across the street. They look like faces chiselled in stone.

  ‘Get on,’ snarls a voice accustomed to giving orders and being obeyed, and the death patrol moves off hugging the smoke-blackened walls. One hand holds the magazine firmly, the other is at the neck of the butt with a finger on the trigger.

  The patrol has not gone more than a few yards down Leipziger Strasse when a series of shots crack through the dark, followed by a brusque, metallic command.

  ‘Halt! Hände hoch!’†

  Two women step out in the middle of the road and lift their hands above their heads.

  Greedily the SD patrol surrounds them. They laugh, and sound like a party of satisfied hunters who have just brought down a long-sought-for animal.

  ‘You ladies been out plundering?’ asks the
patrol commander, squeezing one eye shut slyly, as if he had said something amusing.

  ‘Herr Oberscharführer,’ stammers one of the women.

  He smashes the back of his hand brutally across her face, knocking her over backwards.

  Her shopping bag slides across the asphalt and two packets of butter and a bag of flour fall from it.

  Practised hands search her friend. Two rings, a necklace and a packet of ration coupons are found in her pockets. Explanations and excuses pass unheard.

  ‘String ’em up,’ orders the Oberscharführer, and points to an ancient lamp-post from the time of the Kaiser.

  ‘Come on, girls,’ grin the two young SD men. ‘Up you go and enjoy the view.’

  A long-drawn female scream echoes down the street, back and forth from the houses in Spitaler Markt.

  ‘Shut up, you bitch, cut that screaming out!’ scolds an SS man.

  Soon the two women hang kicking alongside one another from the antique lamp-post.

  Nonchalantly the Oberscharführer hangs a card around their necks:

  ICH HABE GEPLÜNDERT42

  The SD patrol sneaks on its way across Spitaler Markt, and stops for a moment outside ‘DER GELBE BAR’.† One of them tries the door but it is locked.

  ‘Damnation,’ he swears viciously. ‘I could have done with a couple of cold beers an’ a shot just now! One of those bitches pissed on me!’

  ‘They always do. Fear!’ says one of the others.

  They do not hear the bomb on its way. It is one of the small ones which do not make much noise. The just have time to flinch from the enormous flash of flame before the blast throws them straight through the wall behind them.

  The Oberscharführer does not die immediately. He looks down in surprise at his legs, torn off and lying beside him. He opens his mouth and screams. A long howl like an animal. Then he is dead.

  ‘That’s where my friend’s wife lives,’ says Menckel, as they pass Alexander Platz just at dawn. ‘We were in the same regiment. He was the OC. Let’s hurry there.’

  ‘No,’ says Wisling. ‘It’s too late now. We must wait until it gets dark again. If the caretaker sees us we’ve had it. He has to tell the SD if strangers enter the house.’