Court Martial (10 page)

10
Mpi (Maschinenpistole) = machine-pistol.

11
Slang for Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Sword.

+
It is war.

12
akja: Finnish reindeer sledge.

+
politruk: political commissar.

++
kz: concentration camp.

13
vojemkom: regimental commissar.

+
PAK-gun (Panzerabwehrkanone): Anti-tank gun.

14
Beseff (Arabic): To be sure (quite certainly).

15
HJ (Hitler Jugend) = Hitler Youth.

16
Job tvojemadj (Russian) = Go home and fuck your mother.

17
Bysstryj (Russian) = faster.

+
Karbid (Russian) = top-speed (tankman slang).

18
Padaersclae (Russian) = Help.

19
Kempinaki's = an elegant Berlin restaurant.

COURT MARTIAL

Leutnant Schultz loses no time after we get back. Inside an hour he is reporting to the NSFO
20
. In every corner there is muttering against the malicious Nazi-Leutnant. A couple of Finnish
Jagers
suggest we kick his balls in and toss him over to the neighbours.

'I'll blow his candle out,' threatens Porta, pulling his Nagan from its yellow holster.

'You stay where you are,' decides the Old Man, brusquely. 'Let's keep out of the officers' private quarrels.'

'It could've been one of us,' protests Porta, tensely. 'That Schultz is a real bastard.'

'Maybe he is,' says the Old Man, unsympathetically, 'but it's
not
one of us he's informing on! If an officer needs to be revenged then let the other officers see to it themselves!'

'Piss,' Porta gives in, 'but if that arsehole ever gets in front of my gun-muzzle, you'll see a pair of balls wither away sharply!'

'That's murder,' shouts Heide, indignantly.

'No it bloody isn't!' answers Porta, furiously. 'A bastard who runs off at the mouth don't count!'

We discuss Leutnant Schultz for a long time. One thing is certain when the discussion in the Finnish
Jagers
sauna is over. Leutnant Schultz won't need to worry about his old age.

Tiny has been filing away at three bullets while we've been talking. Dum-dum bullets make an enormous hole in a man.

The following day a Major from the Secret Security Police comes for Oberst Frick, and Oberleutnant Wisling is picked up in the middle of technical service.

They are put immediately into a JU-52 and flown to 6th Army at Munster to go in front of a court martial.

The final verdict is deferred until evidence can be taken from others belonging to the battle group. In the meantime the two arrestees are sent to the military prison Torgau where they are placed in the boot squad, together with countless others taken into custody. Prisoners who have been sentenced are given much harsher treatment.

Every man in the boot squad is issued each morning with ten pairs of new, iron-hard army boots of smelly yellow leather. The squad marches for one hour in each pair of boots. To attention and at the double. Round and round the great parade ground. When the hour is over a whistle shrills, and everyone changes like lightning to a new pair of boots. Then 'Qui-ick march!'

This goes on without a break from 05.00 hrs to 21.00 hrs. Some faint. Feet swell up and become lumps of bleeding meat. Blisters burst and new blisters form. No attention is paid to this. In Torgau pity is an unknown term. It is a military prison, notorious for its strictness, and the permanent staff are proud of their reputation.

'March, march, you lazy men,' roars the Feldwebel, standing on a box in the middle of the parade ground. 'Do you call that parade marching? Get your legs
up
, you fucking bastards! Stretch those insteps! Hands level with the belt-buckle and
down
again smartly!
Smartly
, I said!'

A Major-General collapses. He is an elderly man who comes from a soft job in an outlying garrison.

Curses and oaths rain down on him but he stays down. It takes the fire-hose to get him on his legs again.

'An hour's extra marching for you,' orders the Feldwebel, jovially. 'It'll be easier, soon as you get that lazy sweat out of you!'

And the Major-General continues making hard boots supple, so that the fighting-men in the trenches won't have the trouble.

Every evening between 21.00 and 22.00 hrs each man in the squad hands ten pairs of softened-down boots into the Quartermaster's Store and receives instead ten pairs of hard, stiff ones in replacement. These are to be marched supple by the following evening.

In front of Oberst Frick runs a Feldwebel with red shoulder straps, a political prisoner. Behind him is a Gefreiter with green shoulder straps, a criminal, and behind the Gefreiter an artilleryman with purple shoulder straps, a religious deviator. Then comes a Rittmeister with white shoulder straps, a defence saboteur. There are many in the squad with white shoulder straps. Only two have black shoulder straps. These are men who have insulted the Fuhrer. They are certain to receive the death penalty. Both of them are from the Navy.

After six weeks on the boot squad, Oberst Frick is done for. His feet are in ribbons, swollen pieces of bleeding meat. In the prison infirmary they amputate two of his toes. Oberleutnant Wisling lies in the bed next to him with broken ribs and concussion. He fainted once too often on the boot squad. The GvD
21
was in a bad mood. But the Torgau infirmary is not a place where prisoners are allowed to stay long.

Limping and with faces drawn with pain the two officers report to the armourer's workshop for temporary light duty, a duty any prisoner at Torgau would prefer to avoid.

After a couple of weeks with the armourer they are sent to the convalescent squad, which drills from early morning to late at night.

On the wall at one end of the parade ground is painted in large white letters:

GELOBT SEI, WAS HART MACHT
+

The worst thing of all in the military prison was that Iron Gustav
++
was there. Torgau's feared Hauptfeldwebel, who sneaked around on rubber soles like an avenging angel in infantry uniform. The prisoners and the permanent staff feared him equally. Experienced men, who had spent a long time at Torgau, on one side of the cell doors or the other, contended that if Iron Gustav looked at a man for more than three minutes the unhappy person would just drop dead. A glance from Iron Gustav's icy blue eyes was enough to freeze the blood. Another unusual thing about this little, strongly-built, iron-hard Feldwebel was his voice, which sounded like the cracking of dry sticks. He always used as few words as possible. But every word contained as much as a whole book. Even a mentally defective deaf mute could understand the words that shot from Gustav's tight mouth. He never shouted, as did other Unteroffiziers. If you were not standing close to him you could not hear what he said. But that wasn't necessary.

There is a story about a totally paralysed Unteroffizier who was lying in the infirmary here. The Army Medical Commission from Berlin had declared him completely paralysed. It had, therefore, been decided to pardon him and send him home. This was so shockingly unusual that even the prisoners rattled the bars of their cells when they heard about it. The day before the paralysed soldier was to be discharged, however, Iron Gustav decided to go up and see this strange person who was leaving Torgau in such an irregular fashion.

With the peak of his cap well down over his eyes he silently entered the ward, and stood looking at the paralytic, who in a few seconds, at the very sight of Iron Gustav, had become even more paralysed than he was before.

Iron Gustav's lips parted and fired three words at the paralysed Unteroffizier:

'Attention! Qui-ick
march
!'

What an entire medical commission had not been able to cure, with all their medical knowledge, Torgau's Hauptfeldwebel cured in thirty-one seconds.

The completely paralysed man sprang out of bed like a mountain goat, ran out of the ward, across the parade ground and into the prison office, where he cracked his paralysed feet together and shouted in a loud voice:

'Prisoner 226 reporting k.v.
22
from the infirmary!'

Since then Iron Gustav has always visited the incurable cases, which the doctors have given up.

Iron Gustav can not only cure human beings. He can also get horses and mules back on their feet, when the veterinary surgeons are helpless.

When the punishment companies return to Torgau late in the evening Iron Gustav is waiting to meet them, dressed in a pure white tunic. He wears this tunic, winter and summer. A soldier is never too cold or too warm, he says. The weather is of no consequence to him.

They say he never notices whether it
is
winter or summer.

The punishment companies have always to finish the day's duty by marching round Iron Gustav, singing loudly:

'Es ist so schon, Soldat zu sein!'

It is the only song Iron Gustav is fond of.

On Saturday morning their stay at Torgau is ended for Oberst Frick and Oberleutnant Wisling. They are collected while the punishment company is on duty.

Three military policemen are waiting in the prison office. Silently they leave Torgau. In the evening they arrive in Berlin, and are handed over to the military armed guard on the station.

The Rail officer, a Rittmeister, considerably older than Oberst Frick, feels at something of a loss. If they had been other ranks he would have known what to do with them. Into the cells until they were picked up. Instead he offers them cigars and a glass of wine, even although hospitality is against regulations.

At 22.00 hrs the air-raid signal sounds. Everybody goes to the shelters. Ill at ease, and obviously embarrassed, the Rittmeister tells them that in the case of an attempt at escape he will be forced to fire on them.

'I'm sorry, but those are the orders,' he explains, showing them his weapon, a 6.35 dress pistol hardly capable of hurting anything at a distance of more than half a yard.

Right over the railway station a target marker blooms like a Christmas tree, and the air shakes with the sound of bomber motors.

They move closer to one another in the shelter. The Rittmeister has placed himself between the two prisoners and addresses them as 'comrades'.

Then the bombers arrive. Railway lines are twisted into unrecognisable shapes, heavy goods wagons fly through the air like tennis balls. A railwayman is thrown clear across the goods station and is smashed to pieces against the 1914-18 War Memorial.

Burning phosphorous flows down the streets. Human flesh melts away in it. People are stifled in cellars. There are many casualties in Berlin that night.

The Flak-guns roar and bombs explode. Now and then a bomber is hit and explodes in the air in a giant rain of stars high above the city.

In the air-raid shelter the Rittmeister is telling Oberst Frick what he likes about the music of Sibelius.

Oberleutnant Wisling sits with his eyes closed and dreams of the past. He thinks about his time at Potsdam, when he was attending War School I, and remembers the pretty, and willing girls on the benches at Sans Souci. He shivers and curses himself. Now everything is over for him, and merely for disclosing his real feelings that ice-cold night up on the Arctic Circle.

He should have kept his mouth shut like Major Pihl and the others, and then he might have had a chance of living through the war. Now there was no chance for him. The stupidest man in the army even, would know where this was leading. The only uncertain thing was whether they would shoot him or hang him. They didn't often behead military personnel. Only civilians. Shooting or hanging was better, anyway.

Oberst Frick, who had been given his monocle back when he left Torgau, polishes it thoughfully, before replacing it in his eye. He inspects the Rittmeister, who looks very old and does not seem to fit his uniform.

'Sibelius is, of course, a great composer, but I am afraid I have little understanding of that. I am a professional soldier. I was fourteen years of age when I entered the Cadet School, and I have never had time to occupy myself with music.'

A long, piercing howl breaks into their conversation. The air raid is over. It is the All Clear sounding.

Round about in Berlin fires are burning. An acrid, evil-smelling smoke rolls down over the city.

'There they go, those bloody air-gangsters, back home again,' rages an elderly Home Guard with the party insignia on his chest. 'Kill innocent women and children, they can do that all right!'

Nobody bothers to answer him.

C'est la guerre
, the little Legionnaire would have said.

For a brief instant Oberst Frick thinks of escaping. It would be the easiest thing in the world to knock the old Rittmeister down. There is panic everywhere in the burning city. There would be time enough to get safely away before they could pull themselves together enough to come in pursuit. He had many friends in Berlin, and even if discovery might cost them their lives, he felt sure that they would help him. Just one night at each place, down to Osnabruck and into Holland, then contact the Dutch Resistance. One of his friends had done it. He deserted from Germersheim during outside duty. Once a man can get out of sight with the Dutch Resistance he has a good chance of surviving.