The Bloody Road to Death (47 page)

‘Do you realize, Herr Oberst, that this business can cost you dear?’ snarls Walz, red as a turkey-cock in the face.

‘I think you can leave that to me,’ answers Hinka, lighting a cigar quietly.

The SD officer bites his lip. He has obviously great difficulty in controlling himself, but he knows that he cannot, for the moment, overrule Hinka.

He makes himself a quiet personal promise to look after this puffed-up
Wehrmacht
officer before too long. The day is not far distant when all power will be in the hands of the SS-Reichsführer.

‘Will you permit me to question the prisoner?’

‘No!’

‘Do you realize what you are saying?’ asks Walz, in amazement. ‘Do you intend to sabotage the work of the Security Services?’

‘When you bring me a properly signed order from the Commanding General I shall immediately place myself at your service!’

‘You can be damned sure I shall bring you a properly signed order,’ smiles the SD officer, dangerously, pulling his gloves on slowly. ‘You’ll hear from us, Herr Oberst, and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that you will accompany your prisoner when he leaves! At present you can only be regarded as an officer who has attempted to obstruct the work of the Security Services.’

He Jerks round at the prisoner, who is standing between two Military Police guards.

‘We shall hang you twenty times over before you die! We shall make you beg for death!’ He spits viciously in the commissar’s face.

The next second the commissar’s fist lands in the middle of
the SD officer’s refined features. Blood spurts from a broken nose.

Three shots ring out one after the other. The commissar falls gurgling to the floor. A great pool of blood spreads from under his body.

For a moment there is wild confusion. The MP’s have drawn their pistols but cannot decide who to shoot.

Oberst Hinka has remained seated, swinging one leg carelessly. The adjutant lights a cigarette and commences to blow smoke rings towards the ceiling.

‘Lohse, you’re the biggest idiot in
boots
,’ screams Sturmbannführer Walz at his companion, ‘why the
hell
did you have to shoot that Communist? What am I to tell Berlin?’

‘Perhaps that SD Hauptsturmführer Lohse has liquidated a valuable prisoner!’ smiles Oberst Hinka pleasantly, rearranging the empty arm of his uniform.

‘This will have to go on report, Lohse,’ screams Walz, raging. ‘You have been with the SD a long time! You’ll be allowed to shoot all right, I can assure you of that! But it’ll be in the Dirlewanger Brigade
³⁰
and you’ll start at the
bottom
!’

They leave without saying goodbye.

An hour later the commissar is buried, a little way inside the forest. A board with his name is stuck into the ground.

 
6
. Vojenkom (Russian): Divisional Commissar.

 
7
vôlkischer Beobachter:
Nazi newspaper.

 
8
. Djadja (Russian): Uncle.

 
9
. Durak (Russian): Fool.

10
. Dassvadanja (Russian): So long.

11
. Njet, njet, nix panjemajo (Russian): No, no, not understood.

12
. Politkorn (Russian): Political Commissar.

13
. Hromoj (Russian): The limping devil.

14
. See
Assignment Gestapo
.

15
. Tarakan (Russian): Cockroach.

16
. Papojka (Russian): Party.

17
. The sun is sinking,
Evening is near,
I hurry to you,
I fly home to you . . .

18
. French: It is him!

19
. (Freely translated)

20
. ‘Crow’(Slang): Polikaspow P0–2 reconnaissance plane.

22
. Yokel, look out, boar!

23
. Come here!

24
. Company, sing!

26
. Halt immediately!

27
. Bund deutscher Madels: German Girls Association.

28
. Come here quickly, Germans.

29
. German Army before Hitler.

30
. Dirlewanger Brigade: Notorious SS Penal Brigade.

The people will always attempt to find the positive aspects of all circumstances, which, in themselves, are not susceptible to change
.

Josef Stalin to Molotov, July, 1937

The transit prison of Osmita, which lies almost three miles outside the town of Chita, is stated to be the ‘safest’ prison in the world. It is, at any rate, the most sinister and ugliest, built of large dirty-grey ashlars. It is not a prison in the true sense, in which the prisoners serve out their sentences, but a caravanserai, for that enormous freightage of human beings which streams through here from all the prisons in Russia, on the way to Siberia
.

At Osmita the prisoner meets, for the first time, the world’s greatest hunter of men, the smiling little Siberian convoy soldier with the feared
nagajka
hanging over his shoulder. He is most often dressed in a grey greatcoat reaching down to his ankles, and a tall white cossack cap with a scarlet top and emblazoned on it a green cross. Despite his small size there is something terrifying about him. A
Kalashnikov,
with its round drum of bullets, hangs across his chest. By his side swings a cossack sabre in a black leather sheath. In front, on his stomach, is a black open holster from which the butt of a Nagan pistol projects. The pistol is attached to a white cord which goes through both shoulder straps and down over the chest
.

When the prisoners arrive at Chita they are given into the custody of these small men with the green cross on their caps. It is a shocking experience for most of them. On the prison trains to Chita soldiers were only allowed to strike them on the orders of an officer, but the tiny men with the green cross are allowed to use the dreaded
nagajka
on their own responsibility. As soon as they have signed for the prisoners the
nagajka
begins to whistle through the air, spreading terror where it falls. Before the convoy has reached Osmita the weakest have been lashed to death
.

What goes on inside the walls of the transit prison nobody really knows
.

The prisoners are, however it is achieved, trained to an animal-like obedience. When they leave, three weeks later, transported off on hundreds of sleighs, all life has gone from their faces
.

These small policemen-soldiers have become notorious, since the great Siberian desert has become the world’s largest liquidation centre
.

At least four million German prisoners of war passed through Chita, and were ‘educated’ at Osmita under the biting lash of the
nagajka,
before being sent to the mines along the Kolyma river in Siberia or to the camps which lie spread around Novaja Zemla. Only a very small percentage of them returned to Germany after the war
.

H
AUPTFELDWEBEL
B
LATZ
has ventured into the front line to check our ammunition consumption, which he thinks is too large. He is not, on the whole, satisfied with the state of discipline amongst the men in the line. He has complained to the NSFO who, to his horror, has ordered him to make an inspection of the trench commando.

The day Blatz arrives the front is completely quiet. He stumbles first over some of the lightly wounded who are lying down in a dugout.

‘Bloody malingerers,’ he roars. ‘I’ll make your arses that hot you could fry eggs on ’em! Outside, march, march, you sons of vultures!’ He chases them through the trenches, makes them hop forward with bent knees and carbine at stretch, and crawl across the dangerous open stretch. Strangely there are no snipers on this particular morning.

‘Where’s all those Siberian snipers?’ screams Blatz, triumphantly. ‘Lies, that’s what
they
are! Made-up, lying reports, but they don’t fool
me
! You’ll get to know me better! It’s time we had a few courts going here!’

Blood seeps through the wounded men’s bandages. When some section leaders complain, they are rebuked sharply.

‘To me a wounded man is a man who can’t move! Anything less is malingering! Bloody you say? They bled the sick in the old days. It was healthy. So it is today! Too much blood makes a man lazy!’

A little later he decides to inspect the forward MG-posts. He might be lucky enough to drop on a crime which carries the death penalty.

Finally he gets to the forward SMG. Even at a distance he can hear a thunderous snoring. He shakes with excitement, and rejoices at the thought of arresting the sleeping sentry.

Cautiously he crawls over the earthwork and rolls down into the narrow communicating trench. At the bottom of the trench lies the sentry rolled up in a ball like a wet dog. He is not only asleep but has had the effrontery to roll himself into a lambskin robe and place a little blue feather pillow under his head.

Hanging above the SMG is a sheet of cardboard on which, in large, ill-formed letters is written:

DEAR MISTER HAUPTFELDWEBEL,

PLEASE PASS BY QUIETLY!

DO NOT DISTURB BEFORE

13.00 HRS!

THANK YOU KINDLY SIR!

YOUR OBDT. SERVT.

OBERGEFREITER WOLFGANG CREUTZFELDT.

Blatz does not know whether to shout or to cry. He chooses the former, every NCO’s tried and true weapon when up a blind alley. Just keep on shouting long enough and
something
will occur to you.

Tiny opens one eye and places a finger to his lips.

‘Ee! Stop that shoutin’, man. Can’t you see as ’ow I do be tryin’ to get a little shuteye, like?’

‘You are sleeping at your post!’ roars Blatz in a voice which cracks several times from rage.

‘
Course
I be sleepin’! What’s wrong with
sleepin
’ now?’ Tiny smiles broadly.

‘You admit to my face that you were asleep on sentry duty?’

‘An’ why shouldn’t I be? I
were
sleepin’! An’ I was ’avin’ a lovely dream, I was. There the ’auptfeldwebel was, ’angin’ out on the wire, like, an’ we was all ’avin’ a bang at ’im, with rifles, like. Everytime we got a bullseye ’ow you did ’op about, you did! Just like one 0’ they jumpin’-jacks as they make in Saxony!
You
know!’

‘Sleeping at your post’ll cost you your head, man!’ shouts Blatz in triumph. ‘Up on your feet! You’re under arrest! We don’t make a lot of fuss about pigs like you, Creutzfeldt, you’re getting a summary when we get back to the company and two
of the three judges’ll be me and the OCI You’ll get shot, Greutzf eldt,
we
can guarantee you that!’

‘Why do the ’auptfeldwebel keep sayin’ “
we
”. More’n one of you, like, perhaps? Got the crabs ’as the ’auptfeldwebel?’

‘You wait, pig!’ shouts Blatz, sure of himself.

‘If the ’auptfeldwebel’s tired of livin’ any longer, I’d advise ’e keeps stickin’ ’is ’ead up like that, now,’ smiles Tiny. ‘They Siberian snipers’d be ’appy to put a bullet in a ’ead like that. Minds me of a dog I once ’ad,’ he says, reflectively.

‘Up on your feet,’ roars Blatz, beside himself. ‘You are speaking to a superior! You’re under arrest, man! If you attempt to escape, I shall use my weapon, and it will be a pleasure to do it to
you
!’

‘You ’it your bleedin’ ’ead on somethin’ on the way out ’ere?’ asks Tiny, suddenly dropping his country cousin act. ‘You sound like a Norwegian bleedin’ cod-fish as ’as got lost on the road to bleedin’ Sweden. Arrest, summary, firin’ squad, shot while escapin’.
All
suit
your
bleedin’ book, wouldn’t they? Listen ’ere you clapped-out excuse for a NCO! You come out ’ere to kick us bleedin’ trench pigs in the arse an’ think you can get away with it, do you? We know what
you
were ’fore you joined the club, son! Fuckin’ shit-remover for a load o’ bleedin’ giraffes in the Berlin Zoo
you
were!’

‘How’d you know—?’ comes from Blatz in amazement.

‘What the fuck’s it to you? I know it an’ that’s enough, fatguts! An’ another thing I know, too! You ain’t goin’ to ever
see
them giraffes ever again!’

Tiny’s smile has become thin-lipped and dangerous.