Court Martial (11 page)

He looks around for a weapon and decides on the Rittmeister's desk lamp.

Oberleutnant Wisling looks at him with slitted eyes. They understand one another immediately. There are no guards between the Rittmeister's office and the great station hall, which is crowded with hurrying people. If they can get that far, they're safe. It would be like jumping into a swamp, the mud would close around them and hide them.

Then out of one of the exits and away into the burning streets.

Over the back of the chair hangs the Rittmeister's belt and pistol holster. We must take that with us, the Oberst thinks. He nods to Wisling, who gets up as if to stretch his legs. He reaches for the lamp shaking with tenseness. He has his hand on it when the door flies open and a young, steel-helmeted Leutnant enters, followed by five infantrymen armed with machine-pistols. They come with all the soundlessness of a Tiger tank on the attack.

The Leutnant is energetic and active. His pale-blue eyes shine from a dirty smoke-blackened face. He salutes carelessly with two fingers to the brim of his helmet and nods towards the two officers who are staring at him in amazement.

'This them?' he snarls, brutally.

'Yes,' answers the Rittmeister, crushing his cap on to his head in sheer confusion. 'These are the two gentlemen who are waiting for you.'

'Gentlemen, that's a good one!' grins the Leutnant, pulling out his heavy P.38 and pointing the muzzle at the two prisoners. 'But if that's the way we're doing it. Okay by me! Gentlemen,' he trumpets through his nose, weighing the pistol in his hand, 'it is my duty to warn you that on any attempt to escape this will go off! Do
not
think that you can commit suicide by attempting to escape from us! You would not be the first I have hit in the lower end of the spine.' He smiles like a snarling wolf. He is obviously accustomed to dealing with prisoners.

Odd that he's not with the Military Police, thinks Oberleutnant Wisling, looking at the Leutnant's white infantry lanyard, but then he recalls that the infantry is home for both the best and the worst of officers. If you are looking for a true gentleman you can always find one in the infantry, and if you are looking for a thoroughgoing scoundrel you can always find one of those there too.

'Shall we be getting along,' grins the Leutnant, bobbing impatiently at the knees.

'In all friendliness, of course! Double up now, gentlemen! Let's get this over with. We prefer not to be in your company longer than necessary.'

Outside the railway station a lorry with a tarpaulin cover is waiting for them.

'Into the coach,' orders the Leutnant, harshly.

'Where are we going?' asks Oberst Frick.

'Shut it,' snarls a young soldier, giving him a blow with the butt of his weapon.

At a breakneck pace the lorry drives through Berlin. It swings through the gates of the pompous General Command building in Bendlerstrasse, where they are taken down into a cellar. An Oberfeldwebel greets them with rough kindliness. He is also an infantryman. They have to hand in all their personal property: Belt, braces, bootlaces. It wouldn't do for them to hang themselves and cheat the court martial.

'Open your mouths an' we'll smash 'em in for you,' promises a brutal-looking old soldier with an S.A. emblem on his breast pocket.

Ten minutes later they are fetched again and taken upstairs.

A fat major of
Jagers
, sitting arrogantly behind a desk, introduces himself as prosecuting officer at their trial. He eyes them for a moment as if they were cattle he was thinking of buying. He flips over a few pages of the documents which lie in front of him and leans back in his chair with a satisfied expression.

'Gentlemen, I have decided to do everything in my power to ensure your being sentenced under paragraph 91a.' He snaps his fingers. 'That means to say that we intend you to be executed, and that I feel almost certain that I shall be able to see to it that you swing. You have been responsible for the perpetration of an infamous crime up there on the Arctic front. If the rest of the Army were to follow your example we'd soon lose the war. But, thank God, there are only a few of your kind in the great German Army. Hang you will!' He passes his hand gently over the gold party badge on his chest.

'Did you know that a man can take up to twenty minutes to die on the end of a rope?' he asks with a sardonic grin. 'Where you are concerned I hope it will take twice as long. It is my duty to attend every execution with which I am concerned as prosecuting officer. I do not normally attend but in your case it will be a very great pleasure. Guard!' he roars, in a voice that rings through the office.

Startled, the two infantrymen tramp into the office, convinced that the prisoners must have attacked the prosecutor.

'Remove these two scoundrels from my presence,' yells the Major, hysterically. 'Get them out of here, throw them in the worst cell we have!'

The cells in the cellar at Bendlerstrasse resemble cages at the zoo. Thick vertical bars separate them from the corridors, along which guards perambulate continually.

'Pigs, dirty pigs,' whispers an artillery Hauptmann in the cell next to Oberst Frick. His face is beaten up and swollen. One eye is completely closed.

'What in the world has happened to you?' asks the Oberst, quietly. His body begins to tremble.

'They beat me,' whispers the artillery officer. 'Smashed my teeth in, sent an electric current through me. They want me to confess to something I never did.'

'Where are we?' asks Oberleutnant Wisling, curiously.

'Third Army Court Martial Unit, section 4a, directly under the jurisdiction of the J.A.G.,' a Stabszahlmeister replies. 'Don't expect anything good! Its short and not sweet here. I've been here three weeks. It's like living in a railway station. You get the impression that half the Army's up for court martial. There'll be nobody left soon. They say we're short of soldiers and yet we're shooting our own quicker'n the Russians can.'

'What have you done?' asks Oberst Frick, looking at the supply officer.

'Nothing!' answers the Stabszahlmeister.

A muffled laugh comes from the cell opposite them.

'There's no place like a gaol to meet innocent men,' jeers an Obergefreiter.

'Why are you here?' the Oberst asks a naval officer, the captain of a corvette, who is sitting in his cell, humming, seemingly without a care in the world. His left eye has been shot away leaving only a raw hole.

'For singing,' smiles the naval officer, amusedly.

'Singing?' asks the Oberst, doubtfully.

'That's what I said.'

'They can't gaol you for that,' says the Oberst.

'Can't they, though,' answers the sailor. 'They can gaol you for a lot less than that.' He begins to sing, softly:

Wir werden weitermarschieren
23

wenn Scheisse vom Himmel fallt.

Wir wollen zuruck nack Schlicktown,

denn Deutschland ist der Arsch der Welt!

Und der Fuhrer kann nicht mehr!

'The gentlemen with the oak leaves on their collars didn't like my lyric. So now they'll probably have me hanged.'

'Impossible,' cries the Oberst, unbelievingly. 'People do not get hanged for such nonsense!'

'In this case they do,' smiled the naval officer. 'I sang it standing on the bridge of my submarine when we came back from a foray and ran into the U-boat base at Brest. They'll hang my first officer, too. He asked a high-up officer in the SS who had come out to welcome us back, whether Grofaz
+
was still alive.'

'Was he drunk?' asks Oberst Frick, wonderingly.

'No just inquisitive. What a party we'd have had if somebody had put a bomb under Hitler while we were out fighting the Jack Tars.'

The piercing howl of an air-raid warning siren breaks off the conversation.

A Feldwebel rushes down the corridor.

'All prisoners on the floor with hands folded at the back of their necks! When you're lying down you're safe from shrapnel. Anybody getting to his feet will be shot down without mercy!' he roars.

Immediately after, the building is shaken by an explosion. The lights go out and the whole prison is in darkness. Every so often the light from a flare illuminates fearful ashen faces.

An oppressive silence descends on the prison. Then the roar and crash of exploding bombs. It sounds as if they are dropping them in quick succession in the neighbourhood of Spree. Plaster rains from the ceiling. It is almost as if it were snowing. There is a tinkling of broken windows. Flaming phosphorous gutters.

Berlin groans in its death throes. The heavy Flak-guns on Bendlerstrasse thunder incessantly.

'Help, help, let me out! Mother! Mother!' it is the shrill voice of a child.

'Shut up, you little bastard,' roars a harsh, commanding voice. 'Stay down on the floor!'

Two shots are heard. A lamp flames. A suppressed oath, and all is quiet again.

It is the hour of death. Death outside the walls. Death inside them. Everywhere death is hastening by. In movement, or crouching in a corner, one can feel his cold shadow pressing close to one.

Some get accustomed to it, become phlegmatic. Others break down under it and end in the melancholy madhouse. Some again are silenced by a rifle shot. Throughout the city nerves are tautened to breaking-point, in prisons, infirmaries, air-raid shelters, streets, submarines, in the oil-stinking interiors of tanks, in training barracks. Wherever one may look, death and fear rule supreme.

A long howl on the siren proclaims the end of the raid, but the respite is only for a few hours. Then the bombers, with the white star or the red-white-and-blue rings, are back again.

Berlin is burning.

Fire engines thunder through the streets. Their task is hopeless. Day in and day out the Berlin fire services fight the flames lighted by the incendiary bombs.

An uneasy, irritable noise is heard from the corridor. Keys jingle. Iron strikes against iron.

'Damnation! The lousy bastard's hanged himself!'

'Save us the trouble,' says another voice, harshly. 'We ought to put the lot of 'em up against the wall and knock 'em over with an SMG!'

At eight o'clock the first of the prisoners go before the court martial. Late in the afternoon a platoon comes to remove the prisoners who have been sentenced. They are taken away never to return. Nobody knows what happens to them.

One morning Oberst Frick and Oberleutnant Wisling are called for. Escorted by four soldiers they are taken to the court and each of them is locked into a closet.

Before they are taken into court they are allowed a short interview with their defending officer, a friendly, elderly Oberstleutnant.

'I can't do much for you,' he smiles, pressing their hands. 'But the rules say I have to be present. And as you know we have a great reverence for good order and
correctness
.

'Is this a preliminary hearing?' asks Oberst Frick, hopefully.

'What a sense of humour,' laughs the Oberstleutnant, loudly. 'Preliminary hearing? Not part of the procedure and particularly in cases such as yours. Everything is quite clear, and the result has been decided long ago. I'd be very much surprised if your sentence hasn't been signed by the Kriegsgerichtsrat
24
. You have disobeyed an order of the Fuhrer's and have confessed to having done so! I would like to see the defending officer who could do anything for
you
! Do you smoke?' he pushes a gold cigarette-case towards the Oberst. 'The court will convene at ten o'clock.' He looks out of the window. Rain is pouring down. 'The prosecuting officer wants you hanged. But I suppose you know that? I shall attempt to get the verdict changed to a firing-squad. In view of your many decorations I believe I shall succeed. There is still some respect for that sort of thing although we
are
beginning to get prisoners who have been awarded the Knight's Cross. Unbelievable only six months ago. Good God, look at you! Have you had no opportunity to shave and straighten up your uniforms? You look as if you had come straight from the trenches. It will make a bad impression on the chairman of the court.

'We can neither shave nor wash,' remarks Oberleutnant Wisling, dismally.

'I'm sorry,' says the Oberstleutnant. 'Everything's going all to hell. Sometimes we have up to twenty death sentences in the course of a single day. Yesterday it was three generals. Don't think
I
like it! But I
have
to! And I'm a soldier!' He slaps his leg. It sounds hollow. False. 'The Kiev Cauldron,' he smiles, sadly. 'I had a battalion in a motorised infantry regiment.'

'Line officer?' asks Oberst Frick, without interest.

'Yes, indeed,' sighs the Oberstleutnant, 'there soon won't be any of us left.' He looks out again, at the rain whipping against the windows. 'Take more than Grofaz to win this war.'

'A tragedy,' says the Oberst, quietly.

'Tragedy? Why?' asks the Oberstleutnant. 'We Germans are like hungry dogs, running after a sausage dangling in front of our noses. We keep biting at it, but we never get hold of it!'

'How long will the legal proceedings take?' asks the Oberst nervously.

'Ten, at most twenty minutes. They're busy people. And there are a lot of cases to get through today. Yours isn't particularly difficult. If regulations didn't require it, it would hardly be necessary for you to come into court. A guard Feldwebel could have told you what the result would be days ago.'

'Then we might as well go back to our cells now and do without all this theatrical business,' considers Oberleutnant Wisling.

'No there you're wrong. You forget regulations. No German transgresses regulations. Regulations and paragraphs are a necessity of life,' says the defending officer, seriously.

A military policeman opens the door and clicks his heels with a sufficiency of noise.

'Let's get it over with then,' sighs the defending officer, rising to his feet.

The courtroom is as cold as the board of officers. From the wall, Adolf Hitler stares down on the accused. It is not promising. It is as if the large portrait is alive and sends out an emanation of pitiless self-justification.