Legion of the Damned (3 page)

I do not know what I thought of during that drive. I only know that there was plenty of time to think, and that I was calm, a little elated perhaps, even a little happy for the first time for a very long while. When the next second may be your last you have plenty of time to think. I know, too, that for the first time for ages I was aware of being myself. I had lost sight of myself, had ceased to have even an opinion of myself, my personality had been expunged--and yet it had survived the degradation, the daily degradation. Here you are, I said to myself, here you are. Good day to you. Here you are. Doing what the others dare not do. So, after all, you are a person who can do something, someone they have use for. Look out for those trolley tracks there!

I got out of the town, past the last allotments and tin shanties where only tramps live, bums and down-and-outs. Perhaps decent people lived there too now that there was war and the city was becoming more and more pitted with holes every night. A solitary man was digging. He leaned on his spade and looked at me.

"Aren't you going to take cover?" I called to him.

He said something, though what it was I could not hear for the noise of the engine, and remained as he was. Perhaps he said "Pleasant journey." Strange to be driving so slowly along a completely empty highway.

In the town they would now be creeping back to their flats and shops. The most courageous first. Then the others would come, relieved and delighted. Look, it's all there still.

I could perhaps have escaped; there had been many opportunities in the empty streets. I could have jumped off the truck and leaped into cover, while the bomb continued without a driver for another minute or so, till it went bang. Why I did not take the chance I do not know. But I did not. I was really quite enjoying myself. We were alone, my dear aerial torpedo and I, and nobody could do anything to me.

Flags still marked the route, but out there on the heath the intervals between them were longer. Now my instinct of self preservation awoke from its queer intoxication: weren't we there yet? Hell, but it would be too bad if, after all these miles, after close on twenty-four hours...

Eight miles out on the heath I was able to stop. As they considered it impossible to unload the torpedo, it was exploded as it hung in its sprung derrick.

For driving it I was given three cigarettes with the usual remark that I had not deserved them, but was given them because the Fuhrer was not devoid of human feelings.

I considered three cigarettes good payment. I had only expected one.

The worst thing happened to me that could happen to any prisoner--I became ill; and that perhaps saved my life. I kept going for five days. If you reported sick you were at once sent to the camp hospital, where they experimented on you till you could be used no more; and you could only be used no more when you were dead from having been used. Therefore you did not report sick. But during a roll call I collapsed, and when I recovered consciousness I was in the hospital.

I was never told what was wrong with me--no patient ever was. The day I was well enough to get up it began. I was given various injections. I was put in a scalding hot room and from there taken to an icebox, while they kept taking samples of my blood. One day I would be given all that I could eat, the next I was starved and kept without liquids until I was on the point of collapse; or they shoved rubber tubes into my stomach and pumped me empty of all that I had eaten. One painful state succeeded the other and, finally, they took a large and painful sample of my spinal marrow, after which I was handcuffed to a barrow filled with sand and this I had to push round and round a large enclosure without stopping. Every quarter of an hour they took a sample of blood. All that day I trundled my load, while my head swam. For a long time after that treatment I had intolerable headaches.

I was luckier than so many others. One day they thought I had had enough, or perhaps I was not interesting any more. I was returned to the camp. There a grinning SS man told me that I had been taken off the bomb disposal work. The bombs I had dismantled no longer counted.

I went back to slaving in the quarry.

Then, suddenly, I was sent back to the bombs after all; but just when I had worked up quite a good figure I was sent back to Lengries, and the whole thing went for nothing.

Seven months in the gravel pits at Lengries. Monotonous, lethargic insanity.

One day an SS man came for me. A doctor examined me. I had a mattery rash all over my body; the spots were washed and smeared with ointment. The doctor asked if I were well. "Yes, doctor, I am well and in a good state of health." You did not complain of things there. You were well and the state of your health good as long as there was still breath in your body. I was taken in to SS Sturmbannfuhrer Schendrich. He had curtains at his windows. They were even clean. Just think, curtains! Light green curtains with a yellow pattern. Light green with a yellow pattern. Li-- "What the hell are you gaping at?"

I started. "Nothing, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer. Excuse me, I beg to report that I am gaping at nothing." An inspiration made me add in a low voice, "I beg to report that I am just gaping."

He looked at me confused. Then, brushing his thoughts away, he held out a piece of paper.

"Now will you sign here that you have been in receipt of ordinary army food, that you have not been subjected to hunger or thirst of any kind and that you have no ground whatsoever for complaining of conditions here during the time that you have been here."

I signed. What did it matter? Was I being transferred to another camp? Or was it my turn to be hanged?

Another document, a very formidable-looking one, was shoved across to me.

"And you sign here that you have received strict but good treatment and that nothing has been done to you contrary to international law."

I signed. What did it matter?

"If you should ever say as much as a syllable about what you have seen or heard here you will come back and I will prepare a special welcome for you, understand?"

"I understand, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer."

So I was being transferred.

I was put in a cell where there lay a green army uniform without badges of any kind. I was told to put it on. "And clean your nails, you swine!" An SS man then took me to the commandant's office, where I was paid 1 mark 21 pfennigs for seven months' work, from six in the morning till eight at night. A Stabscharfuhrer roared at me:

"Prisoner 552318 A--for release. Dis-
miss!
"

So they tortured you that way, too. I was quite proud that I did not let my hopes be raised. I turned smartly and walked away, expecting to hear their peals of laughter. They were more subtle than that. They kept straight faces.

"Sit outside in the corridor and wait!"

They were not laughing in there. In the end it began to get on my nerves, for I had to wait over an hour. I began to think silly thoughts, wondering how people could be so petty, so wicked. But you can see for yourself that they can be, I told myself. I thought you had got over that sort of childish thought.

Even today I can still be overcome by that utter, speechless bewilderment in which I followed the Feldwebel into the little gray Opel car after being told that I had been pardoned and was going to serve in a penal battalion.

The great, heavy gate fell into place behind us. The gray cement buildings with their many small, barred windows disappeared, and I was driven away from the nameless horror and fear.

I did not understand it. I was stupefied--no, consternated--and I did not even recover properly when we were driving across the barracks square in Hanover.

Now, many years later, I no longer remember the nameless horror and the many fears except as something that is past and over.

But why my consternation when I drove away from it? I have not yet answered that question.

Twenty times a day we were told with much swearing and cursing that we were in a penal battalion, and that that meant that we were to be the best soldiers in the world.

For the first six weeks we had drill from six in the morning till half past seven at night. Only drill.

We drilled till the blood spurted from our fingernails--not as a figure of speech, but in grim reality.

Or we goose stepped in full equipment: steel helmet, pack, ammunition pouches filled with sand and wearing greatcoats, while other people went about in their summer clothes, groaning at the heat.

Or we slogged through mud that reached halfway up our legs; stood up to our necks in water and did rifle drill without a twitch being visible on our set faces.

Our NCO's were a pack of howling devils who shouted and bawled at us till we were on the verge of madness. They never overlooked an opportunity.

There was no such punishment as deprivation of freedom for the simple reason that we had no freedom. It was just duty, duty and duty. It is true that we had an hour's interval for dinner, and that in theory we were free from half past seven until nine o'clock, but if we did not devote every minute of that time to cleaning our muddied uniforms, leather, equipment and boots, we were taught to do so by the most fearful reprisals.

We had to be in our bunks by nine. But that was not the same as being able to sleep. Every single night there were practice alerts and practice in the quick changing of uniform.

When the alarm sounded we tumbled out, put on full field equipment and fell in. Then back we were sent to change into parade dress. Then into drills. Finally, back into field dress. It was
never
good enough. Every night for a couple of hours we were hounded up and down the stairs like a herd of frightened animals. Gradually we got into such a state that the mere shadow of an NCO was almost enough to make us swoon with panic fear.

Once the first six weeks were past we began rifle practice and field exercises. That taught us what fatigue was.

We learned to crawl on our stomachs across miles of training ground, across sharp cinders and flints that tore our palms to gory ribbons or through inches of stinking mud that almost suffocated us. But it was the route marches we feared most.

One night we were turned out. Our NCO's came bellowing into the rooms, where we lay sleeping the sleep of the dead beat:

"Alarm! Alarm!"

Heavy with fatigue, we tumbled out of our bunks, flung open the lockers and in feverish, cursing haste got into our uniforms. A strap proving difficult, a stubborn clasp, half a second lost, those were catastrophes. Before two minutes had gone the whistles were shrilling out in the corridors. Our doors were kicked open.

"No. 3 Company--fall--IN! What the hell, you stinking pimps, aren't you down on the square yet? And your bunks not made? Do you think this is a home for the aged? Lazy camels!"

We tumbled down the steps, tightening a last strap as we went, and in a few seconds we were standing in two wavy lines on the barracks square. Then there was a bellow:

"No. 3 Company--to your rooms--DOUBLE!"

Fancy their not bursting something in their heads when they bellowed like that! Or perhaps they had done something to the place where normal people keep their common sense. Have you ever noticed how they talk? They cannot talk normally. The words in their sentences are joined together till they are baying, and the last word is made into the crack of a whip, if that is any way possible. You never hear them end a sentence on an unaccented syllable. They chop everything into military pieces, making it incomprehensible. That bawling, that everlasting bawling. They are mad, those people.

Like a flood sweeping everything before it, we one hundred and thirty-five recruits hurled ourselves at the stairs to get back to our rooms and change into drills, before "Fall--IN" was shouted again. After being hounded up and down a dozen times to the accompaniment of crazy oaths and curses, we were again on the square, sweating and wild-eyed, in full marching order, ready to go out on a night exercise.

Our company commander, one-armed Captain Lopei, stood surveying us with a slight smile round his mouth. He required iron discipline of his company, inhuman discipline; yet we thought that he, alone of our tormentors, had something human about him. He at least had the decency himself to do everything that he made us do, and he never expected us to do what he could not do himself. When we came back from an exercise he was as filthy as we. Thus, he was fair, a thing to which we were not used; we were used to the person in authority selecting a scapegoat, a poor wretch whom he was always after, never leaving him alone till he was done for, collapsed, disabled, killed with fatigue or driven to suicide. Captain Lopei had neither scapegoats nor favorites--he was that rare type of officer who can get his men to go through hell for him because he himself will lead them there, and because he is fair. If that man's courage and fairness had not been harnessed to Hitler's car, if he had been an officer in almost any other army, I would have liked him. As it was, I respected him.

The commander briefly inspected his company's dressing. Then he walked out from it and his incisive, commanding voice cracked Out across the square:

"No. 3 Company--atten--tion! Eyes front! Shoulder--arms!"

Three rhythmical smacks rang through the night as one hundred and thirty-five rifles were shouldered. A few seconds of absolute silence--every officer, NCO and private standing as stiff as ramrods, staring rigidly ahead from under their steel helmets. Woe to the poor wretch who moved as much as the tip of his tongue!

Again the captain's voice rang through the tall poplars and the gray barracks buildings.

"By the right--forward! Right--turn--quick--MARCH!"

There was a thunderous crash as our iron-shod boots thudded down onto the cement, sending sparks flying. Out of the barracks, square we swung and on down the rain-sodden road flanked by tall poplars. In a penal battalion all singing and conversation are naturally prohibited; fourth-rate people cannot enjoy the privileges of the German soldier. Nor did we have the right to wear the eagle badge or such symbols of distinction; all we had was a narrow, white band (that always had to be white!) low down on our right sleeves, and on it the word SONDERABTEILUNG in black letters.