Reign of Hell (5 page)

After the music-hall comedy of Helmuth and Fischer, we turned out for the euphemistically labelled ‘Morning Sports Session’. Never a day passed but some unfortunate devil who couldn’t stand the pace was kicked or punched to death and carried off on a stretcher. Sports session at Sennelager was an endurance test that would have defeated most Olympic athletes in full training. But when death is the only alternative, it’s amazing what feats a half-starved body can be forced to perform.

At the end of an hour, with black spots leaping in crazy patterns before the eyes, blood like a cataract pounding in the ears, lungs heaving and ribs strained to breaking point, the survivors were sent off at the double to pick up their uniforms and arms from a communal dump. Boots, jackets, trousers, caps, they were flung about at random and it was each man for himself to grab what he could. The idea was to get one of everything in as short a time as possible and to hell whether or not it was the right size. It was the boots that were the most important. A man could survive with a jacket which scarcely met across the chest, he could hitch his trousers up under the armpits, but if he found himself with a boot a couple of sizes too small, he was really in trouble.
One poor bastard I knew once found himself with two right feet. After only half an hour on the march, he passed out, while some silly sod somewhere must have been tramping about quite happily with a big left boot on a small right foot and never even noticed the difference.

The same morning that Parson Fischer fell foul of Helmuth, we had another bit of excitement with a Jehovah’s Witness. It was his first day in camp and he caused quite a pleasurable stir when he refused point-blank to put on a uniform. His mate – an ex-housebreaker, as I subsequently discovered – did his best to coax him into it, but the chap stood his ground and they couldn’t budge him. It seemed he had some sort of religious objections to uniforms in general and the German Army uniform in particular. Someone asked him why he’d come to Sennelager in the first place if he had no intention of becoming a soldier. It turned out that like so many others he’d had no alternative. It was either volunteering to fight for the Fatherland or standing by to watch while they strung up his crippled brother. Not unnaturally, he volunteered. But now that he was here, not wild dogs nor Prussian NCOs could force him into wearing that uniform.

They threw a pile of clothes at him, but he let it fall to the ground, only picking up the green working overalls. The rest of it, the grey overcoat, the steel helmet, the cap, the cartridge belt, the rifle, the gas mask and all the other thousand and one bits and pieces we were supposed to hump about with us, he left in a heap where they had fallen. Simply rolled up the overalls, stuffed them under his arm and set off towards the stairs. The Quartermaster-Sergeant stuck his big red head through the hatch and stared with bulldog eyes at the discarded pile of arms and uniform. I thought for one delightful moment that he was about to burst a main artery. He caught my hopeful gaze upon him, and sadly tapped his head with a finger.

‘Now I’ve seen the lot,’ he said. ‘So help me, I never thought the day would come when they’d start opening up the bleeding loony bins and recruiting the nuts.’

He came to the door and bawled across the room at the
legs of the Jehovah’s Witness as they disappeared up the stairs.

‘Hey, you! You with the bleeding halo! Where in hell’s name do you think you’re going?’

The man paused at the head of the stairs. Slowly, he turned back to look at the outraged sergeant. Before he could say anything in reply, Sergeant-Major Matho came lumbering up with all his usual doglike devotion. Any duty which might possibly involve a few quick karate chops or a kick in the guts delighted him.

‘What’s going on, Sergeant? What’s all the noise about? Who’s making trouble?’

The Sergeant pointed an accusing finger.

‘We’ve got a bleeding nutter on our hands. Thinks he’s already flapping about heaven playing pat-a-cake with the angels. Says he doesn’t want to put his uniform on.’

The Jehovah’s Witness clicked his heels together.

‘Only the overalls,’ he said. ‘I have no objections to wearing the overalls.’

‘No objections to wearing the OVERalls?’ repeated Sergeant-Major Matho, outraged.

The whole room had by now come to a standstill. In all my years in the German Army, I had never met anything quite like it. I began to have a sneaking respect for Jehovah’s Witnesses. They might have belonged to the lunatic fringe, but it seemed they could hold their own with a Prussian NCO.

‘No objections to the OVERalls, did you say?’ Matho suddenly picked up the discarded greatcoat and shook it as he would a rat. ‘What’s the matter with the rest of the uniform? Don’t you like the colour or something? Don’t you care for the cut of it? Great balls of fire!’ He tossed the coat back to the floor and sent it flying across the room with one almighty kick. ‘What do you think this is, a Paris bleeding fashion show? You’re here to fight a war, not ponce about the place complaining the clothes don’t suit you! You’re willing enough to sit on your great fat arse all day long, guzzling the Führer’s bread and sausages, and then you
have the bloody nerve to start grizzling and bloody moaning because you don’t like the look of the bloody uniform!’

‘Sergeant, it’s not the look of it. It’s the whole principle of warfare.’ The Jehovah’s Witness turned earnestly to face the enraged Matho. ‘I happen to be a Christian. Thou shalt not kill . . . I am forbidden by my faith to take up arms or to wear a uniform. It is as simple as that.’

The man turned to go. Matho was up those stairs behind him so fast his hair started to singe. He grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him round and gave him a kick in the backside which sent him crashing over the railings and headfirst to the ground. Swiftly and silently, the room was vacated. We knew only too well what was coming next. We had no desire to stand and watch. We herded like cattle into the corridor outside. Behind that closed door, in the room that stank of musk and dust and human sweat, the grim scene was played to its inevitable conclusion. We heard Matho’s voice rising to an hysterical shriek, cursing the bible, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the church in general. We heard his victim’s replies, low but clear:

‘I cannot help it. I am a Christian. I will not take up arms, I would rather die.’

And we knew, and he knew that he would never come out of that room alive.

We heard Matho unclasping his heavy leather belt and doubtless shoving the buckle under the man’s nose as he said the familiar, meaningless words: ‘Gott mit uns.’

God was with us. The Holy German Army and the Sainted Führer fed his ungrateful children on bread and sausages, and still this maniac stood his weak snivelling ground and refused to fight.

We heard the first loud crack of leather as the belt whipped out and lashed its buckle across the victim’s face. It wasn’t only Matho, there were half a dozen other sergeants there to help him in his task. They took it in turns, competing among themselves to see who could cause the most damage, or who could produce the longest and the loudest scream of agony. It took almost thirty minutes before a blessed silence fell at
last over the room and we knew that the suffering had finished. There was only a lifeless form left for them to kick around the floor. Now they could not inflict any more of their insane tortures. They opened the doors and called us in to dispose of the body. There was an eye hanging out of its socket half-way down a cheek. There was a scarlet pulp where the nose had been. The mouth was torn to shreds and the gums split open. We picked up the remnants of vainglorious humanity and threw it out of the window. After the floor was mopped, we continued with the business of the day.

It was all quite normal and in order. Just one more dead body to be picked up and buried in a nameless grave. He probably died under the influence of drink. Fell out of the window in an alcoholic stupor. It was amazing the number of inmates at Sennelager who fell out of windows in alcoholic stupors. It happened every day of the week – nothing to write home about. His wife, if he had a wife, would wear out her shoe leather traipsing from one bureaucratic blimp to another. But no one would be able to give her any satisfactory answers. Probably no one would even try. People were disappearing all the time in the German Army. Who should trouble his head about one murdered Jehovah’s Witness?

We put the matter from our minds and went along to hear the Captain make his traditional speech of welcome to the newcomers – or what was left of the newcomers. Fischer was in the infirmary and the Jehovah’s Witness was dead, and God knows how many more had expired during the night or would vanish during the course of the day.

‘You are here,’ said the Captain, with his pleasant smile, ‘by the grace of God and the Führer. This is your chance to repent and be forgiven. To wipe out the sins of the past and to start again with a clean slate. It is our job, here at Sennelager, to train you to be good and useful soldiers: it is your job to co-operate with us and to show your willingness to serve the Führer as loyal citizens of the Fatherland. There are several ways in which you can do this. Just to give you one example, you may volunteer for special missions when you
reach the front line . . . Naturally,’ he concluded, with a deprecating movement of one elegant hand, ‘we shall expect rather more from you than from your fellow-soldiers. This is only natural. This is only right and proper. You have a past to atone for, and you—’

‘Sir!’

A big, burly chap, who, as rumour had it, had been a successful pimp in Berlin before the war, shot up his hand and interrupted the Captain in his full flow of eloquence.

‘Sir!’

The Captain allowed himself only a faint wrinkling of his alabaster brow by way of showing his displeasure.

‘Yes, my man? What is it?’

The jolly pimp sprang to his feet. He must have known as well as anyone that the chances of survival in 999 battalion were pretty remote. He had nothing to lose by making a nuisance of himself and annoying the Captain.

‘Sir, can I ask a question?’ he said.

‘Of course you can,’ said the Captain, smoothing out the wrinkles from his brow. ‘Ask whatever you like. Just try not to take all day about it.’

The man’s question was really very simple. He wanted to know what would happen if a criminal such as himself had his head blown off while he was fighting for the Führer and proving himself a good and loyal citizen of the Fatherland. Would it atone for his past misdemeanours? Would he then be deemed worthy of re-entering the Army as a fully-accredited soldier?

He asked his question in a tone of the most earnest sincerity. A genuine seeker after knowledge. Eager and willing to have his head blown off for the Führer and the Fatherland, so long as he could only be assured that it would reinstate him in the eyes of the Army.

No one dared to laugh, or even so much as smile. Hofmann’s glittering eyes were everywhere at once, but he encountered only a most solemn silence. It seemed as if everybody was hanging in mid-air awaiting the captain’s reply to this most burning of questions.

The Captain tapped his boots impatiently with his riding crop.

‘My dear man, if one dies like a hero, then naturally one is treated like a hero . . . Full provision is made for such a contingency. Article 226 of the Penal Code states quite clearly that anyone falling on the field of battle is granted an automatic pardon. You need have no fears on that score. I trust I have answered your question and set your mind at rest?’

‘Oh yes, indeed, sir. You have indeed, sir. I just wanted to make quite sure that I knew what I was doing before I went and did it.’ The man smiled, cheerfully. ‘Didn’t want to cook my goose; sir, without knowing whether I’d still be alive to eat it afterwards . . . If you see what I mean, sir?’

Over in his corner, Hofmann had taken out his notebook and pencil and was scribbling rapidly. Tiny opened his mouth the merest crack and slid his words out sideways like a second-rate ventriloquist.

‘Shouldn’t care to be in your shoes, mate . . . you’ve not only cooked your bleeding goose, you’ve gone and burnt it to a bleeding frazzle!’

The days that followed were tough and brutal, as was the normal pattern of Sennelager, and five more of our volunteers came to grief. One collapsed and died on a route march; one failed to move fast enough when a grenade went off by mistake; and three others panicked at their first encounter with a tank during a training period and were promptly run down and churned to mincemeat to serve as an example to others.

Shortly afterwards, there were several abortive attempts at desertion. Every single man who tried it was recaptured within the first six hours and brought back to Sennelager to be handed over to Lieutenant-Colonel Schramm, the camp executioner.

Schramm was a butcher merely by force of circumstances. Neither by temperament nor by talent was he fitted for the task. He had lost a leg under a tank at Lemberg, which had effectually ended his active career as a soldier. And instead of
promoting him to a full colonel and giving him a comfortable job behind an anonymous desk, the authorities, with their malicious wisdom, had seen fit to reward him for his services by posting him to Sennelager. The first execution carried out under his command had given him a shock from which he never fully recovered. By the third and fourth he felt that he was losing his reason. But he had a wife and three young children, and he knew what both their fate and his would be should he refuse to obey orders. So he took to the bottle and had been drinking steadily ever since. He drank before executions to steady his nerves and come to terms with his conscience; he drank during executions to give himself the courage to go through with it; and he drank after executions to forget what he had just done. Since executions ran at the rate of three batches per week, it may be surmised that the Lieutenant-Colonel was very rarely observed to be sober. He used to limp round the camp using his sabre as a walking stick, never saying a word to a soul. Frequently on execution days it happened that he was too drunk to move without support and had to be escorted there and back by the execution squad. No one would ever have dreamt of reporting him to the Camp Commander. Schramm was regarded with pitying contempt, and yet was a general favourite among all the men.