The Generals (41 page)

Major von Peters
: Is there no limit to this madness? Celebrated the first of May?

Velder
: Yes. Stoloff made a statement. On the third of May, we made contact with the enemy for the first time. The day after that, the Fascists blasted their way into the western sector. They were thrown back, but the next day we had to leave the western section, which was devastated. We were having great difficulties with ventilation. Despite all the filters and complicated air-spaces, the fans sucked in quantities of smoke and gas. During the following days, the sixth and seventh of May, the attacks were reinforced. The storm-troopers blasted their way in bit by bit, then attacked through the breaks with flame-throwers and grenades. By the morning of the eighth, only one of our three lighting systems was working and we realised our prospects of surviving that day, which was the fiftieth, were not particularly great. Everything went quite quickly at the end. At nine o’clock, it seemed as if most of the militia in our sector had been killed. Ludolf, Stoloff, myself and an orderly were in the operations room, which was the best protected. We were armed with machine-pistols and Stoloff was just hooking hand-grenades into his belt. Ludolf and I were standing about five yards away from him, near the map wall. I know I looked at the clock and saw that it was ten minutes past nine. There was an awful lot of smoke in the room and it was hard to breathe. At that moment a grenade exploded, presumably in the air space above us, however it had got through to there. I can’t have lost consciousness at once, because I know I saw Stoloff fall.

Commander Kampenmann
: Yes, go on.

Velder
: When I came round, it was quite light in the bunker. Later I realised that it was daylight seeping in through the roof, and that the floors above had been blown away. Stoloff was dead. He had had his head practically torn off by a stick of explosive and his body was lying on the concrete floor about five yards away from me. Several soldiers in gas masks and asbestos suits were in there too. The wound in my neck was hurting badly and I lay still. But I think I saw Ludolf moving. After a few minutes, I realised that the soldiers were waiting for something and after a short while a tall officer in Army uniform did indeed come into the room. He looked at me and the general and said: ‘These two are alive. Get them up.’ Now I remember too that it was quiet everywhere, so all resistance in the central fortress must have ceased. The next time I woke up,
I was lying on a blanket on the ground, alongside some kind of tracked jeep. That was the first time for a long time that I had had fresh air in my lungs and I came to quite quickly. Ludolf was standing by the jeep in his dirty khaki uniform, his hands on his hips. Three storm-infantrymen in Peace Corps uniform were standing with their machine-guns cocked. Someone had put a dressing on the wound on my neck. After perhaps a quarter of an hour, that tall officer came back. He was a captain and had a narrow black moustache. I don’t know what his name was.

Major von Peters
: Captain da Zara.

Colonel Orbal
: That’s right, da Zara.

Velder
: He was very friendly and had an elegant manner. He helped me to my feet and into the back seat of the jeep. ‘I’ll take these two gentlemen to headquarters,’ he said. Ludolf was made to sit beside me in the back seat. The officer sat beside the driver. A soldier was standing on the back bumper, as guard, I presume. We drove along a twisting uneven road which had apparently been cleared through the minefield. Far away, we could hear occasional explosions, so I presume that some support-posts were still holding. It took two hours to get to the old road between Ludolfsport and Oswaldsburg. It was hot and I looked at my watch, which was still going, strangely enough, and I saw that it was two o’clock. No one in the jeep said a word. At about three we passed Brock. They had repaired the road but the village lay in complete ruins. Ludolf looked about him indifferently. Then we swung southwards, crossed the autostrad and continued along the main road to Marbella. In some way, it was as if the country had changed character and you didn’t recognise where you were. There weren’t many soldiers on the road, but we met a number of police patrols and lots of gendarmes cycling in pairs. We drove past a lot of low grey metal barracks, which looked like some kind of emergency housing, and smoke-blackened workshops. Near Marbella, we passed a large area which appeared to consist of marked-out allotments. It was a fine day, as I said, and lots of people were standing there, poking about in their potato patches, or whatever they were. Ludolf looked at me at that moment and frowned slightly. I remember exactly what he looked like, red-eyed, deathly pale, with lumps of pus on his eyelashes. Like myself, he found it difficult to see and was peering in the light. We
never got to Marbella, because the jeep swung down a side-road to the right just outside the town and ten minutes later we reached headquarters. It was a row of low grey …

Major von Peters
: Yes, yes, yes. Even Kampenmann knows what headquarters looked like.

Velder
: The officer showed us into a bare room where there was nothing but a table and two chairs. He was still very friendly. Then he left, leaving two guards on the door. We sat on the chairs and said nothing. A quarter of an hour later, the officer came back. He looked in a troubled way from one to the other of us, then turned to Ludolf and said courteously: ‘You’re to be executed shortly. Do you want to express a last wish?’ Ludolf said at once: ‘I want to see Oswald.’ The officer was somewhat taken aback and said: ‘The Chief of State? General Oswald? That’s out of the question, of course.’ Ludolf said: ‘A little whisky, please.’ The officer said: ‘Unfortunately spirits have been strictly forbidden in the country for over a year.’ Ludolf shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘Then give me a cigarette.’ The officer said: ‘Of course.’ He took out his case at once and politely offered it. Then he lit the cigarette. Ludolf puffed at it twice, looked at the cigarette and then threw it away. I know why. We’d quite simply got used to not smoking and found it unpleasant. The officer was sitting perched on the edge of the table, swinging one leg back and forth, as if he were troubled and didn’t know what to say, or as if he were waiting for someone. He was wearing shiny black leather boots. After a while, the door opened and a soldier in linen uniform and low black shoes came in. He pointed at me with his pistol and said: ‘Follow me.’ I glanced at Ludolf, but he was looking in another direction at that moment. The guard walked behind me, across a yard and into another building. It appeared to be a back way. There was a corridor with several doors. He opened one of them and pushed me inside. Then he followed me in and stood with his back to the door, his pistol cocked.

Commander Kampenmann
: Well? What happened?

Velder
: Oswald was in there. The room was obviously his private office and was very large. The steel blinds were down so it was rather murky. Oswald was wearing a general’s uniform, but he’d unbuttoned his shirt and loosened his tie. His boots were standing by
the door and he was padding back and forth in his stockinged feet. His false teeth were in a glass on the desk. When I came in, he stopped and looked at me. ‘Good-day, Erwin,’ he said. ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Where’s Edner and what’s he thinking of doing?’ he said. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘You’re lying,’ he said. ‘Of course you know.’ I said: ‘No, I don’t.’ Then he gave me a long look and said: ‘That’s a pity, Erwin. Otherwise I’d have been able to offer you a swift and relatively painless end. Like this. Look.’ He went over to the window and beckoned me to follow. Then he manipulated the blinds a little so that you could see through the slats. They had led Ludolf out into the yard in front of the building and placed him against a heap of sandbags only ten or fifteen yards from the window. He was standing quite still, looking tired more than anything else. The tall officer set up the execution squad and ordered them to fire. The salvo struck low and it almost looked as if Ludolf were still alive when the officer bent over him and shot him through the head with his pistol. Oswald took two steps into the room and stood there with his head lowered, as he usually did when there was something special occupying his thoughts. I heard him say to himself: ‘That’s one of them. But the other bastard’s alive. What the hell is he thinking of doing?’ He repeated the last sentence several times. Then he made an impatient gesture towards me and said to the guard: ‘Take him away.’ I was very weak by then, from loss of blood, I imagine, and they took me straight to the military hospital.

Major von Peters
: Are you satisfied now, Kampenmann? Do you think the Chief of State will be pleased to hear that you’ve let a murderer and deserter stand and shout out all those lies about him?

Colonel Orbal
: Ach, do we have to have that summing-up today? It’ll soon be dark.

Colonel Pigafetta
: They say it’ll soon be got through. And I also heard from Justice Haller that the Chief of State is expecting it to be done today.

Colonel Orbal
: O.K. Let’s go up and have a beer, shall we? The session
is
adjourned for thirty minutes.

*   *   *

Colonel Orbal
: And Pigafetta’s late as usual. Peculiar person.

Commander Kampenmann
: By the way, how long did the remaining forts hold out?

Major von Peters
: We blew the last one up on the seventeenth of May, if I remember rightly. Anyhow, why did you insist on hearing all that about Ludolf’s execution?

Commander Kampenmann
: I didn’t in fact know about it.

Colonel Orbal
: You’re so fearfully inquisitive, Kampenmann. That’s dangerous. And you’re soft. That’s dangerous, too. Watch yourself.

Major von Peters
: Here’s Pigafetta. And he’s got Haller with him.

Tadeusz Haller
: I’m sorry I haven’t been able to come until now. But I hear that the session has advanced swiftly. The Chief of State seemed quite satisfied when I spoke to him.

Colonel Orbal
: Though it’ll be late today. And the air in here is worse than ever.

Tadeusz Haller
: It shouldn’t need to be lengthy. I’ve spoken to the parties and instructed them to make their final summings-up as lucid as possible.

Major von Peters
: Good. Call in the parties, Brown.

Lieutenant Brown
: Is this extra-ordinary court martial prepared to proceed to the parties’ final summing-up in the case of the Armed Forces versus Erwin Velder?

Colonel Orbal
: Of course, Brown. Why do you ask that?

Captain Schmidt
: I request to be allowed to hand over to the Assistant Prosecuting Officer, Lieutenant Mihail Bratianu.

Major von Peters
: Oh, so you’re doing the final summing-up, Bratianu. Excellent. Go ahead.

Lieutenant Bratianu
: Would you mind pushing the accused forward, Captain Endicott. And turn him so that I can look him straight in the eye. That’s right. Thank you.

Colonel Orbal
: Just don’t go on for too long, Bratianu.

Lieutenant Bratianu
: I shall be quite brief, sir. Mr President, members of the presidium, honoured court martial! To use a mild expression, I should like to say that the person we see before us is the most odious criminal that has ever been before any court in this country. There is nothing to say in his defence. For even if a perverted régime created the circumstances which facilitated and
occasionally directly invited criminal activities, Erwin Velder is in himself a monster of depravity and distorted thinking. In the preliminary investigation, and during the proceedings of this extraordinary court martial, it has been described in detail how during the last decade of his life, the accused sank deeper and deeper into the slough of immorality and crime. As we see him now before us here—scarcely human—through his own person he constitutes a living proof not only of his own guilt but also of how far an individual can sink into the slough I have just mentioned. Erwin Velder’s crimes are so terrible that they cannot be expiated, anyhow not by death, nor by any other form of punishment that I know of. That Velder might be made into an object for correction to some extent, I find absolutely out of the question. But undeniably there is a possibility, and even a person of such deficient moral quality as he could have been channelled into another way of life—if from the beginning of his criminal activities he had become the object of social care. It is from this aspect that the verdicts against Velder are of interest. By their precedential character, they will form the basis for legislation which is not only intended to protect and help our nation and to maintain its dignity and independence, but will also in future offer us the opportunity at an early stage, perhaps as early as during youth, to correct people with criminal tendencies. Therefore in the name of this court martial and of the whole nation, I demand that for every one of the one hundred and twenty-eight crimes he has been accused of, Velder shall be considered liable for irrevocable punishment. The accused has beyond all doubt been proved guilty not only of the one hundred and twenty-six crimes he has pleaded guilty to, but also in both cases in which even before this court martial he has been presumptuous enough to deny criminality, namely the question of bigamy and cowardice in face of the enemy.

The sentences pronounced and the verdicts cited are thus of vital interest to the future of the nation, On the other hand, the accused personally is of no interest whatsoever. Nevertheless, the question must be asked,
pro forma
: What shall the armed forces and the nation do with Erwin Velder?

Nowadays we have the advantage of living in a well-ordered country in which the security and welfare of our citizens rest on the
three fundamental concepts of religion, morality and dignity. Another corner-stone in this our society, created by the Chief of State, General Paul Oswald, is humanity and respect for human rights. Despite the fact that Velder as a being has long stood below that of swine, despite his horrible crimes and animal behaviour patterns, we should in accordance with our accepted norms treat him with a certain leniency. For that is what our way of life teaches us. Therefore I submit quite simply that Corporal Erwin Velder be stripped of his national citizenship and his military rank, be dismissed from the Army and declared to have forfeited any right to his military distinctions. And that after that he be executed.