Assignment Gestapo (41 page)

Lt. Ohlsen stared down at the floor. It was polished to a high gloss and he experimentally slid a foot across it to test whether it was slippery.

Slowly he raised his head and looked across at the three judges behind their horseshoe table. Two of them seemed to be asleep. The President, enthroned on his big red chair, was lost in contemplation of a fly buzzing round the lamp. Admittedly it was no ordinary common or garden house fly. It was a cleg, or gadfly. A blood-sucking fly. Not very pretty to look upon, but doubtless very interesting from an entomologist’s point of view.

Lt. Ohlsen drew his gaze away from the gadfly and turned slowly towards the Prosecutor.

‘Herr Oberkriegsgerichtsrat,’ he began, respectfully, ‘since I’ve already signed a full confession for the Secret Police, your question is surely superfluous?’

Dr. Beckmann pinched his thin lips together in a sarcastic smile. He stroked a blue-veined hand caressingly over his pile of documents.

‘Perhaps the prisoner will be so kind as to leave it to the court to decide whether or not a question is superfluous?’

‘Oh, by all means,’ agreed Ohlsen, with a slight lift of the shoulders.

‘Very well, then. Let us leave aside for the moment the crimes of which you are accused in the indictment.’ The little doctor turned and addressed the judges in a loud high-pitched voice. ‘In the name of the Führer and of the German people, I beg leave to add to the list of crimes of which the prisoner is accused those of desertion and cowardice and in the face of the enemy!’

The two sleeping judges opened their eyes and looked round guiltily, dimly aware that they had missed something. The President gave up his contemplation of the gadfly. Lt. Ohlsen sprang forward.

‘That’s a lie! I’ve never been guilty of either!’

Dr. Beckman picked up a sheet of paper and smiled slyly into it, sucking in his cheeks and making them more hollow than ever. This was the type of combat in which he excelled: a quick barb, a surprise attack, a well-placed arrow.

‘I’ve never in my life even thought about desertion!’ shouted Ohlsen.

Dr. Beckmann inclined his head.

‘Let us study the matter together. That is, after all, what we are here for, is it not? We are here to prove either your innocence or your guilt. If, of course, you are able to prove the accusation to be false, then you will be allowed to walk out of here a free man.’

‘Free?’ murmured Ohlsen, raising a cynical eyebrow.

What is a free man? Had there ever been such a person, in his lifetime, in Germany? Certainly there was none now, in the Third Reich. From new-born babies to old men on their death beds, Germany was a nation of prisoners.

‘Naturally,’ went on Dr. Beckmann, leaning menacingly across his table, ‘if you are proven guilty your fate will be very different.’

‘Naturally,’ said Ohlsen.

The President nodded his head in approval. Dr. Beckmann turned back to the judges.

‘With the court’s permission, we will disregard the aocusations contained in the original indictment in order to concentrate on the fresh charges that I have brought. These charges were made possible only this morning, when I received certain documents—’ He held up a bulky bundle – ‘from the Secret Police Special Service. The facts contained therein are quite clear, and if I may be allowed to question the prisoner for a few moments I believe I shall be able to convince the court that there is no necessity for a preliminary investigation.’

The President nodded again.

‘Very well. The court gives its permission. We shall disregard the charges in the indictment and you may proceed to question the prisoner.’

Dr. Beckmann made a servile inclination and swung round to Lt. Ohlsen.

‘On 2nd February, 1942 you were the officer commanding the 5th Company, 27th Tank Regiment? Is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you please tell the court where you were then fighting?’

‘I will if I can remember.’ Ohlsen stared ahead, frowning, at the enormous photograph of Hitler behind the President’s chair. Not a very inspiring sight. ‘It was probably somewhere near the Dnieper,’ he said, at last. ‘But I couldn’t swear to it. I’ve fought in so many places . . .’

Dr. Beckmann tapped a thin finger on the table.

‘Somewhere near the Dnieper. That in fact is correct. Your division had been sent to the Wjasma Rshew area. You had received orders to take up a position with your Company near Olenin, to the west of Rshew. Are you able to remember?’

‘Yes. The division was on the point of being surrounded. The 19th and 20th Russian Cavalry Divisions had outflanked us on the south, and more of them were coming up on the north.’

‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’ said Dr. Beckmann, crisply. ‘The court is not in the least interested in hearing of the activities of the Russians. And as for your Division being surrounded—’ He looked up at the gallery, full of high-ranking and powerful officers – ‘since the Division is still in existence this seems to me a highly unlikely story.’

A loud murmur was borne down from the gallery. It was, of course, accepted teaching that no German armoured division could ever be surrounded by the troops of an inferior nation such as the Russians. Doubt was therefore at once cast upon the veracity of Lt. Ohlsen’s version of the facts. Dr. Beckmann smiled upwards to his audience.

‘Tell me, Lieutenant, are you able to recall that period of the war with any clarity?’

‘Yes, certainly.’

‘Good. Let us see if we agree with each other . . . You had received an order, verbally, from your commanding officer Colonel von Lindenau, to occupy a position near Olenin because the enemy had at one point broken through and there was now a gap in the defences. That gap, to be precise, was along the railway line two kilometres to the east of Olenin—’

‘Which railway line?’ asked one of the judges.

It was not of the least importance and he had no interest whatsoever in the answer, but it created a favourable impression if one asked a question every now and again.

‘Which railway line?’ repeated Dr. Beckmann, for once at a loss.

He tore furiously through his papers, muttering, ‘
Which
railway line’, to himself in tones of disgust and impatience.

Lt. Ohlsen watched him a while.

‘Actually, it was the Rshew-Nelidowo line,’ he said, helpfully.

Dr. Beckmann turned with an irritable gesture.

‘The prisoner must speak only when he is spoken to!’ he snapped. He looked towards the judges and bowed. ‘It was the Rschew-Nelidowo line,’ he told them, and shrugged his shoulders. ‘A branch line merely.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Lt. Ohlsen, ‘but in point of fact it was the main line from Moscow to Riva.’

A suspicion of colour entered the Doctor’s pale pinched cheeks.

‘I have already explained to the prisoner,’ he said, ‘that he must speak only when spoken to.’

Lt. Ohlsen pulled a face.

‘Just as you wish, but I thought we should have the facts right’

‘We do have the facts right! The line in question may have seemed of large importance to you, but in our eyes it is totally insignificant.’

‘Nevertheless,’ persisted Ohlsen, ‘it’s a pretty outstanding branch line that has two tracks and runs for about 1,000 kilometres.’

‘We are not interested in how far it runs nor in how many tracks it has,’ replied the Doctor, tapping on his documents. ‘If I say it is a branch line, then rest assured that that is what it is. You’re in Germany now, you know; not in some Soviet bog. And here in Germany we have very different standards from those obtaining in Russia . . . But let us pass over this wretchedly unimportant railway line and return to the facts! You received an order from your commanding officer to take up your position to the east of Olenin, and you were told that nothing –I repeat
NOTHING
, neither God nor the devil nor the entire Red Army – was to shift you from that point. You were to dig yourselves in there and make sure of your position both in front and on both flanks. Is that correct?’

Ohlsen hunched his shoulders and muttered some words too low to be heard.

‘Yes or no!’ cried Dr. Beckmann. ‘Will the prisoner please answer!’

‘Yes,’ said Ohlsen.

Dr. Beckmann smiled triumphantly.

‘Very well. So having established agreement on the orders you received, we may now go on with the tale in order to give the court an example of your extraordinary cowardice and failure to do your duty . . . Your company was fighting as infantry, but it was by no means an ordinary company that you commanded. It was a company which had been very much reinforced – you may correct me if I am wrong. Obeying written instructions, a section of tanks fitted with anti-tank guns had been sent to you, and also a section of sappers armed with both light and heavy flame-throwers. Perhaps you would care to tell the court in your own words what the exact strength of your company was at that time?’

‘Certainly,’ said Ohlsen. ‘We had 250 men in addition to the reinforcements you just mentioned. Say 300 men in all.’

‘And I think no one would call that a small company,’ murmured Dr. Beckmann. ‘On the contrary, rather on the strong side, would you not say?’

‘I wouldn’t argue with you,’ agreed Ohlsen.

‘Suppose you tell us something of the armaments you had?’

Lt. Ohlsen sighed. He vaguely began, now, to see where the Prosecutor’s questions were leading him. He looked across at the judges. One had his eyes closed again, and the President was drawing ranks of dinosaurs on his blotting pad.

‘We had two anti-tank guns, 7.5 cm., two mortars of 8 cm. and three of 5 cm. – they were Russian, by the way. Then we had two heavy machine guns, four heavy flame-throwers, four light flame-throwers. All section leaders also had sub-machine guns. Some men had rifles. And the sappers, of course, had mines and grenades and that sort of thing.’

Dr. Beckmann listened to this recital with his head on one side.

‘I congratulate you. You have a very remarkable memory. That is exactly how your Company was armed. I have only one comment to make, and that is that your allocation of sub-machine guns was very much higher than average. You had over one hundred, in fact, and yet despite this you behaved in a manner which can only be described as gross cowardice.’

‘That is not true,’ muttered Ohlsen.

‘Oh?’ Dr. Beckmann raised an eyebrow. ‘I beg to differ, Lieutenant . . . Who was it who gave the order for the Company to retreat? Was it one of your men? A non-commissioned officer? Or was it you yourself, the head of the Company?’

‘It was I who gave the order,’ admitted Ohlsen, ‘but only because by that time the Company had been wiped out.

‘Wiped out?’ repeated Dr. Beckmann. ‘You have a very bizarre notion of the meaning of that expression, Lieutenant! In my book, it is used to signify annihilation – total destruction. And yet your presence here today proves beyond any possible shadow of doubt that the Company most certainly was NOT annihilated! And your orders, Lieutenant, if I may recapitulate a moment, your orders were quite definite, were they not? Neither God nor the devil nor the entire Red Army. . .’

Lt. Ohlsen looked without much hope towards the judges.

‘Do I have the permission of the court to relate the events that took place on 2nd February, 1942 ?’

The sleeping judge woke up and looked about him in alarm: things were happening again and he was not aware of them. The President finished off the last of his dinosaurs and glanced at his watch. He was hungry and bored. He had sat through too many of these trials, they were trivial and irrelevant and a total waste of his judicial intelligence. It was high time such matters were dealt with backstage, by the office staff, without going through all this absurd rigmarole in court. And as for Beckman – he glared at him over the horseshoe table. What did the fool think he was playing at, dragging the case on into, his lunch hour in this tedious fashion? All this nonsense about cowardice in the face of the enemy. Nobody wanted high drama when the outcome of the trial had been settled beforehand.

‘You have the court’s permission,’ he grudgingly allowed. ‘But kindly be brief.’

‘Thank you. I’ll make it as short as possible.’ Ohlsen looked back again at Beckmann. ‘After four days and nights of continuous fighting my Company of three hundred men had been reduced to nineteen. All our heavy guns had been destroyed. We had run out of ammunition. Only two light machine guns were still in working order. It would have been suicide to hang on with nineteen men and no weapons. We were fighting at odds of five hundred to one. Both before and behind us were the Russians, and we were under constant attack. To have stayed on when there wasn’t a hope in hell would have been an act of lunacy and an act of sabotage . . . throwing away nineteen lives for no purpose at all, when they could still be of value to Germany.’

‘An interesting hypothesis,’ admitted Dr. Beckmann. ‘But may I interrupt you one moment, Lieutenant. The order of the day from the Führer himself for all troops in the Wajsmo area was to fight until the last man and the last bullet, in order to stop the advance of the Soviets. And you – you, a mere lieutenant – you dare to call that an act of lunacy and sabotage? You dare to insinuate that our Führer, who is under the direct protection of God, is a lunatic? You dare to sit in judgement upon him? You, who are so insignificant that your life could be extinguished this very moment and no one in Germany would even notice, you dare to set yourself up against the Führer and countermand his orders?’

Lt. Ohlsen watched with a mild and detached curiosity as this self-contained and precise little lawyer worked himself into a rage of fanatical self-righteousness on the Führer’s behalf.

‘Herr Oberkriegsgerichtsrat,’ he at last calmly interpolated. ‘I can assure you that I had no intention of implying that the Führer was a lunatic, nor of countermanding his orders, which I imagined were to be taken as a form of encouragement to the troops rather than to be followed literally down to the last man and the last bullet. When I said an act of lunacy, I was referring to myself. I was taught that an officer should use his own initiative where the situation calls for it, and in my opinion it called for it then. You have to remember, if you will, that our position had altered radically since Colonel von Lindenau first told me to hold the—’