The Generals (34 page)

Velder
: On the third of August, Plan A was put into action. The defence system was complete then. The situation at the fronts had not changed, that is, not during the summer months. The Fascists launched two attacks at the beginning and end of May. During the first, they succeeded in breaking through the outer defence belt in the far north-west and taking up positions along the river ravine on a stretch of about four kilometres, by taking it from the rear, from the east. But Ludolf and Stoloff did not seem in the slightest worried. We did indeed lose the corner in the north-west, an area of about twenty square kilometres, but the attack went on for eight days and the Army suffered many casualties in dead and wounded. Our losses were comparatively small, both in manpower and materials. The next offensive, the one at the end of the month, went on for six days without them achieving anything except insignificant breaks in the outer defence belt. After that, all activity ceased completely—well, shelling went on of course, and there were one or two air raids, but they did no great damage. We found out through foreign sources and our own agents that Oswald’s protectors did not dare use atomic weapons—they were afraid of international complications—and his military advisers considered it better to starve us out by a blockade, until we were so weakened that the so-called bridgehead could be forced or until it capitulated. Meanwhile Oswald was receiving constant reinforcements, but this had to be done discreetly, as the people who were sending arms and men had also signed the non-intervention agreement.

Major von Peters
: Balderdash, pure and simple. I refuse to listen to this.

Captain Schmidt
: We have a summary in Volume Nine which could be considered to present a correct picture of the situation, Appendix V IX/16. May I ask you to read it, Lieutenant Brown.

Lieutenant Brown
: Appendix V IX/16, concerning the disturbances, summary compiled by the National Historical Department of the General Staff. The text is as follows:

After local punitive expeditions at the beginning and end of May, General Oswald decided to stop all further military mopping-up operations. During the course of the summer, attempts were made
to return refractory elements in the Eastern Province’s southern areas to order, amongst other things by offering an amnesty to those who had not been guilty of murder or other serious crimes. Since bandit attacks had begun in August, however, it was clear that the rebels, who had received powerful support from international Bolshevism, would only be brought to their senses by force. As humanitarian reasons excluded the use of atomic weapons, the now strongly fortified rebel forts would have to be routed out by conventional means. The General and his closest collaborators in the Peace Corps and the National Freedom Army, however, hesitated for a long time before resorting to offensive weapons.

Captain Schmidt
: Thank you, that’s enough. Let the accused continue.

Velder
: We were geographically ill-placed for the countries which wished to send us aid, and from the month of May onwards, we were cut off from practically all deliveries from outside. Then the powers that were protecting Oswald began to blockade our coasts with warships, for the maintenance of peace, as they put it. General Ludolf and Colonel Stoloff, however, seemed to have foreseen this and nothing in the original plans was changed.

Captain Schmidt
: Try to link him to Plan A, if you can.

Captain Endicott
: I’ll try to.

Major von Peters
: If you gentlemen didn’t mess about so damned much, this business would be cleared up in half the time.

Velder
: Oh, yes, Plan A. This was implemented on the third of August as a logical preparation for Plan B. All the time we had been training people who were going to launch night-attacks, some against enemy position, but most of all against various vital points in the area behind the front. At first, the core of these troops was made up of the people Bartholic had left behind him. The commando units were built up round these men, shock-patrols, as they were called …

Major von Peters
: Assassins would be a better description …

Velder
: … but we trained, as I said, many more, and it soon became evident that our own people were better than Bartholic’s. They operated in groups, five men in each, and they had very light and efficient equipment. On the night of the fourth of August, we sent out the first wave of shock-patrols, over a hundred groups. The results went far beyond our expectations. The Fascists were
quite unprepared and nearly all the patrols came back without a scratch.

Major von Peters
: If he says Fascists again, I’ll shoot him.

Colonel Pigafetta
: That expression really is very irritating.

Velder
: Then we went on striking, sometimes night after night, sometimes with longer or shorter intervals. The plans were very thorough, based on variation in everything, time, place, strength and methods. These attacks continued during the whole of August and September. Guarding on the other side was naturally improved very swiftly and our casualties grew greater. But all this had been foreseen, and in October we allowed shock-patrol activities to ebb away, also according to plan.

Captain Schmidt
: That was Plan A, then. I must now attempt to put a few direct questions to the accused.

Major von Peters
: About time, too.

Captain Schmidt
: Velder, did you participate in the planning of these raids?

Velder
: Yes.

Captain Schmidt
: Were you also aware of the fact that these activities involved innumerable people being murdered, not just soldiers, but also civilians? That women, too, and even children were killed and maimed by bomb attacks and arson?

Velder
: Oh, yes. We discussed the matter at headquarters. The aim in sending out shock-patrols was to spread fear and uncertainty. I remember there was a memorandum in which we stated that it was unfortunate that innocents were sacrificed, but that no such obstacles were to hinder the patrols from carrying out their assignments. On the other hand, the attacks were never directly against truly civilian targets. The doctrine of terror, it was said, could not be used to its full extent in the ways in which it had been in other countries and in other people’s struggle for freedom, because in our case it was a matter of liberating our comrades in the area occupied by the Fascists. I myself had signed this memo together with Ludolf and Stoloff. The reason for allowing the raids to culminate and then successively cease was to get the enemy to believe that the threat had been averted and in that way lull them into a false sense of security.

Captain Schmidt
: That should corroborate sufficiently the accused’s
participation in and responsibility for the crimes contained in the concept Plan A. From the régime of terror that the enemy of the people, Joakim Ludolf set up in the southern sector, only a few documents have survived and most of these are rather uninteresting. To illuminate the atmosphere and to show what dreadful doctrines applied, I shall, however, refer to one of these confiscated documents, Appendix V IX/31. If you please, Lieutenant Brown.

Lieutenant Brown
: Appendix V IX/31, concerning the disturbances. Order of the day issued on the seventeenth of March by the enemy of the people, Joakim Ludolf. The text is as follows:

Comrades. Through this extreme right-wing coup we have been forced into civil war. Paul Oswald and Tadeusz Haller have oppressed the people in the Central and South-Western Provinces by force. They have also allowed foreign troops to invade the country. Our comrades in the northern sector have been defeated. The reasons for this were vacillation, obscure aims and poor preparations. Nothing similar will happen to us. The prerequisites are as follows. Peaceful co-existence with adherents to a capitalist-Fascist military dictatorship is unthinkable. Our earlier system has shown itself to be untenable. So a return to the old order is meaningless. Socialism is the people’s only road to salvation.

To bring about Socialism peacefully is impossible. So with all our strength and means, we must fight the Fascists and the foreign invaders. We are materially and numerically inferior to our opponents. Our situation is thus serious, but by no means hopeless. The enemy has not succeeded in breaking through our positions anywhere. Our supplies are considerable, our arms first-class and our belief in victory unassailable. But establishing socialism will demand great sacrifices. It is incumbent upon every man and woman in the southern sector to prepare themselves for the moment when the situation demands their total commitment. Ludolf. General. Leader of the Socialist Government Militia.

Major von Peters
: Singularly enlightening.

Captain Schmidt
: Is the accused ready to continue?

Captain Endicott
: He’s ready.

Velder
: Organisationally, the militia in the southern sector was based on the following principle: we at headquarters supervised the whole system, of course, but each and every one of the sixty-four
forts in the three inner fortification chains was in itself a closed self-sufficient unit, under the command of one commandant. The personnel in each fort were practically never moved, except a tactical reserve which was used to relieve units in the outer defence belt. Ludolf and Stoloff said that in this way we could be sure that there was no one outside headquarters who knew enough about the defence arrangements to be of any use, should it so happen that that person fell into the hands of the enemy. We virtually ignored the possibility of spies. All those suspected of unreliability had been eliminated at an earlier stage. We ourselves seldom moved outside headquarters—control was exercised by means of a communications network which was very well developed. One thing happened to me personally which showed how isolated the different units were from each other. On the twenty-second of September …

Major von Peters
: Must we plod through all this?

Captain Schmidt
: The episode Velder mentions is evidence for one of the charges.

Velder
: On the afternoon of the twenty-second of September, I had to go to support-post thirty-five, which lay on the coast about fifteen kilometres due south of the central fortress, that is, headquarters. I went there with a new militia officer, by the way. Individual people still occasionally came over from the occupied areas. They were always put through a very thorough test before they were enrolled.

Captain Schmidt
: It’s worth inserting here that if they did not pass this test, they were—as Velder so eloquently put it—eliminated.

Colonel Orbal
: Oh, Christ! So that’s what happened to those we sent over.

Captain Schmidt
: Go on, Velder.

Velder
: There, at support-post thirty-five, in the first fortification line, which lay on the coast about fifteen kilometres south of the central fort, that is, headquarters …

Major von Peters
: He’s already said that.

Captain Endicott
: One moment, Velder, you’re already at support-post thirty-five.

Velder
: Yes, and suddenly I was standing face to face with my younger wife, Carla. Neither of us had known that the other was in the southern sector, although she’d been there for nine months and
I over six months. We were both very surprised. She was in militia uniform, of course, and was serving as a signaller. She said she’d fled from Oswaldsburg on the very first day of the military revolt, then made her way into the southern sector and at once joined General Ludolf. She’d been at support-post thirty-five ever since, since they’d begun to build the fort. It was all very confusing and embarrassing. Carla told me that Doris had stayed behind in Oswaldsburg with two of the children. Doris was the older of my wives. Carla had taken her own girl with her and had had her evacuated abroad before the turn of the year. She herself was living with a militiaman now, who was stationed at the same fort, the commandant, by the way. They’d signed a marriage contract six months earlier, which you could still do in the southern sector. She went on to say that she hadn’t really believed that I’d betrayed the cause and stayed in the Army, but that she’d presumed that I’d fled the country, and in any case she’d considered she had the right to regard me as dead. I really had no answer to such reasoning. In reality then, she had remarried and the situation was, as I said, difficult. Carla was very beautiful too, and now more so than ever, I thought. I wanted her and she said that naturally we could go down to her quarters, but that she was on duty and so it could only be a matter of a short while, and she didn’t think much of that. Carla was in fact the more erotic of my wives. Doris, on the other hand, was the more sexual.

Colonel Orbal
: I didn’t understand that at all? What on earth does he mean? Are you sitting there joking, man?

Velder
: The end of it all was that I made a special pass out for her so that she could be taken through the various connecting passes to headquarters when she went off duty, which was at nine o’clock that night. The man she lived with fortunately did not react negatively to the situation, which I’d been afraid of, and he, too, signed her pass. Well, perhaps that was also because I was a lieutenant-colonel on the staff then.

Major von Peters
: God, the things one has to listen to …

Velder
: Though she was in fact my wife. It was a peculiar situation. I went back to headquarters. I’d reckoned that it’d take her an hour to get there, with all the barriers she would have to get through, so at ten o’clock, I went into my room and got into bed. Five minutes
later, she did indeed open the door and come in. As I’d expected, Carla was reliable. She undressed at once, taking off her uniform and rubber boots … well, everything, and then got into bed with me without saying a word. Though she undressed slowly; she was always slow when it came to making love, both in her movements and with her hands. Carla was extremely lovely. Slim, she had the most supple and beautiful body I’ve ever seen, and stimulating, exciting in some way, dark and incomprehensible, and the hair between her legs and in her groin was absolutely black. And she had a kind of deep, thoughtful seriousness, in love as in everything else. It was an hour before she said anything and then she said exactly this: ‘I’m so glad. Not because we’re lying here making love, for it’s become so complicated, but because you really came over to us. Can you forgive me for doubting you?’ Carla was very erotic, as I said, and it was three hours before she was sufficiently helpless to want to be … well, fucked, quite simply. She could balance both herself and the person she was with, me, that is, on the edge of this apparent calm for hours. She had certain characteristics, sexual ones I mean, in her way of using her lips and tongue and hands …