Читать книгу The Nightmare - Cecil Louis Troughton Smith - Страница 4

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It was towards the end of Otto Sasse’s third year in a concentration camp that he won his release. He went in when he was seventeen and he came out at twenty. Because he did not die under the treatment he received, nor break down under the labour he had to perform, he had grown very hard and tough. He was lean, yet covered with muscle, his hands were horny, and he could do physical work for fourteen hours a day without overmuch exhaustion; he did that every day during the summer of 1939, often waist-deep in water, while he was employed on the construction of the great bridge across the Oder.

Those three years had been a time of triumph for Germany, marked by the absorption of Austria and Czechoslovakia and Memel, the humiliation of England and France, and the snubbing of the President of the United States. News of these great events had penetrated into the concentration camp; indeed it was proclaimed aloud in them, not only by loudspeakers blaring out the speeches of the Fuehrer, but also by the talks given by Party indoctrination officers. For the Party in those years seemed to adopt a double attitude towards its political prisoners. It killed them quickly or slowly, but at the same time it endeavoured to convert them to the Party doctrines, acting almost as if it believed men had souls to save and wished them to die cherishing orthodox beliefs.

So that as the summer progressed Sasse had some knowledge of the new crisis in which the Reich was involved. He knew about the demand for the return of Danzig to the Reich, and about the related demand regarding the Corridor. Even in the speeches of the Fuehrer and in the lectures by the indoctrination officers he was aware of an increasing tension, of an excitement more heightened even than that over the Czech crisis. He could tell there was a great danger of war; the possibility was obvious that Germany might soon be exposed to an assault by the other powers of Europe, and his feelings regarding it were turbulent and harassing to him.

The crime that had brought him into the concentration camp, a month before he had been due to enter a Youth Camp, was one of omission. He had neglected to betray his own father. In very truth he had known nothing of his father’s activities; he had not even suspected them until the night when the police came bursting into the house, hauling from their beds all the people there and placing them under arrest. But Wilhelm Sasse was not there, as the exasperated police discovered after searching everywhere. He may have been forewarned; it may have been pure chance, but he had not returned that night, and now there was no possibility of his returning. He had disappeared into the German underworld, and it would be largely a matter of chance if he were ever arrested.

Wilhelm Sasse the father had been engaged in a conspiracy against the Reich; there were a thousand arrests in Berlin that night, mostly of men who had been petty officials of trades unions before the Party came into power. These misguided men had been ungrateful enough to the Fuehrer, and blind enough to the benefits he had conferred on the Reich, to be discontented with the new state of affairs. On the other hand they had also been too blind to detect the presence of Party agents in their midst, with the result that well-organized simultaneous raids had effected the arrest of nearly all of them; only a few ringleaders escaped.

Aged seventeen, Otto Sasse the son had been let off lightly; the questioning to which he had been submitted was searching but was not severe—he did not know about the way his mother was questioned—and the results left the questioners convinced he had no knowledge at all of his father’s present whereabouts. But he had been a member of a household whose head was guilty of the blackest treason, and confinement in a concentration camp was clearly indicated for him. Nor could there be any chance of liberty for a man whose father was hiding in the underworld conspiring against the Fuehrer and the Reich. Young Sasse had been nearly three years in prison by the summer of 1939; three years in which to grow from a boy to a young man—three years of confinement.

There was an unusual parade one afternoon at the camp. An unknown officer in an SA uniform walked down the lines making a selection, a youngish man, not yet thirty, and spectacled, and a little stoop-shouldered. He looked out of place in his uniform, as if he were a poet, unbelievable as it might be that that sort of poet should have high rank in the Party. And he was accompanied by a sergeant, also young, in a uniform unknown to Sasse, field-grey with black epaulettes. Black was the colour of the SS, the dreaded colour, and when the sergeant came down the line along with the spectacled officer it could be seen that his badges bore the SS in Gothic characters. Young Sasse guessed he must be a member of the Waffen SS, the private field army that had been built up during the last few years to supplement—and keep in hand—the regular army of the Reich. The sergeant bore himself with all the pride and swagger to be expected of a sergeant in a corps d’élite.

Sasse had attended many selection parades, most of them ending in slaughter, but this was different. The young officer selected only thirty men, and these were all men in their twenties, active and vigorous, and Sasse was amongst them. He stole cautious glances at his neighbours. No one ever knew what might happen next in a prison camp. No one could ever guess, for things went on in a prison camp that no imagination could conceive. If one wished to stay alive in a prison camp one had to be quick-witted and ruthless, and Sasse prepared himself.

At a command from the sergeant the thirty men formed up and marched briskly off the parade ground. A further order from the sergeant wheeled them round. They were not heading for the main gate.

‘What’s the new idea?’ whispered the man next to Sasse, but no one could answer him.

They marched to the side gate, the one which was never used, but this time it was open, and through it they went, into the barracks of the SS who supplied the guards for the camp. A few guards off duty—Sasse knew most of them by sight—looked at them with curiosity, and Sasse looked back at them. They were curious at this sight of prisoners in their hideous uniform marching in, but Sasse could read no more than curiosity in their faces. Whatever fate awaited the prisoners, it did not appear as if the guards were in the secret. And at this new experience, at marching into sacred ground where they had never set foot before, the prisoners could not restrain themselves, and broke into a buzz of chatter, but the next order from the sergeant silenced it, and the order that followed wheeled them round again to the door of a barrack hut outside which stood a party of men in the Waffen SS uniforms.

‘March in!’ ordered the sergeant. ‘One man by each bed.’

It was a spotless clean barrack-room, with beds spaced at regular intervals down each side, and beside each bed were the hooks and the lockers for military equipment. The men filed in and took their places; those of them who had experienced military service set the example to the others of standing at the end of the beds. The sergeant and the officer followed them in, and the door was shut. The pair exchanged a few words and the spectacled officer stepped forward to where they could all see him.

‘Achtung!’ barked the sergeant, and the officer began to speak while the prisoners stood to attention.

‘This is your great opportunity, men,’ said the officer; his voice was beautifully modulated, not persuasive so much as convincing. ‘War threatens. The Reich is in peril, as you know. Jewish capitalism menaces our existence. The armies of the Western Powers are mobilizing on our frontiers, determined on perpetuating the wrongs inflicted on our country. But we shall strike them down, as our Fuehrer has promised.’

He paused; so far he had said almost nothing that the prisoners had not heard already, but he had said it well, with conviction. Then he went on.

‘As I said, this is your great opportunity. A deed calling for great daring and devotion has been planned which a few brave men can carry out. You have been selected for it. For the Fatherland! For the Reich! An hour of peril, an hour of exertion, and you will have struck a blow that will be remembered through history. And then you will be citizens again. Never again will you be inside barbed wire. You will be free, restored to every right and privilege enjoyed by members of the Master Race to which you belong. Those shameful clothes that you wear now you will never see again; you will be soldiers wearing the honourable uniform of the armed forces, entitled to the comradeship and the dignity that uniform confers. Men, I know that you will all go willingly into this great adventure.’

He paused again. His face was alight with enthusiasm; he looked like a man inspired. Sasse had listened to him with the idealism of twenty years old, and with the cynicism of a man who had spent three years in a concentration camp. Danger? Death? They seemed likely enough in this unknown adventure. And yet on the other hand there was the promise of freedom, of an end to imprisonment, the filthiness and shame of life in prison huts. And Sasse was only twenty. His country was in danger even though it was the country whose rulers sought his father’s life and kept him behind barbed wire. For three years, since he was seventeen, he had heard no news except what was broadcast from loudspeakers and what had been told him by indoctrination officers. Maybe propaganda had worked on him in the absence of any counteracting influence. Maybe he felt that his fatherland was threatened by unscrupulous foreign powers who envied and feared the strength that the new régime had built up in Germany. Maybe the simple German patriotism that his father had felt and had instilled in his son had been reorientated; maybe it still existed pure. Otto was ready to strike a blow for his country. He was ready to die for it, as well as being ready to risk death in exchange for freedom. The officer caught his eye, and noticed how the boy’s face reflected his own enthusiasm, and he smiled at him.

‘There is no need for me to say more,’ he said. ‘One day—two days—a week from now at most and we shall start on our adventure. I shall be with you; that is why I say “we.” Until then obey your sergeant. He will look after you.’

The officer turned away and the sergeant opened the door for him, saluting as he passed out into the August sunshine. Now it was the sergeant’s turn to speak.

‘Well, my lucky lads,’ he said, ‘now you’re here and you’d better make the best of it. Give me no trouble and I’ll give you none. No talking after lights out, keep your barrack clean, and I’ll ask no more of you. But the man who causes trouble—back he goes in there with a note to the commandant.’

The sergeant’s thumb jerked back over his shoulder towards the concentration camp to indicate what he meant by ‘in there.’

‘How long are we going to be here, sergeant?’ asked a voice.

‘Perhaps a day. Perhaps a month,’ said the sergeant. ‘No one knows. You will draw your uniforms this afternoon.’

‘What uniforms, sergeant?’

‘Now, that’s enough questions. You’ll get them this afternoon, I said.’

And when the uniforms were served out the men were not much wiser. Each man received a neat khaki uniform like nothing any of them had seen before, not even in such a multi-uniformed country as Germany. The cap badges and insignia meant nothing to any of them, however much they puzzled over them when they were back in their barrack-room. The sergeant had taken some care to see that each man was properly fitted. He issued each man a shirt and a set of underclothing, and a pair of good boots.

‘Now get the lice scrubbed off you before you change,’ he ordered. He was a jovial man, by no means severe. ‘I’ll inspect you in an hour’s time. Each man must be properly dressed by then.’

In the barrack-room a cautious argument began about the clothing; cautious, because the inmates had been drawn from all quarters of the concentration camp and did not know each other, and everyone feared the presence of an informer.

‘It’s a Polish uniform,’ declared one.

‘Polish be damned,’ said another, ‘what would we need Polish uniforms for?’

Sasse fingered his uniform and could only wonder. Meanwhile there was luxury in which to revel, shower baths and hot water and plenty of soap, clean underclothing to put on, the hideous camp clothing to be discarded—for ever, the spectacled Nazi officer had promised. In the late afternoon sunshine they formed up outside the barrack door while the sergeant inspected them keenly. He looked every man over, up and down, front and back.

‘That coat’s a bad fit,’ he said to one man. ‘Report for another.’

None of the clothing the men wore was new, but it was all clean and not badly worn. And the solid feeling of good boots on the feet was remarkably pleasant. Even more pleasant was the supper they were served, food and coffee such as not one of them had tasted since his arrest.

‘SS rations, by God!’ said one man, smacking his lips.

By the time lights out came a certain community of feeling had already grown up among the thirty young men who had been gathered together for the unknown adventure. Talk grew a little more free—in fact it called for a sharp order from the sergeant to bring it to an end. It was a sweltering hot night, it being the end of August, and the barrack-room was overheated by the sun that had blazed on it all day. Sasse turned over in his bed—a strangely comfortable bed—several times before he went to sleep.

Next morning there was an excellent breakfast, with each man eyeing his companions strange in their uniforms in the morning light again. Half a dozen cheap razors had been served out to them, so that each man was cleanly shaved, waiting in turn to use them, while revelling again in the shower baths and the almost sufficient and spotless latrine accommodation.

‘Now for the rest of your equipment,’ said the sergeant after breakfast.

It was the sort of thing any soldier might expect to have issued to him; pack and ammunition pouches, water-bottle and bayonet on webbing straps. But it was not German army equipment, as the men who had done their military service showed by the curiosity with which they handled it. The steel helmets were different from any Sasse remembered having seen in pictures. Pack and pouches were full and heavy.

‘Keep your hands off that!’ snapped the sergeant at the men who began to open them. ‘And I’ll tell you now, in case you start having ideas, that those cartridges are empty. There’s no explosive in them. Now put that gear on and I’ll see if it fits.’

Each man put his arms through the straps, buckled the belts, and felt the weight of the equipment on his shoulders, while the sergeant examined each man, and saw that the equipment was properly adjusted, and the helmets properly put on. He was again very painstaking about it.

‘All right,’ decided the sergeant at last. ‘Now I want each man to hang his equipment here. Remember the number of your hook, so that you can find your own quickly.’

‘Here’ was not in their barrack-room, but in the building where the equipment had been served out, and beneath each hook stood a rifle. The sergeant marched them back to their own barrack.

‘Dismiss!’ he ordered.

That was strangest of all, the sensation of being idle, of having nothing to do. Those men had slaved twelve or fifteen hours a day ever since their arrest, and now it was unnatural to them not to be occupied and not to be dog-tired. Talk amongst them began slowly, but it soon grew louder and more animated as arguments developed on the insoluble question of their destiny.

‘Prisoners of war! That’s what we’ll be,’ declared one man.

A big man with a scar on his face announced his contempt for the suggestion in the brief and filthy words of the camp.

‘What prisoners?’ asked another man, ‘whose prisoners?’

‘Poles, perhaps,’ said the first man. ‘You said these were Polish uniforms.’

‘Polish rubbish!’ said someone else.

‘Well, we are going to fight the Poles, aren’t we?’ persisted the first speaker. ‘Remember that broadcast——?’

‘I think these are Bulgarian uniforms,’ announced someone else.

It was a new suggestion which called for fresh debate. Many of the men were a little vague about where Bulgaria was and what was its political alignment. Then someone else came in with a new remark.

‘That Nazi officer with the spectacles said there’d be danger in it,’ he said.

That called for a moment of silence. It was a memento mori to these men; they had left the shadow of the gas chamber behind them and had felt momentarily immortal.

‘Hell!’ said the man with a scar, ‘what’s danger to us?’

‘He didn’t give us any choice,’ someone else pointed out. ‘He didn’t ask us if we’d volunteer.’

‘Hell!’ repeated the man with the scar, ‘who wouldn’t have volunteered when we were—in there? I know I would have done.’

‘But perhaps they’ll want——’ began another, and then the sentence died on his lips and he looked guiltily about him in terror lest anyone should have guessed how he had intended to end it. He had been going to suggest that ‘they’ were going to force them to do something in support of the régime which might go against the conscience of the inmates, and that would have been a highly dangerous thing to say if there were an informer present.

‘Who cares what they want?’ said the man with the scar. ‘I’ll do it. And——’

The man with the scar broke off his sentence too. He had been going to say that he intended to take good care that he would come through alive, at whatever price to anyone else, but he had seen in time that it would not be policy to give warning of it. But the others had guessed and glances were interchanged. There was another moment of silence as everyone digested the information about the man with the scar even though it was information that everyone would, after almost no thought, have taken for granted regarding anyone from the camp who was a stranger to them.

‘What are those rifles for if the ammunition is no good?’ asked someone, changing the subject.

There was plenty to talk about all morning, and then there was a dinner with food of such quality and in such quantity that they were all impressed, and they could doze and lounge about all the afternoon while waiting for the next meal. As early as the third morning the sergeant could comment on their appearance.

‘You’re fattening up now, lads,’ he said.

It was true. A few days of idleness and plenty of good food had begun to turn them from hollow-cheeked skeletons to burly men. And at the same time the quarrels began, as was to be expected amongst men who had nothing to do. The sergeant heard the din and came in and quelled them.

‘Very well, then,’ said the sergeant. ‘If you can’t keep yourselves out of mischief I must do it for you. The square for you, my boys. I’ll keep you busy.’

So he did; he had them out on the parade yard for hours at a time giving them close-order drill, marching, wheeling, forming column and then line, until they were dismissed to their barrack-room healthily tired and less likely to quarrel. On the night after the second day of drill there was a sudden alarm. The barrack door was flung open and the lights switched on.

‘Turn out! Turn out!’ bellowed the sergeant. ‘Five minutes to dress! Don’t shave.’

He himself had plainly hurried himself into his uniform. They dressed quickly and formed up under the light outside the barrack.

‘Right turn. Quick march. File in there and draw your rifles and equipment.’

He went round each man to see he had his equipment properly put on.

‘Here,’ said the sergeant. He unlocked a safe that stood against the wall and took out from it a small pile of pocketbooks and papers. ‘One of each kind to each of you. Put the book in your right-hand breast pocket and the letters in the other and don’t look at them. D’you hear me, Sasse? Don’t look at them, I said. Now fall in again outside.’

He marched them in the darkness to where stood three motor trucks in column and he herded them into the middle one, climbing after them and seating himself at the tailboard. The motors roared and off went the trucks into darkness out through the gates and into the dark countryside.

‘Sergeant,’ said a voice in the darkness, ‘where are we going?’

‘Shut your mouth,’ snapped the sergeant.

They sat swaying in the truck as it thundered along the road. They bumped against each other, encumbered with their equipment. Even their helmets bumped together sometimes, painfully. Suddenly a bright ray of light stabbed along the interior of the truck. The sergeant had switched on an electric torch and by its diffused light they could just make out his dark figure behind it and the automatic pistol in his hand.

‘You, Kessel,’ he snapped, ‘I heard you. Put that bayonet back.’

They heard the weapon returned to its sheath.

‘It’s no use, boys,’ went on the sergeant. ‘There’s twenty SS in the truck ahead, and twenty in the truck behind, with machine guns. Lift a finger and you’re dead, all of you.’

The truck rumbled on in silence for hours, lurching and swaying. Suddenly there was a halt, and voices. A light shone in at the rear of the truck. They saw an officer, in field-grey, helmeted and in full equipment.

‘Orders for you, sergeant,’ said the officer.

‘My orders come direct from the Ministry, sir,’ said the sergeant.

‘These are from the Ministry. They were telephoned along the route to stop you.’

The officer handed the slip to the sergeant, who read it by the light of his torch.

‘Sign for it,’ said the officer, and the sergeant signed. ‘You can turn at the crossroad here.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said the sergeant.

The trucks reversed themselves in the road, and started to rumble back in the direction whence they had come.

‘Home again, boys,’ said the sergeant.

‘What’s going on, sergeant?’

‘I wish I knew.’

Dawn was already breaking. They could look out across the flat north German plain, across the stubble fields where the rye had just been harvested, at the occasional cattle and horses, and they could see more than that. In the fields off the road there were camps without number, bivouacs, immense parks of tanks and motor transport, bursting into activity again with the coming of the day. There were military police at the crossroads and field-grey uniforms everywhere. The Wehrmacht was moving up for the kill, and to the prisoners so long confined it was a rare treat to see the outside world again, and a world so full of activity at that. They chattered like schoolboys, peering out past the sergeant. Then they swung in again at the gate of the SS barrack and halted.

‘Return your rifles and equipment, your books and your papers,’ ordered the sergeant, and when that was done, ‘I’ll see there’s breakfast for you.’

Now there was more to argue about than ever. The men debated the strange events of the night, trying to correlate them with their other experiences.

‘What were those papers?’ asked one.

‘Paybooks, of course,’ answered someone else.

‘There were letters with mine,’ said someone. ‘Old letters.’

‘Did you read them?’

‘Didn’t get a chance.’

‘Nor did I.’

The sergeant had them out again for close-order drill, and after their disturbed night and the heavy exercise they slept soundly as soon as the lights were out. Yet once more their sleep was broken; the events of the previous night began to repeat themselves. The sergeant woke them as before; once again they donned uniform and equipment and helmets, put their books and papers in their pockets, and hurried with their rifles into the waiting truck. Once again they lurched and rumbled along the dark road. But this time they were not turned back. Daylight found them still heading eastward; it was only just light enough to see when the trucks drew up. The sergeant scrambled out.

‘Down you come, boys,’ he ordered.

They were cold and stupid, and stood in a huddled mass until the sergeant formed them up. Over in the east the dawn was spreading gloriously over the sky.

‘Now move to it, men,’ snapped the sergeant. There was a new note of asperity, of anxiety, in his voice, and his hand rested on his belt convenient to his pistol.

It was an undistinguished part of the north German plain in which they had halted. A mile away in the mist of morning could be seen a church tower and indications of a small town. Much nearer, in line with it, stood three towering radio masts with low buildings clustering around them. The trucks were halted on a minor, sandy road that ran from the main road to the radio station. It was less than half a mile long and they were half-way along it. The sergeant waved to the first truck, which went lumbering on down the road. The third truck was halted a hundred metres behind them. The black-uniformed SS there were setting up a couple of machine guns on the low bank beside the road, where they could sweep the road and the low stubble fields beyond. Under the menace of those guns the men were helpless. The sergeant struggled with his anxiety and composed himself.

‘We attack that radio station,’ he said, pointing, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘It’s all right, boys. It’s one of ours. That truck in front has a motion-picture camera to take a film of our attack. So it has to look like the real thing. Let’s get you lined up.’

The prisoners were surly and suspicious, all the same, and the sergeant had to snap at them.

‘Fix those bayonets!’ he ordered. ‘You there, all this half of you, get out into the field this side. You others, get into the field the other side. Spread out and face these towers. Stay up on the bank, you.’

This last order was directed at Sasse, who obediently stood in the middle of the straggling line that was forming, helmeted, equipped, with bayonets fixed.

‘Now when I blow this whistle,’ said the sergeant, ‘you all charge forward. Yell as much as you like. Spread out farther. Farther still!’

He had to raise his voice now to a shout to reach the men who were at the ends of the line. He stood on the bank twenty yards behind Sasse, whistle in hand, looking over the completed arrangements.

‘Now charge!’ he yelled.

He blew loudly on his whistle and stepped down into the ditch. Some of them obediently began to charge forward, one or two of them even raising a shout. A few, still bewildered, stood where they were, holding their rifles and looking about them; Sasse was one of these. But it did not matter whether they stood or they charged; they met the same fate. From ahead of them came a sudden vicious rattle of machine guns, mowing them down. Three bullets hit Sasse in the chest, tossing him over lifeless into the field, and that was the end of his doubts and wondering. The others died as the guns traversed their fire upon them. One or two turned and tried to run but the guns in the rear opened fire, too, and then ceased.

The sergeant walked back to these guns in the rear; a corporal there was still looking along a gun.

‘That one there’s shamming,’ said the corporal, and fired four shots. Farther along a wounded man rolled over, and the corporal fired four more.

‘See that they are all dead,’ said the sergeant, hoarsely.

A motor car was racing along the road from Berlin; it could race in consequence of the pennon that it flew, which demanded highest priority at every crossroad. Columns of tanks and even fleets of headquarters’ cars had to give way to it. In addition to the chauffeur there were four men sitting in it. One was an American, one was a Spaniard, one was a Swede, and one was a German; this last was a spectacled officer of the SA.

‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ said the American, more to himself than to the Swede and the Spaniard between whom he sat.

‘It hardly seems possible,’ said the Swede.

‘But these Poles——’ said the Spaniard, with a gesture indicating that anything was possible with Poles.

The German leaned back from the front seat to join in the conversation.

‘We do not know as yet,’ he said in his precise English, ‘if this dastardly attack was part of a widely-spread plan. I telephoned the moment the report reached me.’

He was proud of the word ‘dastardly.’ He had found it in the dictionary during the anxious hours of the preceding evening, rehearsing to himself the phrases he would use.

‘Maybe it is part of a plan,’ said the American, with intonation in his voice, which alarmed the German.

The latter went hurriedly in his mind through the orders he had given. If they had not been exactly carried out the consequences would be serious; very serious. The German was very conscious of the abyss that lay open at his feet. If one tiny detail were wrong, so as to reveal the attempt to hoodwink the press of the world, he was a lost man. Every hostile newspaper in the world would proclaim it, and the undoubted purity of German motives would be seriously impugned. It would be worse, far worse, than if the attempt had never been made, and he would be a dead man, or worse, far worse than dead. The Minister himself had entrusted this business to him, his first job of primary importance, and the Minister did not tolerate inefficiency. And it was absolutely certain that the Fuehrer himself would know about it. The spectacled officer felt chills flowing along his spine. But he was a young man of resolution as well as of imagination, and he did not allow himself to quaver—he was sufficiently warned by the note of irony in the American’s voice.

‘I gave orders immediately that nothing was to be touched until we arrive,’ he said.

‘You gave orders?’ asked the American, sharply, and the German saw the trap.

‘Yes,’ he said, and restrained himself from being too glib, speaking as if in patient explanation. ‘I was the officer in charge at the office when the news arrived. So I was able in the Minister’s name to telephone at once to army headquarters and ask for full powers to deal with the situation. They were granted me, naturally.’

‘Naturally,’ said the American.

‘It was six-fifteen when you telephoned me,’ said the Swede looking at his notes.

There was a pause for a few seconds while all of them—the German included—made calculations.

‘I suppose it’s possible,’ conceded the American, grudgingly.

‘Of course,’ said the German, with every appearance of simple innocence that he could muster. It had been a narrow escape.

‘How long before we get there?’ asked the American, and the German looked at his watch.

‘Three hours more at this speed,’ he said. ‘Less if we eat our lunch as we go along.’

‘I vote we do,’ said the American to his colleagues, and they agreed.

It was uncomfortable in that crowded car to unpack and eat the lunch that the Ministry had provided. The champagne spilled over the carpeted floor and filled the car with the smell of wine. They had to tear the roast chicken to pieces with their fingers and gnaw on the bones. But they saved time that way, while the car whirled along beside long columns of field-grey infantry plodding along the road.

‘It looks like war sure enough,’ said the American to himself at sight of them.

‘We can’t be far away now,’ said the German, forcing himself to look out at the countryside as if he had never seen it before. They went over a low rise.

‘There are the radio towers, sir,’ said the chauffeur in German, pointing forward.

‘Then it must be just here,’ said the spectacled officer. ‘It must be up this side road. Stop.’

It was a short minor road leading to the radio station; a guard of SS men stood half-way along it, having got to their feet at the sight of the pennon on the car as it drew up. The spectacled officer got down and returned the sergeant’s salute, and hastened to open the door for the three journalists. They stood beside the car and surveyed the scene. Years of disillusioning experience in Germany had taught the American not to leap hastily to conclusions. He moved forward on to the low bank and stopped again. Almost at his feet lay a dead man in uniform, a rifle with fixed bayonet beside him. Dotted here and there over the fields on either side of the road were other corpses. He counted carefully. There were thirty dead. Over there were the towers of the radio station. It seemed convincing enough.

‘They tried to surprise the place at dawn, as I told you,’ said the spectacled officer. ‘They left their transport on the main road and tried to creep up to it. Fortunately it was guarded and the sentries were on the alert. You can see just how it happened.’

The American looked down at the dead Otto Sasse, whose grey eyes looked past him at the sky. The pool of blood around him had dried on the parched earth, but there were still signs of it on the stubble. Those were bullet holes in the breast of the tunic, undoubtedly—this was no corpse dressed after death for the occasion. He bent down and examined the badges.

‘That’s a Polish uniform all right,’ he said to the Swede beside him. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, for the sun was blazing down upon them.

‘Please,’ said the German officer, ‘make any examination you think necessary.’

The American overcame his distaste at the thought of handling the dead. He had a duty not only to his employers but to himself and to the whole waiting world. He stooped and unbuttoned the breast pocket of the tunic, stiff with dried blood. He brought out from it a dog-eared little book, the lower edge clipped by a bullet. There was dried blood on the book, but the print on the cover and some of the handwriting inside were legible. The Spaniard and the Swede studied it with him.

‘A Polish pay-book,’ said the American.

The German officer held out his hand for it, and turned the pages curiously, as if it was the first he had ever seen.

‘I do not know much Polish,’ he said, ‘but it seems to me as if the last—what is the word?’

‘Entry?’ suggested the American.

‘Thank you. As if the last entry was August 27th. See.’

The three journalists knew no Polish, but they could read the figure.

‘Ye-e-es,’ said the American, meditatively.

He undid the other breast pocket and brought out some stained letters. No doubt about their being written in Polish.

‘A woman’s writing,’ said the Spaniard. ‘His mother, perhaps.’

‘Yes,’ said the American again.

He went on staring down at the dead body of Sasse. He was not going to accept the first sample the Nazis offered him. He walked out of the stubble field, looking at each corpse in turn; they were dead for sure, each one killed by machine gun or rifle bullets. This one looked as if he had been shot in the back; there was nothing deeply suspicious about that, nevertheless. He might have been killed while running away or perhaps what was visible was the exit wound of the bullet. One of the corpses farthest from the road was of a bigger man with an old scar on his face; the scar was a livid white against tanned skin which in turn had no colour behind it. The American did not like doing what he had to do, but it was professional duty. The dead man lay on his back, inclining slightly to one side, one arm across his breast. The American lifted the arm; rigor had fully set in. He remembered what he had learned as a reporter dealing with homicide cases in New York; it was confirmation of the time of death as told to him. And there was no doubt that these men had died where they had fallen; the bloodstains and the absence of any wheel tracks in the stubble proved that they had not been brought here dead and dumped about the field. There were cartridges in the pouches. He opened the pockets; as before, a pay-book and letters, Polish letters. Holding them in his hand he looked back to the road; the spectacled officer was in conversation with the Spaniard and paying no attention, displaying no anxiety to come and oversee his movements, neither attempting to coach him as to what he should see nor heading him off from what he should not see.

The Swede was plodding across the field towards him, and he pointed out all he had observed.

‘It seems true, does it not?’ said the Swede.

‘I am afraid it does,’ said the American, and they went back to the road.

‘You are satisfied now, gentlemen?’ asked the spectacled officer.

The American waited for the others to nod before he agreed. He did not take his eyes from the German’s face. It showed satisfaction, but not overmuch. No sign of relief beyond what might be expected.

‘It is a most remarkable incident I agree, gentlemen,’ said the German, ‘but it proves what hot-headed people these Poles are, and what unpleasant neighbours they have always been to the Reich. You understand better now how the existence of the Corridor is quite intolerable to the German people.’

‘Exactly,’ said the Spaniard.

‘Maybe,’ said the American.

‘At least I have your authority to say that you believe Polish troops attempted to seize the radio station?’ asked the German. ‘Or is there any further examination you would like to make?’

He looked at each in turn and when they still hesitated he went on.

‘The intelligence officer is here; he is most anxious to commence the identification of the dead, as you can understand, gentlemen. Headquarters are telephoning every few minutes to ask about it. He has not been allowed to touch them so far. And there is the question of burial.’

‘Oh, let him get to work,’ said the American.

‘Thank you, gentlemen. And now you do not believe that we Nazis tell lies all the time?’

‘You tell the truth when it suits you,’ said the American, bitterly; and the spectacled officer bowed, controlling his temper.

‘I expect you will want to file your stories as quickly as possible,’ he said. ‘My car is at your disposal, gentlemen.’

‘You are not coming back with us?’ asked the Swede.

‘I shall not be able to return until much later,’ said the German. ‘I shall have to spend much time on the telephone, and I must begin at once—you can understand that, gentlemen. I shall be an hour or two. But please take my car. I can find other means to return to Berlin.’

The spectacled officer watched the car drive away. Not until it had turned into the main road did he allow himself to relax. He was very weary. It had been a great strain to maintain his pose under that acute observation. But it was done. Now he could telephone the news of his complete success to the Minister, who would doubtless listen in person to the whole story. It would mean a decoration, promotion, congratulations. He turned and hastened towards the radio station. He must not wait a moment longer. The Fuehrer himself was waiting for his report—the Fuehrer himself! The speech the Fuehrer was to broadcast to-night could not be composed until he knew what had happened.

That was how it came about that Hitler, broadcasting to a hesitant world on the eve of the outbreak of war, was able to say that that very morning a Polish force raiding over the border had tried to seize the broadcasting station and had been repulsed with loss. Representatives of the American, Spanish, and Swedish press could bear witness to the story. That was how the spectacled officer won his promotion, and that was how Otto Sasse died.