Reign of Hell by Sven Hassel Read Free Book Online

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.
    Whenever you saw him in the blurred grey light of early morning, limping across the courtyard with his flask of kummel in his hand, you could be sure that an execution had been arranged. He used always to snatch a few minutes’ extra drinking time at a point mid-way between the ammunition stores and the officers’ mess, where he was safely out of sight of von Gernstein and his prying binoculars. He would sit down on a low wall, rest his chin on the hilt of his sabre, and stare into space thinking God knows what uncomfortable thoughts before pushing his flask back into his pocket and hobbling on his way with his artificial leg creaking with every step. When he arrived at the camp prison he was inevitably offered a large glass of beer; which just as inevitably he accepted. Some time later he wouldappear with the firing squad and make for the courtyard where the executions took place.
    Once an execution was over, he obliterated all traces of the victims from his memory. There was a story told in the camp, and we all believed it, of how the Adjutant had asked him one night in the officers’ mess ‘what sort of show the General had put up?’
    ‘General?’ said Schramm, looking bewildered. ‘What general?’
    ‘The one you shot this morning, old boy,’ said the Adjutant. ‘Major-General von Steinklotz.’
    ‘Von Steinklotz?’ said Schramm. ‘I shot Major-General von Steinklotz?’
    He plainly thought he must be suffering from drunken delusions. Amid roars of delighted laughter, he finished off his kummel, staggered out of the mess and fell flat on his face. He was taken home to his wife by a couple of sympathetic lance-corporals, who undressed him and put him to bed without his ever knowing a thing about it.
    On two occasions at least he attempted suicide. The first time he hanged himself from the rafters of the attic in his home, but his wife discovered him and cut him down. The second time he took an overdose of drugs, but was flushed out with a stomach pump and sent back on duty. Now and again, in his more lucid moments, he would sit down in the officers’ mess and play the piano. He was an excellent pianist, but rarely sober enough to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time.
    Colonel von Gernstein had also lost a leg on active service. He lost two, as a matter of fact, but it was difficult to notice. One thought at first that he was just a bit ungainly in his manner of walking. He had a stiff neck, as well, and was unable to turn his head without also turning the rest of his body. His spine was supported in a steel jacket. His mouth was a thin mauve line, lipless and puckered. He’d