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turned earnestly to face the enraged Matho. ‘I happen to be a Christian. Thou shalt not kill . . . I am forbidden by my faith to take up arms or to wear a uniform. It is as simple as that.’
    The man turned to go. Matho was up those stairs behind him so fast his hair started to singe. He grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him round and gave him a kick in the backside which sent him crashing over the railings and headfirst to the ground. Swiftly and silently, the room was vacated. We knew only too well what was coming next. We had no desire to stand and watch. We herded like cattle into the corridor outside. Behind that closed door, in the room that stank of musk and dust and human sweat, the grim scene was played to its inevitable conclusion. We heard Matho’s voice rising to an hysterical shriek, cursing the bible, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the church in general. We heard his victim’s replies, low but clear:
    ‘I cannot help it. I am a Christian. I will not take up arms, I would rather die.’
    And we knew, and he knew that he would never come out of that room alive.
    We heard Matho unclasping his heavy leather belt and doubtless shoving the buckle under the man’s nose as he said the familiar, meaningless words: ‘Gott mit uns.’
    God was with us. The Holy German Army and the Sainted Führer fed his ungrateful children on bread and sausages, and still this maniac stood his weak snivelling ground and refused to fight.
    We heard the first loud crack of leather as the belt whipped out and lashed its buckle across the victim’s face. It wasn’t only Matho, there were half a dozen other sergeants there to help him in his task. They took it in turns, competing among themselves to see who could cause the most damage, or who could produce the longest and the loudest scream of agony. It took almost thirty minutes before a blessed silence fell atlast over the room and we knew that the suffering had finished. There was only a lifeless form left for them to kick around the floor. Now they could not inflict any more of their insane tortures. They opened the doors and called us in to dispose of the body. There was an eye hanging out of its socket half-way down a cheek. There was a scarlet pulp where the nose had been. The mouth was torn to shreds and the gums split open. We picked up the remnants of vainglorious humanity and threw it out of the window. After the floor was mopped, we continued with the business of the day.
    It was all quite normal and in order. Just one more dead body to be picked up and buried in a nameless grave. He probably died under the influence of drink. Fell out of the window in an alcoholic stupor. It was amazing the number of inmates at Sennelager who fell out of windows in alcoholic stupors. It happened every day of the week – nothing to write home about. His wife, if he had a wife, would wear out her shoe leather traipsing from one bureaucratic blimp to another. But no one would be able to give her any satisfactory answers. Probably no one would even try. People were disappearing all the time in the German Army. Who should trouble his head about one murdered Jehovah’s Witness?
    We put the matter from our minds and went along to hear the Captain make his traditional speech of welcome to the newcomers – or what was left of the newcomers. Fischer was in the infirmary and the Jehovah’s Witness was dead, and God knows how many more had expired during the night or would vanish during the course of the day.
    ‘You are here,’ said the Captain, with his pleasant smile, ‘by the grace of God and the Führer. This is your chance to repent and be forgiven. To wipe out the sins of the past and to start again with a clean slate. It is our job, here at Sennelager, to train you to be good and useful soldiers: it is your job to co-operate with us and to show your willingness to serve the Führer as loyal citizens of the Fatherland. There are several ways in which you can do this. Just to give you one