Exercise Book V
May–June 1942
The example of “Mongol mentality” – “Bombely”, pp. 33–34
One day, he had received a small cut in his hand from a projectile and had to go to the medical station to have it cleaned and bandaged. However, he never returned from this trip and was reported missing, as we assumed that he had been taken prisoner on the way (which could well happen in the wild and endless forests). He did, however, come back into the light again, but in a highly unpleasant way and as an example of cruelty without equal. One day, we found him during a patrol in some thicket in front of our lines, dead and mutilated. Eyes, ears, nose, cheeks, and genitals had been cut off. His stomach had been cut open and the rest of his body repeatedly stabbed with a bayonet, and to top it all off, a bayonet had been left stuck in the heart of the unfortunate man. What torments this man must have endured before death are indescribable, and that we, as the man’s comrades, thereby lost all respect for the enemy as warriors is understandable, but we never resorted to sadistic methods; however, the enemy in this sector had to bleed a thousandfold for this act in the battles that followed, for many of our men were enraged by this killing.
This was only one of this enemy’s cruelties; we were to see more in the time to come, neither worse nor better. We now knew who we were dealing with, and I do not think that any more Danes went into captivity after this. This is the only case I have seen of the mistreatment of a Dane; the subsequent ones involved Germans.
We saw many examples of von Schalburg’s complete indifference to the Russians and to danger in general. I can mention an incident that I myself witnessed while we were stationed in “Myggedalen”. One evening, while Peder and I were on duty as usual at our lonely post, we suddenly saw a figure walking quite calmly about 100 meters in front of all our watchful rifle barrels. We could only make him out vaguely in the twilight, but we tried to stop him in order to find out who he was. It could easily have been a Russian spy, and if it was one of our own, we would have been obliged to make him aware of his dangerous position. So we called out to the man, and he calmly came closer, and to our great surprise it was von Schalburg, our own commander. He was in a good mood and asked what we wanted. We replied that we nevertheless had to investigate who was moving around our posts and try to warn him if he was one of our own, since we only believed that our own men could move about so carelessly if they had become lost. We also believed that von Schalburg was in the same situation, because he was not armed with anything except his pistol, which was still in its leather holster, and he was also not wearing a steel helmet. But no, it was deliberate, he said—he intended to take a shortcut on his way out to deliver some Iron Crosses to the pioneers. He had the Iron Crosses in his pocket, along with a bottle of rum to drink a toast when he handed out the decorations. He said goodbye and walked on calmly, completely indifferent to all dangers. That was how he was, and he could not be otherwise. At the front, he was in his element as the born fighter he was, and he was a capable leader and a good comrade.