The Sanity Inspectors by Friedrich Deich

Author:Friedrich Deich
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-913861-88-9
Publisher: Boiler House Press
Published: 2022-08-27T16:25:54+00:00

Chapter 21

Lieutenant Vossmenge of the medical corps spent a whole year as a medical officer on the North African front. In November 1941 he found himself in the middle of the retreat of General Rommel’s army. He was transferred to a mobile hospital unit of the Luftwaffe and later took part in the advance to El Alamein. He escaped capture with the rest of the Africa Corps by being transferred to the Luftwaffe hospital in Rome. The fudge Advocate-General’s Department in Rome made frequent use of him as an expert in psychiatry, in addition to which he was consulted by the staff of the General Officer Commanding the Luftwaffe in Italy on a number of problems concerning his men’s psychological welfare.

‘Accused, what have you to say in your defence? You have heard the sworn evidence of Lance Corporal Sachs. He maintains that you visited him in his tent after an officers’ mess party in 1942 in the neighbourhood of Sabratha in North Africa. He also maintains that you made unmistakable homosexual advances to him. Accused, describe what happened on the night in question!’

The accused, a Captain in the Pay Corps called Bertram, answered as follows:

‘I had undoubtedly had too much to drink and went to the wrong tent by mistake. My tent was next to Lance Corporal Sachs’s. As I was trying to get into the tent, I stumbled in the darkness over one of the guy-ropes and fell onto Lance Corporal Sachs’s bed. He was fast asleep. I don’t know what happened after that. I must have gone to sleep at once. When I woke up towards morning, I found myself lying in Lance Corporal Sachs’s bed. He was no longer there himself.’

‘That is correct, accused. Lance Corporal Sachs left the tent as soon as you got into bed with him. He spent the rest of the night in your unit’s kitchen.

‘The next morning, he reported what had happened during the night to the officer in charge of his unit. The indictment which the prosecutor has just read out was then drawn up. Owing to the retreat of Rommel’s army the trial could not take place in North Africa. The Field Marshal has allotted the case to be tried by the Judge Advocate-General’s department in Rome. Accused, are you a homosexual?’

‘I am not a homosexual.’

Judge Advocate Dr Magnus then rose.

‘I have to inform the court,’ he said to the other members of the bench, ‘that in the course of interrogation the accused has consistently maintained that he was sexually normal. Besides as we have already heard, he admits that on the evening in question, on which he got into bed with Lance Corporal Sachs, he was drunk. Lance Corporal Sachs, however, stands by his evidence, according to which the accused behaved in an unmistakably homosexual manner. Here are Lance Corporal Sachs’s words: “Owing to the heat I was lying naked on my bed in the tent. I had fallen fast asleep but was woken up by the accused making homosexual advances to me and saying: Move over, darling, life is so short.

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