Cronley and Cohen had witnessed the trapdoors swinging—BAM!—more than two dozen times before, almost a week later, guards escorted former SS-Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg and former SS-Generalmajor Wilhelm Burgdorf to the side of the gallows. As all the others, they both wore black silk pajamas, and had their hands bound and feet shackled.
Cohen nudged Cronley to follow him.
“I want our faces to be the last they see.”
Cohen and Cronley moved beyond the group of witnesses. Cohen stopped within ten feet of the wooden steps of the first gallows.
The guard with Burgdorf nudged him forward. Burgdorf, with an icy stare, met Cohen’s eyes, then Cronley’s.
Before Cronley realized it, he blurted, “Do you have any last words?”
> “Captain,” Cohen said, coldly.
“Do you?” Cronley pursued.
“I told them!” Burgdorf said, loudly. “I demand an officer’s honor—death by firing squad!”
“You, unfortunately, are in no position to demand anything. A firing squad is not an option. I will repeat my question: Do you have any last words?”
“I did nothing wrong!” Burgdorf barked, then came to attention. “May God bless the Thousand-Year Reich!”
Cronley looked at the soldiers. “Carry on.”
Cronley watched as the hangman repeated his casual double-check of the noose knot as it dangled before Burgdorf. Then he put on the hood and the noose and then shuffled to the trapdoor lever.
BAM!
Burgdorf’s body dropped straight down through the hole, the slack rope quickly becoming taut.
There then came a primal groan as the taut rope continued twitching and turning.
Cronley glanced at the hangman, who revealed a slight grin.
Does that twitch mean Burgdorf is straining?
That his neck didn’t snap on the fall?
He’s strangling . . .
Cronley then looked at Cohen, who nodded just perceptibly.
“It’s not the first time,” he said, in a whisper. “Some say it’s caused by the noose coils being intentionally tied off-center.”
The hangman—with what Cronley suspected was a bit of theater, a look of disgust as he stomped down the wooden steps—went behind the gallows and pushed past the black canvas curtain, disappearing behind it.
They watched as the rope continued to twitch and turn, then there came a little slack in it, then it snapped taut again. There was no more movement.
And the hangman just now broke the neck.
That’s why he grinned?
He caused the extra suffering on purpose?
When von Dietelburg was marched past Cohen and Cronley, he made eye contact with them. But this time Cronley refrained from saying anything.
As von Dietelburg ascended the wooden stairs, Cronley looked up at the hangman. There was no question in his mind that he detected a trace of a grin. Additional confirmation came when the master sergeant had to repeat going beneath the gallows to complete the execution.
The group of witnesses waited for the doctors to pronounce Franz von Dietelburg and Wilhelm Burgdorf dead, but one by one they began to leave before Master Sergeant Woods cut their ropes free of the gallows.