Our backs against the wall,
We’re surrounded and afraid.
Our lives now in the hands
Of the soldiers taking aim.
We’re surrounded and afraid.
Our lives now in the hands
Of the soldiers taking aim.
— "Mars", Sleeping at Last
Pancho Villa: The blood of many brave men have been shared on that wall. It will give you some comfort to share in their glory.
His screaming as they carried him off to that willow tree was indecently loud. He couldn't be made to walk, and four men had to carry him.
One of them held the doctor's head in a vice under his arm. Two others held onto his legs. The fourth pinioned his arms to his sides and breast. He could feel the pounding of the young doctor's heart. It raced.
They told him he ought to face it like a man, that a man should be ashamed to cry.
But it's hard to be a man for a person of twenty-three who believes he's a superior being for having become a reserve army surgeon with two stars.
It was an ugly execution, said those who shot him, old infantrymen from the 94th Regiment. They ought to know, they had executed many. They were capable guys, the men of the 94th.
— Comrades of War by Sven Hassel
"That was a firing squad, my dear Neilsen. Let it be a warning."
Reich Commandant, The Heroes of Telemark (1965)
