Opening Moves

Amon Treschow had reacted quickest but travelled the least distance, and so was closest to the barricade. On hearing the approaching enemy he stood, ready to cut down the attackers one more time.

The flamethrower stream took him in the upper chest, dropping him to the stone floor, his head and shoulders a mass of flames.

As he drew breath to scream, flames and hot gases seared and destroyed his throat and lungs, reducing his audible agony to little more than a high-pitched squeal.

Others were now screaming as fire sought them out, the barricade ablaze, both Treschow and the dead caporal being consumed by flames.

Rettlinger had thrown himself into the base of the Hexagonal staircase and found it perfect cover. He fired one shot that dropped the flamethrower operator to his knees.

The second shot he used on his friend, sending the mad Luftwaffe Hauptmann to a pain free afterlife.

Schmidt and the female agent were both wreathed in fire, and were similarly mercifully dispatched by a commando’s Thompson.

In all, half a dozen lay in flames around the lower courtyard. More Soviet grenades arrived and broke any hope of resistance there.

Prentiss, struggling to drag a wounded French officer to the staircase, was propelled through the air by two simultaneous explosions, striking his head on the roof supports of the stone cistern next to the kitchens. His insensible form lay draped over the cistern headfirst, his thighs and buttocks bloody from minor shrapnel wounds.

Soviet paratroopers rushed forward and into the converted cellar. The leaders were shot down quickly but the rest swept into close quarter fighting with the handful of defenders.

^Fig#8

A few of the allied survivors made for the stairs, knowing the courtyard was lost.

De Walle was the last to make it out of the kitchens before more Russians entered the courtyard. He and Rettlinger rushed upstairs as grenades arrived on their position.

In the cellar, the French tried to surrender and some succeeded without being struck to the ground. Jakob Matthaus, once Maior in the elite ‘Großdeutschland’ Division, had served many years on the Eastern Front, and could not contemplate such a thing. His Wehrmacht uniform drew unwanted attention and most of the enemy in the room focussed on him. He swung his rifle at one paratrooper and missed, recovering his poise in time to parry a bayonet thrust. A rifle butt smashed into his throat and he dropped to the ground, where a frenzy of bayonets, butts and boots ended his life quickly.

The four surviving commandos were herded into a recess and summarily executed.

The momentum was maintained and paratroopers moved quickly through the kitchens, killing some orderlies and more commandos.

Menzel, firing from a window in the Marshall’s chamber, dropped two men in the courtyard, one shot through the head, the other through the chest. Behind him, Von Hardegen and a Commando opened a new box of grenades.

“Come on Artillerie, make way for the Panzers”, shouted Von Hardegen.

“Get your own window Kuno,” Menzel fired another shot and pointed into the next chamber.

Von Hardegen and the commando carried the box into the adjacent room.

An explosion cut down the Frenchman from behind, as a grenade blasted fragments into his back. The man dropped screaming to the floor.

The box of grenades went flying and cannoned into Von Hardegen’s thigh, also dropping him to the floor.

Menzel lay unconscious across the threshold of the room, bleeding from a score of wounds, his breathing shallow and laboured.

The Panzer officer struggled to his feet and manhandled the box across to the window.

He pulled the pins and quickly dropped three grenades out of the window into the courtyard below. Explosions and screams followed, as the highly effective Mills bombs took a heavy toll on Soviet troopers gathering for an assault on the Hexagonal stairway.

The criss-cross diamond glass sections in the window disappeared as a savage burst of fire reached out in search of the grenade thrower. A grenade bounced off the ruined lead work, and fell back to ground, adding to the slaughter below.

Von Hardegen moved into the first chamber, cradling six grenades.

Dropping the first two out of the window, he passed the remaining to Rettlinger at the top of the stairs.

On the return trip, he dragged the bleeding form of Menzel to the foot of the stone stairs leading to the next level.

More Mills bombs followed, each claiming more lives in the courtyard until each explosion brought only a display of blood and gore from those already dead, the living having sought safety from the terrible barrage.

The Soviet attack had stalled once more.

In the Greater Bastion, the Russians had not come again, although a sniper was causing casualties amongst the defenders.

Crisp, the ammunition for his pistol expended, had ascended into the large round bastion to search for more, only to find Ramsey struggling with a wounded man.

“For Christ’s sake hold the fellow down will you Ryan!”