Opening Moves

Climbing the Hexagonal stairs, he met a group forming in the Marshall’s chambers, preparing for an attack. Reversing his course, he moved through bedrooms and found his progress blocked once more, as more paratroopers were readying themselves for the assault. As he went in search of Makarenko, it seemed that every stairway, room and hall contained dead comrades.

Ascending a stone spiral staircase to the second floor, he found the upper level littered with bodies, although he noted with satisfaction that the majority were not his own men.

He entered a room filled with feminine touches and collided with Makarenko, moving quickly in the opposite direction.

“Comrade General, if the mission is fulfilled we must now withdraw. The enemy has reinforced and our escape route is in jeopardy.”

Hardly missing a step, Makarenko shepherded the Major back down the route he had just painfully toiled.

“I can see much from up here Ilya. They look organised and efficient. How long can we hold them?”

Such things were a matter of guesswork, and both men knew it, but his General had asked so Rispan ventured his reply.

“Twenty minutes absolute maximum Comrade.”

The two pressed on, the silence indicating only thought.

Makarenko broke it.

“I must launch this last attack, for we have not done all we set out to do here. How do you plan for us to leave Ilya?”

Rispan’s own moment of truth was now upon him, and he delivered his verdict as evenly as he could.

“With our casualties, through the main gate. If we are bottled up, then over the north wall where our forces made their assault but without our casualties, Comrade General.”

The two officers were now moving through the first floor bedrooms Rispan had previously traversed, full of the dead and wounded of the paratroop battalion. As they passed by, each wounded man’s face turned to them silently seeking information, each set of dead eyes seemingly staring at them in accusation for what was to come.

Makarenko stopped so abruptly that Rispan cannoned into him.

“Those of our comrades who cannot move with us must remain here, Comrade Major. Formed as a rearguard for those who are capable. There is no choice.” The icy formality of his words masking the emotion of an officer who loved his men and understood the consequences of the decision he was making.

“One last attack and we will leave. Get it organised and start protecting that route out Ilya.”

He slapped his Major on the shoulder and turned away, immediately immersing himself in readying his men for the final assault.

Enemy troops were bottled up in the Armoury on the first floor. The last two attempts to crush them had been thrown back with heavy casualties. The General had observed from his vantage point on the second floor how the assaults on the Bastion had withered.

His hasty plan sent more men to aid those attacks. Men were assigned to cross the small drawbridge leading from the apartments into the garden area, but only once the defenders of the Armoury were engaged by other troops.

On the second floor, the enemy held a similar area, being pressed into the Kaiser’s Hall and the two adjoining rooms.

Nodding to the wounded Kapitan who would lead the Bastion assault party, the General closed his eyes and availed himself of a word with some higher authority, seeking hope amidst the hopelessness of death.

A whistle pulled him from his reverie and launched the final attack.

0608 hrs Monday, 6th August 1945, Approach roads to the Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg, French Alsace.

Lavalle and Haefeli had executed their hasty attack to perfection, gaining good firing positions from where their halftrack-mounted heavy machine guns started to cause casualties amongst the defenders and, more importantly, were able to provide good cover in which to manoeuvre.

Mardin’s assault had overcome the resistance in front of him, his report citing the defenders as mainly previously wounded men who had been organised into a roadblock. His company had indeed wiped out the men who had been injured in the drop.

2e Compagnie was now pressing hard up the main road approach, driving the thin screen of enemy paratroops before it.

One platoon of Haefeli’s men had overrun an enemy mortar unit before they had responded to the threat, the troops either dying or being driven off by the Legion’s love of the bayonet.

Lavalle had remained with the command halftrack, in contact with other units moving swiftly towards the fighting, coordinating the counter-attack. Haefeli had joined the vehicle belonging to his 2IC, bringing his company efficiently online to squeeze the Château from the south, leaving Mardin to do the same from the north road.

Four 6x6 ‘deuce and a half’ trucks arrived, swiftly disgorging their troops, reinforcements courtesy of Lavalle’s hasty planning. Normally comfortable transport for sixteen or so combat troops, each of these American-built GMC trucks brought over thirty men to the battle, each clad in the traditional brown and grey jellaba.