Opening Moves

However, the paratrooper veteran of the Eastern Front quickly recovered and sought another weapon. By his other hand lay a weapon from a different time, one of the classic swords from medieval times that decorated the Armoury.

Sweeping it up, he ran at Rettlinger, roaring as much with the pain of his shattered fingers as with the intent to intimidate. Weaponless, the ex-SS Gebirgsjager officer could only roll out of the way.

The paratrooper breathed hard and gathered himself for another attack with the heavy blade. Again he missed, the metal clanging off the stonewall as he lunged past Rettlinger’s twisting body. A rock hard fist smashed into the Russians face, breaking his nose and misting his eyes.

Unable to see properly, he dropped back and swung blindly, the tip of the sword flicking the German’s shirt as he leapt back.

Shaking his head to clear his vision, blood flowed freely from his nose, splashing in all directions, decorating the living and the dead lying everywhere within the Armoury.

Rettlinger made a mistake, catching his foot on a corpse and losing balance. He fell against the wall and the paratrooper saw his opportunity.

The ancient blade swung in an arc and bit into flesh and bone.

Slicing the muscle of Rettlinger’s upper arm, the metal smashed into the bone, shattering the humerus at its mid-point. In olden days, such an attack would have severed the limb and gone further to claim the life of the victim but the blade’s travel was suddenly arrested by the stonewall.

The ringing contact jarred the sword from the paratroopers grasp and it fell to the ground. The Russian’s left hand was broken and useless, his right now senseless and bereft of feeling, the heavy impact having robbed him of control.

His German adversary slumped to the ground, bleeding profusely from his wound and out of the fight.

The Russian moved purposefully to the doorway and picked up a PPS dropped by his section Corporal, disentangling the sling from the dead man’s bread bag with difficulty, his numb hand unable to properly function. The paratrooper halted and flexed his hand, bringing life back to numbed flesh. He slipped the weapon’s strap over his head, less trouble now his tingling hand was regaining its functions.

The man cocked an ear to the sounds of fighting nearby, rightly sensing that his comrades were withdrawing and that he should follow them too.

However, the paratrooper had a debt to collect for his dead comrades.

Here.

Now.

Shaking his right hand to summon back more control, he turned to finish the German off. Rettlinger was conscious and pushing himself away with his feet, as his right hand worked to squeeze his terrible arm wound and restrict the blood loss.

The hate in the Russian’s eyes was very real, and DerBo expected to die. What he did not expect was to witness the paratrooper’s death.

Both men sensed a presence, heard some sounds and feared the worst, as malevolence incarnate burst into the room.

As the paratrooper turned, the heavy weight smashed into his chest, propelling him backwards and onto Rettlinger’s legs. The Russian’s scream was silenced as soon as it began, throat ripped open from chin to chest.

Marengo.

Rettlinger had the most horrible experience of watching a man die three feet in front of his eyes, ripped apart in stages by the huge Alsatian. Lifeless eyes bounced in the savaged head as the beast worked on, opening cavities and stripping flesh from bone.

DerBo lost consciousness, his last vision being that of Marengo assessing him with merciless eyes.

The attack had mainly failed, at further great loss to the brave paratroopers, and Makarenko withdrew his forces, urging them to set fires as he herded his weary and battered men towards the lower courtyard.

He paused quickly in the Upper Courtyard, exchanging quiet words with the medical orderly Serzhant who was responsible for the score of broken and crippled men that were to be left behind there. Embracing and kissing the man, a soldier from the very first days, an emotional Makarenko slipped away down the ramp towards the Basse Cour.

Despite the growing sounds of combat ahead of him, he was genuinely horrified at the sights he passed, his young troopers mixed with enemy dead, bodies riven and torn for seemingly no purpose.

In the Lower Courtyard a repetition of the previous scene, with numerous wounded laid out as best they could be, tended by three orderlies and the only woman member of the Battalion.

Senior Lieutenant Doctor Stefka Kolybareva was hobbling between her charges, her own heavily bandaged thigh restricting her mobility, her bandaged left hand restricting her capability to care.

“Comrade General, I have told Mayor Rispan that I am staying. He refuses permission. You must grant me permission Sir.”

Behind the determined woma, an orderly pulled a blanket over the face of a Corporal whose suffering had ended.

“I cannot agree to that Stefka.”

His decision given, Makarenko made to move on but a firm hand stopped him.