Opening Moves (The Red Gambit Series) (52 page)

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.

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!”

The ‘Deux’ agent had been shot in the face by a rifle from outside the Château and the man was writhing in agony.

The American held the agent tightly as Ramsey attempted to reassemble the man’s ruined face, removing loose teeth and pressing eyes and nose into rough shape before applying a rough bandage.

A French orderly arrived with two ampoules of morphine and dropped them on the floor next to Crisp before beating a hasty retreat, anxious to be away from the hideous sight.

Ramsey broke an ampoule and plunged it into the man’s thigh. He picked up the second ampoule and hesitated, silently seeking out Crisp’s opinion with his eyes.

A simple nod sufficed and the second ampoule deposited its relief into the Frenchman’s system.

Ramsey lowered the shattered head onto a jacket Crisp had quickly placed there.

Picking up the man’s discarded Beretta35 pistol, Crisp checked the magazine and rechambered the weapon.

Catching the Englishman’s look of disgust he could only shrug.

“It will have to do until something else becomes available.”

“Quite,” commented Ramsey with all the reserve of an archetypal Englishman.

Producing his Webley Mk 6 service revolver, Ramsey replaced the four spent cartridges. The Beretta carried eight rounds in a magazine, whereas the Webley cylinder held only six, but the .455 calibre rounds put people down a lot better than the lighter and less brutal .32 rounds of the Italian origin handgun.

Shaking off the strap from his shoulder, a Thompson was held out to the Paratrooper.

“No spare ammo I’m afraid Marion, but that one’s full. There’s bound to be some more somewhere here.”

Slipping the Beretta into his empty holster, Crisp grasped the sub-machine gun, checking the safety was on. He dropped the magazine out and tested it for weight.

“Thanks John. What are you going to use?”

“Incisive wit and repartee I should suppose.”

The American laughed that laugh they save for the English, partially at the obvious humour but partially at the inherent madness of those from the Old Country.

“Yeah right.”

A heavy machine-gun outside the walls broke the momentary awkwardness between them.

“That’s a .50 cal. Relief is closing up it seems.”

As if in illustration of the likely fragility of their survival, heavy firing erupted from the north wall and lists, as well as renewed sounds of combat from within the living quarters.

“It appears our Russian friends agree with you, Major Crisp. They intend to finish the job right now.”

Shouts came from all points of the Bastion, indicating enemy movements and threats.

“I suggest we hold the stairs. You take the North tower, I will take the main entrance. Best of luck Ryan, and keep your head down.”

Knocke and Von Arnesen, and for that matter even Anne-Marie Valois, had seen men die in strange and unfortunate ways, but what happened in front of their eyes was a new horror.

Positioned on the wall of the Upper Garden, directly above the return in which Soviet paratroopers huddled, they were covering any attempt to force a passage into the garden, either through the gateway in the north wall or over the top, as had been suggested by the English Major.

Most of the battlement walkways were covered with a tiled roof but a part of this section had seen one of only three hits sustained by the Château during a French artillery attack in early 1945. One shell had landed in the menagerie, killing an old Alsatian herdsman. The second had struck the roof of the Grand Bastion, penetrating but failing to explode. The third had struck the roof of the battlements above the return where Knocke and his party positioned themselves, removing it for a length of twenty metres and blowing away the stonework, leaving a marked elongated U-section removed, an area exposed and decidedly more easy to grapple than other parts of the ancient defences.

Olbricht concentrated on the scaling approach and kept taking quick looks through the portal, refusing to fire, in order to avoid drawing attention to himself and the others.

The grapnel sailed up unnoticed and dropped quickly down, striking the one-armed Engineer on his good shoulder. The metal tool struck stone, a sound that prompted the paratroopers below to haul on the line.

The stunned Olbricht found his right thigh suddenly dragged from him as it was pulled against the stonework by force applied from below. He was painfully pinned against the battlements, parallel with but two feet above the stone floor.

He resisted his pain until the paratroopers below pulled hard to test the line, causing two spikes to penetrate his flesh before exiting the other side and biting into the battlements.

A second grapnel flew over the wall and down the other side, overthrown in the excitement of the soldier using it. He pulled swiftly to bring the device into play.

The grapnel bounced back up the wall and flew across the floor, catching under Olbricht’s neck.

One spike penetrated the back of the skull at the base of the wounded man’s neck.

The scream of pain was silenced as powerful arms below tugged hard, pulling the spike into the soft cavity of Olbricht’s brain.

The dead man’s head moved rhythmically, in time with the climbing pattern of the second paratrooper to scale the wall.

Von Arnesen shot the first Russian as he opened the shutter, sending the lifeless body to fall upon those gathered underneath the ropes.

The second paratrooper grasped the stonework and hauled himself over, receiving two bullets from Valois’ handgun in the face. The impact threw the man off the battlement and into the lists below, striking soft flesh and causing more hurt to the attackers.

An object looped up over the wall and dropped into the Upper Garden. The explosion caught one of the French orderlies passing, penetrating his body with shrapnel and stone fragments. The man’s screams attracted attention and two intelligence agents dragged him away towards the Bastion.

As the sound of the wounded man decreased, the noise from the Northern Ward increased, as the paratroopers put in an attack, encouraged by support from two DP machine-guns. Knocke risked a quick look through an undamaged shutter and saw little by way of return fire from the Small Bastion.

Quickly realising the precariousness of their position he shouted to Von Arnesen to move back from the gap, and moved himself to cover the small entranceway from the Ward into the garden.

Fig#9