Walking round the two officers had fallen into one of their traditional arguments about French and Alsatian food and wine. As a proper Frenchman, Fournier was defending the honour of the Bordeaux region, waxing lyrical about the combination of a good Garonne Sauterne with his mother’s baked apple and honey pudding. As a gastronome second and soldier first, Rettlinger understood the value of alcohol whatever its place of birth but hadn’t always been such a philistine and argued for a sweet Muscat an uncle of his had experimented with in Alsace before the war, combined with the honeyed raisin pastries which made his mother money during harder times.
Both men halted their pointless verbal fencing with grins and took station on stools within the small round tower above the main entrance, leaning back on the woodwork in satisfied silence, minds recalling times sat around family table’s years before sampling the remembered delights of their argument, looking towards the half-open shutter, in anticipation of the first signs of an approaching dawn.
The inevitable cigarettes appeared.
A tinkle of breaking glass.
Followed by nothing but a low growl from Marengo.
Both men stopped a few seconds, waiting to hear the unlucky person being berated by an officer or NCO but nothing came; only silence.
Almost casually, they both opened the wooden shutters a bit further and looked out, gazing down towards the checkpoint. They had heard the jeep grinding up the slope as they talked, so were not surprised to see it in the road. The scene was vivid and obvious. The two men had seen enough of war to know that either side of it were dead men, and that the flitting shadows moving up both sides of the road were not caused by trees lazily shifting in the breeze, but by concealed men moving urgently and with deadly purpose. Men in uniforms only one of them recognised were moving around the jeep and checkpoint, the two dead men in the road being swiftly pulled away and other shadows materialising with berets to take their place.
More movement caught the eye and suddenly the whole area seemed alive, which it was.
Fournier reached for his .45 M1911 automatic and slipped off the safety. Taking rough aim, he fired three quick shots into the men at the checkpoint and then started running along the battlements, firing in the air as he went, shouting as he ran, almost overtaken by the diminutive Arab being dragged along by the huge dog attached to his left wrist.
Rettlinger dashed towards the sleeping area of his comrades, shouting the alarm at the top of his very considerable voice.
The Russians were coming.
The M1911 was an excellent handgun, and had what was called ‘stopping power’. The three bullets fired by Capitaine de Corvette Fournier were mainly to initiate the alarm but he decided not to waste them and sent them flying towards the men at the second checkpoint.
The first bullet hit the Senior Lieutenant with the silenced pistol, taking him in the left side of the neck, ploughing downwards through windpipe, lung, and liver until it exited at thigh level, subsequently removing two toes from the soldier moving past his now dead officer.
The second bullet passed through the roof of the jeep, clipping the steering wheel and burying itself in a sandbag.
The third bullet struck one of the men stooping to recover the dead guards, severing his spinal cord and wrecking his spleen in an instant, dropping him numb to the roadway, his bleeding finger no longer a concern. He would die within a few minutes.
The alarm spread through the Château like wildfire as the fighting erupted. The duty guard inside rushed to their positions at the open entrance and engaged the attacking force whilst others, roused from their slumber, dressed and tumbled out into the night, directed by the shouts of their NCO’s and officers, not knowing who had come calling but in the knowledge that the killing had already started.
Capitaine du Frégate Dubois ran the short distance from the company office to assume command of the lower courtyard and was found there by a breathless Fournier.
His arrival coincided with the report from his Petty Officer Major that the phone lines were down and no one could be raised on the radio.
Therefore, it seemed that ‘Biarritz’ was very much on its own.
A small group of commandos took position on the walls above the entrance and started to pour down fire and grenades, causing horrendous casualties to the elements forming for a second assault. However, a quick-witted Kapitan swiftly organised four sniper-rifle equipped troopers and they quickly silenced the French fire with well-aimed and mainly fatal results.
Another platoon of paratroopers was immediately directed to use their grapnels and gain the wall position under the covering fire of the sniper unit. The grapnels rose and all but two held first time. One landed harmlessly back on the ground and was recovered for another, again unsuccessful throw. The other fell back and heavily struck an unsuspecting young trooper on the head, splitting his skull and dropping him senseless to the grass. His comrades ascended the taut lines, each second expecting the stinging impact of bullets.
At the north wall of the Château, two more platoons were already in the process of scaling the wall of the Little Bastion, having taken down three guards with silenced rifle fire before they could respond.
In the allied officers sleeping quarters in the main building, pandemonium ensued as the alarm was shouted and then reinforced by the unmistakeable sounds of gunfire nearby. Each allied officer had his pistol in his hand as they emerged on various floors, grouping up and deciding what to do.
Prentiss was senior rank in his group and decided they should stay together and head towards the sound of the guns.
At the main entrance, the latest Russian assault had been more fruitful. Forty men had gathered on the pathway near the gate and rained grenades on the defenders, killing or incapacitating every man not in good cover.
A sudden surge brought success and the wooden gateway fell, its guards slain with no chance to close the wooden door. It was a matter of design that the defences should offer no protection to attackers, so the turret and wall positions were all open to fire from inside the Château. Paratroopers surged inside, taking cover where they could but all the time suffering casualties from the numerous firing points that could bear in the killing ground between the archways.
The next gate was closed and barred, obstructing the way into the Basse Cour. The Captain in charge ordered two men forward with satchel charges to resolve the blockage. Above the door were holes designed in a different age, defensive measures that had permitted defenders to pour pitch and oils upon any assault force. The old provision proved equally effective when used in conjunction with grenades, and one per man arrived, shredding the two paratroopers before they could successfully deploy their explosives.
Reacting swiftly, the Russian officer sent forward one of his flamethrowers, and in seconds, fire blasted through the same slits to fatally envelop the grenadiers, their screams rising above all the noise of battle.
The Captain ordered more explosives forward but exposed himself in the doing, falling bloodily to the stone with his jaw shot away by a French rifle bullet.
The explosives set, Russian paratroopers scrabbled for cover as the fuses burned down and ignited the charges, turning the door into dangerous matchwood. Two French commandos and one paratrooper were struck down by large splinters, all three fatally.
Dubois had organised the defence of the lower courtyard, positioning the unit’s .50cal heavy machine-gun by a stone trough, ready to cover down the approach to the gateway and flay any attackers who got past the portcullis that he had ordered dropped.