Neither was prepared for the sights before them.
Butchered Soviet paratroopers lay everywhere, the absence of ears bloodily apparent on each corpse.
At the fountain trough, a paratrooper, face down and bent double over the stonework, his backside exposed and bleeding, his most recent violator preparing for a second assault, oblivious to the two officers stood staring in disbelief at him.
To the left, female legs, held wide open by two grinning tribesmen, her arms pinned by two more as a fifth Goumier plunged himself vigorously into the screaming woman. She too was face down as the unnatural violation ripped her painfully.
A sixth Goumier was displaying her bloody breasts, one in each hand, held out to any of his comrades who wished to inspect them.
What happened next was a blur, decent honourable men acting without thought, either for their own lives or for the consequences of their actions.
Lavalle and Haefeli moved forward as one, producing their handguns.
As they ran, both officers shouted an age-old cry for assistance.
“A moi La Légion!”
Such a call could not be refused by any legionnaire who heard it.
The Colonel nearly blew the arm off the sodomiser of the unfortunate woman, his first bullet striking the shoulder. A second bullet took the man in the stomach as he lay on the floor. Haefeli took the life of the other rapist who collapsed over his victim, his ruined face spilling blood on the young Russian’s corpse.
Lavalle’s next shots struck the man holding the bloody trophies, his throat and chest exploding as he flew backwards into the stonewall.
The four men pinning the woman looked on in terror, knowing death was about to visit them. Haefeli’s Sergent-Chef emptied his Garand into them, two bullets each, the heavy impacts throwing them into disarray. One man moaned, only wounded. Haefeli shot him in the crotch.
The legionnaires turned towards the larger group of Goumier’s, comrades of those they had just mercilessly dispatched, expecting to die in turn.
The tribesmen seemed momentarily unsure of what to do until one of their older NCO’s spoke up, directing them to gather up their things and move on after the enemy.
The arrival of more legionnaires from the 3e may well have aided his decision.
The woman’s screams had subsided to a low, continuous moan of pain and anguish, expressing suffering way beyond the thresholds of human tolerance.
The apparition pushed herself up on her arms, the bloody stumps of her breasts exposed, a knife in her side now apparent to the transfixed watchers.
Every essence of their being implored them to help her but there was something about her struggle, something tangible to each of them, that instructed them to leave her, to let her make her efforts.
She slowly stood, the blood running freely from her mouth, chest, side, and violated lower body. She took hold of the knife and pulled it slowly from her flesh, the pain making her eyes roll in her head.
Still the Legionnaires stood immobile, knowing that the woman needed to do this herself.
She dropped to her knees, her rapist groaning and bubbling, as red fluid gently seeped into his lungs.
She spoke soft words in her native tongue to the Goumier, but they were not words of comfort, the venom and hate that they carried obvious to all.
Gathering herself for the effort, Stefka Kolybareva grabbed the man’s genitals and twisted, the new pain washing over him in a wave. But it was as nothing compared to the extreme of suffering she visited upon him as she sliced away at his manhood, removing every tangible sign of his gender before pushing open his scarlet thighs and using his rectum as a scabbard for the bloody blade.
Exhausted, and with huge blood loss, the hideously wounded woman toppled on top of her rapist, falling into merciful unconsciousness.
Haefeli’s medic moved forward and the work to save her life began.
No one noticed the single Goumier turn and walk briskly forward, his target, the back of the senior officer; the man who had shot his brother.
The arm raised, knife about to plunge between Lavalle’s shoulder blades, his revenge was imminent.
When the shot rang out all eyes immediately went to the source of the sound. A bloody hand on the battlements sagged, and the automatic pistol fell from its grasp, bouncing on the stone floor of the Lower Courtyard.
Some intuitive sense made Haefeli check his men’s fire, the wounded Russian clearly no longer armed or a threat.
Lavalle turned at the sound of a fall behind him, the headless corpse having dropped like a rag doll onto the dead Russian prisoner’s.
The wound was immense, unusually removing everything from the lower jaw upwards. It was later discovered that the gun’s former commando owner, against orders and all conventions, had converted his bullets into dum-dums with quartered heads. The destructive impact of Rispan’s shot had put the Goumier down immediately and given no possibility of him fulfilling his act of revenge.
More men were sent to tend to the man who had saved Lavalle’s life.
“A close call Mon Colonel, a close call for sure.”
Even the brave and the bold can be shaken by such things, and Lavalle was no exception. He knew how close to death he had just been.
“Yes Albrecht. I was very lucky.”
Composing himself, Lavalle got his thought processes back on track.
Both men’s eyes locked and silent communication took place.
“Yes. We will deal with these bastards later Albi.” Lavalle did not mean the Russians.
“Now, let’s get some information out to our superiors and find out what the hell is going on here eh?”
Nodding, Haefeli summoned a radioman.
“You do it Albrecht. I think I will take some of the men and go on up.”
He indicated the ramp that led up into the Château, the signs of battle evident, blood and bodies leading up into unseen places beyond.
Within half an hour, the Château was declared safe, although armed legionnaires patrolled everywhere in case some hitherto unsuspected hiding place disgorged enemy paratroopers.
2e Compagnie was still off pursuing the Russians, without much success according to the reports filtering back via radio.
A senior French officer, a Brigadier-General no less, had arrived with the rest of the Goumier Tabor, gathered up the survivors and promised to keep the tribesmen employed in the pursuit of the enemy, as well as ensuring investigation and retribution in equal measure, horrified at the excesses his men visited on the Lower Courtyard.
Lavalle had ensured he understood that the matter would not be left dormant for long.
The commando barracks was now a makeshift field hospital, staffed by a group of doctors and nurses on their way back from a detachment to the Red Cross in Geneva. They made no distinction between their charges, each man or woman receiving appropriate treatment regardless of the uniform, although, unsurprisingly, Stefka Kolybareva received more personal attention than most, the women nurses drawn into her personal suffering by loyalty to their gender as well as their natural caring natures.
Lavalle took a close interest in the Russian officer who saved his life, slipping a note into the man’s ID book and briefing the medical team on the man’s actions.
Much as Ramsey had done a few hours beforehand, Lavalle reflected on the Château around him, fresh with signs of battle, and how a battle here would be fought or, at this particular moment, had been fought.
No less a bloodbath than it would have been in the days of boiling oil and broadswords was his sanguine conclusion.
Already the butcher’s bill was revealing itself in all its true horror. The 2e had lost nearly 20% of its men dead and wounded, the 3e twice as many, with more than two-thirds of them killed outright.