The main Soviet force swept on, pushing hard, brushing aside the occasional modest resistance, until reaching St Petruskapittel.
In the church and the academic building, night was turned into day by grenades and gun flashes, fires growing throughout the two separate buildings. Street fighting developed, often of the closest kind, and death came to the soldiers of both sides in every bestial way imaginable.
Inside the church, the US airborne troopers ceded ground, and were driven into the tower, holding the stairs against all rushes, killing a score of Guardsmen.
A small stock of gasoline nearby provided the inspiration for an act that stood out in a night of extreme barbarism.
Screaming and laughing maniacally, the Guardsmen sloshed the petroleum all round the base of the tower, setting it alight, and screaming with pleasure as the flames took hold and rose higher with every second.
Somewhere inside, men grabbed at the bell ropes, and the whole scene was accompanied by indiscriminate maniacal tolling.
Those outside watched as men jumped from the side openings onto the main building roof, some slipping and falling to their death below, others being shot off by the maddened Russians.
Still others chose to die by falling, rather than the alternative of death by burning. They hurled themselves out into the darkness and fell to the ground. Two managed to drop on top of an enemy, each Soviet soldier killed in turn.
Yet others had no choice over their end, and fiery living plumes started to descend, each screaming meteor ending in an awful mound at the base of the tower. Each pitiful pile burned, marking the body of a paratrooper, the area around the church scattered with such piles, burning like candles set around an altar.
Artem’yev did not interfere, leaving the mopping up to others, and pushing his units forward towards his goal; the Markt.
It was the lead group of the 179th’s 3rd Battalion that Master-Sergeant Hawkins had seen in the Oulde Markt, approaching the Hotel Limbourg.
Men went down on both sides as the two groups clashed on the Oude Markt.
The Americans had the advantage of cover, vehicles and crates providing excellent firing positions, the Guardsmen had numbers on their side.
Cover won, and the depleted guardsmen withdrew around the corner, some of their number investing the houses at the junction of Oude Markt and Kloosterplein, quickly setting up their DP’s and rifles, to put fire into the paratroopers.
Artem’yev took over from the dead battalion commander, switching the 3rd’s advance, a tourist map now his most useful tool in organising the assault.
Leaving some men to cover Kloosterplein, he focussed one company on a rapid assault up the Gats, a road that reduced to a narrow lane, winding through the buildings before terminating in the Markt itself.
The other intact company moved past the church, intent on securing Limbrichterstraat, and entering the Markt beyond.
The telephone was answered by his commanding officer, and so Higgins wasted no time.
“Sir, Higgins. We are in danger of being overrun here!”
Higgins waited with a patience of a saint, whilst Maxwell Taylor delivered the standard rhetoric about standing fast, and the expectation that all his command would do likewise.
The opportunity to talk came eventually.
“I don’t think that’s possible, Sir”
“Joe, I need more time, and you are going to give me it, goddamnit! Hold that town for two more hours. That’s all, just two goddamn hours, Joe!”
“Sir, I seriously doubt we can give you that. The commie bastards are on top of my HQ as we speak.”
As if to emphasise the point, a grenade detonated alongside the Hotel Limbourg, bringing screams from injured men.
“Joe, I will do what I can, but you must hold. I’m sorry, but that’s it, General. I will put a burr up the ass of the engineers, but you gotta hold!”
Two Russians ran into the headquarters, trying to escape from the slaughter spreading slowly into the square, straight into a burst from a Thompson sub-machine gun.
Both men collapsed, side by side, reflecting each other, with arms and legs in a star pattern.
One was dead, his face and chest destroyed by .45 bullets.
The other lay silent, unmoving, save for his eyes that flicked in all directions, trying to comprehend why he could not move, unable to see that his spine had been severed by the heavy Thompson round.
“I will hold, General.”
Joe Higgins waited whilst one of his Lieutenants put a bullet into the wounded Russian.
“Unless there’s anything else, Sir, I gotta go.”
“Good luck to you and your men, General.”
“I think we’ll need it, Sir. Goodbye.”
Handing the receiver back to the operator, Higgins pondered for a moment.
“Ok, listen in! Pack it up, and get ready to move. Get the latest reports in from the units, and get that updated”, he gestured at the situation map, “We will stand until ordered out, if anyone asks. I will be back in three minutes. You have three minutes.”
Higgins grabbed his carbine, its folded stock wet with blood from an unknown source, and moved to the main entrance to start his own assessment.
Only friendlies were in sight, but the Soviets were obviously still near.
The rush that had almost carried to the Markt had been thrown back by a surge of men from the reserve, the bakers and postmen fighting with unexpected ferocity. The Chafee tank had long since lost its battle for survival.
Some of the Soviets had got to the entrance of St Michaels. The grenades they threw inside wounded the already wounded, and added doctors and medics to the growing list of battle casualties.
Higgins saw that Crisp had already organised a withdrawal of the wounded, and grunted his approval.
Turning around, the barricade obstructing the route coming from the Gats was silent, the men there hunched ready but, as yet, untested.
Beyond that, the Limbrichtstraat entrance on to the Markt was more animated, the defenders active in their defence but, as yet, no sign of what they were firing at.
The Markt itself had emptied of the living, its sole occupants a handful of dead, some laid out in organised rows by caring medics, others thrown into bloodied heaps by whatever high-explosive shell had ended their lives.
Crisp’s voice cut through the sounds of battle, detailing men to find usable transport from amongst the thirty or so vehicles in the Markt.
The Gats suddenly burst into life, followed almost immediately by a flurry in the Oude Markt behind him.
Almost in slow-motion viewing, he had a grandstand view of the Gats defenders rising up as an assault force of Guardsmen overran them, PPSh’s lashing out, opposed by Carbines and Garands, momentum alone carrying the assault force to the barricade.
One Russian left the melee and moved towards the 101st’s commander, screaming like a Viking Berserker.
Higgins let fly from the hip, four bullets whistling past the unhinged Soviet soldier.
The Carbine jammed.
Scrabbling for his pistol, Higgins was about to lose the most important race of his life, the advancing soldier slapping his new drum magazine to make sure it was properly home.
Unable to get his automatic out, Brigadier General Higgins faced death with stoicism, until the Guardsman’s throat blossomed like a huge scarlet rose, and he was thrown backwards, the impact of other bullets killing him three times over.
“Thank you, Sergeant.”
“No problem, Sir.”
Montgomery Hawkes swiftly moved past the relieved General, ordered by Crisp to back up the defenders of the Gats.
Another group of paratrooper reinforcements followed, and the situation was restored, the surviving Russians withdrawing to think again.