The Last Battle (32 page)

At about the same time that Cliff Reinhard was relaying Lynch’s instructions for a rescue force to Company E commander Gill, Lee realized that he was running out of options. The telephone line had been Schloss Itter’s last communications link with the outside world, and it had been severed before Lee was able to give Kramers any intel about the location, strength, or weaponry of the attacking Waffen-SS troops. Without that information the relief force could well end up wasting precious time fighting enemies it might otherwise be able to avoid, and anything that delayed the advancing Americans only made it more likely that Schloss Itter’s VIPs and their defenders wouldn’t survive the afternoon.

At this critical juncture Jean Borotra stepped forward with an audacious—and quite possibly suicidal—proposal. He would go over the wall and make his way to the nearest Americans to both hurry them up and show them the quickest way to get to the castle. When Lee rightly pointed out
that the tennis star’s chances of making it through the enemy cordon were slim, at best, Borotra replied that his previous escape attempts had given him a unique knowledge of the surrounding terrain and of several ways to leave the castle unobserved. He confidently predicted that he’d reach the advancing Americans “in no time,” and Lee, with no other options, reluctantly agreed to let the tall Frenchman try.

After disguising himself as an Austrian refugee—complete with ragged bedroll and gnarled walking stick—Borotra waited for a brief lull in the firing and then clambered over one of the low parapet walls on the castle’s north side. He dropped some fifteen feet to the ground, rolled easily, and in seconds was back on his feet. His daily training runs stood him in good stead, for he dashed quickly across forty yards of open ground, made it into the woods that bordered the castle’s northwest side, and started down the steep slope toward the river. After carefully eluding several groups of SS men, some of whom were firing upslope at the castle, Borotra burst from the trees at the bottom of the hill and came face to face with two soldiers manning an MG-42 machine gun sited so it could fire at both the castle and at any Americans approaching from the direction of Söll-Leukental.
⁴⁵

No doubt equally as startled by Borotra’s sudden appearance as the Frenchman was by theirs, the Waffen-SS men nonetheless held their fire, apparently taken in by the tennis star’s “harmless refugee” disguise. He reinforced their first impression by calmly bending down to gather some herbs and then relieving himself against a nearby tree. When it was clear that the soldiers had dismissed him as a possible threat, he sauntered to the bank of a large stream and, holding his bedroll and walking stick over his head, waded into the swift-flowing, waist-deep water. Though he slipped once or twice, he kept his footing and made it to the other side. Climbing to the top of the bank he looked back at the soldiers, tossed them a friendly wave, and started toward Söll-Leukental. As soon as he thought it safe, he began the slow and steady jog that ultimately led him to Reinhard and Lévesque.
⁴⁶

Within minutes of that meeting Borotra was talking to Lynch, who had set up his regimental command post in a farmhouse only a half mile away, from where he could see the castle silhouetted atop the towering ridgeline to his south. After delivering his message—that the situation at Schloss Itter was dire and help was needed immediately—the Frenchman presented his plan: he would lead the American infantrymen back to the castle via the
quick route up the north slope and along the way point out to them all the German positions he’d observed. His only request was that he be given an American uniform and a weapon.

Suitably attired and armed, Borotra led Reinhard’s platoon and most of Matney’s Company G back across the open farmland toward Schloss Itter. After eliminating the MG-42 and its two-man crew, the Americans crossed the stream—aided by ropes—and started up the steep hillside, killing two more Waffen-SS men and capturing twelve without a single U.S. casualty.
⁴⁷
Borotra led the way, determined to be the first to reach his beleaguered comrades in the castle. Unfortunately, that honor would not be his.

When the bulk of Company E and all of Company G had turned south onto the road to Hopfgarten, the resistance that had bedeviled them on the way out of Wörgl slackened considerably. Though occasionally fired on by snipers and the odd machine gun, the column had been able to quicken its pace down the Brixentalerstrasse. Upon reaching the northern outskirts of Hopfgarten, Company G had dropped out to secure the town, allowing Gill and his company to start north up the steep and narrow Ittererstrasse toward the castle. It wasn’t a cakewalk; the GIs encountered several well-defended roadblocks, and at one point an antitank gun mounted on a halftrack fired at the lead Sherman. It missed, and one of the other M4s quickly knocked out the German vehicle with an AP round and then killed its fleeing crew with .30-caliber machine-gun fire.
⁴⁸
But Gill—now with his battalion commander, Marvin Coyle, riding along with him—was a man on a mission, and he pushed his men up the road as fast as he could. As Meyer Levin recalled: “There were short bursts of fire—machine guns, burp guns, ours, theirs. [But] the tanks reached [Itter] village. They let out a long roll of machine-gun fire, and presently a few dozen jerries came piling out of the houses, hands up. In a few minutes, the Joes were through the town.”
⁴⁹

A
S SOON AS
B
OROTRA
had gone over the wall, Lee—always the pragmatist—had begun planning what he and his shrinking command would do if the relief force didn’t show up in time. Securing the agreement of Weygand and Gamelin—both of whom had deferred to the young American throughout the battle despite their own exalted ranks—Lee began pulling defenders off the walls and shepherding them and the French VIPs toward
the keep. The American tanker, aided by Schrader and the other German officers, deployed the troops and the armed Frenchmen at windows and the top of each staircase.

Daladier, for his part, sequestered himself in one of the second-floor bedrooms, where:

two of the German soldiers who had come with [Gangl] had taken up positions, with their rifles resting on the window sills. They pointed out [SS troops] firing at the “castle” from a few hundred yards away, near the little electric plant, on the edge of the forest. The two soldiers returned the fire. I took advantage of a moment of calm to exchange a few words with our defenders. They told me in German that they were Polish. When I told them I was French, one of them started shaking my hand while the other pulled a bottle out of his coat and offered it to me. It was a bottle of Fernet Branca; where the devil did he get that? I drank a bit; it was really bad. Then he laughed and told me Hitler was kaput.
⁵⁰

Down on the schlossweg, a squad of Waffen-SS troops was at that moment pressing the attack. Just as one of them settled into position to fire a panzerfaust at the front gate, the sound of automatic weapons and tank guns behind them in the village signaled a radical change in the tactical situation. Seconds later the SS men evaporated into the woods, just as
Boche Buster
rolled to a stop at the village end of the schlossweg, its appearance prompting Daladier’s newfound friend to stop laughing, point out the window, and yell “panzer!”
⁵¹
It was just after four
PM
.

Within minutes the castle’s jubilant defenders—American, French, and German—poured down into the front courtyard, out the gate, and past
Besotten Jenny
’s still-smoldering hulk toward the men and vehicles of the rescue force. As a small truck bearing Rupert Hagleitner, several of his resistance fighters, and Andreas Krobot rolled down the schlossweg, Lee thanked Gill for arriving in true Wild West fashion: just in the nick of time. Lee and Basse then walked over to where Elliot was nonchalantly leaning against
Boche Buster
. Feigning irritation, Lee looked the young tanker in the eye and said simply, “What kept you?”

CHAPTER 8

AFTERMATH

A
S
C
APTAIN
J
OE
G
ILL
’
S
infantrymen quickly set about establishing a security perimeter around Schloss Itter, 142nd Infantry Regiment commander George Lynch ordered John Kramers to maneuver the chattering, gesticulating French VIPs and liberated number prisoners back into the castle’s front courtyard. The jubilant crowd squeezed through the gatehouse portals, Meyer Levin and René Lévesque dashing from person to person gathering quotes and Eric Schwab photographing civilians and soldiers alike.

A very tired Jack Lee walked up to Lynch, saluted, and, gesturing at the French VIPs loudly thanking Zvonko Čučković and Andreas Krobot for their courageous rides, said, “Take them colonel, they’re all yours.”
¹
Lynch smiled and was about to respond when Čučković, spotting Kurt-Siegfried Schrader in his Waffen-SS uniform, let out a yell and rushed toward the startled officer as if to attack him. Krobot jumped between the two men, restraining the Croat handyman and explaining that the German had helped protect the French VIPs “with his life.”
²
As an only slightly less angry Čučković moved away, Schrader approached Lynch. Saluting far more smartly than had the exhausted Lee, the German said he had the pleasure to formally hand over the French former prisoners, who had been “under his protection.”

Protecting the liberated VIPs was also high on Lynch’s task list, of course—there were still armed enemy units in the area, after all, and no
cease-fire had yet been officially declared—and he had received orders from Major General McAuliffe to move the former prisoners as soon as possible to the 103rd Infantry Division’s command post in Innsbruck. Through Kramers, Lynch directed the French to return to their rooms, pack only what they could carry in hand luggage, and then assemble in the castle’s Great Hall while he set about organizing the first leg of their journey back to France.

While thrilled to have been rescued, the VIPs were obviously not willing to let go of the enmity, rivalries, and petty backbiting that had characterized their time at Schloss Itter. As they drifted into the Great Hall with their bags, several of them took the opportunity to voice their complaints to Kramers. As Meyer Levin later wrote, “Some of them whispered about others who had been quite friendly with the German commandant of Itter, and Major Kramers shrewdly observed that perhaps some of these people were as happy to be liberated from each other’s company as they were to be liberated from imprisonment.”
³

René Lévesque was equally struck by the fact that liberation had obviously done nothing to ease the personal animosities of the French VIPs. When he entered the Great Hall to continue his interviews, the young Canadian war correspondent found them “sitting around in little groups seeming very disinclined to talk to one another.”
⁴
Lévesque noted that Daladier and Reynaud were seated in opposite corners of the room and studiously avoiding each other.

Despite the obvious tension, the young reporter could not pass up the chance to interview two such august personages. Initially unsure which gentleman to approach first, Lévesque took a decidedly pragmatic approach: respecting the chronology of their public service, he began with Daladier.

The “old bull of the Vaucluse”
⁵
had thinned down a little, but he was still a rugged customer, though he had a hesitant look as if he might be worried about awkward questions. As far as that went, he’d had plenty of time to prepare himself. “Monsieur le Premier Ministré,” I asked him after we’d been formally introduced, “would you mind sharing with us some of the reflections that time and distance have certainly given you a chance to elaborate?” “Cher Monsieur,” he replied, “I have indeed many things to reveal, and above all a great many things to set straight. I intend to publish a full account as soon as I return to France. But here, you understand,” he said, lowering his voice, “there are indiscreet ears belonging to certain individuals who will be unmasked in my memoirs as they deserve to be. I can hardly say more.”
⁶

The “old bull” obviously intended Lévesque to realize that the “indiscreet ears” belonged to his arch political enemy, for as he finished speaking, he shot what the young reporter called “a murderous look” at Reynaud, who was sitting across the room “affecting the most complete indifference.” When Lévesque approached Reynaud, whom he described as a “dry, pointed little fellow,” he was treated to a virtual repeat of his conversation with Daladier: