The Last Battle (24 page)

L
EE
’
S RETURN WITH THE
eagerly anticipated American rescue column drew all of Schloss Itter’s French VIPs out of the safety of the Great Hall, across the walled terrace, and down the steps to the courtyard with smiles on their faces, cheers in their throats, and bottles of wine in their hands. That initial
enthusiasm quickly dimmed, however, when they realized the limited extent of the relief force. Lee’s assurances hours earlier that he would return with “the cavalry” had conjured in their minds images of a column of armor supported by masses of heavily armed soldiers; what they got instead was a single, somewhat shopworn tank, seven Americans, and, to the former prisoners’ chagrin, more armed Germans. The French, to put it mildly, were decidedly unimpressed.

The former captives’ mood darkened even more when they heard Lee telling Schrader—who’d returned to the castle in full uniform—about the Waffen-SS roadblock the relief force had encountered on the Ittererstrasse just north of Hopfgarten. The French knew there were hostile units in the area, of course—Blechschmidt had told them just that when he and his men had arrived earlier—but the fact that there were German troops still willing to confront American armor was a chilling reminder that the war was most certainly not yet over. Their peace of mind would have been further undermined had the French heard what Schrader reported to Lee: pulling the tanker to one side, the Waffen-SS man told him quietly that as Blechschmidt was deploying his handful of men along the castle’s upper floors earlier in the afternoon, he’d seen hostile troops moving toward the schloss from the north, west, and south. Even more ominous, Schrader added, both he and the young Wehrmacht lieutenant had seen two Pak 40 antitank guns
³⁷
being moved into positions from which they could fire toward the castle: one just inside the tree line on a parallel ridge directly east of the schloss and the other in a small clearing on the west bank of the Brixentaler Ache, southwest of the schloss.

Aware that the tactical situation had worsened significantly in just the past few hours and that an attack could come at any minute, Lee quickly began issuing orders. His first was directed at the expectant French, whom he told to take Schrader’s wife and children and the female number prisoners and seek shelter in the basement storerooms. His order was greeted by an immediate outburst of Gallic outrage—Reynaud, Daladier, and the other men loudly protesting that they would rather die on the parapets than cower in the cellars. Lee cut off the dissent with a curt wave of his hand, reminding the Frenchmen that he was in sole command and adding that they wouldn’t be any good to postwar France if they got themselves killed.

As the French former prisoners moved off, the men still grumbling, Lee motioned Basse, Gangl, Schrader, Dietrich, Höckel, and Blechschmidt together
and quickly outlined his strategy. Since there weren’t enough vehicles to move everyone in the castle back to Kufstein and given that the immediate area seemed to be crawling with enemy troops anyway, they would stay put, defend Schloss Itter, and wait to be relieved by the advancing 142nd Infantry. Lee would remain in overall command of the castle’s ad hoc garrison—which now included ten Americans, one Waffen-SS man, and fourteen Wehrmacht soldiers—with Basse, Schrader, and Gangl acting as his lieutenants.

Though the defenders were likely to be hugely outnumbered, Lee said, they had several factors working in their favor. First, they were relatively well armed: In addition to Kar-98 and M1 Garand rifles, they had MP-40 and M3 submachine guns, Pollock’s BAR, German and American pistols and hand grenades, and, most important, the .30-caliber and .50-caliber machine guns and 76mm cannon on
Besotten Jenny
. Second, Lee pointed out, attackers coming from the north, west, or south would have to surmount the encircling concertina-wire barriers and advance uphill while under intense fire from men atop the high walls on those sides. Third, enemy troops moving in from the east would be completely exposed as they negotiated the short schlossweg leading from the closest part of Itter village to the schloss, and in the final sixty feet of that distance the attackers would have to cross the narrow bridge over the ravine before even reaching the gatehouse. Fourth, Lee said, Schloss Itter’s thick stone walls would offer protection from small-arms fire and, to a lesser extent, reduce the effectiveness of enemy artillery. Fifth, and possibly most important, Lee pointed out that should attackers actually breach the outer ramparts, the defenders could resort to a positively medieval tactic: they’d shepherd the VIPs into the schloss’s tall central building—which Lee immediately dubbed the “keep”—and use the remaining ammunition, the grenades, and, if necessary, their fists to make the enemy fight for every stairwell, every hall, and every room.

Having laid out the battle plan, Lee set about deploying his troops. Gangl and Schrader would each be responsible for defending 180 degrees of the castle’s perimeter, Lee said, the former on the south and the latter on the north. Each man would have junior officers as “squad leaders”—Dietrich and Blechschmidt with Gangl, and Höckel with Schrader—and three of the Wehrmacht enlisted soldiers. The three remaining German troops would be posted as lookouts on the top floor of the keep. All of the friendly
Germans would wear a strip of dark cloth tied around their left arms as a recognition symbol, Lee said. Until something happened, the troops could sleep and eat in shifts, but, when and if the shooting started, it would literally be every man to the battlements.

As the German officers moved off to take up their positions, Lee told Rushford, Szymczyk, Seiner, and McHaley to wait for him next to the tank, still parked a few feet in front of the gatehouse. Turning to Basse and the four GIs from the 142nd Infantry, Lee said they would be responsible for the area around the main gate, as well as for covering the approach road. Motioning them to follow, Lee trotted over to the gatehouse, where he and Basse did a quick recon as Pollock, Worsham, Petrukovich, and Sutton took up defensive positions just to the rear and on either side of
Besotten Jenny
.
³⁸

Exploring the thirty-foot-tall, forty-foot-wide gatehouse confirmed the two officers’ initial impression: while it certainly wasn’t impregnable, it would make a decent first line of defense against any direct enemy assault from the direction of the village or uphill from the south or east. Strongly built of stone, the structure had two sets of gates, one set at each end of the covered and arched central entryway. The outer gates had been installed as part of the schloss’s conversion into a prison; built of thick, rough timber and pierced on one side by a small inset door, they opened outward and could be secured from the inside by several large padlocks. Set about fifteen feet further back, the inner gates were made of massive, metal-banded timbers, opened inward, and could be both locked and barred. Moreover, the central entryway was flanked by two tall stone towers pierced at the top by firing loops
³⁹
that commanded the short access road. Two additional towers some forty feet to the rear of the gatehouse—on the west front corner of the schlosshof—overlooked the steep slopes leading up to the base of the castle’s massive southern and western foundation walls. The front guard towers and the gatehouse’s cramped upper floor were accessible via two small wooden doors, one to either side of the inner gates, while the schlosshof’s tower had its own gate and internal circular staircase.

There were two possible weak spots in the defenses in and around the gatehouse, Lee and Basse agreed. The first was the area directly beneath the arched supports of the small bridge on the access road. Enemy troops who were able to work their way through the ravine and reach the base of the stone pier closest to the main gate would be able to cut through the concertina-wire barriers where they butted up against the pier while remaining
almost impossible to engage: none of the firing loops in the gatehouse offered a clear line of sight, and the sloping shoulders of the small promontory on which the castle stood would block fire from the main walls. The second weak spot was the small arched doorway—the sally port
⁴⁰
—at the base of the south foundation wall, right below the schlosshof’s guard tower on the castle’s south side. The door opened directly onto the sloping hillside leading down into the ravine. Built of thick, metal-reinforced timber, it was heavily barred from within and was overlooked by firing loops in the guard towers, but the placement of the openings in the curving walls of the towers would make it difficult to actually bring a weapon to bear on the slightly recessed door. Worse, small trees and underbrush on the hillside leading to the sally port meant that enemy troops who cut through the concertina wire might be able to make it from the ravine to the door unseen and blow it open before they could be stopped.

Standing before the front gate, Lee realized that the position of
Besotten Jenny
also presented a tactical problem. While his foresight in backing the vehicle up the access road spanning the ravine and parking it immediately in front of the gatehouse both protected its more vulnerable rear end and made any enemy assault up the approach road virtually suicidal, it also severely restricted the field of fire of the turret-mounted 76mm cannon and coaxial and hull-mounted .30-caliber machine guns. In order to ensure that the tank could cover the sally port and engage targets to the west and south of the schloss in addition to those immediately to the east, Lee ordered Rushford to move
Besotten Jenny
further from the gatehouse and park it just on the castle side of the bridge. Its engine roaring and with greasy smoke belching from its exhausts, the Sherman moved slowly forward. When it came to a stop, Rushford and the other crewmen jumped down and trotted back to the gatehouse, each man carrying his personal gear, a .45-caliber M3 submachine gun, and as much ammunition as he could carry.

Lee knew that repositioning the tank was a calculated risk: while the move would significantly increase the field of fire for the Sherman’s main and secondary weapons, it would also make the vehicle more visible to antitank gunners and increase the likelihood of attack by infantrymen wielding the fearsome panzerfaust. To help prevent the latter, Lee told Basse to emplace one of the tank’s machine guns in the gatehouse’s small upper level. By kicking out some of the ceramic roof tiles, the defenders could create a firing position that would cover
Besotten Jenny
and also
provide an elevated—if somewhat exposed—position from which to engage enemy troops attempting to move up the hillsides on either side of the bridge over the ravine. Though Lee would have preferred to use the tank’s Browning .50-caliber for the overwatch task, its size and weight would make it too unwieldy to use in the gatehouse’s cramped attic space. And of the tank’s two lighter and smaller .30-caliber machine guns, Lee and Basse agreed that it made more sense to remove and resite the assistant driver’s hull-mounted M1919A4 weapon: it had a more restricted arc of fire than the coaxial next to the main gun in the rotating turret and was easier to remove from its mount. Whistling to get McHaley’s attention, Basse told him to go back to the tank, dismount the bow .30-caliber, retrieve its stowed tripod, and take the weapon and several cans of ammunition to the top of the gatehouse. Turning toward Worsham, Basse told him to help McHaley emplace the weapon and then act as the young tanker’s assistant gunner.

Leaving Basse to deploy Pollock, Petrukovich, and Sutton as he saw fit, Lee moved over to where Rushford, Szymczyk, and Seiner were crouched just inside the first set of gates. Lee told them that while he realized that
Besotten Jenny
was in an exposed position, he wanted at least one of them in the buttoned-up vehicle at all times. Turning to Seiner, Lee said that, since there was virtually no chance they’d have to tangle with German armor, he wanted the Sherman’s 76mm gun loaded with a high-explosive shell, which would be far more effective against troops than an armor-piercing round.
⁴¹
Finally, Lee said, at the first sign of a full-scale attack he wanted all three of them to get to
Besotten Jenny
as soon as possible; Basse would try to join them, but if the motor officer couldn’t make it out to the Sherman, the three enlisted men should keep it in action as long as they could.

With the defense of the gatehouse organized, Lee headed across the small courtyard toward the schlosshof, noting as he did that the wire-topped parapet walls on either side were not tall enough to offer complete protection from incoming fire. Making a mental note to remind everyone that in the event of a firefight they’d have to crouch when traversing the lower courtyard and the equally exposed terrace between the schlosshof and the main building, Lee hurried toward the Great Hall. It was just after nine thirty, the sun was starting to set, and he wanted to ensure that all the “tame Krauts” were in position and alert before nightfall.