Opening Moves

This beast was called Marengo, named for the decisive French victory that Napoleon’s forces inflicted upon the Austrians in Italy one and a half centuries before. Von Arnesen, the keen historian and wit, advised his comrades that the leviathan was actually named for Napoleon’s horse Marengo, given the similarity in size. He got no arguments on that suggestion, as the solid Alsatian hound was far and away the largest of its breed any of them had ever seen.

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.