Commando- The Complete World War II Action Collection Volume II

by Jack Badelaire

  There was the sound of automatic weapons fire behind them, coming from the top of the staircase, immediately followed by the sound of machine gun fire from outside the chateau, the deep rattle of multiple Bren LMGs firing long bursts of powerful .303 calibre slugs. Lynch heard the hammering of bullets against stone and plaster, the smashing of wood and glass, as the Bren teams shredded the windows of the floors above them. Near the staircase, a grenade exploded, the blast strong enough to send vibrations through the stone at Lynch’s feet. He knew from the sound it was a British Mills bomb, no doubt lobbed up onto the floor above them to clear the landing for King’s assault.

  A painful jab to the arm from Herring reminded Lynch that they hadn’t finished the task at hand, and they moved up to the doors leading into what was likely some kind of large parlour or dining room. Lynch thought of changing magazines but dismissed the thought - he’d only expended a handful of rounds, and there was no more time to lose. Rearing back, he lashed out with a boot and smashed the doors open, ducking back and crouching low as they swung wide. A pistol shot cracked out, and then two more from the same direction in quick succession. Lynch saw an arm poking out from around an overturned dining table near the furthest corner of the room. He raised his Thompson and sawed a line of slugs sideways across the table, and the arm’s owner toppled out from behind his flimsy cover, half his skull blown away.

  The room was indeed a large parlour room, with a number of round tables arranged around a pair of couches and a fireplace in the center of the far wall. There was a well-stocked dry bar against one wall, and several bookcases along the other. Paintings and other artworks hung from the walls, and chandeliers of electric lights hung overhead, illuminating the room. Most of the tables were overturned, and Lynch saw the tip of a German soldier’s boot sticking out from behind one of the couches. Not knowing how many others inside might be armed. Lynch pulled a Mills bomb from his webbing and indicated that the two riflemen with him should do the same, while Herring covered the room with his machine pistol. In seconds, the three Commandos lobbed their munitions into the room, aiming to land them behind barricades which might hide the most Germans.

  There were several shouts of alarm, and Lynch saw one grenade go skittering back out into the open, kicked away by someone with quick reflexes. The Commandos ducked back as their grenades exploded, the shock of the blasts accompanied by screams of pain from inside the room. Lynch leaned away from the wall again and signalled for his men to follow as he charged into the room, a haze of dust, wood splinters, and upholstery stuffing hanging in the air. They moved fast, trusting in the shock of the explosions to disorientate the Germans, and within seconds, it was over. Lynch counted eight dead men in the room - three killed by the grenades, the rest by gunfire. A quick search of the space showed no one hiding under a couch, or a well-hidden door where someone might have fled.

  “Well now, lads, that wasn’t so bad, now, eh?” Lynch asked his men.

  Another grenade exploded somewhere upstairs, followed by the sound of Thompson fire and the more powerful bark of Mauser rifles.

  The fight for the chateau was by no means over.

  Chapter 10

  The Chateau

  0150 Hours

  In the first few seconds, Kurzmann thought one of the other guests at the Lustschloss had gotten drunk and either acquired one of the guards’ weapons, or used one of their own, and was either simply causing trouble, or possibly engaged in a quarrel over cards or women, the way he’d nearly had to shoot Brune the other day. It wasn’t the first time someone has fired a weapon there - it had happened on two occasions while Kurzmann had been staying at the chateau, and one of the guards, who had been stationed there for six months, said it happened a couple of times every rotation.

  But as the gunfire continued, his ears picked up the different sounds, and he was instantly up and out of bed, his bare feet hitting the worn rug, his hand reaching for the unholstered P-38 on the nightstand next to his bed. He quickly debated whether it was better to dress and be better prepared, or immediately take action against what he was sure was a Maquis attack, when his door slammed open. He had the intruder firmly in his sights, finger on the trigger, when he recognized the silhouette of Stahl against the illuminated corridor outside the room.

  “It’s the Tommies!” Stahl shouted, rifle in hand. The lean man had his uniform blouse on but unbuttoned, his web gear slung over a shoulder. Kurzmann saw that Stahl had taken the time to put on his boots, so he reached for his own.

  “How many?” Kurzmann asked, struggling into his trousers.

  Just then, a burst of machine gun fire slashed across the room, cutting through the blackout-curtained window and punching a half-dozen holes in the opposite wall, each the size of a man’s fist. Stahl didn’t flinch, even as one bullet impacted half a metre away. Kurzmann shoved his feet into his boots and began lacing them up.

  “Several squads,” Stahl replied, “platoon strength, possibly more. Someone saw at least a score of men outside, all over the grounds, and they’ve taken the ground floor already!”

  Kurzmann finished lacing his boots and moved at a crouch to his closet, careful to keep below the level of the bullet holes running across the wall like some kind of deadly high-water mark.

  Just then, Brune loomed over Stahl’s shoulder. “What are you doing? There’s Tommies to kill!” he shouted, brandishing his machine pistol. It was a wooden-stocked MP-28, practically an antique now in the age of stamped metal and mass production, but the SS had been equipped with many second-line weapons, older guns like the MP-28 among them.

  “Is there much resistance?” Kurzmann asked, getting his web gear around his shoulders and slinging his hard leather rifle case across his back. There would be no reason to use the long gun now, its size and telescopic sight more of a hindrance than an asset in such close quarters, but he would not leave it behind.

  “Most of the fighting is one floor below us,” Brune stated. “We’re holding them on the landing, but we don’t have enough armed men. Stupid shits! This is enemy territory! Who doesn’t bring a weapon with them?”

  Kurzmann grunted in reply. While officially these men on leave weren’t supposed to have weapons with them, France was still an occupied territory, the civilian population cowed, but not in any way friendly. However, only about half of those who came to the Lustschloss brought weapons with them, and most of those were personal arms, often trophy pistols taken from dead enemies, or particularly prized weapons they wouldn’t part with, such as Brune’s machine pistol, or Kurzmann’s own rifle.

  Another machine gun burst tore through the curtained window, one of the bullets missing his head by a few centimetres. The volume of fire outside was definitely increasing, and a pair of grenade explosions one floor below, neither of them German ordnance, signalled that the Tommies were bringing more weight to bear in the assault. Ducking low, Kurzmann crossed under his window, then approached it from the side, pulling back the heavy curtain only a centimetre so he could peer out. Below, he saw light spilling out from the building’s front entrance, as well as muzzle flashes from at least a half-dozen machine guns. In the flickering light of the muzzle blasts, he saw the khaki uniforms of British soldiers, and his sniper’s eye, trained in information gathering, counted at least a score of men, maybe more. Given those numbers, as well as what he heard below, there might be as many as fifty enemy soldiers attacking them. A tidbit of information popped up in his memory - that number was the approximate size of a British Commando troop. This was, then, likely a raid, although one that made little sense, since the Lustschloss had no real military value.

  And then it came to him. They were the value. There were several dozen highly-decorated SS soldiers in this one location, lightly guarded and largely unarmed. A successful raid against them by the British would mean killing a goodly number of Germany’s bravest and most decorated men, each of them a prized asset to their country and to the war effort. Their skills and their fame were worth more
than any airfield of fighter planes or munitions depot. You could always build more Bf-109s or artillery shells, but every man at the Lustschloss was unique, a hero of the Fatherland, and therefore, irreplaceable.

  As soon as he realized this, Kurzmann knew what they had to do.

  “Stahl, the secret door,” he said.

  Stahl nodded, immediately understanding Kurzmann’s intent, if not necessarily the reason. Brune just looked confused.

  “What secret door? Come on, you worthless shits, we have to fight!” he snarled.

  “There’s no time to explain,” Kurzmann snapped at the larger man, herding Brune and Stahl out of his room.

  Outside in the corridor, the sounds of gunfire were staggeringly loud. Kurzmann heard men shouting in both English and German, and he smelled the gunsmoke, explosive residue, and the slaughterhouse reek of blood and offal that comes from violent death. Near the top of the staircase at the end of the hallway, four Germans were arranged in a defensive position, weapons pointed down the staircase. Only one of them had a rifle, while the other three held an assortment of pistols. One of them saw Kurzmann and the other two approach with weapons in hand and his expression brightened.

  “Brune, you goddamn maniac, get that machine pistol over-”

  The man’s head detonated as a pair of bullets tore through the side of his skull. A moment later, a captured stick grenade bounced against the wall and fell in front of the remaining three men, landing just two steps below them. The three threw themselves backwards, but one of them was too slow. The explosion tore him nearly in half. The two survivors, stunned, began to pick themselves up.

  Kurzmann saw a tremor pass through Brune, and he realized it was uncertainty, a fear that he would die here, at the top of a staircase in France. Just then, they reached the spot where Stahl had found the hidden door, and he popped it open.

  “Come on, quickly!” Stahl told his companions, stepping inside the hidden passageway.

  Brune hesitated, looking from the secret door back to the top of the stairs. One of the two survivors was fitting a new five-round clip of ammunition to the top of his Mauser rifle, while the other had a pair of pistols, one in each hand, and was methodically firing one after the other, a shot every few seconds, down the staircase, using the bodies of the other two men as cover. There was more gunfire on the level below them, and Kurzmann realized that the Tommies were moving from room to room, killing anyone they found. The number of men and their firepower was irresistible.

  “If we stay here, we maybe kill one or two, and then we die!” Kurzmann shouted to Brune. “But if we run, we can become the hunters, not the hunted. We can kill many more Englishmen.”

  That seemed to finally change Brune’s mind - the chance to kill more of his enemies. He gave a last look to the two men defending the staircase, who’d either forgotten about them or decided to ignore them, and the big man turned and began to wedge his considerable bulk down the passageway. Once he’d gotten far enough along that Kurzmann was confident Brune wouldn’t become stuck, he stepped in himself, closing the secret door just as he heard a shout from the stairs, the pounding of booted feet, and the roar of a machine pistol.

  The last he heard, as they navigated the secret passageway in the darkness, were voices in the corridor speaking English.

  Chapter 11

  The Chateau

  0200 Hours

  “You don’t want to go down there, Lance-Sergeant. Bad business, so it is.”

  Lynch stood in front of a guard posted to the cellar door, another Irishman named Finley, one of Sergeant Howe’s men. Finley had a bloody bandage wound around his forearm, where a bullet fragment had torn through the muscle but, thankfully, didn’t break the bone or hit any arteries. Finley was one of the seven Commandos wounded in the assault, although thankfully one of the five who’d suffered relatively minor injuries. Two of the wounded were in a bad way, and Oliver Hall, the troop’s medic and one of Lynch’s former squadmates, thought one of them might not survive to see the morning. If that was the case, the poor sod would join the three others who’d died in the attack, two of them from Peabody’s squad, another from Howe’s. Fortunately, only one of Lynch’s men had been wounded, a trooper named Frost, who’d taken a sharp stone fragment above the eyes, covering his face in a frightful mask of blood but doing little real damage.

  Now the Commandos were searching the chateau, and rumors of what was found down in the cellar were beginning to circulate. However, Eldred and Stambridge wanted to keep the rabble from getting in everyone’s way, so Finley had been put in place to keep the unnecessary away.

  “I know it’s bad, Fin,” Lynch replied. “but my lads found it, and what am I, if I can’t go where they went?”

  Finley thought for a moment, then took a half-step aside, signalling that Lynch could proceed. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you now, Lance-Sergeant.”

  Lynch adjusted the sling of the Thompson on his shoulder, then took the first few steps down into the cellar. The stairway took a right-hand turn, and as he came around the corner, he found the half-dressed body of a German soldier sprawled face-down on the stairs, wearing his uniform blouse but naked below the waist. There were several messy exit wounds in the German’s back, evidence that he’d been killed by submachine gun fire while coming up the stairs.

  Lynch gingerly walked around the dead German, taking care to not step in the blood pooling on the stairs, and continued down until he exited the stairway and entered a room evidently used to store various consumables, as well as racks upon racks of wine bottles. There was another dead German here, this one naked save for his helmet and his boots, a bloodstained bayonet several feet from his outstretched right hand. There was one large exit wound in the German’s back, most likely caused by a Lee-Enfield at nearly point-blank range.

  “Who’s that?” Stambridge’s voice came from the next room. “Authorized personnel on-oh, it’s you, Lance-Sergeant.”

  The lieutenant stepped out of the next room, a displeased expression on his face. “No one called for you, Lynch. What are you doing down here? Haven’t you got anything better to do?”

  Lynch saluted his commanding officer, then gestured towards the other room. “Corporal Nelson discovered the room, sir. Wouldn’t tell me what he found, then he staggered outside and was sick. We’ve fought together for a year, sir, and I’ve never seen a bloody thing that’d make Harry Nelson sick.”

  “Looking to indulge your more depraved sensibilities, Lance-Sergeant?” Stambridge asked.

  “No sir, Nelson’s one of my lads, sir,” Lynch replied. “Whatever he’s seen or found, I should see for myself. It’s my job, sir.”

  Stambridge grunted, then turned slightly to the side and gestured back towards the next room. “Suit yourself, Lynch. I’ve got to go topside, see to the collection of the medals and the destruction of the enemy armaments.”

  Lynch nodded, then watched Stambridge as he walked past. For all his dismissive nonchalance, Lynch thought the lieutenant looked particularly pale, his jaw clenched tight, a line of sweat running from his brow. It had been sheer willpower that’d kept Stambridge in that room as long as he had been, Lynch realized.

  Steeling himself, Lynch continued through the storeroom, and entered the larger room beyond. Even before stepping through the doorway, the smell of human waste, unwashed bodies, and the fetid reek of blood, both old and new, assailed his nostrils, and Lynch swallowed hard, involuntarily raising a hand to his face.

  “Bloody hell,” he muttered.

  “That about sums it up, Lance-Sergeant,” Captain Eldred remarked.

  Lynch took a look around, and he felt his blood go cold. The room was relatively large, at least fifteen paces to a side, and split roughly down the middle. On one side, several crudely-constructed cages made from heavy timbers and iron bars stood with their doors open, but inside, blankets and chamber pots indicated people had been held prisoner for some time. Indeed, a number of civilians were both inside and outside of the
cages, all of them sitting on the stone floor, several of them being attended to by Commandos offering them food, water, or simply comfort.

  Of the dozen civilians in the room, nine were women, all of them young, thin, and showing signs of physical abuse. Of the three men, two were also young, probably eighteen or nineteen years, while one of them appeared to be in his early thirties, although his sickly, disheveled appearance meant he could be younger. Lynch saw Hall kneeling next to young girl, barely out of puberty, who sported a bloody gash above her left eye. Hall was carefully winding a gauze bandage around the girl’s brow.

  After a moment, Lynch began to notice other, more disturbing details. The half of the room not constrained by cages contained various pieces of furniture - low stools, benches, and several chairs. The center of the room contained a small dining room table, capable of seating six, and a blood-stained blanket draped over the center of the table hid what could only be a dead body, still dripping blood onto the floor. Makeshift bindings and chains with manacles were fitted to most of the furniture, and Lynch saw a small, feminine hand protruding from the edge of the blanket on the dining room table, a leather strap bound so tightly, the hand was purple. Soon, a horrific picture began to form in Lynch’s mind, and the reason for such furniture and their fittings became obvious. To make matters worse, hanging from the walls, there were various implements of pain and suffering: barbed leather flails, iron pokers, broad wooden paddles like cricket bats, riding crops, and several long, wicked-looking knives, their blades stained dark with dried blood.