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 port40—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.
As he crossed the terrace, Lee was pleased to see that Gangl had placed two of his men behind a low wall that allowed them to cover both the castle’s main entryway and the stairway leading up from the front courtyard. The soldiers saluted the American officer as he walked past them into the Great Hall, where Lee found Gangl and Schrader waiting for him. Together, the three men set off to inspect the defenses. Then it was down to the cellars to look in on the VIPs and Schrader’s family, followed by a drawn-out strategy session among Lee, Gangl, and Schrader that evolved into a remarkably open discussion of the war and the uncertainties of the coming peace. It must have been a truly odd sight: the brash tanker from upstate New York and two highly decorated German officers, sitting around a table in the candlelit great hall of a medieval castle, speaking quietly of their experiences in a conflict that each man fervently hoped would end within hours.
Finally, talked out, the enemies-turned-allies went in search of places to catch a few hours’ sleep. Lee ended up in what had until recently been the SS guards’ dormitory on the first floor of the keep. Setting his helmet and M3 submachine gun on a bedside table, he picked one of the narrow beds at random and lay down on the bare mattress still wearing his boots and pistol belt. His foresight would soon be validated, for it would be a very short night.
Sited atop a hill that commands the entrance to Austria’s Brixental Valley, Schloss Itter is first mentioned in the historical record in 1241. Damaged, rebuilt, and enlarged over the centuries, before its 1941 conversion into a VIP prison it had served successively as a military fortress, a private home, and a boutique hotel. (Author’s collection)
German police march into Tyrol following Germany’s March 12, 1938, annexation of Austria. The Anschluss led directly to Schloss Itter’s transformation from fairytale castle and hotel into something decidedly more sinister. (National Archives)
The network of “special prisons” maintained by the Nazis grew from Adolf Hitler’s belief that important prisoners might prove of value in negotiations with the Allies. Ehrenhäftlinge—honor prisoners—were housed in reasonably good conditions in castles, hotels, and similar facilities throughout the Reich, though their continued good health relied solely on the führer’s whim. (National Archives)
Though Hitler fully supported the work of the Schloss Itter–based “Alliance for Combating the Dangers of Tobacco,” Reichsführer der SS Heinrich Himmler believed the Austrian castle was ideal for more nefarious purposes. On November 23, 1942, he got Hitler to sign an order to begin the process of acquiring the castle outright for “special SS use,” and Schloss Itter was officially requisitioned by the SS in February 1943. (National Archives)
SS Major General Theodor Eicke, the director of the Nazis’ concentration camp system and originator of the “inflexible harshness” doctrine applied to K
Z prisoners, directed that Sebastian Wimmer and the commanders of other honor prisoners’ facilities treat their prisoners well but stand ready to execute the VIPs at a moment’s notice, without compunction and without remorse. (National Archives)
Plans for Schloss Itter’s conversion from an antismoking administrative center into a high-security honor prisoner facility were apparently overseen by no less a personage than Albert Speer, Hitler’s minister of armaments and war production. (National Archives)
By the time he arrived at Schloss Itter, General Maurice Gamelin had spent more than fifty of his seventy-one years as an officer in his nation’s army. His career was marred, however, when his poor response to Germany’s May 1940 invasion of France led Prime Minster Paul Reynaud to replace him as supreme military commander with archrival General Maxime Weygand. (National Archives)
Stocky, barrel-chested, and pugnacious, sixty-one-year-old Édouard Daladier was the youngest of the three VIPs whose arrival at Schloss Itter on May 2, 1943, marked the castle’s official opening as a prison. (National Archives)
Seen here during a prewar visit to the United States, labor leader Léon Jouhaux and his colleague and longtime companion Augusta Bruchlen both ended up imprisoned in Schloss Itter; Bruchlen’s incarceration in the Tyrolean fortress was voluntary, Jouhaux’s was not. (National Archives)
Sent to Schloss Itter in May 1943, Paul Reynaud was horrified to discover that his arch political rival Édouard Daladier had preceded him but was relieved to find conditions at the castle far better than those he’d experienced at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. (National Archives)
Though Jean Borotra—the famed “Bounding Basque”—willingly joined Marshal Philippe Pétain’s collaborationist Vichy government following France’s capitulation, the tennis star’s less-than-discrete disdain for the Nazis led to his dismissal and ultimate arrest. Borotra encountered Paul Reynaud at Sachsenhausen, and the two remained friends at Schloss Itter despite their differing politics. (National Archives)
Upon his December 1943 arrival at Schloss Itter, General Maxime Weygand encountered immediate vituperation from Paul Reynaud and only less obvious hostility from Maurice Gamelin; the former considered Weygand a traitor to France, and the latter burned with professional embarrassment. (National Archives)
Though Michel Clemenceau had been a longtime admirer of Pétain, he became an outspoken critic of what he saw as the aged general’s willingness to collaborate with the Germans. Clemenceau’s views quickly drew the attention of the Gestapo, and he was arrested in May 1943. His calm self-possession upon arrival at Schloss Itter prompted Reynaud to note that the castle’s other VIP prisoners were reassured by Clemenceau’s “unshakable confidence.” (National Archives)
Until his arrest by the Gestapo in 1943, François de La Rocque had been a key member of the Vichy government, a confidant of Pétain, and a man widely viewed as one of France’s leading fascists. His arrival at Schloss Itter was thus a surprise to the other VIP prisoners, who would have been further astounded to learn that de La Rocque led a resistance movement that provided valuable information to British intelligence. (National Archives)
SS-Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Eduard Weiter, the last commandant of Dachau, arrived at Schloss Itter with his retinue on April 30, 1945. His suicide just 48 hours later prompted Sebastian Wimmer and his troops to abandon the castle and its VIP prisoners. (National Archives)
During his four years at Vermont’s Norwich University, John Carey Lee Jr. was known for both his football skills and his equestrian abilities and is seen here following his May 11, 1942, graduation and commissioning as a second lieutenant of cavalry. (Photo courtesy Robert D. Lee)
Upon his graduation from Norwich, Lee received orders to attend the basic armor officer course at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and lingered in New York only long enough to marry a woman named Virginia, the first of his eventual three wives. (Photo courtesy Robert D. Lee)
Taken about two months before the battle at Schloss Itter, this image depicts Company B commander Jack Lee (at right) with, from left, 2nd Lieutenant John Powell, one of Lee’s platoon leaders, and 1st Lieutenant Harry Basse, Company B’s motor officer and Lee’s closest friend in the unit. Within weeks Powell was dead and Lee and Basse had both been lightly wounded. (Photo courtesy Robert D. Lee)
Following the 23rd Tank Battalion’s mauling during the January 1945 Battle of Herrlisheim, Jack Lee’s Company B was reequipped with the improved M4A3(76)W version of the Sherman tank. Also referred to as the M4A3E8, the variant was widely known as the “Easy Eight.” By the time of the Schloss Itter mission, the second Besotten Jenny would have appeared virtually identical to the well-worn 10th Armored Division vehicle shown here. (U.S. Army photo, courtesy Steven Zaloga)
A tanker stows main-gun rounds in the “wet” ammunition-stowage racks in the floor of an “Easy Eight.” The system was intended to prevent the Sherman’s 76mm rounds from detonating if the tank’s hull was breeched by enemy fire. It was a feature that would prove extremely important for Besotten Jenny during the battle for Schloss Itter. (U.S. Army photo courtesy Steven Zaloga)
Black soldiers of Company D, 17th Armored Infantry Battalion, clear German civilians from a recently captured town. Though most secondhand accounts of the Schloss Itter action state that Jack Lee tapped several Company D troops to take part in the rescue mission, the author’s research has shown that the four U.S. infantrymen who rode aboard Lee’s tank and helped defend the castle were actually drawn from the all-white 2nd Platoon, Company E, 2nd Battalion, 142nd Infantry Regiment. (U.S. Army photo courtesy Steven Zaloga)
Soldiers of the crack 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division “Götz von Berlichingen” take a break from the intense hedgerow fighting that followed the June 1944 Allied landing in Normandy. Less than a year later elements of the Waffen-SS unit would besiege Schloss Itter. (National Archives)
A career soldier three times decorated for bravery in combat against his nation’s enemies, Wehrmacht Major Josef “Sepp” Gangl willingly chose to put his life in even more direct peril in order to help Jack Lee save a querulous group of French VIPs locked away in a fairytale Austrian castle. (National Archives)
For most of his military career the personification of the dedicated Waffen-SS officer, Hauptsturmführer Kurt-Siegfried Schrader nonetheless threw in his lot with Lee, Gangl, and Schloss Itter’s French prisoners. (National Archives courtesy John Moore)
Maj. John T. Kramers (seen here in a postwar photo), a German-speaking former artilleryman assigned to the 103rd Infantry Division’s military-government section, was unaware of Jack Lee’s rescue force and launched his own effort to secure the French VIPs at Schloss Itter. (Photo courtesy John T. Kramers)
A Seventh Army military policeman chats with (from left), Léon Jouhaux, François de La Rocque, Jean Borotra, and Marcel Granger following their rescue. (National Archives)
Major General Anthony C. McAuliffe, commander of the 103rd Infantry Division, poses for a photo at his Innsbruck headquarters with former Schloss Itter honor prisoners (from left) Paul Reynaud, Marie-Renée-Joséphine Weygand, Maurice Gamelin, Édouard Daladier, and Maxime Weygand. (National Archives)
Though Jack Lee is smiling in this 1947 photo taken outside Hand’s Inn in Norwich, NY, where he found employment after his plans for a profootball career fell through, his life went into a slow but seemingly inexorable downward spiral after World War II. The hero of “The Last Battle” died on Jan. 15, 1973, at the age of 54. (Photo courtesy James I. Dunne)
CHAPTER 7
A CASTLE BESIEGED
JUST AFTER FOUR AM Jack Lee was jolted awake by the sudden banging of M1 Garands, the sharper crack of Kar-98s, and the mechanical chatter of a .30-caliber spitting out rounds in short, controlled bursts. Knowing instinctively that the rising crescendo of outgoing fire was coming from the gatehouse, Lee rolled off the bed, grabbed his helmet and M3, and ran from the room.
The young tanker raced down the hallway, across the Great Hall, and out
the front door. As he reached the arched schlosshof gate leading from the terrace to the front courtyard, an MG-42 machine gun opened up from somewhere along the parallel ridgeline east of the castle, the weapon’s characteristic ripping sound1 clearly audible above the outgoing fire and its tracers looking like an unbroken red stream as they arced across the ravine and ricocheted off the castle’s lower walls. Almost immediately the German weapon was answered by the slower, deeper thumping of Besotten Jenny’s .50-caliber Browning, and, as Lee ran the last few feet to the gatehouse, he could see the M2’s own tracers stabbing into the trees near where the MG-42 must be. The German weapon quickly fell silent, its two-man crew no doubt seeking shelter from the .50-cal.’s deadly stream of thumb-sized rounds.
The big Browning continued to bang away as Lee reached the inner set of gates and yanked open the small wooden door leading to the guard tower on the west side of the gatehouse. Using his red-lensed flashlight2 for illumination, he pounded up a flight of circular stone stairs until he reached the first firing loop, through which Sutton was methodically loosing rounds from his M1. To Lee’s surprise the infantryman was firing not across the ravine but down into it, aiming into the darkness to the west of the tower. In response to Lee’s shouted query, Sutton said that he’d spotted four troops who had apparently cut through the concertina wire—Waffen-SS he thought, though with only moonlight for illumination it was hard to be sure—dashing the thirty or forty feet upslope to the base of the foundation wall. They looked to be carrying grappling hooks and ropes but were spotted before they could put them to use. When he opened up on the enemy troops, Sutton said, they had scurried back downslope under covering fire from the woods and gone to ground.
The Last Battle: When U.S. And German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe Page 17
