The Last Battle

by Stephen Harding

  Daladier’s disdain was the least of Lee’s concerns, of course; he had a rescue to organize. Less than twenty minutes after arriving at Schloss Itter, and, after having directed Blechschmidt and his men to remain, Lee, Szymczyk, Gangl, and Hagleitner started back toward Wörgl in the kübelwagen, retracing their earlier route and again encountering no resistance. After dropping Hagleitner off, the other three continued on to Kufstein, where Lee sought out his battalion commander. Clow told him to proceed with the rescue effort but said that because CCR was already turning the area over to elements of the 36th Infantry Division, the only 23rd TB assets available to Lee were his own tank and one other—any additional men and vehicles would have to come from the 36th ID.

  With Gangl in tow Lee rushed back to where he’d left his task force earlier in the day. He first informed his own crew—Szymcyk, driver Technician Fourth Grade William T. Rushford, loader Technician Fifth Grade Edward J. Seiner, and assistant driver/bow machine gunner Private First Class Herbert G. McHaley—of their new mission. He then asked his friend Harry Basse to take command of the second tank, Second Lieutenant Wallace S. Holbrook’s Boche Buster, whose crew included sergeants William E. Elliot and Glenn E. Sherman.[239]

  Still needing additional firepower, Lee was able to dragoon five Shermans from the incoming 3rd Platoon, Company B, 753rd Tank Battalion. Lee then went in search of Colonel George E. Lynch, commander of the 142nd Infantry Regiment, which was moving in to assume control of the area. Fascinated by Lee’s tale of French VIPs in need of rescue, Lynch tasked three squads of infantrymen from 2nd Platoon, Company E, of Lieutenant Colonel Marvin J. Coyle’s 2nd Battalion to accompany the column. Lynch also pointed out that his regiment’s planned axis of advance would take it toward Itter and pledged that the bulk of his battalions would be “right behind” Lee and his column.

  That column rolled out of Kufstein just before seven PM. Lee and Besotten Jenny took the lead, followed by Boche Buster and the five 753rd TB Shermans. The infantrymen from the 142nd were spread among the tanks and riding atop the rear engine decks, and taking up the rear of the column was Gangl in his kübelwagen, the white flag on its radio antenna now supplemented by large white stars crudely painted on either side. Despite the apparent ease with which Lee and the others had managed to drive to and from Schloss Itter earlier in the day, the young officer was under no illusions that his considerably larger column would go unnoticed or unchallenged. Die-hard Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht units remained throughout northern Austria, and they could be expected to be well-equipped with the lethal panzerfaust antitank rockets that Allied tankers had learned to fear.

  It quickly became obvious that panzerfausts were not the only thing the American tankers had to worry about. Almost immediately after leaving Kufstein, the relief column had to cross a small and obviously old bridge over an Inn River tributary known as the Brixentaler Ache. Lee’s two tanks and two of the 753rd TB Shermans made it over the span without difficulty, but the structure began to collapse when the fifth tank attempted to cross. Lee had no choice but to order the last three 753rd vehicles to return to Kufstein with their embarked infantrymen.[240]

  Further complications awaited the rescue force when it reached Wörgl at about eight PM. The same roving bands of die-hard troops that worried Lee were also of great concern to Rupert Hagleitner and his fellow resistance leaders, and they pleaded with the young officer to bolster their defenses. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, Lee agreed to leave the two remaining 753rd TB tanks and their accompanying infantrymen in Wörgl. However, Gangl offered to make up the deficit with more of his men, and when Lee agreed, the Wehrmacht officer called together two of his officers—Captain Dietrich and Lieutenant Höckel—and several additional enlisted men. When the relief column left Wörgl to continue the journey to Schloss Itter, Lee commanded two Sherman tanks, fourteen American soldiers, and a kübelwagen and small Mercedes truck carrying a total of ten Germans. It was certainly a first for an American officer in World War II.

  The rescue force initially headed due east out of Wörgl but turned southeast when they hit the village of Söll-Leukental and then followed the two-lane Brixentalerstrasse south along the west bank of the Brixentaler Ache. At the small hamlet of Bruggberg they found a bridge that Lee determined would bear the weight of the tanks as they crossed to the other side of the small river, but it had already been wired with demolition charges. Realizing the span might be the only route back to U.S. lines with the evacuated French VIPs, Lee decided to leave Boche Buster and its crew—minus Basse—to disarm the explosives and protect the structure.

  Continuing on with Besotten Jenny and its crew, with Basse and the four remaining 142nd infantrymen—Corporal William Sutton and Privates Alex Petrukovich, Arthur Pollock, and Alfred Worsham—riding on the back deck and Gangl and his men following in their vehicles, Lee continued along the east bank of the river. The road was hemmed in on the east side by a steep mountainside, forcing the column to continue almost due southward toward the market town of Hopfgarten until they came to a sharp left-hand curve onto the Ittererstrasse, the road leading uphill toward Itter village and the schloss. Lee could now see his objective, perched atop the hill barely a mile directly to his front, and he ordered his driver to move out carefully.

  His caution was justified, for within minutes of turning onto the Ittererstrasse the column rounded an S-curve in the road and almost drove over a squad of Waffen-SS troops trying to set up a roadblock. The infantrymen riding on the tank’s rear deck quickly opened fire, as did bow gunner McHaley and Gangl’s troops in the truck, and the Waffen-SS men scurried into the surrounding woods without firing. Lee ordered Rushford to “open her up,” and the tank slewed around another corner and up the twisting Ittererstrasse with the Wehrmacht vehicles close behind.

  The mini convoy roared through the narrow streets of Itter village and then turned west onto the schlossweg, the narrow lane leading toward the castle. The schlossweg ended at the bridge leading to the castle’s main gate, where Lee ordered Rushford to pull Besotten Jenny as far over to the side as possible and then motioned Gangl and the driver of the truck to move ahead and cross the bridge. As the Wehrmacht vehicles eased past the Sherman and on toward the gatehouse, Lee told the four infantryman atop the tank’s rear deck to jump down and take up defensive positions. Turning to Rushford—who’d driven the several hundred yards from Itter village with his head and shoulders out of his hatch—Lee said to back the tank up slightly until it was in the center of the road and then turn it 180 degrees so the front of the vehicle would face toward the village. The turn was a delicate operation on the narrow roadway, but, by moving the steering levers in opposite directions and applying power, Rushford was able to rotate the tank in place.

  Lee’s rationale for the maneuver became clear moments later, when he told Rushford that they would be backing Besotten Jenny up the curving, sixty-foot-long access road toward the gatehouse. In response to quizzical looks from both Rushford and Basse, Lee quickly explained that during his brief earlier visit to the castle with Gangl, he’d realized that the access road was narrower than where the vehicle now sat and that the gatehouse’s arched entryway was too low to allow the tank to move all the way into the schloss’s lower courtyard. He wanted to get the tank as close as possible to the gatehouse, both to block the entry and to ensure that enemy troops couldn’t get between the vehicle and the gate. While backing Besotten Jenny up the access road to the gatehouse would be challenging, Lee said, it would also ensure that enemy gunners couldn’t get a shot at the tank’s most vulnerable spot: the less heavily armored lower rear hull. With the plan agreed on, Lee ordered everyone but Rushford out of the tank and then climbed atop the turret and dropped into the commander’s hatch.

  Because the Sherman’s rearview mirrors had been damaged several days earlier, Rushford had to rely on Lee’s voice commands for guidance. As Besotten Jenny began creeping backward, so slowly that its movement was at first barely discernable to the anxious
soldiers looking on, Lee relayed small course corrections via intercom. The initial half of the access road was relatively straight, but it also included the potentially most dangerous hurdle the tank had to surmount: the twenty-foot-long bridge spanning the ravine separating Schloss Itter from the rest of the ridgeline. The metal-reinforced concrete span was supported at either end by what appeared to be fairly robust, arched, dressed-stone piers, but the Sherman would undoubtedly be pushing the bridge well beyond its design limits. Should the span give way under the tank’s immense weight, Besotten Jenny would drop some twenty-five feet to the bottom of the ravine—a distance that would disable the vehicle, rob the rescue force of its biggest gun, and almost certainly kill or severely injure Lee and Rushford.

  When the Sherman backed onto the bridge, the span literally started to groan as the interior metal girders supporting the length of the structure began to bend. Chunks of the stone façade popped out and dropped into the ravine, and hairline cracks opened in the macadam road surface. Art Pollock, crouched nearby with his BAR[241] pointing back toward the village, turned at the sound, and was stunned to see that the bridge was actually swaying slightly from side to side.[242] Despite the obvious signs of distress, the span held, and after nearly a minute of high anxiety for Rushford, Lee, and the watching soldiers, Besotten Jenny rolled safely across—only to face another challenge. At the castle end of the span the roadway turned left toward the gatehouse at about a 15-degree angle, narrowing from twelve feet to just under eleven. The turn would be a tight one, with the nine-foot-wide tank having less than a foot of clearance on either side. If Rushford misjudged the angle of his turn or inadvertently applied too much power, the Sherman would smash through the low, cinder-block and wooden-plank guard rails lining the roadway and might well go tumbling down the slope on the other side. But again, Lee’s precise instructions and Rushford’s steady hand averted a possible disaster: Besotten Jenny made the turn with inches to spare and covered the remaining distance to the gatehouse without incident.

  When Rushford had backed the Sherman to within a few feet of the arched gateway—through which the German vehicles had already passed—Lee told him to shut the engine down. Both men then climbed out of their respective hatches, jumped to the ground, and lit up celebratory smokes as Basse, Szymcyk, Seiner, McHaley, and the four infantrymen left their defensive positions on the village side of the bridge and trotted to join them. The Americans then moved through the open gates and into the snow-dusted lower courtyard, where Schrader and Gangl were waiting. With daylight fading, Lee was eager to organize the castle’s defenses. But before he could begin issuing orders, the schlosshof’s small arched gate swung open, and he and his men were engulfed by a wave of Gallic congratulations.

  –———–

  LEE’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[243] 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.[244]

  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[245] 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.