The Charlemagne Murders

by Douglass, Carl;

  “Entirely. Please allow me to return to the barracks before you move your men back and out of harm’s way. We will approach the armory with great caution. We will control our fire as much as is humanly possible to prevent collateral damage to civilians or to Legionnaires. We will even try as much as we can to avoid serious damage to buildings.”

  The two men saluted, and Lev did a smart about-face and walked purposefully back to the barracks and his men without so much as a backward glance.

  Duris stood with his men in the square until Lev was out of sight, then he ordered them to follow him away from the parade grounds.

  They set up a perimeter and placed snipers on every building that had a view of the armory.

  §§§§§§

  The three surviving Gebirgsjägers watched through the armory window as the Jew and the capitaine parlayed under the white flag. The next thing that happened was a surprise and perplexing. The Jew—which Antoine now recognized as Lev Mizrahi, the Krav Maga master—turned away from Capitaine Duris and disappeared into the barracks. Duris led his Legionnaire detachment away from the parade ground, out of sight, and presumably out of the action.

  “We’re going to be attacked by the Jews,” Hugues said. “Better get ready.”

  “I don’t think that’s what will happen first,” Antoine observed. “They’ll want to parlay, have us surrender peacefully and without any more bloodshed. My bet is that a couple or more of them got wounded or killed by the Legionnaires, and that won’t sit well with the Jew bosses in the Hebrew Entity.”

  The sun was up and blazing at ten a.m. when Lev Mizrahi and Moises Silverman walked out into the ovenlike heat and dazzling whiteness of the sandy parade ground under a white flag. The two Israelis walk slowly and cautiously. Moises carried the white flag, waving it constantly. They were unarmed and exposed and would be for the 120 yards from the first barracks to the armory building.

  Serge glued his eyes on the two Mossad agents. His finger twitched on the trigger of his F1 sniper rifle—not out of fear or out of concern that lives would surely be lost in the coming minutes, but out of his hatred for Jews and everything Jewish. He started to hum the marching song of the Waffen SS—the SS Marshiert in Feindesland.

  In a few moments, Antoine and Hugues joined in the music that was indelibly etched into their memories. Antoine had a fine baritone voice and began to sing the lyrics. His voice was quiet and calming, and the words evoked the glories of their time of power and pride. Serge and Hugues joined him lustily. As the Israelis grew close enough to hear them, the three SS officers began to sing louder, finally reaching the loudest they could manage to be sure the Jews heard their defiance and would be afraid as they always had been when the Waffen SS marched into a village or city with Jews.

  Antoine opened the front door a crack; so, the sound of the song which was once familiar to every German—but was now prohibited in both East and West Germany—could carry fully:

  “Wo wir sind da geht’s immer vorwärts,

  Und der Teufel der lacht nur dazu!

  Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

  Wir kämpfen für Deutschland,

  Wir kämpfen für Hitler,

  Der Rote kommt nie mehr zur Ruh.’

  Der Rote kommt nie mehr zur Ruh.’”

  [Where we are it always goes forward!

  And the devil merely laughs,

  Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

  We fight for Germany,

  We fight for Hitler,

  The red one (communism) never gets a rest.

  The red one never gets a rest.]

  Hugues pushed a standard-issue MAS 49/56 service rifle obtained from the armory racks through a small crack opening of the door. He liked the gun—a semiautomatic rifle holding only ten 7.5 x 54mm cartridges—with a good range of effectiveness, but was not happy with its lack of power. Any shot he made would have to be fatal, or he and his fellow Gebirgsjägers would not last long. The presence of the menacing rifle was not lost on Lev or Moises. Behind him, Antoine held a MAT-49 submachine gun. What that weapon lacked in range—only about one hundred yards—it made up for in power and magazine capacity. The gun was a confidence builder: it held thirty-two rounds of 9mm ammunition and could fire 600 rounds per minute on full automatic. The limited range mattered little since the fight between the Gebirgsjägers and the Jews or maybe even with their fellow Legionnaires would be at relatively close quarters like the SS men were used to from their days in the war when they spread fear from door to door. The benefits of their MAT-49s outweighed the minor disadvantage, and they felt ready for whatever was to come. Serge’s sniper rifle could handle anything requiring accuracy at a distance, and he was a deadly accurate shooter. The armory had enough readily available ammunition to allow them to hold out for weeks.

  When the Israelis were within twenty feet of the door, Hugues yelled at them, “Far enough! You have five minutes; so speak your piece. After that, your white flag won’t mean a thing, Jew.”

  He punctuated his harsh rhetoric with two shots fired near their feet. He was impressed that neither man flinched.

  Lev spoke calmly but loud enough for the men in the armory to hear every word. “You know this is the end for you here. The Legion won’t have you anymore after the dossier we gave them about you. As I told you when we had our little Krav Maga contest, Antoine, we have a strong and enduring relationship with the French and the Legion.”

  “Is that why we heard them shooting at you early this morning—that kind of ‘strong and enduring relationship’?”

  “We violated their trust in order to get into the EMT barracks to arrest you without a fight or without the Legion even knowing what had happened. As you correctly recognized, that didn’t work out well. Two of our people were killed for sure, maybe more. However, once we identified ourselves, Capitaine Duris allowed me to apologize and accepted our assurances that we truly do value our relationship with the Legion. He also ordered his Legionnaires to back away and to let us deal with you separately,” Lev said calmly.

  “Time’s almost up, Jew. What do you want?”

  “You are charged in the Cour Internationale de Justice with the postwar murder of retired military officers, with crimes against the Jewish people, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and illegal flight to avoid prosecution. We are here to give you a chance to defend yourself in court against these accusations.”

  “In a Jew court? How stupid do you think we are?”

  “Israel is a country of laws and legal procedures, unlike your Nazi Germany. I promise you safe passage and a fair hearing and trial.”

  “Or what?”

  “We settle things finally here today in this godforsaken desert.”

  “Time’s up. Go back to Jew country now. As cowards or as corpses … makes no difference to us. We fought to the end in the Battle of Berlin, and we are ready to do so again to day. You have a minute to run and hide, Jew. Go to hell!”

  “You first, Scheiss Kommando!” Moises said.

  Antoine flashed the sign of the fig in total disrespect.

  Lev and Moises began to back away.

  Moises got in the last word, “Justice will be done today, Nazi!”

  The two men separated and began to move swiftly in opposite directions. When they were almost 100 yards away from the armory, Hugues fired one shot close to the shoulder of each man, and the two Mossad agents ducked into building entrances for safety.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

  Armurerie, EMT [État-major tactique, Tactical Command Post], La Légion Étrangère, Sidi-bel-Abbès, Algeria, January 3, 1964, noon

  The heat in the armory was rising by the hour and would become unbearable by mid-afternoon. The Gebirgsjägers were beginning to realize the extent of their predicament. In their crucial haste to get away from the Mossad commandoes pouring into the barracks building during the night, all they had been able to think about was getting to a defensible location and obtaining necessary arms. Now, with dry mouths, parched throats, and empty stom
achs, they had to deal with other necessities.

  “Why don’t they come after us?” Hugues asked.

  He was sweating profusely and had soaked his Legionnaire shirt. He felt feverish.

  Antoine said, “Because they don’t have to. They can just sweat us out, or starve us out, or let our thirst force us to give in and to go with them without a fight.”

  “Did you find anything to eat or drink in the building when you reconnoitered?”

  “No. There is no faucet for running water, not even a toilet. There is no food storage here.”

  Serge asked, “So, Gruppenführer, what are our options?”

  “Between slim and none,” Antoine replied with his usual candor and alacrity.

  Hugues said, “What if I find a way to sneak out and see if I can find food and water or an escape route?”

  “I think we should all stay together through this whole thing,” Serge said.

  “Hugues has the germ of an idea, Serge. Why don’t you take first watch for any attack or suspicious activity? Hugues and I will go over every inch of the building to determine if there is a hidden tunnel, a sewer passage, or a way to sneak out to a different building. I don’t think we’re likely to find anything, but we can’t just give up.”

  “Yes, sir,” Serge said, standing at attention.

  Antoine and Hugues made a cursory tour of the building and determined immediately that the option of sneaking out by entering the outdoors was not feasible. The armory sat alone at the end of the parade ground with no less than fifty feet between it and any other building. By Legion regulation, the surroundings should be pristine clean and free of any debris, trash containers, garages, or vegetation. The policy had not been adhered to with anything near perfection, but they would be like sitting ducks in a shooting gallery if they tried that route. They proceeded to tear up floors and ceilings to see if there was a crawl space out of the building. There was not enough room for a man even to crawl in any under floor or above ceiling space, and none of the small spaces led anywhere except around the space itself. Their efforts on the basement floor were more work, but also somewhat more successful.

  They found the fairly large utility pipes and were able to follow them to the left side of the concrete foundation walls under the floor. There was enough space around the piping that a man could slither on his belly. It would be very difficult going, but it was not impossible. The work was backbreaking and time-consuming. Both men were approaching heat exhaustion, and dehydration was beginning to take its toll.

  Antoine said, “Our shifts can only be about half an hour long, or we will get exhausted and too weak to be useful. It will take a lot of time; and we have precious little of that; but let’s try. I’ll go relieve Serge, and he can do a half-hour turn.”

  He removed a 100 Santeem [Fr. Centime] Dinar coin and said to Hugues, “Let’s flip for which one of us takes the next turn. After that, we will rotate digging and guard shifts among all three of us. All right?”

  “No problem.”

  They flipped, and Hugues won. Antoine would take over digging in half an hour, and Serge would go next, then Hugues again. Hugues lay down on the concrete floor and was asleep in minutes. Serge—the strongest of all of them—came down the steps and began the arduous task of making a tunnel to the foundation wall. He moved much more quickly than the other two had. By 1400, there was a passageway to the wall. Now the problem was to break through the thick wall and see what conditions were like under the parade ground above.

  The only tools available to them in the armory were entrenching tools. Each small shovel lasted only about an hour before breaking up or becoming so bent that it was useless. The walls were very thick and had rebar reinforcements every eight inches. Antoine worried about the amount of noise they were creating and about the glacial slowness of their progress. They were all worried about their physical condition. The longer they worked the hotter it got, and the more exhausted, famished, and dehydrated they became.

  On Antoine’s watch at 1530, he saw an Israeli commando dash across the parade ground and situate himself behind a stone pillar and a stone flower bed.

  “We have action,” he called to his comrades-in-arms.

  “We better stop digging and all of us come up and watch for a while. Maybe this is the time we get to fight instead of trying to be sappers or combat engineers,” Serge said. “The attempts to get through that four-foot thick concrete foundation are futile.”

  “Even if the Jew-dogs don’t attack, we can’t just sit here until we are too weak to fight. That’s what they want us to do, Antoine,” Hugues said.

  “I agree. It’s a good day to die,” Antoine said. “We need to let them commit themselves a little more; so, we at least know where some of them are before we take them on. We have to make it a good day for as many of them to die as possible; so, the day is not wasted, meine Brüder.”

  Serge and Hugues nodded their agreement.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

  Armurerie, EMT [État-major tactique, Tactical Command Post], La Légion Étrangère, Sidi-bel-Abbès, Algeria, January 3, 1964, 1900 hours

  “The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”

  -F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

  Hugues asked Serge and Antoine, “What do you remember best about our early days in the SS?”

  “Marching through Polish villages rounding up the untermenschen. Our lines were perfect; our black uniforms and polished high black boots shined like mirrors. I loved those days,” Serge said.

  Then Serge asked, “What was your worst day in the war?”

  “Easy,” Hugues answered, “the day the Führer died at the end of the Battle of Berlin.”

  Antoine smiled and asked facetiously, “What was your best meal during our stay in the Butugychag Tin Mine—the Soviet gulag camp for us ‘special treatment’ POWs?”

  The very question brought a pall over the men, but Antoine still smiled. Serge got his drift.

  “Rat stew.”

  They all laughed.

  Antoine asked again, “What was your best meal in the American POW Camp 63 Brienne le Chateâu in France?”

  “That’s easy,” said Serge, “dirt cakes.”

  They all gave macabre laughs remembering the Hobbesian nightmare of their stays in the Soviet and then the American and French murder camps. They were somehow amused, knowing they were whistling in their walk past the graveyard.

  As the insufferable day wore on, Antoine pulled from his shirt pocket a worn pack of Italian playing cards he obtained from one of the Croatian Legionnaires. It was 1600 hours, and the merciless sun was still providing the source of furnace level heat in the armory.

  “Let’s play a little game of Briskula to pass the time until the sun goes down. I hate to fight in the heat.”

  Briskula is the Croatian name for the Italian card game better known as Brisk. The Spanish version is Brisca. Antoine proposed that they play the Spanish variant, Mano o Sola Negra [the Black Hand]. The game was appropriate to the day since it is played by each participant attempting to play tricks on all other players. It was commonly played by bored Legionnaires while waiting for assignments and at rest stops.

  Hugues hummed Frère Jacques—his favorite song from his childhood in Marseilles—a sign of his resignation to the fates that awaited him. He allowed himself a moment of longing for those days of safety and peace. Antoine and Hugues began to sing the familiar words; and for a few moments they forgot their cards, the oppressive heat, and their untenable predicament.

  “Frère Jacques,

  Frère Jacques,

  Dormez vous?

  Dormez vous?

  Sonnez les matines,

  Sonnez les matines,

  Din, din, don!

  Din, din, don!”

  [Are you sleeping,

  Are you sleeping?

  Brother John?

  Brother John? />
  Morning bells are ringing,

  Morning bells are ringing,

  Ding ding dong,

  Ding ding dong.]

  Serge then started Au clair de la lune [By the light of the moon], and finally they all sang Alouette, an angry and sadistic little children’s song about the wrath of a man awakened by the cheery sound of a lark’s song in which he threatens to pluck off the bird’s feathers, then its beak, then its head. It aroused anger and a longing for revenge in the three Gebirgsjägers.

  “Alouette, gentile alouette,

  Alouette, je te plumerai,

  Je te plumerai la tête

  Je te plumerai la tête

  Et la tête! Et la tête!

  Alouette! Alouette!

  A-a-a-aha tête.

  Alouette! Alouette!

  A-a-a-ah”

  [Lark, nice lark,

  Lark, I will pluck you.

  I will pluck your head,

  I will pluck your head,

  And your head! And your head!

  Lark! Lark!

  O-o-o-oh!]

  Hugues stopped singing and reported seeing two more Mossad agents take up positions along the columns of the barracks building. Others began to run out with pieces of furniture to create barricades.

  Antoine ordered, “Serge, check the back.”

  Serge returned to report, “Jew-boys in position at the back and snipers on the rooftops on both sides.”

  The prospects were dismal at the very best. They waited until dusk, parched, hungry, and weakened by heat; then Antoine gave orders to each of his comrades-in-arms and himself to fix bayonets to their MAT-49 submachine guns and to attach scabbarded combat knives to their belts.

  “Take as many of the Jew-dogs as possible. We go out in glory in our last fight.”