After being abused in every way devised by man, the battered but still conscious naked girl was hung by her neck from a protruding floor joist.
She kicked for some time before the noose and the prodding bayonets claimed her life.
The Soviet cordon was broken in two places.
Firstly by the arrival of forces dispatched by Lavalle, the 1er BAS soldiers, dismounted from their amphibians, supported by the rest of the 7e RTA, slammed into the positions of the Guards motorcycle troops and the remnants of the 6th GIBTR.
Shortly afterwards, Haefali’s advance units broke into the rear of the dead Zilinski’s force and started taking prisoners, Soviet morale seemingly broken by the bitter fighting.
News of Knocke’s injuries spread like wildfire, and the rumour machine had him marked down as dead to slightly winded, and all points in between.
The truth was that, despite the attentions of Linus Wildenauer and of the captured Soviet medical officer, Knocke was gravely wounded and not expected to survive.
In real terms, the battle on the Koprzywianka River did not end until around 1500 hrs on 2nd April, when the final disengagement took place, although there were four more multi-aircraft missions launched by Armée de L’Air, the DRL, and USAAF units, and two by the Red Air Force.
The Soviet’s bill was severe, with both the 1st GMRD and 116th GRD fielding less than 30% of the manpower they had started the battle with, although wounded and stragglers would bring that number up to about half over the next few days.
Both had lost their commanders; Deniken to an air attack and Artem’yev to severe concussion from a close artillery strike.
6th GIBTR had three running tanks, one of which was ‘Krasny Suka’. Stelmakh was one of only four officers left unwounded.
Sárközi’s MACE unit was annihilated, although the price it had extracted from the tanks of the 1er RCDA was extremely high.
1st GMAEB was at roughly 65% strength, but its commander, Chekov, could not be found, despite the efforts of his men.
Similarly, 91st Tank Battalion was around 65%, although disabled vehicles and crews were found across the battlefield over the next few days.
6th Guards Tank Corps had taken a beating from air attack in the main, losing significant portions of its artillery and mortars to ground attack aircraft and counter-battery fire. Its 53rd Guards Tank Brigade lost heavily at Sulisɫawice and around Route 9, and the 2nd Battalion, 22nd Motorised Rifle Brigade suffered the highest losses of any fielded unit, with solely 27 men left unwounded at roll call the following day, although a number had surrendered to the legionnaires in Sulisɫawice. It was the captured medical officer from 2nd/22nd who worked alongside Wildenauer long into the night and early morning, saving lives and easing the suffering of those who would pass anyway.
The Red Air Force lost one hundred and one badly needed aircraft over the battlefields of southeast Poland, although only thirty-nine pilots and crew were killed
On the Allied side, the air losses were less, but only moderately so, given the numerical and technical superiority they had enjoyed, as the increased AA presence marked down many ground attack aircraft.
Sixty-seven Allied aircraft were lost, and forty-nine took their pilots with them, a staggeringly high rate that was brought on by the predominantly low-level nature of the attacks.
Losses in the DRH were modest by comparison to the rest of the Allied ground force, with Grossdeutschland suffering the greatest at just under 10% of their committed force dead, wounded and missing, with the 116th Panzer close behind at 8%.
The 1er Division’s infantry brigades were both damaged but took over the line duties from the two hammered Legion Divisions.
Alma was badly mauled, and 3e RdM and 7e RdM were down to 55% and 60% effectives respectively.
The rest of the division mirrored those losses, with the exception of the 3e Genie and 2e Blindé, who had both been extremely lucky, and suffered only a handful of casualties between them.
The corps troops of the LCDA were savaged beyond repair, save for the relieving force of 1er BAS and the rest of 7e RTA, the latter of which had lost two battalions in all but name, so high had the onus been on the North African infantry.
Only three of the 1er BCL’s tanks were salvaged from the battlefield, and only one of those, the immortal ‘Lohengrin’, left the bloodied field under her own power.
Camerone was virtually destroyed as an effective unit, both by casualties and by the mortal wounding of her commander and Legion talisman.
Haefali and Braun had extracted an important number of men and machines, but they were, in both cases, commanding forces spent and in need of recovery.
Emmercy’s force was smashed apart, a small portion taken prisoner, a larger segment scattered to the winds to the northwest of Klimontów and now intermingled with units of the 116th Panzer.
Haefali found himself in charge of recovering the remnants of Camerone and extracting it from the line before the exhausted men totally ceased to function.
In human terms, the battle had cost the Legion some of its finest.
Emmercy’s body was found with many of his men, executed beside the Floriańska highway near Skwirzowa.
The body of Uhlmann was carried from the field on the rear of a Jaguar, his headless corpse wrapped in a tarpaulin and covered with the flag of the Legion.
Truffaux, Jung, Jorgensen, and Peters had all fallen at Sulisɫawice.
Found amongst the dead of a vicious hand to hand fight around the K44 Pak was Wagner, the mad gunner.
In the final moments of victory, Sergent-chef Yitzhak Rubenstein, who had once helped Haefali and Knocke lay to rest the slaughtered Soviet paratroopers at the Chateau du Haut-Kœnigsbourg, sharing the Kaddish with the two officers, was struck down by machine-gun fire.
In the perverse way that war often deals out its fates, he was killed in combat with men who were once members of the 100th Guards Division, the division from which the men he had honoured were drawn and who now filled out the ranks of Artem’yev’s 116th.
Alma lost its commander, when St.Clair was flayed by shrapnel from groin to chest, and carried from his burning staff car by survivors from his headquarters group, whilst yet others shook their fists impotently at the Armée de L’Air Thunderbolts that had dropped bombs on their own.
The other wounded included Renat-Challes, Hässelbach, and Fiedler, although all of them were expected to recover.
Across the whole Corps, the losses were felt intensely, and with a very real grief for so many comrades lost and maimed.
But no loss, no death, no wounding, was more keenly felt or more widely mourned that that of Knocke.
At 0302 hrs, Wildenauer took his leave as Lohengrin prepared to move back behind the lines.
He clambered into the tank and his crewmates looked at him with a newfound respect, and with hope in their eyes.
“So… how is he, Linus? Good news, I hope?”
He knew that the senior men in the Tiger’s crew had a special relationship with Knocke, so he considered lying.
But, in the end, he chose the truth.
“He won’t last the night.”
Chapter 199 – THE PLOTTERS
It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.
2211 hrs, Friday, 4th April 1947, House of Madame Fleriot, La Vigie, Nogent L’Abbesse, near Reims, France.