De Lattre escaped without injury, as did Knocke, although his dress tunic was cut in three places by flying glass.
Anne-Marie received her injury when her face collided with a rapidly moving chair and her eye closed up within seconds.
Clementine Plummer’s back was bloodied from head to foot from many glass and wood splinters that had opened up her flesh and turned her yellow dress red. The wounds were numerous but none was severe.
More serious were the wounds sustained by Georges de Walle.
The indomitable Belgian lay on the floor hissing his pain through clenched teeth, a portion of the door framing deeply embedded in his inner thigh, a wound from which blood copiously flowed.
A piece of glass had laid his cheek open, exposing his upper teeth, before it moved on a surgically removed the top of his left ear, both wounds providing more free-flowing exits for his vital fluids.
The smallest but the most dangerous of wounds was a piece of glass that protruded from his neck, so close to the vital jugular that Anne-Marie never even thought about dressing the wound.
It did not bleed overly but undoubtedly had the capacity to kill.
“Gently, Georges… gently now.”
She took hold of the wounded man and relaxed him against an upturned chair.
As she worked she asked a question of her new husband.
“Ernst… is she dead?”
She ripped up her lilac and white dress, to provide a tourniquet for the leg wound and then a wad for the facial wound.
“Yes.”
“Then come and help me here.”
Knocke moved away from the body of Sabine de Rochechouart, her life taken by a piece of the cart that had smashed into her chest and destroyed her heart.
Holding up De Walle’s leg for his wife to work on, Knocke watched her deftly slip a tourniquet above the wound and tighten, bringing more sounds of pain from the Belgian.
All around them, other people were attending to those injured and identifying those beyond hope.
Haefali, his broken arm quite obvious from distance, assisted with the attempt to save the life of the man who had initiated the bomb, a battle that would ultimately be lost.
He had been thrown forward and smashed his neck into the edge of a table, which heavy impact had destroyed much of the soft tissue, the swelling now cutting off his airway.
One of the legionnaires lay still, his cause of death not immediately apparent, but none the less very dead.
Elsewhere in the room, there were three more dead, and a score more injured enough to need more than a plaster or a bandage.
Outside, the bomb and wooden splinters had claimed twelve lives.
Four Poles, seven legionnaires… and Benoit Plummer.
1602 hrs, Sunday, 5th January 1947, Pałacyk Sokół [Falcon Palace], Park Miejski, Skawina, Poland.
The medics had quickly decided that moving De Walle any distance was not a good idea so, adopting a practical approach, they had set up a medical facility within the part of the Falcon Palace unaffected by the bomb blast.
There were a total of eight in-patients and a regular procession of wounded returning for change of dressings and other medical interventions.
Local Polish medical personnel supplemented the Legion staff, and together provided the very best of care.
The Knockes had just left the palace having visited their friend who, despite being in considerable pain was, according to the doctors, going to survive the injuries.
The neck wound had come close to ending his life but the doctor, a man who had plied his trade on the steppes and in the bocage, had skilfully extricated the sliver from de Walle’s neck, all the time marvelling at how close it had actually come to the main vein without actually causing the slightest hint of damage.
There was a hint of infection, and the thigh wound was causing the Deux commander considerable pain, but he grinned and grimaced his way through the Knocke’s visit.
A nurse had come in to administer some pain relief but had retreated to allow the three to say their goodbyes.
Both Ernst and Anne-Marie nodded to her when they left.
“Time for some medication, General Waller.”
De Walle tried to move himself up the bed but pain shot through his damaged limb.
“Let me help get you comfortable.”
The Polish nurse caught hold of his left arm and pulled upwards, virtually dragging the Belgian up the bed, splitting one stitched wound on his shoulder.
“So sorry, General. I didn’t know that was there.”
De Walle nodded his acceptance of her explanation, although he was surprised at the roughness of her approach.
“Haven’t seen you before.”
‘…or have I… you do look familiar come to think of it…’
“I’m just in from Krakow to help out. Only for a few days. Sorry again, General.”
“There’s a few more stitches here and there, It’s all in my notes… err… nurse?”
“Radzinski… Urszula Radzinski.”
“Georges de Walle… I would get up but…”
Radzinski interrupted, ignoring his attempted gallantry.
“Now, some pain relief that’ll help you relax.”
She took a syringe from a kidney dish and filled it with studied care from a glass vial.
“Just 15 mills of morphine to make things go away, General.”
The needle went home and Georges felt an immediate wave of relaxation wash over him, dulling the pain in his thigh and neck almost instantly.
The nurse made a record in the notes, although her signature bore no resemblance to anything intelligible or pronounceable.
‘Ah… no more pain…”
He relaxed into the wave of relief that washed over him but suddenly a part of his brain went on full alert.
‘Mallman… Irma Mallman… Abwe…’
Taking his wrist, Radzinski checked his pulse and waited until the full effects of the narcotic overtook her patient.
De Walle lapsed into a deep sleep.
Removing three more vials from her pocket, Radzinski quickly filled the syringe and injected three further doses of morphine into his veins, a total of 60 mgs dose of the effective barbiturate.
An effective and intentionally fatal dose.
Busying herself elsewhere in the room, Radzinski watched as De Walle’s breathing became less pronounced and he went into respiratory failure.
There was no struggle, no fight to prevent an untimely end, just a nothingness that she observed come to an end as the chest rose for the final time.
‘Sehr gut.’
And in a moment, Radzinski was gone forever.
1631 hrs, Sunday, 5th January 1947,Szczęście Farm, Ul’yanowa, Skawina, Poland.
“Here’s to Georges!”
Anne-Marie raised her glass and they both drank a toast to their friend.
“Close… he’s a lucky man, darling.”
“Yes, so it seems.”
“As are you, Darling. How’s your eye?”
“Sore.”
They relaxed into silence as they grappled with the information that they had been made aware of prior to visiting the makeshift hospital.
“A Jew.”
“Yes, a Jew. Which makes it all clear, I suppose, Cherie.”
Anne-Marie could understand the motivation for a Jew to kill ex-SS, Germans, anyone who could be faintly connected with the death camps.
That the bomb had not claimed such a life was ironic to say the least, although one of the legionnaires slain outside the palace was German, but had always been a legionnaire, even through the German war.
“They’ll be able to trace him by his number… if records permit.”