By then it was clear to the Jeds that taking the school with the weapons they had — Bren guns, Sten guns, rifles, pistols, and hand grenades — was not going to happen. Their alternatives: a long siege (a bad idea, in view of the Germans' ability to send help to their Egletons garrison from their headquarters in Clermont-Ferrand), or a quick, perfectly coordinated attack, supported by mortars and bazookas.
Antoine's intention, relayed by his chief of staff, was to continue the siege indefinitely. "There are SS inside! We will pin them down." In other words, Antoine was happy to engage in a silly operation in order to reap the political benefit derived from making a few of the hated SS troops moderately miserable.
And so Antoine ordered the siege to continue.
Meanwhile, word had come that Captain Wauthier had received an airdrop the night before. Now the strength of his SAS unit had grown to thirty men, and he had mortars and British Piats (which were like bazookas). With this added firepower, Dominique and Singlaub reasoned that it ought to be possible to break the siege at Egletons in a few hours… and rake in the Germans heavy machine guns and antitank guns, which were badly needed.
A runner was dispatched to Wauthier with the request.
And then, at 0900, the Nazis in the Egletons garrison got their help, in the form of three Luftwaffe Heinkel-111 medium bombers. The Heinhels swooped down low for bomb runs, one after the other, while Hubert's Maquis and the Jeds dived for cover.
The first plane dropped a stick of 100-kilo bombs that blasted the row of houses facing the school. The concussion shook everything nearby, and the red-flickering tailgun swept up afterward.
When the second I Ieinkel lined up on FTP positions, several brave — or recklessly foolish — Communists raced into the center of the road and fired rifles and Sten guns at the plane, braving machine-gun fire from both the school and the Heinkel's nose gunner. Two bombs dropped out of the plane into somebody's garden. They exploded moments later.
A time delay! Singlaub realized. So the low-flying bombers could escape the blast. If properly coordinated, he quickly reasoned, Bren guns, which fired the same.303 round as a Spitfire fighter, might throw off the bombardicrs' aim and take the pressure off the Maquis front-line positions.
Dominique grabbed four Bren gunners from the FTP units, while Singlaub rounded up four from Hubert and set them up in the sunken road. Singlaub gave instructions and Dominique translated. The Heinkels were now making single bomb passes that took them directly overhead. As a bomber approached, he and Dominique would estimate its speed and altitude and hold up fingers to indicate how many plane-length leads the gunners should allow when they fired — one finger equaled one lead, two fingers equaled two, and so on. A clenched fist meant no lead.
A Heinkel was now coming in below 200 feet, lined up directly above the sunken road. The Bren gunners crouched at the ready. Singlaub could clearly see the pilots in their leather helmets. He took a breath and stepped out, with one finger raised. "Fire!"
But then the pilot saw them, and at the last minute banked right. So the rounds that hit only raked his left wingtip.
Better luck next time, Singlaub hoped.
The next Heinkel drove in from Dominique's direction, and Dominique was standing there, clearly visible, his fist beating against the sky. "No lead!" Singlaub yelled. The Brens coughed and rattled as one, with accurate, coordinated fire, hosing the green-painted bomber with a Spitfire's firepower at point-blank range. Shards of glass scattered from the nose, holes appeared in the belly and right engine nacelle, and you could see oil streaming along the base of the wing.
The pilot banked hard left, aborting the bomb run, and limped away on one engine. His right engine was out and throwing clouds of smoke. He slowly lost altitude as he staggered north over the Correze valley. Singlaub later learned that the Heinkel had crashed and burned a few kilometers away.
The Maquis screamed and howled, wild with the ecstasy of the kill. And Singlaub was no less thrilled. "My heart thudded in my throat and temples," he recalled later. "My breath was ragged. I was caught up in the rage of battle."
At 130 °Captain Wauthier and his SAS platoon sprinted into town under a rain of bullets. The Heinkels had been replaced by three Focke-Wulf 190 fighter-bombers, which were strafing anything that moved, and punctuating that with fragmentation bombs. The superbly trained SAS troops seemed indifferent to all this, and looked very glamorous in their red berets.
Soon SAS NCOs had taken charge and were preparing mortar positions. The plan was to lay down a mortar barrage on the school courtyard. It was hoped this would drive the German troops indoors and allow the Maquis to push their Bren gun positions forward and dig them in. Singlaub decided to act as forward observer and direct the mortar fire.
In the meantime, Dominique would try to track down the elusive Antoine and do what he could to convince him to allow his forces to join the attack, or at least to lend troops for ambushes north of town.
Singlaub returned to his early-morning observation position in the attic of the house near the school. This time, FTP troops he passed on the way included Bren gunners who'd fought the Heinkels with him that morning; they greeted him with welcoming smiles. He was no longer persona non grata among the Communists.
He made his way carefully up the stairs of the now-much-damaged house. The roughly planked attic floor was littered with slate fragments and splintered wood from the 37mm shell. Entrance and exit holes in the steeply raked roof indicated the shell's path. He crouched low, slithered across the floor, and took up a position he hoped would be invisible.
Moments later, the first SAS mortar round arced into the courtyard, driving German soldiers out of shallow foxholes in a hedgerow into the cover of the school. Singlaub shouted down to a young FTP sergeant, who was acting as his relay, "Correct fire twenty meters right, and then forward." The next round dropped on a timber barricade near the school's administration wing. Another covey of enemy troops raced into the school. Singlaub was beginning to feel good. Now they were getting even for the heavy air attacks they'd faced that morning. A few rounds later, the mortar rounds had nicely bracketed all of the German outside positions, and it was time to drop a few rounds onto the school itself. Since several machine gunners had set up positions in the school attic, Singlaub directed fire onto the roof (like the local houses, slate-and-timber), with the aim of driving the Germans down to lower floors. For this job, Wauthier added phosphorus to the high-explosive rounds. Soon, fires were burning merrily in the attic.
Things were going so well that Singlaub forgot where he was — and that the Germans would be looking hard for the forward observer — or that he was silhouetted against the 37mm exit hole as he crouched beside the circular entrance hole. His carelessness did not go unnoticed. In a flash, steel-jacketed machine gun rounds were clattering against the slate, spraying the entrance hole, and madly ricocheting about the attic.
He was hit.
The next thing he knew, he was sprawled on his back. "My skull [was] ringing like a gong," he said. "It was as if someone had thrown a bucketful of rocks in my face. I felt the blood, warm and salty, on my right check, then saw thick, dark drops raining on the floor. My hand went to my ear and came away sticky red. There was blood all over my para-smock now. The pain began after the initial shock, hot and persistent. 1 got control of my breathing and took stock. My head moved all right on my neck, and there was no spurting arterial blood. So I must have been superficially gouged by slate and bullet fragments."