CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

Armurerie, EMT [État-major tactique, Tactical Command Post], La Légion Étrangère, Sidi-bel-Abbès, Algeria, January 3, 1964, 0715

The battle outside the armory was sporadic, with small arms fire crackling around the barracks buildings for a few minutes followed by men shouting in three or four different languages. After nearly three hours of fighting, no one seemed to have discovered the whereabouts of the Gebirgsjägers. It appeared the commandoes who had invaded the EMT were conducting a guerrilla-type fight with the Legionnaires with alternating running, hiding, and stopping to fire at pursuers. In the darkness and smoke and chaos, men were being wounded and some were dead on both sides; but the chaos made it impossible to determine an accurate and up-to-the-minute casualty count.

“Maybe they’ve forgotten about us,” Hugues said, “and maybe they’ve gotten themselves into too much trouble to be able to concentrate on their mission.”

“Maybe … but I don’t think that will last very long,” said Antoine.

The three men were taking a breather from their work of fortifying the inside of the building for when—not if—the interests of the outsiders shifted to them. They had opened three bottles of rather good Cote du Rhone red wine from the storage racks reserved for officers and were quenching their thirst. There was no water in the armory and no food.

Serge sat looking out of the first floor front windows—the only windows in the building.

“White flag,” he said.

“Whose?” Antoine asked.

“The commandoes. The Jews. One of them is walking out to parlay with Capitaine Duris.”

“Let me have a look,” Antoine said. “It’s the Krav Maga master, Lev Mizrahi. That can’t be any good for us. He has real juice with the Legion, and he’s a smooth talker. My bet is that they are going to try to make the best of out a terrible situation for both of them. Once they do, our time here is over despite all that ‘Each Legionnaire is your brother-in-arms whatever his nationality.’ I can almost hear the reasoning about how Nazis—and especially SS—are the natural enemies of the Legion, and certainly for mother France. The best we can hope for is to get the chance to escape with a head start, and the worst is that we have a small last Battle of Berlin here today.”

“I won’t surrender. No POW camp for me. I’ll never go back to one. So, if we’re going to have a battle, it will be my last one,” said Serge.

“I have no intention of giving up. But I will go down fighting. Hopefully we can take down a few Jews as we go,” Antoine added.

Hugues said, “I hate to be fighting Frenchmen again, but so be it. We are effectively persons with no country. My only allegiance is to you two. Don’t let them take me. Kill me if it looks like I can no longer fight, or if I get surrounded.”

Antoine put his right hand in the air, and all three touched palms in a pact to the death.

“Sichern und laden [lock and load],” he said, “zum vernichtungskrieg [to a war of annilation, an ultimate offensive].”

§§§§§§

“Watching him watch … I asked how [it] was going. He answered that the boat was sinking normally. It was a figure of speech. He knew from experience that the [men] were doing well enough.”

-William Langewiesche

Lev stepped out of the morning shadows cast by the rising sun. He was keenly aware of the dozens of Legionnaire guns pointed at him and knew he was as close to death as he had ever been, white flag or not.

Captaine Duris glared at him with a mixed look of hatred for an enemy, profound disappointment for having been betrayed by a man and a country he had counted upon as friends, and a face full of quizzical bewilderment. Lev stopped halfway between the barracks and the Legion captain, slowly turned around a full 360 degrees, and opened his hands to show empty palms.

Duris gave a curt jerk of his head to signal Lev to approach. All around him came the sound of locking rifles. Duris turned slowly and gestured with his hands in a downward fashion to signal his men to point their rifles at the ground. All guns lowered and aimed at a forty-five degree angle towards the hard pack of the parade ground.

Lev walked directly to Captaine Duris and stopped two feet from him. His eyes held the captaine’s in a look of courage that he scarcely felt, and a deep conviction that he would not signal anything suggesting aggression, anger, or that he was an enemy.

“Thank you for agreeing to speak with me, Capitaine. I offer no excuses. My commandoes and I came here uninvited and with a military mission. I wish to assure you that we never intended to harm even a single Legionnaire. Our mission is to arrest, detain, and remove back to Israel three mass murderers. We believe them to be common enemies of both of our countries. We are sorrowful that there has been blood shed on both of our sides. We ask that you allow us to deal with the three Nazi Totenkopfverbände [Deaths Head units who specialized in extermination camp duty] who not long ago were murdering our defenseless countrymen, women, and children, and who betrayed France by collaborating—even worse—by forming the infamous 33rd Waffen SS division—the Charlemagne regiment—to kill Frenchmen. They should have been nothing more than scheiss kommandoes [men assigned to latrine detail by the Konzentrationslager].”

“What is it you expect me to do, Lev?”

The question was posed in a manner of resignation fully expecting that his Legionnaires would shortly be fighting to the death against the elite IDF and Mossad commandoes—a lose-lose situation with unthinkable international ramifications. At the very least, he knew his career would be over; and he would be cashiered out in disgrace.

“Let us reason together, mon ami. We have already lost men we can ill-afford to lose. No matter what happens from this point on, we will lose more. Both you and I and our respective countries will suffer great loss of face if a battle occurs between us. I would like to avoid that if it is humanly possible. I think there can still be a solution, one which may yet allow us to prove our true friendship towards the Legion and to France. Have your Legionnaires back away a safe distance and remain ready to annihilate our men should it even appear that we will do anything other than what I promise.”

“And what is it that you promise, Lev? What possible good can come of what you have already done?”

“Allow us to arrest and take the three homicidal monsters back to stand trial in Israel … or to die trying. Perhaps they will elect to fight to their own deaths. That would be no great loss to you, to the Legion, to France, or to the world if that is their choice. When we finish our mission, we will leave with the same secrecy that governed our arrival. No one outside of this location need ever know what took place here. I pledge you my personal honor that the Mossad, the IDF, and the government of Israel will never breathe a word of it beyond our top secret councils.”

Duris pondered the offer for a few moments.

“We will place a cordon sanitaire around the EMT and all entrances and exits of Sidi-bel-Abbès. We will neither hinder nor help you. You will be on your own to find your way out. You know I cannot speak for the ungovernable Kabyle Berbers. They live by their own law—the kanum—and like nothing better than to kidnap and torture or sell a senior Legion officer. They are wild men but know that they are Muslims to their cores. They would not hesitate for a fraction to kill or torture you or your men or any other Jew they might encounter. I hope you have a plan for your escape; but if you don’t, we will not remember nor mourn you. Are we clear on our agreement?”

“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.