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.”
He opened the front door of the armory building as wide as it could go. The three men began to sing at the top of their lungs as they emerged from their last place of refuge:
“Au revoir, au revoir, au revoir tout le monde.
Au revoir tout le monde, au revoir.
Au revoir, au revoir, au revoir tout la monde.
Au revoir, au revoir, au revoir tout le monde.”
[Goodbye everyone.]
Then they burst out of the armory, guns blazing. The Mossad agents were caught by surprise, and three of them paid with their lives for their lack of vigilance. The three Gebirgsjägers were cut to ribbons by a withering fire from five directions. The SS 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division-Charlemagne 1st French – ceased to exist.