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Halstead looked over to see a pair of vacant eyes staring at him, eyes inside a skull whose right section had been shot away to reveal a cratered brain beneath. Halstead looked away, looked up at the pair of armored cars firing from their positions in front of City Hall, and allowed himself to be dragged by another subordinate in the direction of a sidewalk café. It was behind the protection of a stone column that Halstead was able to think once more, to notice the warm blood flowing down from his forehead and to consider the precarious position of his forward contingents lying flat in the street and huddled within the shops that lined it. Halstead sent a junior officer scuttling back across the cobblestones on belly and knees to pass along the order for several companies to pull back and fan out to secure their flanks. This same officer was also ordered to commandeer an automobile and rush back to the artillerymen at the Burgerbräukeller with orders to level City Hall. This last instruction the lieutenant had nodded to with reluctance, but Halstead smiled with satisfaction when he cautiously peered out from his hideout to see an Opel being hotwired and driven off by the officer and a handful of men. The orb of the sun was just touching the rooftops of Munich when the first volley of twenty shells landed in the Marienplatz, striking City Hall and the flagstones surrounding. Five more volleys landed in quick succession, providing an adequate cover for the company of Ordnertruppe that shimmied forward along the stones of the square with their rifles held out before them. Half of the roof of City Hall was blown skyward and its spires smashed by an explosion of the Communist ammunition stored within it at the same moment that several companies of Halstead’s followers charged the Communist barricades thrown across Zweibrücken Strasse to the east of Marienplatz. Debris fell everywhere, occasionally clanking off a phoenixed helmet and knocking down its wearer, but the infantry charges over the Marienplatz and points eastward were entirely successful, overrunning the dazed defenders and leading to bayoneting and butting contests on top of barricades and along the Tal. |