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When Halstead saw his invention of a flag being waved atop the barricade of cars at the eastern end of Marienplatz, he ordered a signal squad to send up a series of flares that his allies would be able to make out in the dusk forming above the city skyline. The artillery resumed their bombardment of the Communist positions and the regular army units charged across the Ludwig Bridge once again. Halstead trotted to the eastern edge of the now-secure Marienplatz (both of the enemy armored vehicles had been knocked out by direct artillery hits) after ordering an entire battalion northward towards the Opera House, and joined his men in a mass charge down the Tal, in the direction of Zweibrücken Strasse. The Communists, their positions overrun and hordes of anti-Bolshevists now charging from all directions east, south, and west, panicked and fled northward as a disorganized mass. Halstead greeted Röhm for the second time that day as the two men and several dozen comrades met in front of the Torbräu Tavern. Halstead paused long enough with his hands on the captain’s elbows to allow a photographer to snap a photograph of the Darbeitpartei leader greeting a fellow liberator of Munich against a background of dozens of followers of each doing the same. Then hundreds of the drained victors were marching northward to exploit the rout of the Communists, many of whom would try to escape northward out of the city, only to be captured by Halstead’s battalion in the vicinity of the Opera House or by Reichswehr reserves advancing along both banks of the Isar. Both Halstead and Röhm and their respective staffs, as well as several newly-arrived majors, colonels and a brigadier general who were Röhm’s superiors, filed into the Torbräu for food and drink provided free of charge. Halstead and his handful of men ate hastily in a corner of the dining room while watching the Reichswehr officers in the center spread maps over their tables and set up a makeshift headquarters. Halstead watched with grim fascination as a handcuffed youth with a handsome face and a red armband was led up a flight of stairs to the rooms on the second floor and closely followed by a second guard and a grinning Röhm. |