The destruction of Besotten Jenny signaled the start of a general attack. SS troops swarmed from the tree line to the east, sprinting toward the castle’s main gate. Others began scrambling up the hill on the west, trying to reach the relative cover of the lower walls. American and German defenders poured fire from the castle’s upper walls and loopholes, taking a heavy toll with their rifles and machine guns. Even the French notables got into the act: Reynaud, Clemenceau, La Rocque, and Borotra all fired at the attackers.

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Nonetheless, fire from the SS troops and the still-concealed 88 killed several of the Wehrmacht men and wounded several others. Among the dead was Major Gangel, killed by a sniper as he and Lee attempted to spot the 88’s position from a rooftop observation post.

By this time, Maj. John Kramers and his party from Innsbruck had reached the bridge outside Wörgl where Elliot and Boche Buster were standing guard. From that vantage point they could clearly see the battle raging around the castle. Kramers’s group consisted by then of just four men: himself, Eric Lutten, Meyer Levin, and Eric Schwab, riding in a jeep. Since Kramers had crossed beyond the 103rd Infantry Division’s operational boundary and into the 36th’s area of operations, he’d been ordered to halt the advance of his M10s and infantry. Infuriated, he’d left them in town.

But the small party soon grew. By the time it reached the bridge, lead reconnaissance elements of Lt. Col. Marvin J. Coyle’s 2nd Battalion, 142nd Infantry Regiment had joined Elliot and Boche Buster. While the new arrivals knew nothing of the Castle Itter operation, they quickly secured Coyle’s permission to join the rescue effort.

Before setting off with the reinforcements, Kramers attempted to raise Lee by radio. He was unable to do so and urgently cast about for another means when one of the Austrian partisans pulled him into Wörgl’s undamaged town hall. Picking up a telephone, he simply called the castle. Kramers was soon speaking with Lee, who reported that the SS fire was increasing and the defenders were running perilously low on ammunition. Kramers told him help was coming and jumped back in the jeep with Lutten, Levin, and Schwab. The four roared off in pursuit of the 142nd Infantry tanks and halftracks, which had set off toward the castle with Boche Buster in the lead.

While news of the approaching relief column cheered Castle Itter’s defenders, it did little to improve their immediate situation. The SS attackers hadn’t yet managed to breach the fortress’s walls, but they were pressing their attack with what Lee would later call “extreme vigor.”

By noon the American-German force was almost out of ammunition. Aware that he was running out of options, Lee accepted Jean Borotra’s offer to leave the castle and guide the relief force through the village’s twisting streets. The former tennis star slipped out during a lull in the firing, dashed across forty yards of open ground, eluded several groups of SS men in the woods, and set off at a jog down the road toward Wörgl.

Always the pragmatist, Lee began planning what he and his shrinking command would do if the relief force didn’t show up in time. The solution was literally medieval: the defenders and the French notables would withdraw into the castle’s massive keep. They would use their few remaining rounds of ammunition, their bayonets, and—if necessary—their fists to make the SS men fight for every stairwell, every hallway, every floor. Securing the agreement of Weygand and Gamelin, both of whom had deferred to the young American throughout the battle despite their own exalted ranks, Lee began pulling defenders off the walls and shepherding the French toward the keep.

Sensing victory, the SS troops pressed their assault on the castle’s entrance. Just before three in the afternoon, a squad of men was settling into position to fire an antitank rocket at the front gate when the sound of automatic weapons and tank guns behind them in the village signaled a radical change in the tactical situation. The cry “Amerikanische panzer!” [“American tanks!”] from a Wehrmacht soldier high in the keep alerted the castle’s defenders that the relief force was shooting its way up the road. Seconds later, the SS attackers began melting into the surrounding woods. The battle for Castle Itter was over.

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