On April 30, new orders arrived by radio from the Brain:

Allies have reached the Piave. Your mission is now: an all out effort on main route, which appears to be enemy’s route of withdrawal. Cut road in as many places as possible. Go get ’em boys. Can’t be long now.

This was the kind of order Chappell lived for. If he was now ordered to blow up the Brenner routes, why not take out a few Germans as well?

It wasn’t long before Chappell had set the perfect trap for an ambush, concealing dozens of Val Cordevole men behind large boulders situated hundreds of feet above the impassable gorge of Digonera. The gorge lay northeast of the small town of Caprile, not far from the Brenner Pass. The traffic on the road, which was cut into the mountain crags, was painfully slow as it negotiated hairpin turns, steep grades, and rocky obstructions. A sheer wall of dark, volcanic rock loomed above the site of the ambush, sixty yards from a bend in the road. The partisans positioned themselves perfectly atop this natural bottleneck. Further complicating troop movement north of the gorge, the route went over a small bridge crossing the river that cut through the Val Cordevole, the namesake of the battalion. The tortuous route made vehicles and personnel completely vulnerable to an attack from the high ground.

Atop the gorge, 180 feet above the road, Captain Chappell knelt by a large boulder. He scanned the panorama below with his field glasses: troops on foot, trucks, light tanks, and half-tracks towing the notorious 88mm antitank guns snaked their way in a column more than half a mile long over the winding mountain roads of the Dolomites. Cobbled into a makeshift fighting group, the men represented the remains of several of Germany’s finest units: a heavy Tiger battalion, German mountain troops, and the notorious SS. The bedraggled soldiers had spent the last several days fighting northward toward the Brenner and the perceived safety of their crumbling homeland.

The Brenner, once a lifeline, had become an escape route. Snipers, strafing Allied fighter-bombers, and all-out combat with partisan bands now made the mass retreat back to the Reich a journey through hell.

Field glasses in hand, Chappell primed for battle. Though he had never read the details of Hall’s plan, he was executing a fundamental element of Operation Mercury, sealing off one of the routes feeding into the Brenner.

“We moved down the road and blew up a small bridge north of Caprile…[and] set up a roadblock under the command of Ettore.…At this time, I sent [another] battalion partisan commander to set up a roadblock at Alleghe about eight kilometers to the south,” Chappell recalled.

As a final defense, ten of Ettore’s troops held positions on the north side of the bridge.

In the north, Ettore’s men blocked the German advance outside of Caprile. In the south, the partisans blocked any retreat by cutting the road at Alleghe. Before they could escape through the Brenner, the Germans would have to capture the gorge and repair the bridge. The ambush represented the final resistance they faced on the ground: their final obstacle to freedom.

The Germans were advancing into an elaborate trap.

A bony finger depressed the gunmetal trigger of an Italian Breda machine gun. With a maximum cyclic rate of over 450 rounds per minute, the weapon spat bursts of flying lead with deadly fury. “Two skinny kids” from the Val Cordevole did most of the damage. Sitting behind ideal cover—huge boulders—they worked as a team, feeding one belt after another, cutting down Germans like a scythe through a wheat field. More than 130 of Germany’s elite mountain troops died within fifteen minutes.

Chappell described the carnage he and the partisans dished out: “When we pinned the Germans down at these points, it was impossible for them to do more than one of two things. They could fight and die, or they could surrender. When the convoy moved into the trap, they did both. As they reached our roadblock, they tried to fight. One hundred thirty of them died in fifteen minutes, and the rest asked for a truce shortly afterwards.”

Ciccone remembered: “The area was littered with large boulders. It wasn’t like the westerns where they could shoot you from behind the boulders . . . and when we shot, our bullets hit.”

At last, Chappell had the Germans in checkmate. But a familiar face emerged from the convoy Chappell had the Germans in checkmate. But a familiar face emerged from the convoy to try and wrench victory from Chappell and Ettore’s grasp. The face belonged to the man Chappell had seen in his field glasses before the SS descended on his mountaintop hideout on the morning of March 6. Major Otto Schröder started issuing orders.

Chappell described the unfolding scene: “Looking down from the crags above, we saw the SS dragging [scores of] civilians from their houses and herding them into the [town] church.”

Shortly thereafter, a German command car flying a white flag of truce appeared up the road. (The same flag still hangs in the town church today, sixty-three years later.) The car contained the town’s priest and a German sergeant. The sergeant came with a message from Major Schröder, who thought he had figured a way out. The man who had hunted Chappell for the past several months, and captured Fabrega and Silsby, was delivering an ultimatum. Dumbfounded, Chappell instantly recognized the name on the message.

The conniving SS officer attempted to turn the tables with a threat: “If you do not permit all German military personnel to pass, all civilians in Caprile will be executed.”

Ettore looked straight at the Nazi sergeant and said, “If any of the civilians are bothered in any way, we will refuse the Germans any chance of surrender.”

The priest stood nearby, weeping. He begged Ettore to change his position and spare the townspeople.