Otherwise your health could be affected." I They jolted along the soupy track in rain that made it soupier, but in time the car sank with all four wheels into the mire, and halted amid long rows of yellow stubble stretching out of sight. No rescuers appeared; they could not have, without rising from the earth, but Pug half thought they might. The driver shovelled the wheels clear and laid planks to the back tires. When the passengers got out to lighten the car, Amphiteatrov warned them to stay in the road, for mines were planted everywhere under the stubble. Showering muck and splinters all over them, the car lurched free. On they went. Pug gave up trying to guess the direction. They never passed a road marker or signpost. The low gray clouds showed no sun patch. In the forest of the earthworm sol(tiers, the artillery thumps had been fainter than in the village. Here they were considerably louder. But zigzags in the front line could cause that. Obviously they had stopped going west, because westward were the Germans. The car appeared to be meandering five miles or so behind the fire zone. "Here we will go a bit out of the way," the tank colonel said at another crossroads, "but you Will See something interesting.yp They entered fields where tall Yellow-green stalks of grain stood unharvested and rotting. After a mile or so Amphiteatrov told the driver to stop. "Perhaps you won't mind stretching your legs," he said. "You all have nice thick boots." He gave Pamela an odd look. "But you might find this walk boring. Perhaps you will stay with the driver here?" "I'll come, unless you tell me to stay." "Very well. Come." They went pushing in among the stalks. The wet quiet field of overripe grain smelled sweet, almost like an orchard. But the visitors, squelching along behind Amphiteatrov in a file, soon glanced at each other in revulsion as a rotten stench hit their noses. They broke into a clear space and saw why. They were looking at a battlefield. In every direction, the grain was crushed Hat in great crisscrossing swathes of brovm muck. Random patches of stalks still stood; and amid the long brown slashes and the green-yellow clumps, damaged tanks lay scattered on their sides, or turned clear over, or canted, their camou age fl paint blistered and burned black, their caterpillar tracks torn, their armor plate blown open. Seven of the tanks bore German markings; two were light Russian T-z6 tanks, such as Pug had often seen moving through Moscow. The stink rose from German corpses, sprawled in green uniforms here and there on the ground, and others slumped in blown-open tanks. Their dead purple faces were bloated disgustingly and covered %with fat black flies, but one could see they had been youngsters. Pamela turned pale and clapped a handkerchief to her face. "Well, I am sorry,- said the colonel, an ugly gleam lighting his face. "This happened only day before yesterday-These Fritzes were probing and got caught. Theircomrades went away from here and wouldn't stop to dig proper graves, being in a slight hurry." Helmets, papers, and broken bottles were littered among the tanks and the corpses, and the oddest sight was a mess of women's underwear pink, blue, and white drawers and petticoats-heaped soiled and sodden in the mud near an overturned tank. Pamela, eyebrows rising over the handkerchief, pointed to these. "Well, funny, isn't it? I suppose Fritz stole those from a village. The Germans steal everything they can lay their hands on. That is why they have come into our country, after all-to steal. We had a tough tank fight around Vyazma a month ago. One tank we blew up had a large fine marble clock in it, and also a dead pig. The fire ruined that pig. That was a pity. It was a very good pig. Well, I thought this might interest you." Pictures of knocked-out panzers were common in Moscow, but before this Victor Henry had seen actual German tanks only in Berlin, clanking down boulevards lined with red swastika flags, to the blare of brass-band marches over the loudspeakers and the hurrahs of crowds giving Nazi salutes; or else massed factory-fresh on trains of flat cars, chugging to the front. Seeing a few broken and overturned in a desolate Russian cornfield two thousand miles from Berlin, with their crewmen rotting beside them in the mud, was a hard jolt. He said to the tank colonel, "Aren't these Mark Threes? Haw could your T-26's knock them out? They don't fire a shell that can penetrate the Mark Three." Amphiteatrov grinned. "Well, very good. For a seaman you know a bit about tank warfare. But you had better ask the battalion commander who won this battle, so let us be on our way." They backtracked to the crossroads, headed toward the forest, and arrived at what looked like an open-air machine shop for tank repairs, in a village of a dozen or so thatched log cabins straggling along the road through wild woods. Detached caterpillar tracks stretched long and straight on the ground under the trees; bogie wheels were off; guns were off; and on every side men in black or blue coveralls hammered, filed, greased, and welded, shouting in Russian and laughing at each other. Strolling down the street in an olive-colored greatcoat too large for him, a short, hook-nosed, swarthy officer broke into a trot when he saw the black automobile. He saluted the colonel, then the two embraced and kissed. Introducing the visitors, Amphiteatrov said, "Major Kaplan, I showed our friends those busted German tanks out there. Our American Navy friend asked a real tankist's question. He asked, how could T-26's knock out Panzer Mark Threes?" The battalion commander grinned from ear to ear, clapped Victor Henry on the back, and said in Russian, 'Good, come this way." Beyond the last cabin, he led them into the woods, past two lines of light tanks ranged under the trees and draped with camouflage netting over their own green-and-sand blotches. 'Here we are," he said proudly.
'This is how we knocked out the Mark Threes." Dispersed in the thickets, all but invisible under branches and nets, five armored monsters thrust heavy square turrets with giant guns high in the air. Tudsbury's mouth fell open, as he stared up at them. He ner -A vously brushed his moustaches with a knuckle. "My God! What are these things?" "Our newest Russian tank," said Amphiteatrov. "C'eneral Ycvlenko thought it might interest President Roosevelt." "Fantastic!" said Talky. "Why, I'd heard you had these monsters, butWhat do they weigh? A hundred tons? Look at that gun!" The Russians smiled at each other. Amphiteatrov said, "It's a good tank." Tudsbury asked if they might climb inside one and to Pug's surprise the colonel agreed. Young tankists helped the lame fat Englishman to the batch, as Pug scrambled up. Inside the command turret, despite the clutter of machinery and instruments and the bulky gun breech, there a lot of elbowroom. Themachinesmelledstartlinglylikeanewcar;Pugguessedthiscame(was) from the heavy leather seats for the gunner and the commander. He knew very little about tanks, but the workmanship of the raw metal interior seemed good, despite some crude instrument brackets and wiring. The dials, valves, and controls had an old-fashioned German look. "Great God, Henry, it's a land battleship," Tudsbury said. "When I think of the tiny tin cans we rode in! Why, the best German tanks today are eggshells to this. Bloody eggshells! What a surprise!" When they climbed out, soldiers were clustering around the tank, perhaps a hundred or more, with others coming through the trees. On the flat hull stood'Pamela, embarrassed and amused under the male stares. Bundled in mud-caked lambskin, Pamela was not a glamorous object, but her presence seemed to thrill and hypnotize the tankists. A pale moonfaced officer with glasses and long yellow teeth stood beside her. Major Kaplan introduced him as the political officer. "The commissar would like to present all of you to the troops," said Amphiteatrov to Victor Henry, "as he feels this visit is a serious occasion that can be used to bolster their fighting spirit." "By all means," Victor Henry said. He could understand only fragments of the strident, quick-tumbling harangue of the moonfaced commissar, but the earnest tones, the waving fist, the Communist slogans, the innocent, attentive faces of the handsome young tankists, made a clear enough picture. The commissar's speech was half a revivalist sermon and half a football coach's pep talk. Suddenly the soldiers applauded, and Amphiteatrov began to translate, in bursts o'f three or four sentences at a time,during which the moon face beamed at him: "In the name of the Red Army, I now welcome the American naval captain, Genry, the British war correspondent, Tudsbury, and especially the brave English newspaperwoman, Pamela, to our front. It is always good for a fighting man's morale to see a pretty face." (Laughter among the men.) "But we have no evil thoughts, Miss Tudsbury, we think only of our own little sweethearts back home, naturally. Besides, your father has wisely come along to protect you from the romantic and virile young Russian tankists." (Laughter and handclaps.) "You have showed us that the British and American peoples have not forgotten us in our struggle against. the Fascist hyenas. "Comrade Stalin has said that the side which has more petroleum engines will win this war. Why is the petroleum engine so important? Because petroleum is the biggest source of energy today, and energy wins wars. We tankists know that! Hitler and the Germans thought they would make a lot of petroleum engines in a hurry, put them in tanks and aircraft, and steal a march on the world. Hitler even hoped that certain ruling circles in America and England would help him once he decided to attack the peaceful Soviet people. Well, he miscalculated. These two great nations have formed an unshakable front with the Soviet peoples. That is what the presence of our visitors shows us. We three countries possess many more petroleum engines than the Germans, and since we can manufacture still more engines faster than they can, because we have much larger industries, we will win this war. "We will win it faster if our friends wig hasten to send us plenum war supplies, because the Nazi bandits will not quit until we have killed a great many of them. Above all, we will win much faster if our British allies will open a second front at once and kill some German soldiers too. Certain people think it is impossible to beat Germans. So let me ask this battalion: have you fought Germans?" Twilight had fallen during the harangue, and Pug could barely see the nearest soldiers' faces. A roar came from the darkness: 'DAI' "Have you beaten them?" '(DAd) "Are you afraid of Germans?" 'NYETI'-and barking male laughter. "Do you think the British should be afraid to open a second front against them?" "NYETI'-and more laughter, and another bellow, like a college cheer, in Russian, "Second front now! Second front now!' "Thank you, my comrades. And now to dinner, and then back to our tanks, in which we have won many victories and will win more, for our socialist motherland, our sweethearts, our mothers, our Wives, and our children, and for ComradeStalin!" A tremendous college cheer in the gloom: "WE SERVE THE SOVIET union!" "The meeting is over," hoarsely cried the commissar, as the moon rose over the trees. Pug came awake from restless sleep on a straw pallet, on the dirt floor of a log cabin. Beside him in blackness Talky Tudsbury liquidly snored. Groping for a cigarette and lighting it, he saw Pamela as the match flared upright on the only bed, her back to the plastered log wall, her eyes glittaring. "Pam?" "Hello there. I still feel as though we're bumping and sliding in mud. "Do you suppose if I stepped outside, a sentry would shoot me?" 'Let's try. I'll step out first. If I get shot, you go back to bed." "Oh, that's a fine plan. Thank you." Pug pulled on the cigarette, and in the red glow Pamela came over and clasped hands. Moving along the rough wall, Pug found the door and opened a blue rectangle in the dark. "I'll be damned. Moon. Stars." A high moon, pa y veiled b rtl y swift-rolling clouds, dusted the thatched huts and the rutted empty road blue-gray. Across the road in the woods, soldiers, were sadly singing to an accordion. Victor Henry and Pamela Tudsbury sat down on a rough bench, hands clasped, huddling close in the frigid wind which blew straight up the road. Underfoot the mud was ridged hard. "Dear God," Pamela said, it's a long long way to Tipperary, isn't it?" 'Washington, D.C."s even further.anks for bringing me out, Victor. I was sitting there not daring to move. I love the smell of this countryside, but lord, that wind cuts you!" Yellow flashes ran along the sky and loud thumps followed fast. Pamela winced against him, with a little gasp. "Oh, oh! Look at that. Talky was a pig to drag me out here, wasn't he? Of course it suits him. He dictated two hours by candlelight tonight, and he Couldn't have written a line himself. It's quite a story, I'll say that. Are those tanks as startling as he claims? He says in his last sentence that if the Soviet union can massproduce them, the war's as good as over." "Well, that's journalism. Size isn't everything. Any tank, no matter how big, can be an incinerator for crews if it's built wrong. How maneuverable is it? How vulnerable is it? The germans'll find the weak spots. They'll rush out a new gun that can penetrate these things. They're good at that. Still, it's quite a tank.""Count on you!" Pamela laughed. "I think that was why I couldn't sleep. I had this vision of the war coming to a sudden end. It was such a weird, dazzling idea! The Germans beaten, Hitler dead or locked up, the lights going on again in London, the big cleanup, and then life continuing the way it used to be! All because of these monster tanks rolling by the thousands to Berlin-my God, those guns do sound dose." 'It's a pipe dream," Victor Henry said. "The Germans are winning'. We're pretty close to Moscow here, Pam." After a silence she said, looking up at the moon and stars and then at Pug's shadowy face, "When you just said those tanks couldn't end the war, do you know what? I felt relieved. Relieved! What kind of mad reaction was that?" "Well, the war's something different, while it lasts." Victor Henry gestured at the angry yellow flare-ups on the black western clouds. "The expensive fireworks-the travel to strange places-' "The interesting company," Pamela said. "Yes, Pam. The interesting company." The accordion was playing alone now, a plaintive tune like a lullaby, half drowned by the cracking and sighing of trees in the wind. 'What is that sensation of sudden remembering supposed to mean?" she said. "The sort of thing you felt yesterday at the Tolstoy place?" Pug said, 'Isn't it a kind of short circuit in the brain? Some irrelevant stimulus triggers off the sense of recognition when it shouldn't. So I once read." "()n the Bremen, the second day out," said Pamela, "I was walking the deck in the morning. And so were you, going the other way. We passed each other twice. It was getting silly. I decided to ask you, next time we passed, to walk with me. And I suddenly knew you'd ask me. I knew the exact words you'd use. You used them. I made a remark about your wife as though I were acting a play, and your answer came like the next line in the play, all old and familiar. I've never forgotten that." A tall soldier, muffled in his greatcoat, trudged by with smoking breath, the unsheathed bayonet of his rifle glinting in the moonlight. He stopped to glance at them, and passed on. "Where are we heading tomorrow, Victor?" "I'm going into the front line. You and Talky will stay in a town several miles back. Up front one sometimes has to make a dash for it, the colonel says, and of course Talky can't do that." "Why must you go?" "Well, Amphiteatrov offered. It'll be informative.""This is the flight to Berlin again." "No. I'll be on the ground all the way, on friendly territory. Quite a difference." "How long will you be gon from us?" "Just a few hours." A green radiance blinded them, a sudden blaze filling the heavens. Pamela uttered a cry. As their pupils adjusted to the shock, they saw four smoky green lights floating very slowly down below the thickening clouds, and heard the thrum of engines. The sentry had darted off the road. The village showed no sign of life: a tiny sleeping Russian hamlet of thatched huts in the woods an a mud road, like a hundred others, with a stage-setting appearance in the artificial glare. All the tanks under repair had been camouflaged. 'You look ghastly," Pam said. -You should see yourself. The)ere searching for this tank battalion." The lights sank earthward. One turned orange and went out. The airplane sounds faded away. Pug glanced at his watch. "I used to think the Russians were nutty on camouflage, but it has its points." He stiffly rose and opened the cabin door. 'We'd better try to sleep." Pamela put a hand out, palm up to the black sky. The clouds were blotting out the moon and stars. "I thought I felt something." She held her hand toward Pug. In the light of the last falling flare he could see, melting on her 'aim, a fat snowflake. The car crossed a white bare plain in a steady snowfall in leaden gray light by which the driver guided the jolting, Tlight. Pug could s no roa sliding, shaking machine. What about mines? Trusting that Pug could Amphiore appetite than he to get blown up, Pug said nothing. teatrov had no m In about an hour an onion-top belft-y of yellow brick loomed ahead They entered a town where soldiers milled and through the veil of snow. wood houses. army trucks lurched on mud streets between unpainted idlers peered the livid, bloody, bandaged faces of so From some trucks sadly. Villagers, mostly snow-flecked old women and boys, stood in front of the houses, dourly watching the traffic go by. At the steps of the yellow brick church, Pug parted company with the others. A political officer in a belted white leather coat, with the slanted eyes of a Tartar and a little beard like Lenin's, came to take him off in a small British jeep. Talky Tudsbury happily said in Russian, pointing to the trademark, "Ah, so British aid has reached the front at last!"The political officer replied in ragged English that it required men and gunfire, not automobiles, to stop Germans, and that the British vehicles were not strong enough for heavy duty. Pamela gave Victor Henry a serious wide-eyed stare. Despite the wear and soil of travel she looked charming, and the lambskin bat was tilted jauntily on her head. 'Watch yourself," was all she said. The jeep went west, out of the tumultuous town and into a snowladen quiet forest. They appeared to be heading straight for the front, yet the only gunfire thumps came from the left, to the south. Pug thought the snow might be muffling the sound up ahead. He saw many newly splintered trees, and bomb craters lined with fresh snow. The Germans had been shelling the day before, the commissar said, trying in vain to draw the fire of Russian batteries hidden in the woods. The jeep bounced past some of these batteries: big horse-drawn howitzers, tended by wearylooking bewhiskered soldiers amid evergreens and piles of shells at the ready. They came to a line of crude trenches through the smashed fallen trees, with high earthworks sugared by snow. These were dummy dugouts, the commissar said, deliberately made highly visible. They had taken much of the shellfire yesterday. The real trenches, a couple of hundred yards further on, had escaped. Dug along a riverbank, their log tops level with the ground and snowed over, the actual trenches were totally invisible. The commissar parked the jeep among trees, and he and Victor Henry crawled the rest of the way through the brush. "The less movement the Fritzes can observe, the better," said the Russian. Here, down in a deep muddy hole-a machine gun post manned by three soldiers-Victor Henry peered through a gun slit piled with sandbags and saw Germans. They were working in plain view across the river with earth-moving machines, pontoons, rubber boats, and trucks. Some dug with shovels; some patrolled with light machine guns in hatnhde. GUenrlike the Russians, concealed like wild eatures in the earth, mans were making no effort to hide themselves or what they were doing. cr Except for the helmets, guns, and long gray coats, they might have been a big crew on a peacetime construction job. Through binoculars handed him by a soldier-German binoculars-Victor Henry could see the eyeglasses and frost-purpled cheeks and noses of Hitler's chilled men. "You could shoot them like birds," he said in Russian. It was as close as he could come to the American idiom, "they're sitting ducks." The soldier grunted. "Yes, and give away our position, and start them shelling us! No thanks, Gospodin American."If they ever get that bridge finished," said the commissar, "and start coming across, that'll.""That's what we're waiting for," said a pipe-smoking soldier with heavy drooping moustaches, who appeared to be in command of this hole in the ground. Pug said, "Do you really think you can hold out if they get across?" The three soldiers rolled their eyes at each other, weighing this question asked in bad Russian by a foreigner. Their mouths set sourly. Here, for the first time, in sight of the Germans, Victor Henry detected fear on Red Army faces. "Well, if it comes to that," said the pipe smoker, every man has his time. A Russian soldier knows how to die." The political officer said briskly, "A soldier's duty is to live, comrade, not to die-to live and fight. They won't get across. Our big guns are trained on this crossing, and as soon as they've wasted all the time it takes to build a bridge, and they start across, we'll blast these Hitlerite rats! Eh, Polikov? How about it?" "That's right," said a bristle-faced soldier with a runny nose, crouched on the earth in a corner blowing on his red hands. "That's exactly right, Comrade Political Officer." Crawling through bushes or darting from tree to tree, Victor Henry and the commissar made their way along the dugoutsp pillboxes, trenches, and one-man posts of the thinly held line. A battalion of nine hundred men was covering five miles of the river here, the commissar said, to deny the Cennans access to an important road. "This campaign is simply a race," he panted, as they crawled between dugouts. "The Germans are trying to beat Father Frost into Moscow. That's the plain fact of it. They are pouring out their lifeblood to do it. But never fear, Father Frost is an old friend of Russia. He'll freeze them dead in the ice. You'll see, they'll never make it." The commissar was evidently on a morale-stiffening mission. Here and there, where they found a jolly leader in a trench, the men seemed ready for the fight, but elsewhere fatalism darkened their eyes, slumped their shoulders, and showed in dirty weapons, disarrayed uniforms, and garbage-strewn holes. The commissar harangued them, exploiting the strange presence of an American to buck them up, but for the most part the hairy-faced Slavs stared at Henry with sarcastic incredulity as though to say-'If you're really an American, why are you so stupid as to come here yourself? We have no choice"worse luck." The Germans were in view all along the river, methodically and intimidating, calmly preparing to cross. Their businesslike air was more Pug thought, than volleys of bullets. 'neir numbers were alarming, too; where did they all come from? The commissar and Victor Henry emerged from one of the largest dugouts and lay on their elbows in the snow. "Well, I have finished my tour of this part of the line, Captain. Perhaps you will rejoin your party now.""I'm ready." With a grim little smile, the commissar stumbled to his feet. "Keep in the shadows of the trees." When they got back to the jeep, Pug said, "How far are we from Moscow here?" "Oh, quite far enough." The commissar whirred the noisy engine. "I hope you saw what you wanted to see." "I saw a lot," Victor Henry said. The commissar turned his Lenin-like face at the American, appraising him with suspicious eyes. "It is not easy to understand the front just by looking at it." "I understand that you need a second front." understand the The Commissar uttered a brutal grfurntn.t,"iTfhweenmyuosut, Captain Genry, main thing. But even without the second cockroaches." we ourselves will smash this plague of German By the time they reached the central square of the town, the snowfall had stopped and patches of fast-moving blue showed through the clouds. The wind was bitter cold. The tangle of trucks, wagons, horses, and soldiers was worse than before. Vehement Russian cursing and arguing filled the air. The old women and the wrinkle-faced boys still watched the disorder with round sad eyes. In a big jam of vehicles around two fallen horses and an overturned ammunition wagon, the jeep encountered the black automobile. Talky Tudsbury, in great spirits, stood near forty yelling soldiers and officers, watching the horses kick and struggle in tangled traces, while other soldiers gathered up long coppery shells that had spilled from burst boxes and lay softly gleaming in the snow. "Hello there! Back already? What a mess! It's a wonder the whole wagon didn't go up with a bang, what? And leave a hole a hundred feet across." "Where's Pamela?" Tudsbury flipped a thumb over his shoulder. "Back at the church. An artillery spotter is stationed in the belfry. There's supposed to be a great view, but I couldn't climb the damned tower. She's up there making some notes. How are things at the front? You've got to give me the whole picture. Brrr! What frost, eh? Do you suppose Jerry is starting to feel it in his balls a bit? Hullo, they've got the horses up." Amphiteatrov said he was taking Tudsbury to see a downed junker 88 in the nearby field. Pug told him that he had seen plenty of junker 88's; he would join Pam in the church and wait for them.
Ampbiteatrov made an annoyed face. "All right, but please remain there, Captain. We'll come back in twenty minutes or less." Pug said good-bye to the bearded commissar, who was sitting at the wheel of the jeep, bellowing at a scravmy soldier who clutched a live white goose. The soldier was coarsely shouting back, and the goose turned its orange beak and little eyes from one to the other as though trying to learn its fate. Making his way around the traffic tangle, Pug walked to the church on crunching squeaking dry snow. Freedom from the escort-even for a few minutes-felt strange and good. si the church, a strong unI In de churchlike miasma of medicine and disinfectant filled the air; peeling frescoes of blue big-eyed saints looked down from grimy walls, at bandaged soldiers who lay on straw mats smoking, talking to each other, or sadly staring. The narrow stone staircase spiralling up the inside of the belfry with no handholds made Pug queasy, but up he went, edging along the rough wall, to a wooden platform level with big rusty bells, where wind gusted through four open brick arches. Here he caught his breath, and wooden ladder. mounted a shaky st brick walk, Pam waved and "Victor!" As he emerged on the topmo called to him. gi e job of tin sheets Seen this close, the bulging onion dome was a c,d yellow brick nailed rustily on a curving frame. Squared around it was a walk and parapet, where Pamela crouched in a corner, out of the whistling wind. The artillery spotter, shapeless and faceless in an ankle-length thick earflaps, manned brown coat, mittens, goggles, and fastened-down giant binoculars on a tripody pointed west. A fat black tomcat beside Pamela crouched over a bowl of soup, lapping, shaking its big head in distaste, nd the spotter were laughing at the cat. 'Too and lapping again. Pamela a look showed she clearly was much pepper, kitty?" Pamela's gay flirtatious ched far east and south to enjoying herself. Below, the bare plain stret distant forests, and west and north to the black wriggling river and sparse t of life, made thin noise in an woods. Straight downward the town, a clo empty white Hat world. "Vy Amerikanski offitzer?" The spotter showed fine teeth in the hairy uncovered patch of his face. "Da." 'Pos-niotritye?" The mittened hand tapped the binoculars. "Videte nemtzi?" Pug said. ("Can you see Germans?") "Slishkom m'nogo." ("Too many.") 'Odin slishkom m'nogo," Pug said. ("One is too many!") With a grim nod and chuckle the spotter stepped away from the bithem to the oculars. Pug's eyes were watering from the wind; he put n eyepieces and the Germans on the riverbank leaped into sight, blurry and small, still at the same work. "Doesn't it give you an eerie feeling?" Pam said, stroking the cat.
"They're so calm about it." Victor Henry went to a corner of the brick parapet and surveyed the s, hands jammed in his blue snowy vista through all points of the compas south to north, made a slow coat. The spotter, turning the binoculars from east on a long black sweep along the river, talking into a battered telephone wire that dangled over the parapet." The cat was washing itself, and "Kitty, don't forget behind the ears. Pamela scratched its head. Pug told her about his trip, meanwhile scanning the horizon round and round as though he were on a flying bridge. An odd movement in the distant snowy forest caught his notice. With his back to the spotter, he peered intently eastward, shielding his eyes with one chapped red hand. 'Pass me those." She handed him small field glasses, in an open case beside the binocular stand. One quick look, and Pug tapped the spotter's shoulder and pointed. Swinging the large binoculars halfway round on the tripod, the spotter started with surprise, pulled off goggles and cap, and looked again. He had a lot of curly blond hair and freckles, and he was only eighteen or twenty. Snatching up the telephone, he jiggled the hook, talked, jiggled some more, and gestured anger at no answer. Pulling on his cap, he went trampling down the ladder. "What is it?" Pamela said. 'Take a look." Pamela saw through the big eyepieces of the spotter's instrument a column of machines coming out of the woods. "Tanks?" 'Some are trucks and armored personnel cars. But yes, it's a tank unit." Victor Henry, glasses to his eyes, talked as though he were watching a parade. 'Aren't they Russians?" "No." 'But that's the direction we came from." "Yes." They looked each other in the eyes. Her red-cheeked face showed fear, but also a trace of nervous gaiety. "Then aren't we in a pickle? Shouldn't we get down out of here and find Amphiteatrov?" To the naked eye the armored column was like a tiny black worm on the broad white earth, five or six miles away. Pug stared eastward, thinking. The possibilities of this sudden Turn were too disagreeable to be pu dragging of t into words. He felt a flash of anger at Tudsbury's selfish his daughter into hazard. Of course, nobody had planned on being surPrised in the rear by Germans; but there they were!
If the worst came to the worst, he felt he could handle himself with German captors, though there might be ugly moments with'soldiers before he could talk to an officer. But the Tudsburys were enemies. 'I'll tell you, Pam," he said, watching the worm pull clear of the forest and move sluggishly toward the town, leaving a black trail behind, "the colonel knows where we are now. Let's stick here for a while." "All right. How in God's name did the Germans get around back there?" "Amphiteatrov id theresa was trouble to the south. They must have broken across the river and hooked through the woods. It's not a large unit, it's a probe." The top of the ladder danced and banged under a heavy tread. The blond youngster came up, seized a stadimeter, pointed it at the Germans, and slid a vernier back and forth. Hastily flattening out a small black and white grid map on one knee, he barked numbers into the telephone: "Five point six! One two four! R seven M twelve! That's right! That's right!" Animated and cheery now, he grinned at the visitors. "Our batteries are training on them. When they're good and close, we'll blow them to bits. So maybe you'll see something yet." He put on his goggles, changing back from a bright-eyed boy into a faceless grim spotter. Victor Henry said, "they're watching across the river for your batteries to fire." The spotter clumsily waved both heavy-clad arms. "Good, but we can't let those bastards take the town from the rear, can we?" "I hear airplanes." Pug turned his glasses westward to the sky. "Sa?Mlyuttil' "Da!" Swivelling and tilting the binoculars upward, the spotter began to shout into the phone. "Airplanes too?" Pamela's voice trembled. "Well, I'm more used to them." "that's the German drill," said Victor Henry. "Tanks and planes together." The oncoming planes, three Stukas, were growing bigger in Pug's glasses. The spotter switched his binoculars to the tanks again, and began cheering. Pug looked in that direction. "Holy cow! Now I call this military observing, Pam." Tanks in another column were coming out of the woods about halfway between the Germans and the town, moving on a course almost at right angles to the panzer track. He handed her the glasses and squinted toward the airplanes. "Oh! Oh!" Pamela exclaimed. "Ours?" 'Da!" cried the spotter, grinning at her. "Nashil Nashil" A hand struck her shoulder andknocked her to her hands and knees. "They're starting their dive," Victor Henry said. "Crawl up close to the dome and lie still." He was on his knees beside her. His cap had fallen off and rolled away, and he brushed black hair from his eyes to watch the planes. They tilted over and dove. When they were not much higher than the belfry, bombs fell out of them. With a mingled engine roar and wind screech, they zoomed by. Pug could see the black crosses, the swastikas, the yellowish plexiglass cockpits. All around the church the bombs began exploding. The belfry shook. Flame, dirt, and smoke roared up beyond the parapet, but Pug remained clearheaded enough to note that the flying was ragged. The three ungainly black machines almost collided as they climbed and turned to dive again in a reckless tangle. The Luftwaffe had either lost most of its veteran pilots by now, he thought, or they were not flying on this sector of the front. Anti-aircraft guns were starting to pop and rattle in the town. Pamela's hand sought his. She was crouched behind him, against the dome. "Just lie low, this will be over soon." As Pug said this he saw one of the Stukas separating from the others and diving straight for the belfry. He shouted to the spotter, but the airplane noise, the chatter of A.A. guns, the clamor and cries from the town below, and the roar of the wind, quite drowned his voice. Tracers made a red dotted line to the belfry across the gray sky. The tin dome began to sing to rhythmically striking bullets. Victor Henry roughly pushed Pamela flat and threw himself on top of her. The plane stretched into a sizable black machine approaching through the air. Watching over his shoulder to the last, Victor Henry saw the pilot dimly behind his plexiglass, an unhelmeted young blond fellow with a toothy grin. He thought the youngster was going to crash into the dome, and as he winced, he felt something rip at his left shoulder. The airplane scream and roar and whiz mounted, went past, and diminished. The zinging and rattling of bullets stopped. Pug stood, feeling his shoulder. ............