Hanging on

door of the corrugated shed and would shortly be out of reach, Major Kelly shouted, "Bullshit to you, too, Coombs!"
        Coombs jerked as if he had been shot, swiftly recovered his composure, opened the shed door, and stepped grandly out of sight.
        Below Kelly, in the ravine, the bridge lay in a chaotic heap. Too much smoke obscured the structure for him to get a good look at it; however, as a vagrant breeze occasionally opened holes in the fumes, he did get a few brief glimpses. He didn't like what he saw. Everywhere he saw destruction. That was a word that usually was used in conjunction with another word Major Kelly liked even less: death; death and destruction. Although no one had died on or under the bridge, Major Kelly was deeply disturbed by what the suddenly made and just as suddenly closed holes in the smoke revealed. The bottom of the ravine was strewn with chunks of concrete and jagged lumps of stone, all scorched black and still radiating wavering lines of heat. Trees had been shattered by the explosions and by hurtling lengths of steel. Most of these had not caught fire, but their leaves were blackened and limp, little wrinkled lumps like thousands of huddled bats clinging to the branches. The bridge beams rose out of the rubble at crazy angles, ends broken, twisted by the explosions and by the intense heat, looking like nothing so much as the ribs of some prehistoric monster, the weathered bones of a behemoth.
        The holes in the smoke closed again.
        Lieutenant David Beame, second in command of the unit, thrust head and shoulders above the black vapors, as if the stuff were solid and he had broken through with some effort. He spied Kelly and scrambled up the slope, stumbling and falling, cursing, finally gaining the fresh air at the top. He was covered with grime, his face an even black except for white rings around his eyes where he had repeatedly rubbed with his handkerchief. He looked like a vaudeville comedian in blackface, Kelly thought. Wisps of smoke trailed after Beame, soiled ribbons that the breeze caught and twined together and carried away.
        "Well, Dave," Kelly said, "what's it like down there?" He really didn't want to know, but it was his place to ask.
        "Not so bad as before," Beame said. He was only twenty-six, twelve years younger than Kelly, and he looked like a college student when he was cleaned up. Blond hair, blue eyes, and downy cheeks. He could never understand that it was always as bad as before, that nothing ever improved.
        "The bridge piers?"
        "Nearside pier is down. I couldn't even locate the struts through the anchorage and down to the pile. All gone. Farside pier's okay, bridge cap in place and the bearings sound. In fact, the farside cantilever arm isn't even bent. The suspended span is gone, of course, but we still have a third of the bridge up."
        "Too bad," Major Kelly said.
        "Sir?"
        It was Major Kelly's duty, as directed by General Blade, to see that this bridge, which spanned a small river and a larger gorge for some nine hundred feet, be kept open. The bridge was presently behind German lines, despite the great advances the Allies had made since Normandy. No one had yet seen any Germans around here, except those in the Stuka dive bombers which had knocked out the damned bridge three times after Kelly's men had rebuilt it. The first time, in its initial existence, the bridge had been destroyed by the British. Now that Allied armored units hoped to cross the gorge at this point, whenever the German Panzer divisions had been turned back and finally overwhelmed, it must be maintained. At least, General Blade thought it must. This was one of his private contingency plans, a pet project. Kelly thought that General Blade had lost his mind, perhaps because of chronic syphilis, and that they were all going to die before any Allied armored units could ever use the bridge. Though Kelly believed these things with a deep and abiding pessimism, he also believed in getting along with his superiors, in not taking chances, in hanging on. Though they were all going to die, there was a slim chance he would last out the war and go home and never have to look at a bridge again. Because this slender thread of hope was there, Major Kelly didn't tell the general what he feared.
        Beame, wiping at the grime on his face, still waiting for some sort of explanation, coughed.
        "What I meant," Kelly