Hanging on

Danny Dew roared around the clearing on his virility symbol, scraping out the streets which Hagendorf had surveyed yesterday.
        The demolition of the HQ building was quick and dangerous. Headquarters had to come down, because it was obviously a temporary structure and military in origin. It would not have fooled the Germans for a minute. Therefore, after breakfast, the shortwave radio and the furniture were moved out of HQ, and a crew of workmen dismantled the corrugated metal roof. An hour later, the roof was gone, and the walls began to fall, slamming the earth like a series of angrily closed doors, casting up obfuscating clouds of dust. Armed with hammers and pry-bars, goaded on by Major Kelly-"Faster, faster, faster, for Christ's sake!"-Maurice's laborers swarmed over the thin partitions. They separated metal from wood, tore one plank from the next, stacked the materials where they could later be used in the construction of the village.
        The Frenchmen, Kelly thought, were like Eskimos stripping the carcass of a huge old walrus, leaving behind them nothing of value.
        It was a pleasant thought, and he was still thinking it when Tooley came running over from the machinery shed waving his arms and shouting. "Major Kelly! Major Kelly, why did you put Hagendorf in the box, sir?"
        "Hagendorf?" Kelly knew it was a bad idea to ask for an explanation. He sensed another crisis that would waste precious minutes. But he also knew that if he ran away, Tooley would only run after him. "Hagendorf? In the box?"
        "Yes, sir. In the box, sir."
        "What box?"
        "In the machinery shed, sir. Don't you remember which box you put him in?"
        "I didn't put him in any box," Kelly said, feeling not unlike a character in a Lewis Carroll fantasy.
        Tooley wiped his broad face with one hand, pressed the hand on his shirt, and left a huge wet palm print. "We were clearing out the machinery shed so it can be knocked down. The last thing we came to was this big crate Sergeant Coombs has been meaning to convert into a tool chest for several weeks. The crate was supposed to be empty; but Hagendorf was inside. With maybe twenty bottles of wine. He's naked and drunk, and he insists you put him in the box." While he talked, Tooley unbuttoned his shirt and took it off. His thick weight-lifter's torso was shiny with sweat and alive with muscles.
        "I didn't put Hagendorf in the box," Kelly said.
        "We didn't force him out, because we didn't know why you put him there."
        "I didn't put him there."
        "We didn't want to interfere in whatever you were doing. We thought maybe you put Hagendorf in there to guard the box."
        "Hagendorf isn't guarding the box," Kelly said, wiping sweat from his own face.
        "That's what I said. I said you must have put him in the box for some other reason." Tooley spat on the dry earth.
        "I didn't put Hagendorf anywhere," Kelly said.
        "Hagendorf says you did."
        "Let's go talk to Emil about this," Kelly said.
        Thirty French men and women and a dozen of Kelly's men were clustered in the late morning sunshine outside the open machinery shed door. The noise and stench of perspiration were unendurable. Kelly and Tooley pushed through the crowd into the cool, dark, empty, and comparatively quiet interior which had been gutted for demolition. "Why aren't these people working?" Kelly asked.
        Tooley shrugged. "They're Angelli's people, and they aren't worth a damn when he's not egging them on. Of course, he's up at the hospital bunker."
        Kelly stopped just inside the door. "Is Vito hurt?" He hoped not. Angelli was essential. No one could handle the Frenchmen like he could. Besides Maurice, he was their only real contact with the French.
        "It's not that," Tooley said. "He's okay. He's just up there romancing Nurse Pullit."
        "Romancing Nurse Pullit?" Kelly was not certain he had heard right.
        "Well sure. The nurse is attractive. Sooner or later, someone was bound to fall for her."
        "Fall for her?" He felt as if he were Tooley's echo." Not that too!"
        The pacifist did not seem to see anything strange in the Angelli-Pullit romance. "There's the box," he said, pointing across the room. "Hadn't we better get Hagendorf out of it?"
        The only thing remaining in the large, main room of the shed, besides Sergeant Coombs and Lieutenant Beame, was an