Hanging on

him."
        "But the dozer and radio are all that will satisfy my father, Major." She let go of his hands and returned to the last track, which was waiting for her. She jumped onto the bed, sat with her long legs dangling over the lowered tailgate.
        "Anything but the dozer," Kelly said.
        She shook her head. Her black hair spread out like a silk fan, folded up. "I wish I could help. But that is all my father would take."
        The truck started away. It entered the bridge. Crossed the bridge. Went around the bend on the other side. Out of sight.

----

    6
        
        "We should send a commando squad into Eisenhower tonight and kill that crazy frog bastard," Sergeant Coombs said.
        Major Kelly ignored the sergeant's suggestion.
        Instead, he gave the men a pep talk. And he tried to flog them into accomplishing their own work and that of the Frenchmen now on strike. He doubled job assignments. Mind racing feverishly, he looked for and found and implemented all tolerable shortcuts in their construction procedures. He cut the supper break down to fifteen minutes. He stalked from one end of the clearing to the other, doing his Patton imitation: badgering, cajoling, screaming, shaking his fist in the faces of the goldbrickers, joshing, berating, threatening…
        "If we don't get our little religious community built before the Germans get here, we're finished," Kelly told them. "They have rifles, pistols, automatic pistols, cannons, ack-ack guns, grenades, submachine guns, mortar, flamethrowers, tanks… They'll grind us into fish meal. Any of you want to be made into fish meal? Huh? Any of you?"
        None of the men wanted to be ground into fish meal. They worked hard, then harder, and finally hardest.
        A three-man search party went looking for Lieutenant Beame when Kelly learned that the junior officer had not shown up at his work assignment after lunch. Beame was supposed to be guiding the blueprinting and initial construction of the church tower, a job only he or Kelly was qualified to do. But he was missing, and his men were idle… Half an hour after they set out, the searchers came back with the lieutenant. They had located him on a grassy knoll in the woods where he had been lying on his back, looking at the sky and daydreaming.
        "What's the matter with you?" Kelly demanded of Beame. "You're the only man here besides me who can do this sort of planning. You're the only other full engineer. I need you, Beame. You can't go wandering off into the woods-"
        "I can't stop thinking about her," Beame said. "Nothing else matters except her. And he won't let me see her…" He looked like a sad clown.
        "Who?" Kelly asked. "Who's he and who's she?"
        "Maurice is he. Nathalie is she. I love her, but he won't let me near her."
        "Love can get you killed," Kelly told him. "I order you to stop loving her. Get on the ball, Beame! Don't desert me now."
        Kelly also had to keep an eye on Angelli, who kept trying to sneak away to see Nurse Pullit. Vito was one of the few men quick and limber enough to slip around on high beam frames, troubleshooting connections and looking for flaws in supports and braces. He was vital, even when there were no Frenchmen for him to oversee. And now when their chances were evaporating like water in a teakettle, he was playing the love-sick schoolboy. Even when he was working, Vito was, like Beame, in such a state of longing that he could accomplish only a third of the work he should have done.
        When night came, they worked on, though they ordinarily would have stopped and called it quits until dawn. There was not much that could be done in complete darkness. If they used enough lanterns to throw sufficient light on their work, they risked becoming targets for Allied and German planes. Tonight, they compromised. Kelly allowed the use of half the lanterns they needed-which provided just enough light to attract the dreaded bombers but not enough to permit efficient labor.
        Finally, at 10:30, Tooley came to see the major. The pacifist was pale, sweaty, filthy, exhausted. His ropy muscles did not look so formidable as they always had before. His thick neck seemed to be made of rubber and was supporting his head with difficulty. "Let them stop, Major! For God's sake, be merciful!"
        "The Germans are coming. We can't stop. We're dead if we do!"
        Tooley shook his head. It was