Hanging on

one-story structures with a surprisingly well-constructed appearance.
        "And appearances are all that matter," Major Kelly told Lieutenant Beame as they inspected the first prefabricated building to be finished. "The krauts won't be going into any of these places. Just the rectory. Maybe the church, if any of them are Catholics."
        "But the church and the rectory will be real," Beame said. "So we'll be safe. We'll pull it off."
        "Never." It was the most positive reply Kelly had in him.
        And yet the afternoon went fairly well, so far as the other men were concerned. A great deal was accomplished. The ten-foot-square entrance foyer of the convent-into which the Germans might venture, though no farther-was framed and walled, even though the convent's larger outer walls had not yet been thrown up. A few outhouses were completed and roofed. "You call yourselves members of the Army engineers?" Kelly screamed at his men. "It takes you two hours to build a goddamned shithouse? Faster! Faster, damn you!" The rectory walls crept toward a nonexistent second-story roof, these not prefabricated but crafted with care; and between the porch posts the floor of the rectory's veranda took shape, and the stoop in front of it and the steps leading down from the stoop and the sturdy banisters on both sides of the steps. "Three and a half days!" Kelly screamed at the men working the rectory job. "That's all you have. Not a month!" The town's small church, built on low stone walls similar to those that would give the convent the air of permanence it needed, was framed from foyer to auditorium to sanctuary to sacristy, complete with an eighteen-foot bell tower in which there would not be any bell. Hopefully, the Germans would not notice this omission, arriving as they were in darkness and leaving in the early morning light. A few picket fences were set up around small lawns. And off the street behind the convent, four men worked hard on an old-fashioned stone well complete with its peaked roof, winch bar-but no bucket attached. An isolated religious community would have a few open wells. But who was to say these must function after so many years? This was a dry well. Principally, it was a dry well because the distance between the top of the well wall and the bottom of the pit was six feet, and half of that aboveground. This well could never draw water. But it looked as if it once had. And appearances, as Kelly kept telling his men, were all that mattered. Throughout the afternoon, then, the fake community went as the stone well went: smoothly, steadily, with much sweating, cursing, scraped hands, torn fingernails, cuts, bruises, tortured muscles, suspected hernias, known hernias, and exhaustion. Very little of what they built could be used, but it all looked as if it had been lived in for decades.
        Therefore, Kelly should have been happy.
        But he distrusted happiness. He forced himself to scowl all through the long, hot afternoon.
        He was still scowling at suppertime. He stood by the mess tent at the southern end of the camp, eating a boiled-potato sandwich (with mustard) and scowling at the other men who were hastily consuming creamed chipped beef on toast and cling peaches. He ruined many good appetites.
        "Why are you so depressed?" Lyle Park asked. "Those prefab walls are doing the trick. The work is coming along well."
        Before the major could tell Park about Kowalski's latest prediction, they were interrupted by Lieutenant Slade. Shouting and waving, Slade ran along the tent row, leaping gracelessly over guide ropes and pegs, dodging the men who were sitting before their tents eating supper. The men tried to trip Slade, but he was too quick and watchful for them to succeed. He stopped at the mess tent and unconsciously saluted Major Kelly. "Urgent message, sir! Call from General Blade!"
        "Blade's on the radio now?" Kelly asked, around a mouthful of bread and boiled potatoes.
        "It's about the Panzers," Slade said.
        Kelly paled. "What about the Panzers?"
        "I don't know," Slade said. "That's what the general wants to talk about."
        Slade appeared to be sincere. Kelly had not overlooked the possibility that Slade was engaged in some elaborate hoax designed to make a fool of his superior officer. Slade would want to get even for yesterday, for the things that the major had shouted at him. But right now, Slade was sincere. He seemed to