Hanging on

Although he was known as a man with no talent for discipline, the workers stared at him for a brief moment, then turned and ran.
        Too soon, the sunset came in a glorious splash of orange and red. The red deepened into purple.
        Night fell. Kelly could almost hear the crash.
        It was 9:30 before any workers were available for the reconstruction of the platform house and the outhouse which Hagendorf had knocked down. Even then, Kelly could find only four of his own men and six Frenchmen who had finished their other chores.
        By ten o'clock, the damaged platform was patched enough to support the crude framework for the one-story house. Twenty minutes later, that frame was in place, except for the roof beams.
        "We'll make it!" Lyle Fark told Kelly.
        "No, we won't."
        "We only need another hour, at most. We'll be done half an hour before the Germans arrive-plenty of time left to change into our French clothes and hide these fatigues."
        "What if the Panzers get here early?" Major Kelly asked.
        While Fark and the other men hammered more frantically than ever, Kelly rounded up eleven more workers who had completed their job assignments. They were weary, sore, stiff, bruised, and full of complaints. Nevertheless, they worked on the reconstruction of the damaged building.
        The road to the east remained deserted. But the Panzers could not be more than a few miles away.
        Occasionally, Major Kelly imagined that he could hear the great machines and the clattering steel treads… "Faster! Faster, faster!" he urged whenever the ghostly tanks rumbled in the back of his mind. "Faster!"
        But it was a command his men had heard too often in the last few days. It no longer registered with them, had no effect. Besides, they were already working as fast as they possibly could.
        At ten minutes of eleven, Lyle Fark said, "The roofs almost done. We have to put the windows in, then clean up the place. But we can do it. I told you we could do it."
        Kelly shrugged. "It doesn't matter. We're all dead anyway. The krauts will see through this in ten minutes. Or less."
        A window frame was raised to a precut hole in the prefabricated wall, nailed into place.
        "You keep saying we haven't a chance," Fark said. "If you really believe that we're doomed to fail-why have you worked us so hard to get the village done?"
        "What else was there to do?" Kelly asked.

----

    10
        
        Major Kelly thought he looked like a genuine priest. He was wearing sturdy, well-kept black shoes with extra-thick wartime rubber soles and heels. His black trousers were worn but dignified, cut full in the legs and generously cuffed. An almost perfect match for the pants, his black cotton suit jacket was worn at the elbows but was otherwise quite impressive. The vest and clerical collar had been made especially for him, sewn by a woman in Eisenhower, and did most to confirm his image. A black felt hat with a shiny black ribbon band covered his balding head; it was creased and looked fairly old, but it was clearly not the hat of a laborer or farmer. The hat was a size too large for him and came down almost to the tops of his ears, but that only made him look more genuine: a backwoods priest, a man not much of this world.
        Yesterday, Kelly had laughed at Maurice's suggestion that he play the town's ranking priest. "My French isn't good enough," Kelly had said.
        "At one time," Maurice admitted, "it would not have passed. But in the weeks you have been here, you have recalled your schoolboy French and have learned even more. Naturally, your French would not impress one of my countrymen. He would spot you for a foreigner. But it will sound fine to General Rotenhausen, because his own command of the language is far worse than yours."
        "And if one of the other krauts speaks French?"
        "Several might," Maurice said. "But none will be fluent in it. Only the German military's elite officers are well enough educated to speak it fluently. And none of them will be in a convoy moving toward the front."
        "I don't know…"
        Maurice was adamant. "I cannot pretend to be the priest, because Rotenhausen knows me. He knows this is not my village and that I am no holy man. I must not even show my face so long as he is here. And which other of my people would you trust in such a crucial, sensitive