Hanging on

jumped up. They quivered momentarily in the gray rain. Lazily, they fell back into the body of the ruined span.
        This was a slower death than the bridge had ever before suffered, but it expired just as completely, settling into a mass of useless materials.
        "Christ, what a show," Danny Dew said.
        Nathalie knelt beside Beame and put her arms around him, held tight to him. He kissed her cheek, leaving bloody lip prints.
        Gradually, silence returned.
        And after a moment of silence, Kelly became aware of the Panzer noise and the drumming rain.
        On opposite sides of the gorge, the Allies and the Germans stared across the void at one another and wondered what in the name of God they were to do now.

----

    4
        
        Dreadfully weary, Major Kelly walked around the village store, one hand against the wall to balance himself. Wet, muddy, bloody, he came out on the bridge road where the German convoy stretched eastward as far as he could see. He went looking for General Adolph Rotenhausen.
        The general was standing in the hatch of his Panzer. He was fearlessly eyeballing General Bobo Remlock, who was standing up in his Cromwell turret nine hundred feet across the ravine. "Father Picard!" Rotenhausen cried when he saw Kelly standing ankle-deep in a mud puddle beside the tank. "This is a dangerous place right now. Go back to your church and-"
        "No," Kelly said. He slopped through the mud, put one foot in the huge mud-clogged tread gears, and clambered up until he stood on the tank fender. "I am worried about my people, my village."
        "There is nothing you can do now," Rotenhausen said. "You should have done something sooner. You should have stopped the partisans from blowing up the bridge."
        "I knew nothing of that," Kelly said. "And I guarantee you, General, that no partisans take shelter in St. Ignatius. They must have come up the river from some other town."
        Rotenhausen turned his aristocratic face to the sky. The rain stung it, rolled off his white cheeks onto his glistening slicker. "It doesn't matter whether I believe you or not. The deed is done."
        Kelly wiped nervously at his face. When would Bobo Remlock get tired of sitting over there and lob another shell at them?
        "There is no other bridge in the area wide enough to accommodate your Panzers," Kelly said, just as he and Maurice had planned for him to say. Right now, on the west bank, Maurice was imparting this same information to
        Bobo Remlock. "But ten miles to the north, near the base of the mountains, there is a place where the gorge becomes shallower and the river broadens. You could get over to the west if you went up there."
        Rotenhausen perked up for a moment, then squinted suspiciously at Kelly. "Why do you tell me this?"
        "I don't want my village destroyed," Kelly said. "Already, several of my people have died. And I have been injured myself."
        For a long moment, Rotenhausen looked across the mist-bottomed gorge at the Cromwells, Shermans, and M-10s. Then, as the tanks on that side began to pull back, turn, and start north, the German made his decision. "I must get this convoy turned around," he told Kelly. "We'll reach that ford before they do, Father Picard."
        "Good luck," Kelly said, jumping down from the tank. Holding his wounded arm, he walked over to the village store and leaned against the wall and watched the tanks move out.

----

    5
        
        Danny Dew raised the sledgehammer over his head and brought it down on top of the shortwave radio. The metal casing bent, but nothing broke.
        Major Kelly was standing beside Dew, his arm in a sling. The bullet wound was not serious, merely a crease; but it pained him too much to allow him to wield the hammer himself. "Again!" he shouted.
        "Yes, Massah," Dew said. He swung the hammer a second time. One of the casing seams popped open.
        "I don't understand why you have to destroy it," Lily said, looking mournfully at the shortwave set.
        "Neither do I," Beame said. He was standing next to Nathalie and Maurice, though The Frog was glaring fiercely at him.
        "I don't ever want to talk to Blade again," Kelly said. "Even if I gave the radio to Maurice, Blade would have a way of reaching me."
        "Mon ami-" Maurice began.
        "Again, Danny!" Kelly said.
        Dew raised the sledgehammer. His hard black