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By Root 9231 0

what's happening up at the front," Goldstein shouted. He had realized with a shock that there were other bivouacs like this, scattered for miles into the jungle. Ridges shrugged. "Holdin' on, Ah guess," he shouted back. Goldstein wondered what it looked like up forward; during the week he had been with recon, he had seen only the mile or two of road upon which they were working. Now he tried to conceive of an attack being made during this storm and winced before the prospect of it. All his energies had to be concentrated on the ridgepole, which he held with both hands. The Japs might even be attacking their area now, he thought. He wondered if anyone was on guard in the machine gun emplacements. "A smart general would start an attack now," he said.

"Reckon," Ridges answered quietly. The wind had lapsed for a moment, and their voices had a subdued uncertain quality as if they were talking in a church. Goldstein released the pole, and felt the strain flowing out of his arms. Fatigue products being carried away by the bloodstream, he thought. Perhaps the storm was practically over. In the hole, the ground was hopelessly muddy, and Goldstein wondered how they would sleep that night. He shivered; abruptly he had realized the chill weight of his sodden clothing.

The wind started again, and their mute tense struggle to preserve the tent began once more. Goldstein felt as though he was holding onto a door which a much stronger man was trying to open from the other side. He saw two more tents tear off into the wind, and he watched the men running to find shelter somewhere else. Wyman and Toglio, laughing and cursing, dropped into their hole. "Our tent just went," Wyman shouted, his young bony face spread in a great grin. "Gee, this is something!" he roared, and the expression on his face was somewhere between delight and wonder as though uncertain whether the typhoon was a catastrophe or a circus.

"What about your stuff?" Goldstein shouted.

"Lost. Blew away. I left my M-one in a puddle of water."

Goldstein looked for his rifle. It was on a ledge above the hole, splattered with water and mud. Goldstein was disgusted because he had not wrapped it in his dirty shirt before the storm began. He was still a rookie, he told himself; a veteran would have remembered to protect it.

Water was dripping from Toglio's big fleshy nose. He moved his heavy jaw and shouted. "Think your tent'll hold?"

"Don't know," Goldstein roared. "The stakes will." The four men were cramped in the hole even though they were squatting on their heels. Ridges watched his feet sink into the mud, and wished he was not wearing shoes. Man's jus' more fussed tryin' to keep 'em dry than the whole thing's worth, he thought. A rill of water kept running into the tent along the ridgepole and trickling onto his bent knee. His clothing was so cold that the drops of water seemed warm. He sighed.

A tremendous gust of wind bellied under the tent, blew it out like a balloon, and then the ridgepole snapped, tearing a rent in the poncho. The tent fell upon the four men like a wet sheet, and they struggled stupidly under it for a few seconds before the wind began to strip it away. Wyman got the giggles, and began to feel around helplessly. He lost his balance and sat down in the mud, struggling feebly under the folds of the tent. "Jesus," he laughed. He felt as if caught in a sack, and he subsided into helpless laughter. Too weak to punch my way out of a paper bag, he said to himself, and this made everything seem even more ludicrous. "Where are you?" he shouted, and then the folds of the tent filled out again like a sail, ripped loose completely, and went eddying and twisting through the air. A little piece of the poncho had been left on one of the stakes, and it flapped in the gale. The four men stood up in the hole, and then crouched before the force of the wind. They could still see the sun just above the horizon in one clear swatch of sky that seemed infinite miles away. The rain was very cold now, almost frigid, and they shuddered. Almost all the tents were down in the