More crewmen milled around, jostling, swearing. A fat guy pounded Landel on his back as though he had won the war: he had seen Landel’s bus knock out the Nazi machine. Landel pointed overhead. Planes roared by; low on the horizon, a dozen Fortresses crawled through a dusty sky. Dennison picked up the cat and stroked it. As the line of men washed and drank, a boy scuttled from one of the houses, carrying a clay bottle of water: he offered it to the men nervously, speaking French, talking jerkily, as if something had injured his tongue. He could not get it into his head that the crewmen were temporarily deaf; his mother had told him they might not understand his French; he thought that was the trouble. Dennison drank from his bottle--cool, cool. He explained that the Corpsmen were deaf; then, as Dennison handed back the bottle, the boy began to shout and point: he indicated the roof of one of the buildings across the square. "Look, Monsieur ... look, on the roof ... the roof of the mayor’s house! See! There’s machine gun ... it’s pointed this way! Maybe somebody can ... see, the gun is moving ... they’re getting ready." Dennison had difficulty understanding the boy’s jargon; when he got it straight he yelled at the nearest crewmen. The warning spread. Someone at the fountain, a skinny guy in oily jeans, raced across the square and lobbed a grenade. It fell short. At once the gunmen fired. A bullet chipped Dennison’s arm, and the waterboy dropped, Millard fell, slumping heavily against the basin of the fountain; the cat scampered for shelter, leaves fell from the olive trees. Seconds later, another grenade wiped out the roof gun and gunners ... planes roared overhead ... Millard was dead; the water-boy lay motionless ... Zinc began bandaging Dennison’s arm. Two minutes, or was it three? Or five? "It’s nothing," Dennison objected. "I’m okay. We’d better see about the kid." "I know it’s not bad ... a nick. Hold still!" Zinc yelled. They were crouched alongside the fountain, Zinc’s first aid kit on the rim. Millard faced the olive trees and the many ripped off leaves around him. Dennison thought that his face had become years older: oil had spattered his chin. His lowered lip sagged, exposing his missing teeth. Landel was bending over him, checking for his ID, his dog tag. Landel’s greasy bald head filled Dennison with great bitterness: it said: Here we are, who cares! In Africa, who cares! Who will bury us? The waterboy was moving. "Hold still," Zinc commanded. "Now there are only four of us to crew our tank," Dennison yelled. "So what!" Zinc yelled. "Four of us," Dennison repeated. "We can manage, Chuck is good." Dennison wondered what Millard’s wife was like: had she loved the guy or was the beneficiary sum worth far more? His hands trembled: death was such a crappy business. In Ohio death wasn’t like this! In Ohio, there were preachers, graves with names and dates on them.