Climbing a big mound of garbage he saw chutes billow; then came the twisting dive, smoke from the cockpit area as the plane went down. Five chutes were swaying, drifting. A black column headstoned the crash site. Dennison jumped from the garbage pile and informed some of the crewmen. At once several GI’s took off, dog trotting through the dusk, toting small arms. Dennison was glad to run, glad to be on the go across a field--free of armor. The first chute man, tangled in his chute, lying on his side, lying behind bushes, opened fire with his submachine gun, almost killing PM. Bullets cropped weeds and grass around him. "Look, you goddamn ass! We’re not Nazis!" shrieked PM, flat on his belly... "How do I know who you are! Some of you bastards talk English," the airman yelled. "Yeah, well, I’m from Chicago, see. I used to clean up the loop every day for eighteen bucks a week. Dee is my uncle. I’m in the 321st ... all of us are in the 321st. We just crawled into this lousy town. Put down your tommy gun: I’ll show you some snapshots? Okay?" "I guess so, but keep your hands up! Don’t fuck around!" In a moment they were shoulder-slapping and pumping hands; within a short time the tankmen located three more flyers--one with a smashed leg. Someone hacked a willow and thin pine poles and Dennison and Zinc improvised a jacket litter. On the way into Olpe they located the other flyer, his parachute shot down. Dennison was stung by his death: he felt the tragedy of his broken body: he looked into Zinc’s face: but he was looking at something else: everyone here about the same age, Dennison thought: all trapped. Another kick from death! Death, lousy death, that insatiable hellion! He wanted to defy death. He wanted to kick it in the ass. He wanted the world to know what death was doing! Smog was filtering over Olpe’s dumpage: the brick and stone walls, a slate roof, the beams and plaster: nearly every structure had been shambled. Olpe had been known for its oil refinery but shelling had dug and re-dug earth, pipes, storage tanks, cracking gear. They carried the pilot into a ruined inn: somebody had already explored the town and led them there: somebody rounded up a medic: Dennison, Zinc, Landel and PM bedded down in the low T-shaped building that still had a giant elm tree in front. Debris was everywhere, broken dishes, broken window glass, dangling plaster, a disemboweled sofa, ripped out wiring, pulverized bricks and tiles: Dennison walked through the rooms as through a surrealist museum: finding burlap and a mattress he lay down and unbuttoned his trousers and scratched and then lay motionless. No food had come. One of the flyers hung a flashlight and its swaying light crawled about, expressing hate. Other crewmen bedded down. Dennison’s mind had nothing to tell him so he wriggled underneath the sacking and hunger became his anesthesia. Turning his hands palm-up, he gazed at them, one at a time, dozed, and then slept.