"Here's your bacon and eggs, Colonel," he grinned irrepressibly. The man just wouldn't give in, I thought. "How do you feel this morning?" "Pretty good, considering," I replied. I finished eating and walked down to the stream to splash some water on my face. Kim was there, washing up. I kept down-stream from him. "How are you feeling, sir?" he said, towelling his face with his undershirt. "OK so far, Kim. I need a cigarette. Have you got any? No, not your packet! Just one. I'll ask again if I need it." I caught the black Russian weed he threw at me and dragged gratefully. "I didn't see much of the fighting at the bridge after Makstutis threw the switch," I said, sitting down on a boulder. "I was down in the bottom of the gorge most of the time. Clue me in on what happened." He squatted comfortably on his heels, oriental style, and I was momentarily amused at how quickly he had reverted from his western training. "When the bridge fell down," he began, "the boys along the canyon rim all fired on the coach stuck in the approaches across the way. A lot of the Reds were hit getting out of it but a lot more made it and started a firefight across the canyon with us. That lasted quite a while." "I saw the beginning of it," I said. "I heard from Makstutis that some of them got down in the bottom and shot at you and you were hit." "That's true, but I was hit by mortar fragments. Did he tell you that I'd never have got out if it hadn't been for him and his two men?" "No, he didn't. He did tell me you all got splashed with that virus stuff." "We sure did, and nobody except Anders is to come near us until we find out if we're going to get the fever or not. But what happened to you?" "While the fight was going on back and forth across the canyon," he began again, "the engineer tried to take off with what was left of his train ... it broke apart just ahead of the first tank car. He almost did it too! The two men I had posted up above, on either side of the cutting, couldn't do much as they were firing down at too steep an angle. They did manage to keep the Commies' heads inside the coach, however, and, when the train started up the grade, five of us were able to scramble up on the flat cars, leaving the other six guys to finish the fight at the bridge. Two of them were killed later on by an unlucky mortar shell burst.