“We’ll stay here till the shelling that the colonel ordered is over,” Dobie ordered. Slim had his men out of the truck and ready to move in. Without warning, from unseen guns, a barrage of shells circled the barn. The men crouched near the jeep winced under the explosive pressure on their ears. Captain Dobie had been watching his stopwatch. Five minutes later he said, “All right, Slim, shelling’s over. Fan your men out, and take those Nazis in.” The new sergeant and his men moved rapidly ahead, skirting the cottage wall. They had just disappeared around the corner when Dobie cried sharply, “What in the name of--” Weller had sprung headlong from the jeep and lunged at a sunken doorway. A moment later he returned, breathing hard, with a dog in his arms. “_Patchou!_” Dobie shouted. Weller, his face tilted away from Patchou’s loving tongue and scrambling paws, pitched the dog into Captain Dobie’s lap. “If this means what I think it means,” he puffed rapidly, “André’s somewheres about. Maybe you can figure it out, sir....” Without waiting, he was gone, clanking with grenades, his head lowered between determined shoulders. Straining forward in the jeep, Captain Dobie sat raging at his helplessness. He knew he would be useless in the field. He could barely walk. But every rifle crack, every grenade explosion sent his blood boiling. To think of André exposed to all this was a maddening extra anxiety. He kept a hand on Patchou, who was torn between the joy of reunion with an old friend, and terror. Dobie smoothed his fur absently while he directed his binoculars toward the heavy firing about the barn. He could not see much that was happening, because of the cottage wall, and stared around the fields. “If André’ll only keep under cover till this shooting stops,” Dobie thought. He stiffened at the smell of timbers burning, and looked back to the barn quickly. Slim appeared around the corner of the cottage and ran up toward Dobie. “Cap’n,” he panted. “More--” He stopped and stared wildly. “What’s that dawg! That ain’t--_It is_ Patchou! Well, for cryin’ out--” “_More what?_” the captain snapped. “More trouble, Cap’n. The barn’s afire in one corner. An’ we ain’t got half the Germans yet. They’re hid everywhere. If Ouvarski and the men have to make a break for it, there’s still enough Nazis to pick ’em all off.” Dobie reached for the radio switch. Turning to Slim, he barked instructions. “I’ll order smoke shells to cover their escape. Go out there and warn the men to pull back a little. Where’s Weller?” Slim poised on one foot to answer. “He’s fightin’ mad--an’ he’s fightin’ good.” He disappeared into a thicket to carry out the captain’s order. Dobie spoke rapidly into the radio and then signed off. For a while he sat listening, and watching the smoke billow high above a gable of the barn. He heard loud, sputtered German orders. Then came renewed rifle bursts, and a grenade exploded near by.