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And then they head off, unscathed, racing away to the relative safety of their base in Sicily

Rio and Jenou crawl out frousted, at the caked-on dirt that covers their fronts from toes to knees to face

/>“They could have waited till eled off,” Jenou says

“We best go tell Sarge we’re still alive,” Rio says

The air raids are fewer lately, as the Royal Air Force planes with some help from the Americans have claimed control of the North African skies But now Rio hears a distant shriek of pain and thinks what every soldier thinks: Thank God it isn’thome

A term has become common: million-dollar wound The million-dollar wound is the one that doesn’t kill or coh to send you home to cold beer and cool sheets and hot showers

A tea the ti, “I have soy; I arabs his crotch

He trips and falls on his back, and Rio and Jenou share a satisfied nod

The US Army, Tunisia, in the summer of 1943

2

FRANGIE MARR—CAMP MEMPHIS, TUNISIA, NORTH AFRICA

Several miles away there is a different screaoes, rises, falls, lapses into silence, then starts up again

It’s a battlefield sound, but they are not on the battlefield, they are in a camp very reen lines across the dried ravel Austere, lifeless hills rise in the far distance, like red waves rushing toward a shore, but frozen in time The only immediately noticeable difference between this encampment and the one where Rio and Jenou sunbathe is that here all the soldiers—except for the officers—are black It is a colored artillery battalion, its 105ement so as to make air attack a bit more difficult for the Krauts

There is a Sherhs 72,750 pounds

Corporal Frangie Marr, army medic, does not know this fact, but it doesn’t matter much because she’s spent some time in close proximity to tanks and she does not need to be convinced that they are large and terrifying and very, very substantial