SPECIAL MISSION
Dick Donnelly and his friends were not thinking of Italy. They were thinking of more immediate objectives—Bizerte, Tunis, and the driving of Rommel’s Germans into the Mediterranean. During the course of that action they were kept a little busier than in their first few weeks. There were no complaints of inaction such as had filled the air previously.
Max Burckhardt missed one battle when he was in the hospital with a touch of fever. Lefty Larkin was killed in another battle, and a few other casualties cut down their numbers somewhat. Bert O’Leary had been sent back to a main hospital for his leg to heal, but young Latham’s hand wound had kept him out of only two actions. Vince Salamone, after his release from the guardhouse, had become the greatest battler of them all, making up for lost time with a vengeance.
It was in the invasion of Sicily that the group first met George “Boom-Boom” Slade. He was not a paratrooper, really, but he found himself joining more and more paratroop actions. Slade was a master sergeant and a demolition expert. He knew dynamite and nitroglycerin as well as most soldiers knew their Garand rifles. He knew the construction of bridges, dams, radio towers, so thoroughly that he could place a small blast in exactly the spot that would crack the dam, or demolish the bridge, or topple the tower. Naturally, his constant work with explosives had given him the nickname of “Boom-Boom” and he didn’t mind it.
“Funny,” he said one day, “but I’ve gotten so I love blowing up things. You work with something long enough and you get to like it, I guess.”
He did not look like a man who would love explosives. He was short and rather slight in build, with mouse-colored hair and a colorless face. The glasses he wore made him look like a rather timid student. He was quiet and mild, a gentle person who liked to feed stray cats and dandle babies on his knee.
But when he set to work at his profession, he changed. Dick Donnelly had been amazed the first time Slade went along with them in Sicily. They were to hold one bridge and blow up two others behind the German lines. Lieutenant Scotti had stayed with the force at the bridge they were to hold for the advancing Americans, while Dick went off with Slade and a few others to blow up the bridges on two side roads.
Dick could not believe that this mild little man could possibly be a demolition expert. In the first place, he hated jumping from a plane in a parachute, but never mentioned the fact. Dick knew it by the agonized expression on Slade’s face. Then once on the ground, he acted as if he didn’t know where to turn, and just followed Dick around like an obedient, if slightly frightened, dog. But when they reached the first bridge, Slade changed. He stood off and eyed the structure, almost forgetting those around him. Dick had meanwhile placed his men to hold off any German patrols that might chance that way, but he kept his eyes on Slade. In less than two minutes, the little man had decided exactly where the charge of dynamite should be placed, and set at that job with a swiftness and precision that was wonderful to watch. In five minutes more they all withdrew some distance and the bridge was blown up. One end rose in the air about six feet as the other end cracked, and the entire center span fell into the bed of the stream below.
Slade went back for a quick look at his work and seemed pleased. “Good,” he muttered to himself. “Our engineers can get another span across there for our own men in half an hour.”
That had been the idea—to blow up the bridge so that it could not be used by retreating Germans but could be used by advancing Americans after only a short delay. The Germans would be too hard-pressed by the Americans to take the half-hour necessary for the repair. Foot-troops would be able to ford or swim the stream, but trucks and heavy guns would be caught—and captured!