Kaleidoscope Read Free Page A

through hell together and it was something neither of them would ever forget. It meant a lot more than anything in their past, and for the moment even anything in their future.
    “Come on, Patterson, get off your dead ass.” They had been resting in a valley south of Rome, in the steady march to defeat Mussolini. “The sergeant says we move out in half an hour.” Patterson groaned, without moving. “Lazy fart, you didn't even have to fight in Cassino.” In the weeks after Arthur had been hit, they had struggled for Cassino, and fought until the entire town was reduced to rubble. The smoke had been so thick that it had actually taken several hours to see that the huge monastery had been totally destroyed and had virtually disappeared from the shelling. There had been no major battles since then, but constant skirmishes with the Italians and the Germans. But since the fourteenth of May, their efforts had been stepped up, as they joined the Eighth Army to cross the Garigliano and Rapido rivers, and by the following week all of the men were exhausted. Arthur looked as though he could have slept for a week, if only Sam would let him. “Up, man, up!” Sam nudged him with his boot. “Or are you waiting for an invitation from the Germans?”
    Arthur squinted up at him through one eye, wishing he could doze for another moment. The wound still bothered him from time to time, and he tired moreeasily than Sam, but he had before the wound too. Sam was tireless, but Arthur told himself that he was also younger. “You better watch it, Walker … you're beginning to sound just like the sergeant.”
    “You gentlemen have a problem?” He always seemed to appear at the least opportune moments, and to have a sixth sense about when his men were talking about him, and in less than flattering terms. As usual, he had materialized behind Sam, and Arthur scrambled quickly to his feet with a guilty look. The man had an uncanny knack for finding him at his least prepossessing. “Resting again, Patterson?” Shit. There was no pleasing the man. They had been marching for weeks, but like Sam, the sergeant never seemed to get tired. “The war's almost over, if you can just stay awake long enough to watch us win it.” Sam grinned, and the crusty sergeant stared at him, but there was an entente between the two men, and a mutual respect which totally eluded Arthur. He thought he was a son of a bitch to his very core, but he knew that secretly Sam liked him.
    “You planning to get your beauty sleep, too, Walker, or can we get you two on your feet long enough to join us in Rome?”
    “We'll try, Sergeant … we'll try.” Sam smiled sweetly, as the sergeant roared over his head to the others.
    “Move 'em outtttt!!!! …” He hurried on ahead to roust the others and ten minutes later they were heading north again, and it felt to Arthur as though they never stopped again until the fourth of June when, exhausted beyond words, he found himself literally staggering through the Piazza Venezia in Rome, being pelted with flowers, and kissed by shrieking Italians.Everywhere around them was noise and laughter and singing and the shouts of his own men, and Sam with a week-old beard shouting in delight at him and everyone in sight.
    “We made it! We made it! We made it! ” There were tears of joy in Sam's eyes, matched by those in the eyes of the women who kissed him, fat ones, thin ones, old ones, young ones, women in black and in rags and in aprons and cardboard shoes, women who might have, at another time, been beautiful but no longer were after the ravages of war, except to Sam they all looked beautiful. One of them put a huge yellow flower into the mouth of his gun and Sam held her in his arms so long and hard that Arthur grew embarrassed watching.
    They dined that night in one of the little trattorias that had been thrown open for them, along with a hundred other soldiers and Italian women. It was a festival of excitement and food and song, and