130 l Ⅴ. The City closer to the station where enemy machine-gunners were making the morning rattle with their fire. Other Reds, armed with rapid-fire burpguns and hiding behind the gutted walls along the way, squirted quick bursts at the steadily pushing Marines—then melted away. Civilian mothers and their children scurried past the Marines as though the storm of storms had been lashing their tree—and they, tired, miserable, autumn leaves were fleeing its final wrath. More, whole families, appeared from out of the shambled flaming ruins—and rushed into the arms of the Marines for sanctuary . . . hysterically babbling words unknown and offering gifts unwanted to the embarrassed men. The Marines leapfrogged from street corner to street corner, building to building, sandbagged barricade to barricade and from wall to wall. Their targets were almost impossible to see and even more difficult to hit. So they just put down their heads, grabbed their rifles, and attacked right up the street. After they got within shooting distance of the high-domed, old-fashioned station, every bit of cover had its Marine firing protective support for every other Marine out in the open, making that last heart- bursting sprint for the shell holes and gaping bomb craters girdling its massive walls and blown-out windows. When the Communists saw that their fire had dropped but few of the men with the camouflaged helmets and strange khaki legs, and that the rest kept coming, shooting into every window of the station as they moved, they slipped out and down the street to the barricades being hastily reinforced and manned by others of their kind who had been rushed in from the northern defenses of the city. From behind their barricades they started spraying endless rounds into the station and its plaza out in front. The Marines burrowed into the shell holes and dared not raise their heads, for the crack of bullets overhead was close and constant and meant for them. Back along the street other Marines heard the fire, leaned dangerously far out from their own barricades to see how they might relieve their buddies, and had found no answer—when deep, ground- shivering This is War!
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