lashing the seas to the south, the Marines ignored the deepening mud of the road underfoot and grunted profane but sincere thanks for the break in the heat. Their big Pershing tanks, supported by light machine- gunners, were beginning to hit sporadic harassing fire from enemy guns concealed in the small farm- houses and villages bordering the road. The tanks and machine-gunners poured tracer and cannon fire into each point of resistance until the flames of the burning buildings silenced the other guns. Scouts moved through the fields flanking the road, and the column continued its advance. Even so, despite all the weapons loaded and manned by Marines just waiting for opportunities to shoot up enemy roadblocks, despite the scouts moving over the hills and across the fields at the flanks, the Reds still mounted heavy machine-guns and from positions in the ridges far ahead of the column sent bursts of slugs whistling down into the road. The column kept advancing—with those Marines leading the way now hugging close to the clanking treads of their beautiful, big, stinking, steel buddies—the tanks. The tanks ferried them across the more open parts of the road, where the enemy fire was thickest, but there still came the time, and place, when they had to leave that wonderful hunk of armor behind—and run for it. Luckily, those first Communist machine-guns were being fired from nearly maximum range, and not too accurately, so few men were hit, none of them critically. Still, for many of the younger Marines, though trained under live ammunition, it was their first taste of being fired at by enemy gunners. Now all of those months of careful schooling either would pay off . . . or they might easily become listed among the men never to return home. Trained as he was, the young Marine who dived into the rice paddies alongside the road did very well and entirely eluded the Red gunners. But nothing in all of his experience, through all the camps and special courses, had prepared him for the shock of meeting his first enemy soldier face to face. Especially with the man dead . . . and most of his head blown away by a Marine bullet. Possibly it 80 l Ⅳ. The Hill This is War!
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