George H. Smith

“ Guys are yelling for the Medic robot and for the Ammo robots and others are just slumped down in their suits waiting for something else to happen ... and it ain't long in happening. It can't be more than ten minutes after we chased the last Red out the back of our objective before their heavy guns're trying to knock it down around our ears.
Armor or no armor, what's left of the battalion takes refuge in the cellars where a few hours before the Reds were playing possum from our guns. Coleman, Whitey and I find us a nice heavy beam and are standing under it. ”

“ Twenty minutes later we're in position among the wrecked buildings on our side of the square and several kinds of hell is traveling back and forth across it. As is usual, the enemy seems to have as good an idea as to what we're about as we have. ”

“ I sees a couple of guys go down and I stumbles over a tangled mess of armor and flesh as we break from cover and start across the hundred yards or so of the square.
Floater rockets are overhead, circling kind of lazy like and lighting up the whole company as pretty as a summer's day with big magnesium flares. It's real comfortin' to see guys on all sides of you, but not so comfortin' when you sees them fallin' right and left.
I know I'm running with the rest of the guys 'cause I can hear my power pack rev up and feel the steel legs of my suit pounding along through the mud. ”

“ There's other guys all around me now and we're smashing through doors and crashing over window sills into the building. The place is full of enemy joes and they're hitting us with everything they can throw. I take a couple of 40 mm shells that knock me off my feet, but Whitey blasts the gun crew two seconds later. We fight our way up a pair of marble stairways and they're really pouring it on us from up above, when suddenly they take a notion to rush us and come rushing down the steps ... ”

“ The whole company of thirty men is on its way with the rest of the battalion close behind.
"Say, maybe there'll be some dames up ahead," Dobshanski is saying.
"What do you want with dames? You got the Waiting Wife and the Faithful Sweetheart on your TV, ain't you?" the Sergeant says.
"It ain't the same. It ain't the same at all," Dobshanski says.
I cuts in with, "Hey, did you guys hear what I heard? Pretty soon we won't really need women anymore. Those new suits of armor we're going to get have got Realie TV sets in 'em. When a gal comes on it's just like she was in the suit with you. ”

“ Whitey is still harping on his favorite subject so I turns back to the sergeant and the kids he's talkin' to.
"What's with these punks? What they got to complain about? If it wasn't for us they wouldn't have no country."
"They say that the Russians was about to take them away to a camp and make soldiers out of them and they're afraid we'll do the same."
"Well ... what in hell do they want to do? Spend the rest of their lives hiding in a hole while we do their fighting?"
"This youngster says he doesn't want to be brain washed. He doesn't want to be a soldier." ”

“ Coleman moans. "Did Mac Williams send them a copy of his orders as soon as he got through writing them?"
Heavy shells and rockets is plowing up the already plowed up pavement all around us. Geysers of mud and water are being lifted by shells on all sides. ”

“ Our assets ain't what they used to be. There's about twenty guys left in our company and maybe about sixty-five in the whole battalion.
I guess that's why the Major ain't very friendly when some of the guys dig out a couple dozen women and children who've been hiding in the building.
"Well, I'll be damned! Look what's comin' in!" I says to Coleman. There's maybe twenty women and the rest is kids.
"Why do the kids always seem to outlast the rest of the people, Sarge?" I asks. "Every place we been in this town, there's always more kids left alive than older folks." ”

“ In the WDPFR there are more washing machines than in any place else in the world!"
I had to laugh. "You ever seen a washing machine, Sarge?" I asks.
Coleman was looking back toward our lines. "Yeah. There used to be a place called Brooklyn that was full of 'em. You know, there's something going on back there. The whole company seems to be moving up. And there's a big armored crawler there with a smaller one parked beside it."
He sits back down with a clanking of armor. "Must be some big shots coming around to see how we're winning the war." ”

“ That light plastic battle armor of theirs don't even look like stopping our stuff; and packed together like they are on those steps, it's murder. A lot of them get to the bottom, but there ain't much left of them when they get there. ”