Then, in early March, the battalion was put on trains and moved 380 miles west to Oujda, in French Morocco, where it was bivouacked outside the city. There it received replacements, and returned to intensive training.

But even in French Morocco, battles were fought. In early May, the new, highly trained but unblooded 82nd Airborne Division arrived, eager to prove itself, and was bivouacked near the 509th. Whose men took umbrage at the newcomers' cockiness, particularly when, in early June, the Allied command attached the previously independent 509th to the green 82nd as just another constituent battalion.

It might not have been so bad, had living conditions not been so lousy, both for the old hands and the newcomers. The training was brutal and unrelenting, humping equipment up and down the rugged hills, running, and especially training at night: They were to become the masters of darkness.

Which meant sleep time was not only short, but often came during the day. And they slept in pup tents-crawl-in shelters that by day were like ovens.

Nor were there mess-halls, or even mess tents. They took their mess tins to the kitchen, got their food (which was poor and monotonous), and sat on the ground to fight for it with swarms of flies. They soon gave up trying to shoo them away, or even brush them off effectively. They simply cursed, chewed, and swallowed.

On the occasional day off, there was little to do except go into Oujda, where keepers of cheap bars dispensed bad whiskey. And arriving in a less than Christian mom the troopers were inclined to truculence. In fact, the battles of French Morocco were fought in the bars of Oujda, notably between troopers of the 509th and those of the 82nd. In these, any reluctance to trade blows tended to be lost.

Not all troopers took part, of course. Bar brawls are not vital experience for young warriors, but for many at that stage they were inevitable, indeed for many a joy.

Macurdy, however, preferred to avoid brawls, and found quieter, more out-of-the-way bars, frequented by those who preferred friendliness to fist fights. He'd learned to drink in Phenix City, Alabama, and did it more gracefully than most. Having a rare ability to control his physiological processes, and being neither obsessive nor addictive, he didn't get drunk. Largely he drank wine-he hadn't learned to like hard liquorallowing himself at most a certain mellowness. Of course, he'd recently had his 39th birthday, but he'd have handled his trips to Oujda more or less similarly had he been ten years younger. In fact, he would probably have come through his Oujda months unscathed, except for a two-and-a-half-ton truck. He was with Cavalieri and Luoma, headed back to camp, not drunk or even tight. Over-relaxed perhaps, and less alert than might be. The truck was heavily laden, hauling ordnance from the docks at Mellilla. The driver said he never saw them, that a donkey cart had turned in front of him, and he'd swerved. Also, he'd been continuously on duty for seventeen hours. At any rate he knocked down a G.I. and ran over him.

MPs appeared as if by magic, filling out forms, taking names, ranks, serial numbers, units… The driver they hauled off in an MP jeep. The victim, who was taken away in an ambulance, was Staff Sergeant Curtis E. Macurdy, serial number 36 928 450.

Macurdy awoke in the base hospital, remembering nothing of the day. The heavy truck had run over his right leg, doing extreme soft tissue damage, breaking the femur, patella, tibia and fibula, but somehow missing foot, hip, and left leg. He didn't know this, of course. All he knew, vaguely, was that his right leg was in a cast and elevated, its shrunken aura a chaotic mess, and that he was doped to the gills.

He thought of doing something about it, but it seemed like too much trouble, so he fell asleep again, drifting in and out for an indeterminate period that seemed quite long.

The next day he awoke more or less alert. The ward was less than half full, but he had a neighbor in the bed on his left, his right leg also elevated and in a cast. The man was reading a paperback.

Macurdy lay quiet for a while, searching his mind for what had happened, and finding nothing. So he interrupted the reader. "Where am I?" he asked.

The man looked at him. "The base hospital in Oujda."

"What happened to me?"

"Damned if I know. A medic can probably tell you. How's your leg feel?"

Macurdy gathered focus and looked again at the aura around it, more clearly than before. It was still shrunken, but a little less chaotic. "Busier" now; the leg was trying to heal. It was also dark with pain, more pain than the hard-edged ache he felt. He was still doped up, he decided, but not nearly as much as he had been.

"Not too bad. I'd like to know what happened though. What happened to you?"

"I'm in the 505th Parachute Infantry. We jumped on an exercise in the hills east of Jerada, five days ago. It was pretty windy, and I came down in a ravine full of rocks." He paused. "What outfit are you with?"

"The 509th."

"Ah! One of those! See any combat, did you?"

"Not much. We took some shelling at Tafaraoui, and swapped shots on a night patrol I was on out of Gafsa, but the only real fighting I saw was when we drove the Germans off Faid Pass."

He paused. "Not all that much-some companies got more- but enough to get the feel of things. We had almost as many casualties jumping and training as we did fighting." He chuckled. "And barroom casualties here in Oujda. I stay clear of those. I'm basically a peaceful man."

The 505er laughed. "Me too. I'm thirty years old; I leave those bullshit brawls to the kids. My name's Keith. Staff Sergeant Fred Keith, from Gwynn, Michigan."

"Mine's Curtis Macurdy, from Washington County, Indiana by way of Nehtaka, Oregon. I'm a staff sergeant too."

They were interrupted by a nurse. "How are we doing, Sergeant Macurdy?"

"Could be better. What happened to me?"

"You were run over by a loaded truck. The surgeons spent several hours putting your bones back together. You have enough pins in your leg to make a magnet spin."

"Huh! How long do they figure I'll be in here?"

"Two months if you're lucky-if healing progresses the way we hope. Then another month or two in rehab."

Her aura told him she was withholding from him. "Then what?" he asked.

"You should be able to walk normally."

"What about jumping? Parachuting."

Her eyes evaded his. "The doctor can tell you more about that than I can." She sensed his awareness, and added: "I expect you'll get a non-combat assignment."

Inwardly Macurdy smiled. FU give them something to think about, he told himself as she left, and decided that complete recovery in ten days would be about right.

Meanwhile his neighbor stared at him. Two months! Keith thought. He didn't commiserate though didn't know how Macurdy felt about it. At any rate, his neighbor from the 509th seemed to have his attention elsewhere.

Actually, Macurdy was examining the aura around his good leg, imaging it mentally as a basis for working on the damaged one. If need be, he could heal by the feel, but he preferred having a base line. He couldn't get at it very well with his hands, but he could do a good enough job using his eyes and mind. And this project, he told himself, would improve that skill.

The next day, when a visitor arrived to see Keith, Macurdy was reading, and paid no attention till the man spoke. "How you doing, sarge? The guys said to tell you they want you back before we get shipped somewhere." It was the voice that grabbed Macurdy's attention, jerking his gaze from the page.

"Any rumors?" Keith asked.

"Nothing different than usual: Greece, Italy, Sicily, southern France… But one thing is real: Division sent a team of officers somewhere to set things up. Probably the place we'll invade from."