Dick Donnelly of the Paratroops

Dick Donnelly and his friends were not thinking of Italy. They were thinking of more immediate objectives—Bizerte, Tunis, and the driving of Rommel’s Germans into the Mediterran...

“Here’s a map of this region,” Lieutenant Scotti said, unfolding a paper which Dick Donnelly looked at eagerly. “You can see the hill we’re on. Here’s the pass in the valley bel...

“Right under our noses all this time,” Tony’s uncle said. “That’s where we’ll put your radio sending station, Tony my boy. And it will be right under—or rather, over—the Germans...

The two men did not talk for some time as they walked slowly through the dark woods. As the trees began to thin out near the bottom of the hill, Dick thought more carefully abou...

Lieutenant Scotti smiled. A well-placed light mortar shell had just landed in a cluster of three German trucks on the road below. And that had happened shortly after word had co...

“When I volunteered for the paratroops,” young Tony, the radioman, said one day, “I did it because I like action. I like excitement. I like thrills. Danger—it doesn’t mean much...

They spent a good part of the next day sleeping, although they still had plenty of time to talk over their plans. They found it more difficult than ever to sit in front of the c...

It was a short trip. Their base was not far behind the front lines below Maletta, and the field to which they had gone was only a few miles further south and—they guessed—some d...

“Vince,” he said, “will you go down to the bell tower and stay with Tony? He’ll be on the lookout for someone before long and will let the rope down to you. Tomaso will come wit...

The men at the cave were doing far more than biting their nails. They were pacing up and down, those who could, and Scotti was just about to send Vince and Max off to town to se...

The men on the roof said no word. They all knew, even old Tomaso, that Tony had reached the opening at the top of the bell tower. They stood close to the wall, their eyes fixed...

“We’re really just a diversionary action, a feint,” Scotti said, his voice raised slightly so that all the men in the plane could hear him above the muffled hum of the plane’s e...

The others came running to the boulder in a moment. Dick had felt the Lieutenant’s pulse and found it still strong. The blood on his face was from two deep gashes in his skull,...

Although Dick and Tony had been entertained by the vain search of the Germans for their radio, they did not fail to note the increasing movement of troops and equipment into Mal...

Tony Avella was nearing the end of his long vigil in the top of the bell tower. He was feeling restless, cramped, and uneasy. He kept telling himself that this radio job was jus...

The big transport plane flew out of a cloud just as the sun appeared over the flat horizon of the desert to the east. The rolling hills over which the clouds hung low smoothed o...

They were all in the town of Maletta again, two months later. It looked cleaner and neater than when they had first seen it, for the townspeople and the U. S. Army engineers had...