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93rd Regiment attached at the moment to General Walker's division?'
    ` The black boys ! ' someone among the brass exclaimed in surprise.
    `Yes,' Walker said emphatically. 'They've been up here four weeks now. They've got to go into action some time. We're strapped for men and even if they are relatively inexperienced, they outnumber those Teds up there three to one at least.'
    Clark hesitated. He was not a politically-minded man like Eisenhower or the limey Montgomery. But he did know enough of the situation in the USA to realize that America's first Negro combat regiment was a political issue, especially as the War Department had made so much publicity about them, plastering the front pages of papers all over the States with pictures of coloured master and staff sergeants in the supply services, sacrificing their rank to become PFCs in a combat outfit.
    `What do you think, Fred?' he asked at last.
    Walker hesitated.
    Well, General, they're as ready as they're ever gonna be. But I don't know.' He bit his lip. 'Hell, you know me - I command a Texan division and those buckos of mine don't like black boys. They don't even like white guys - if they don't come from Texas!'
    There was a burst of laughter from the rest of the brass, hastily suppressed when they saw the look on Clark's face. `What about you, Geoffrey?'
    Keyes was a much smarter man than Walker. At that moment, Pearson could see the Corps Commander's mind racing, trying to outguess the big Commanding General. Did Clark want the Negroes to carry out the attack or not? That was the problem. And in the end Keyes solved it in the manner that Pearson had come to expect from those senior officers who were going to survive the course. He compromised.
    ‘ Well, sir,' he said, 'Bob here and Fred say that the 93rd are trained and, after all they are volunteers, even their white officers. So their spirit should make up for their other defects. In addition they outnumber the Krauts, as Fred has pointed out. So I say, let them have a crack at taking out the Peak.' He shrugged. 'And if they don't pull it off, at least they'll have worn the Krauts down and we can still send in Fred's Texans.'
    `Good,' Clark picked up his cap with its outsize lieutenant-general's stars and nodded to Pearson to follow him, 'then that's that. The black boys will do it.'
    With Clark in the lead, the brass streamed out into the winter morning. The white helmeted MPs of his escort snapped to attention and the correspondents and cameramen surged forward, shouting questions and levelling their cameras to get a shot of Clark. As usual, the Fifth Army's Commanding General was more than approachable. Pearson grinned, as he turned his face so that the cameramen could photograph his left side - his best - and answered the correspondents' yelled demands for information with his conceit wrapped round him like a halo.
    `Just say, gentlemen,' he bellowed above the racket, 'that General Mark Clark's Fifth Army has got the situation well in hand. And off the cuff - so don't quote me on this, gentlemen - you can expect to hear that Peak 555 is back in the possession of General Mark Clark's Fifth Army within the next seven days. Okay, Pearson, let's get the hell out of here. It's colder than a well-digger's ass.'
    The brass snapped to attention and the jeep shot away, followed by the outrider escort of MPs on their gleaming motor cycles.
    The staff of the US Second Corps relaxed. Their hands came down from the gleaming lacquered helmets, with the silver and gold insignia. Someone broke wind. A colonel spat into the mud of the farmyard. Slowly they began to drift back into the farmhouse HQ.
    ‘ Waal,' the big Colonel who had spat, said to his neighbour in a thick Alabaman voice, heavy with whisky and a lifetime of prejudice, 'it sure looks as if those niggers are gonna get their asses well and truly licked, don't it?' He hawked and spat again.

     
    Five
     
    On the same morning that General Mark Clark visited the