Free Edge of Valor by John J. Gobbell

countered Radcliff.
    â€œAin’t this the livin’ end,” groused Peoples. “We ride in trucks while Japs ride in limousines. I thought we won the war.”
    â€œQuitcherbitching,” said Radcliff. “You could be back on Okinawa swatting flies.”
    â€œYeah, yeah,” said Peoples.
    â€œHere you get three squares and nice, clean sheets.”
    â€œAnd here I get to swat mosquitoes instead of flies.”
    â€œLeroy, I can always get another copilot,” said Radcliff.
    â€œYeah, yeah,” said Peoples.
    The photographers pressed in closer; camera shutters clicked, flashbulbs spiked the deepening dusk. The crowd was right behind them. Like an inexorable tide they swept through the photographers and merged around the line of MPs ringing the Mercury staff cars.
    â€œThese people are really pissed off,” said Radcliff. He turned to the MP sergeant. “Aren’t you guys going to do anything?”
    The sergeant sighed. “Looks like we’re going to have to, sir.” He blew a whistle, waved an arm over his head, and shouted, “Come on, ladies.” The MPs jumped down and ran forward to join the MPs at the staff cars. Others dashed past from trucks behind.
    â€œWhy can’t we am-scray?” asked Hammer.
    â€œIt’ll be soon enough,” said Neidemeier.
    â€œWell, it better be soon or we’ll all be dog meat,” said Berne. He looked around and said, “Gotta get this for history.” He pulled a 16-mm Bell & Howell movie camera from his bag and loaded a fifty-foot roll of film. Then he wound it up, put his eye against the eyepiece, and began panning the crowd.
    â€œYou do this often?” asked Ingram. Cameras, especially movie cameras, were supposed to be illegal, but many used them anyway.
    Berne said, “We go to a lot of places. You know: Guadalcanal, Tulagi, Rendova, Leyte, Okinawa. Got into Tarawa a couple of times. So I get shots of wrecked airplanes, burned-out tanks, and pillboxes. Got some natives, too. Beautiful sunsets, that sort of thing.”
    â€œColor?”
    â€œYup.” He leaned over. “Keep a secret?”
    Ingram snickered to himself. Why was everyone blabbing to him about keeping secrets? “Of course,” he said solemnly.
    â€œA buddy of mine is with the 509th.”
    Army Air Corps mumbo-jumbo , Ingram thought. “What’s the 509th?”
    â€œYou know, the 509th composite group: B-29s. The ones who dropped the A-bombs on Japan. Anyway, my buddy was a crew member on the Great Artiste and shot some footage with this little baby.” He tapped his camera as he panned. “The Great Artiste is a B-29; it accompanied Bock’s Car as one of the instrument planes.”
    â€œWow! How did it turn out?”
    â€œThe guy blabbed. They confiscated his film. Nearly threw him in the stockade. Instead he’s in hack for three months. I was lucky to get my camera back.”
    Just then Ingram spotted Captain Fujimoto. A staff car door was held open for him. He ducked his head and entered. No sooner had the Mercury’s door closed than a rotten pomegranate exploded against the window, showering the car and bystanders with red juice.
    Ingram looked away and asked, “Did he see it? You know, the blast?”
    Berne flicked off the switch and examined his camera as if it were a holy object. “They let me talk to him for a couple of minutes. He said he couldn’t sleep the first couple of nights. All he could see when he closed his eyes was this great pinkish flash. Then they were hit by a shock wave that tossed them around. After that, an enormous mushroom cloud boiled up above them. Amazing. They were at thirty thousand feet and this damned cloud zipped up to forty or fifty thousand feet, with weird lightning bolts flashing inside; all sorts of reds, yellows, and greens. ‘The devil’s caldron,’ he called it.”
    Ingram thought of the pomegranate