“You’re acting commander of Dog Company from here in.” He looked around him at his staff. “One of these gentlemen will dig you up a couple of silver bars. We’ve got plenty of them left over.”
Ekland wondered whether it was expected that he should say something, but when he looked at the colonel’s face he saw that it was not expected.
The colonel said something, “What’s that you’ve got under your arm?”
“Why, that’s a bottle of Scotch, sir!”
“A bottle of Scotch!” He sounded just as surprised, and incredulous, as had Dog Company when the captain had first brought out the bottle. “Well, if that’s a bottle of Scotch, don’t you want to celebrate?”
“Well, yes, sir, but not with this bottle of Scotch. It doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to Captain Mackenzie.”
The colonel looked at it, and Lieutenant Ekland could see that the colonel, himself, would very much like a drink of Scotch. “Mackenzie’ll never miss it. He’ll have Scotch by the bucket in a week or so.”
“Oh, yes he would miss it, sir,” said Ekland, “and if I opened it now, and drank it, I wouldn’t have a company.”
“Okay,” said Colonel Grimm. A colonel usually thought he knew a good deal about his command, that is, if he was really a good colonel, an old colonel. And then every once in a while he discovered he didn’t know anything at all.
Ekland said, “If you’ll pardon me, sir—”
“Have to leave, lieutenant? Don’t you want to mess with us?”
“I want to tell my men, sir,” said Ekland. “And I have work to do and I might as well get started. I’ve got a lot of letters to write.”
He saluted, and he left.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Encouragement, and advice, and factual aid provided by many people went into the writing of this book. I particularly want to thank Colonel J. R. Hester, Director of Marine Corps Public Information; Lieutenant Commander Edwin A. Fischer, USNR; Major Milton Maloney, Medical Corps, USAR; Captain Ned Carmody, who commanded a line company of the First Cavalry Division in some of the fiercest actions in Korea; and my friend Lieutenant Waldo Stockton, late of the heavy artillery, who first told me the anecdote of the battle of Scotch, which inspired the book.
Pat Frank
PAT FRANK (1908–1964) is the author of the classic postapocalyptic novel Alas, Babylon, as well as the nuclear satire Mr. Adam. Before becoming an author, Frank worked as a journalist and also as a propagandist for the government. He is one of the first science fiction writers to deal with the consequences of atomic warfare.
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ALSO BY PAT FRANK
Alas, Babylon
Mr. Adam
Forbidden Area
An Affair of State
COPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
HOLD BACK THE NIGHT. Copyright © 1951, 1952 by Pat Frank. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Originally published in the United States in 1952 by J.B. Lippincott Company.
FIRST HARPER PERENNIAL EDITION PUBLISHED 2017.
Cover design by Gregg Kulick
Cover images © Dover Pictura
EPub Edition January 2017 ISBN 9780062421821
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