Word: sheldon
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...HUGH R. SHELDON...
British Novelist Fred Majdalany tells how Tim Sheldon took that walk at the head of a night patrol. Majdalany, himself a onetime infantry major in North Africa, knows about patrols and can recreate their tension. But much of the peculiar tension of Patrol comes from a peculiar thesis: "Courage is moral capital," and the more a man spends the less...
When the patrol begins, Sheldon doubts that he has more than a few coppers of capital left. Nonetheless, he prepares for his job like the technician he is, studying the terrain from an observation post, taking compass bearings, making map notations, and darkening his face and hands with cocoa paste...
...moonless night is"seven men wide"; it is so dark a man could be two yards from a crouching figure and not know it. Moving toward the enemy by compass, instinct and hope, the patrol covers 3½ miles in 3¼ hours. With another mile to go, Sheldon is so obsessed with the task of getting there that he hardly thinks of what he must do when he arrives. The Germans take care of that. Spotting the patrol, they open up. The fire is that of a battalion; by serving as a target, Sheldon gets the information...
...ending follows from Novelist Majdalany's thesis rather than from his story. Why did his hero die of a minor leg wound? "Tim Sheldon was-used up. Just used...