Illustrator: Charles BergerBELLY LAUGH
By IVAR JORGENSEN
You hear a lot of talk these days about secret weapons. If it's nota new wrinkle in nuclear fission, it's a gun to shoot around cornersand down winding staircases. Or maybe a nice new strain of bacteriaguaranteed to give you radio-active dandruff. Our own suggestion isto pipe a few of our television commercials into Russia and bore theenemy to death.
Well, it seems that Ivar Jorgensen has hit on the ultimate engineof destruction: a weapon designed to exploit man's greatest weakness.The blueprint can be found in the next few pages; and as the soldierin the story says, our only hope is to keep a sense of humor!
Me? I'm looking for my outfit.Got cut off in that HollandTunnel attack. Mind if I sit downwith you guys a while? Thanks.Coffee? Damn! This is heaven.Ain't seen a cup of coffee in a year.
What? You said it! This sure isa hell of a war. Tough on a guy'sfeet. Yeah, that's right. HollandTunnel skirmish. Where the Ruskiesused that new gun. Uhuh. God!It was awful. Guys popping off allaround a guy and him not knowingwhy. No sense to it. No noise.No wound. Just popping off.
That's the trouble with thiswar. It won't settle down to a routine.Always something new. Whatthe hell chance has a guy got tofigure things out? And I tell youthem Ruskies are coming up withnew weapons just as fast as we are.Enough to make your hair standon end.
Sugar? Christ, yes! Ain't seensugar for a year. You see, it's likethis: we were bottled up in the pitsaround the Tunnel for seven damndays. It was like nothing you eversaw before. Oops—sorry. Didn'tmean to splash you. I was laughingabout something that happenedthere—to a guy. Maybeyou guys would get a kick out ofit. After all, we got to keep oursense of humor.
You see, there was me and aKentucky kid named Stillwell inthis pit—a pretty big pit withlots of room—and we were allalone. This Stillwell was a nice kid—greenand lonesome and it'spretty sad, really, but there's ayak in it, and—as I say—we gotto keep a sense of humor.
Well, this Stillwell—a reallygreen kid—is unhappy and justplain drooling for his gal backhome. He talks about his mother,of course, and his old man, but it'sthe girl that's really on his mind asyou guys can plainly understand.
He's seeing her every place—likespots in front of his eyes—nicespots doing things to him,when this Ruskie babe shows up.
My gun came up without anyorders from me just as she pokedher puss over the edge of the pit,and—huh? Oh, thank you kindly.It sure tastes good but I don'twant to short you guys. Thankyou kindly.
Well, as I was saying, this Ruskiebabe pokes her nose over the edgeof the pit and Stillwell dives andknocks down my gun. He says,"You son-of-a-bitch!" Just likethat. Wild and desperate, likeyou'd say to a guy if the guy wasjust kicking over the last jug ofwater on a desert island.
It would have been long enoughfor her to kill us if I hadn't hadgood reflexes. Even then, all I hadtime to do was knock the pistolout of her hand and drag her intothe pit.
With her play bollixed, she wasconfused and bewildered. She ain'ta fighter, and she sits back againstthe wall staring at us dead panwith big expressionless eyes. She'sa plenty pretty babe and I couldsee exactly what had happened asfar as Stillwell was concerned. Hisspots had come to lif