Manila disappears behind them into the darkness. The awareness that he hasn’t seen Glory since that night is like a slow hot dentist’s drill. He wonders how she’s doing. Maybe, once the war settles down a little bit, and the battle lines firm up, he can figure out a way to get stationed in this part of the world. MacArthur’s a tough old bastard who will put up a hell of a fight when the Nips come. And even if the Philippines fall, FDR won’t let them remain in enemy hands for very long. With any luck, inside of six months, Bobby Shaftoe will be marching up Manila’s Taft Avenue, in full dress uniform, behind a Marine Band, perhaps nursing a minor war wound or two. The parade will come to a section of the avenue that is lined, for a distance of about a mile, with Altamiras. About halfway along, the crowd will part, and Glory will run out and jump into his arms and smother him with kisses. He’ll carry the girl straight up the steps of some nice little church where a priest in a white cassock is waiting with a big grin on his face—That dream-image dissolves in a mushroom cloud of orange fire rising up from the American base at Cavite. The place has been burning all day, and another fuel dump has just gone up. He can feel the heat on his face from miles away. Bobby Shaftoe is on the deck of the ship, all bundled up in a life vest in case they get torpedoed. He takes advantage of the flaring light to look down a long line of other Marines in life vests, staring at the flame with stunned expressions on their tired, sweaty faces.