[b]Port Said, Egypt[/b]

The two Americans were the first to die. They had begun to charge off the ramp when an enemy machine gunner, sheltered by a mass of fallen driftwood, opened fire on the landing craft. The hull suddenly became a death trap as bullets ricocheted off the metal plates and slammed into the men jammed shoulder to shoulder. Some screamed, some cried out for god, most died. The two Americans, a pair of twins from the Philippines, three young childhood friends from Cuba, all of them collapsing under the spray of bullets, all of them between Delgado and the enemy gunner.

He waited only a fraction of a moment before taking a quick step, hoisting himself up the side of the landing craft and then rolling over towards the water below. He hit it with a crash, the weight of his equipment dragging him down until he hit the bottom on his back. He flailed free of his pack, desperate as the water closed in about him and his lungs began to burn, he hadn't taken a breath before he plunged into the tepid waves. He jerked and writhed, finally freeing himself from the pack and kicking out to get his feet underneath him. He lunged for the surface and to his surprise found himself in only five feet of water. 

The landing craft was several yards away now drifting slowly towards the beach, blood oozing down her ramp. The wheelhouse was gone, the windows smashed, the driver slumped in his chair. No one emerged from the front of the landing craft though Delgado caught sight of Mohammad struggling to free himself his own pack some fifty feet away. Small geysers suddenly erupted all around the black man and it took Delgado a moment to realize that the enemy gunner was trying to kill them in the water. 

He swore, dragged him weapon up from beneath the surf, aimed at the place where he had seen the muzzle flashes, and pulled the trigger. The moment he would never forget, the sudden clarity and joy as he emptied his thirty round clip in a slow methodical motion as he waded towards shore. The machine gun went silent but a dozen other enemy soldiers who had survived the naval bombardment opened fire on him now, their bullets peppering the water all around him and still he advanced. 

One by one, clip by clip, he silenced the enemy soldiers, his eyes coldly roving the beach to pick out the huddled forms of his enemy. He showed no mercy, even when several stood with their hands in the air, clearly trying to surrender, he shot them down. Others, stunned by his seeming invincibility as he advanced into the teeth of their gunfire, began to panic and pull back. A second Spanish rifle opened fire as Mohammad, freed of his weight, joined the tall Argentine and together the two of them managed to clear the grasping waves and hit the beach at a run.

The attack was only five minutes old and already a dozen enemy soldiers lay dead in the sand, their bodies flung down by the lethal shots of the two soldiers who seemed impervious to everything thrown at them. One group of enemy soldiers, a later examination would reveal them to be Egyptians, made a stand in a small nest of driftwood and boulders but the two attackers fixed bayonets and with screams of "Muerte y Gloria!" they threw themselves over the barricades and the close quarters killing began.

It took thirty seconds, thirty seconds of screaming and slaughter, to clear the vipers nest. Delgado and Mohammad stopped killing only after the last of the enemy soldiers had stopped crying for his mother. Delgado pulled his bayonet from the mans chest, wiped it clean on the dead mans robes and then stood. Mohammad caught his eye and the two men nodded at each other, only slowly becoming aware of the cheering that was sweeping across the water towards them. The soldiers still approaching the beach in their landing craft, and those on the ships beyond, were screaming themselves hoarse in adoration of the two men.

Delgado looked about him, realizing for the first time that his landing craft was the first one to have reached the beach and the only one to have taken any serious enemy fire. The remainder of the men who had embarked with them were dead and only now, six minutes into the fighting, the second landing craft was only just touching the beach. Around them, their blood pooling at their feet, were at least two dozen enemy dead. Mohammad broke the silence first.

"We have done a great thing Comrade." He reached out and the two shook hands over the shattered corpses of their slain enemies and the cheers of the soldiers landing on the beach below doubled in intensity and boots pounded across the sand as they hurried towards the two of them.

"Keep moving!" A Spanish officer shouted. He caught Delgados eye as he yelled and for the first time since he had joined the Spanish army he saw something different in the officers eyes. For months it had been disgust, disdain, revulsion at the base "colonial troops" he had been forced to command but now something else was behind that gaze, respect.

Shots rang out further down the beach and Delgado turned to see more trucks hastening towards them from the city. It was to little to late. Behind him the bulk of the [i]Brigada Internacional[/i] was landing, men streaming up the beach to take up firing positions. The causeway was narrow it worked like a funnel, pushing the Egyptian forces into the teeth of the 109th's gunfire. Trucks exploded, flipping into the air as grenades were hurled by strong young farm lads, men jerked backwards as if pulled by invisible strings as bullets fired by youth who had done it for sport back home found their mark. They might be a motel collection of colonials but the [i]Brigada Internacional[/i] was learning how to fight.

It was not without loss of course. Many of the young men had no proper fear or respect for enemy bullets, forgetting that if you can see a man, he can see you, quite the opposite of a deer. Over a hundred would die taking the causeway as they pushed eastwards into the ruins of Port Said. By the time the first boots were in the streets nearly a sixth of the [i]Brigada Internacional[/i] was dead or wounded. Of that, half were the Brigades Spanish senior NCO's and battlefield promotions came swiftly. For Mohammad and Delgado it meant promotion to platoon Sergeants as the story of their beach assault spread swiftly through the men and officers alike. 

The causeway itself was taken within the hour, the sound of the Spanish cruisers firing beyond the skyline of the city only increasing the demands for urgency from the Spanish officers. Pushed past limits of endurance, the [i]Brigada Internacional[/i] found itself in increasingly precarious positions as it fought to advance deeper into the streets of Port Said. More men fell, and those who did not quickly learned how to keep their heads down and engage in pitch gun battles. Hand to hand fighting became the norm as the young foreigners, realizing that they were bigger and stronger than their Egyptian and Ethiopian counterparts, closed in to make the fighting even more personal. Boys, who three months previously had been harvesting wheat, tending to injured animals, and shouldering farm labour, now used that same strength to punch, kick, bite, and in many cases, choke, the the life from other human beings.

Delgado, leading a random band of soldiers now, was in the midst of it all. He had not yet had time to reflect upon the lives he had taken that day but one thing was for certain, he was good at killing. With a rifle he was a crack shot, in hand to hand combat he was as lethal as any many alive. The long hours spent working the vineyards had given him massive upper body strength which he simply used to beat down his smaller opponents if they came within reach. Some of the moments would come back to haunt him in dreams for years to come but for the moment he was a god, an artist, and the battlefield was his canvas. 

Two hours into the attack and the Airfield was completely under Spanish control even as the leading elements of the [i]Brigada Internacional[/i] began to force the western edge of the city. Fighting was becoming desperate as Egyptian militiamen found themselves trapped between the advancing 109th and the Spanish Marines. They began to cluster into the city centre which made them an easier target for the big Spanish guns, guided onto target by spotter aircraft above, it was turning into a massacre.

The Spanish Commander finally called a halt as the [i]Brigada Internacional[/i] cleared the last of the enemy soldiers from the eastern edge of the airfield and secured the buildings that overlooked the tarmac. A head count was taken and the numbers came in, of the six hundred men who had come ashore only two hours ago, almost half were dead or wounded. The 109th's battle was over for the moment.