Valentine

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The great copper ball of the sun hung in the metallic-blue sky where not a cloud offered a veil to the punishing heat torturing the bare plain beneath. Far in the distance, snow-capped mountains shimmered like a mirage, and behind the low hills surrounding the plain, the Atlantic Ocean crashed against the wild, rocky coastline.

But for the fifty men of His Majesty's Third Dragoons, sweltering in their scarlet tunics, gasping on the parched earth, the cold surf-tipped waves of the ocean and the icy white of mountain snow were a dream.

Again and again the thin blue line of Frenchmen came at them over the hills. They fired into the line, saw men fall, saw the line falter, retreat, only to reappear, reinforced. Their own men lay dead and dying, their bodies crushing the wild thyme that scratched a living with spindly olive trees and cactus, releasing its fragrance into the unstirring, burning air.

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