H. Beam Piper & John J. McGuire 45 min read

On a ridge eleven minutes before the barrage, UN patrol leader Benson glances at his watch, and steps, without warning, clear out of his own war and into another time.

Piper and McGuire's 1959 story is a clever military-SF and time-travel tale of a soldier pulled from the battlefield into a strange mission. Sharp, twisty golden-age SF. Read it for a gripping story where a wartime patrol becomes a doorway to a very different kind of duty.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

45 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).