Forward, Children!

Landel shook Dennison's shoulder.

"Whatcha want?" Dennison mumbled, raising himself on one elbow and unconsciously pushing aside his blanket.

"The supply trucks have come," Landel yelled.

"Who's come?"

"The trucks and tanks are here. Three trucks have brought supplies. We've got food. Are you awake? Hey, do you hear me?"

"What did you say? Sure, sure, I'm awake," Dennison replied hazily. He squinted and ducked as Landel shot the beam of his flashlight directly into his face.

Landel knelt down beside Dennison and fumbled about the floor of the abandoned plank and sandbag irrigation shack for his tank helmet. His tall body almost filled the place. His bald head looked repulsively bald to Dennison--something surgical.

"I let ya sleep a little longer than the other guys," Landel yelled. "Yeah, you needed sleep." He shifted his flashlight around the crude shack, over the mounds of blankets where their crewmates had been sleeping.

"Our kitchen's here! The trucks are here ... three of them," he repeated.

"We've got something hot to eat," he hollered. "Are you awake?" He pushed Dennison--shoved him against the floor. "Come on, get out of here!"

"What time is it?" Dennison asked.

"Nearly fifteen ... we've got to get moving," Landel crabbed. He found his helmet underneath a sandy, greasy blanket and stuck it on. "Raub's got here with his kitchen ... so, let's go ... okay? Now?" He was talking to himself, spitting out words, annoyed by the day's problems, war's problems. He rose from his knees and, stooping low to keep from cracking himself against the roof, edged, crab-fashion, toward the door.

"I'm leavin' ... I'm goin'," he cried.

"I'll be along in a minute," Dennison said, yawning and propping himself against the wall, legs and shoulders feeling stiff.

Landel reappeared.

"Go on ... I'm awake!" he shouted. "See you at the chuck wagon."

"We've got to eat quick ... we've a hell of a lot to do," Landel screamed, his head in the doorway. He zoomed his flashlight into Dennison's eyes, like a warning, and walked off.

Angry, Dennison rubbed his hands over his bearded face, slumped down onto the floor again.

Through the doorway he caught glimpses of the flashlights and lanterns of men headed for the kitchen: legs and lights passed with metronome jerkiness across the sand: dust came up from beneath boots. Shellfire rumbled in the distance, a sound that had in it all the vacuity of the African desert.

A jab of wind dribbled sand through the doorway and shook sand from the make-shift roof of the shelter where only yesterday gunners had been trapped emplacing a gun.

Dennison smelled the stench of gasoline and grease from the tanks and a tank dump nearby; he could smell the gas and grease on his clothes; it seemed to swirl around him.

The incoming air was chilly.

Shivering, he hauled a blanket around him and with his shoulders against a sandbag, lit a cigarette. As his lighter flared he noticed his squashed, grease-pocked helmet; sleepily, he reached for it and placed it across his lap, pressing it down, making it a part of him. One hand holding his pack of cigarettes, the other bringing a cigarette to his mouth, he tried to think.

It seemed to him that he had dreamed during the night.

The tip of the cigarette glowed encouragingly.

Yes, he had dreamed about the library tower, the chimes, the sounds travelling down the hill slopes, down toward Lake Cayuga, the tower and the sounds blurring. Kids were sitting in the library, at long tables, faces, faces. There seemed to be an elm tree at the far end of the reading room, snow, lake ...

He tried to remember the sound of those chimes.

Huddled against sandbags, he drowsed and as he drowsed he saw a campfire in the woods somewhere, students standing around the fire, some of them singing. A guy was playing his harmonica, muting his music by cupping both hands over the instrument ...

Dennison's arms and hands had fallen asleep.

Yesterday the pace across the desert had been formidable, the heat increasing, a shortage of water, the water warm and sickening, nothing at all to eat at noon ...

He shook his hands and arms to bring back the circulation, groaning, cold, the exhaust of a tank stinking and coughing nearby. The sound brought with it the sensation of violent pitching, the distress of gasoline and oil fumes, the threat of shellfire at close range.

Shoving his sweater inside his trouser, adjusting his belt, he knelt and fished about: his helmet had rolled heedlessly and bumped against the wall: recovering it, he strapped it on, tilting it over his forehead, aware of its grime.

Slipping on his leather jacket, yanking the zipper, he wormed about the blankets for his mess kit and stepped out into the open, feeling sand drop off his clothes.

Outdoors, his cigarette tasted better and he inhaled deeply to help wake up. The chilly air nipped his face and hands, as he stood motionless urinating.

Behind the shack rose a tangle of rusty machinery from an irrigation pump, the machinery snarled over a cannon-sized conduit, the pipe's mouth toward the sky. The stars seemed closer because of the junked pipes and gears: the sky, utterly cloudless, was defiant: in a few hours its sun would be hammering, leading on and on, sand gobbling sand, dunes blurring into hills: heat and flies would move it together, thirst would be everywhere.

A G.I. scuffed by, coughing and spitting.

"Raub's here," he called, noticing Dennison and his cigarette. "We're ready to eat!" He coughed again.

Dennison wet his lips with his tongue and swallowed.

"I'm right behind you," he said. "Wait a second ... I've got my flashlight. Here, Millard!"

He pulled his flash from his jacket pocket and walked behind his crewmate--the sand deep, their boots scuffing, the flashlight wobbling as if asleep.

"Gonna get hot today," Millard hollered.

"Can't hear you," Dennison hollered.

"Any news on the radio?"

"What was it you said?"

Raub had his kitchen under lopsided leafless trees and a scabby fire of branches burned close to it, kitchen and blaze hidden behind a dune, an enormous crested thing with skeletal brush and camel grass growing on its side. Gaunt, set off by stars, it threatened the kitchen and men, hung, swollen, a thing of unbelievable weight. Yellow light crept up the slope and bounced off the scarred steel of the field kitchen. Steam gushed from pots at the rear of the stove; the air smelled of coffee and hash.

His flashlight in his pocket, Dennison worked his way through sixty or eighty men, brushing sand out of a mess kit with a dirty handkerchief and the palm of his hand. It seemed to him that he had done this many times.

"Hi," he greeted one of the Corps.

"Hi, Dennison ... Hi. Goddamn desert, cold. Freeze off your ass." The man drained his coffee and then blew into the bottom of his cup. "Coffee's good," he said.

"Give me a cup of coffee," Dennison said to Raub, at the kitchen: Raub had his coffee pot raised for pouring, his face smudged, his eyes puttied with sleep; cups were scattered along the kitchen counter in front of him, some of them clean.

"Howdy, any news from you guys?" Raub asked, tilting the pot, arm extended across the counter, the pot steaming. He smiled at Dennison, liking him: Dennison reminded him of a fellow back home, in Atlanta, a boy he'd grown up with.

"You ought to know the news," Dennison said, "you just came in with your outfit, so what's the news? What's up?"

"Not a damn thing! Here, hold still, have some hash. Hungry? It's not bad stuff."

"Sure," Dennison said.

"Fill'er up," Millard said, behind Dennison. "I could eat anything!"

The Corpsmen wore regulation uniforms or the coveralls of the mechanic; there were a number in fatigues; some men wore helmets; they were an unshaven lot. Their khaki did not count for much: they were all of a piece: their greasy, oily, gasoline messed clothes stuck to their greasy, oily bodies; they had not washed in days. No water, no inclination.

They appeared strangely alike in the firelight, each with a bush on his face, each with a crew cut or helmet, each with his mess kit or cup of coffee.

A shell thudded behind the great dune.

"Hell, I hope they don't lay a line on this fire," Millard said, moving a few yards away from the kitchen to allow others to queue up.

His pan filled, Dennison stepped out of line and pushed his way through the crewmen.

"Captain Meyers had guys pull some of the wood out of the blaze," a fat sergeant told Dennison.

"They're not near enough for a hit," Dennison belched cheerfully, spooning some hash.

"Christ, there's a village burning up over there, beyond that dune," somebody yelled. "What's a piddling campfire alongside a village! We'll be out of here in an hour. It'll be our turn to let them have it!"

Dennison found a hollow and sat down on a dead tree, a palm, a frondless bole; shoes sliding into the sand, he resumed eating, spooning and chewing slowly, listening to the men talk, noticing the stars now and then. The pan burned pleasantly in his hand and he shifted it about and spooned another spoonful of hash, his mouth sticking out, his nose in the steam.

On one side of him, Millard was shouting:

" ... Why, you know the drag of those cylinders, the lousy combustion; why, man alive, the Panzer tanks withstand the desert heat a hell of a lot better than our machines. Why..."

Somebody was yelling for more hash.

Somebody beefed:

"We've got fifteen Sherman tanks in reserve ... I'll bet we never use them!"

Dennison was familiar with some of the voices and the familiarity helped: the fire was encouraging: the hash was really hot: there was more at the chuck wagon. Coffee too.

Yesterday ... he tried to shut off the memory as he would a tap, but memory trickled through: Jesus, the vast terrain they had covered, that whamming through the sand, screwing round to avoid rocks, ducking behind a dune, climbing to fall into the direct fire of a Panther, her guns blazing ...

Luck, nothing but luck had pulled them out of that jam.

You never could tell, maybe they would have a lucky break today ... maybe it wouldn't get too hot inside the bus; maybe there might be enough water, stuff that was fit to drink ... they could travel across some comparatively level ground, none of the loose sand to baulk the treads. And food? Maybe they'd have something to eat, a chance to eat outside the tank.

It was a wretched kind of hope, the same hope that everyone got up with every morning--but it was hope. Gazing at the smoke from the fire, he followed it upward where the sky was a thousand stars, no New York sky; even through the smoke the points blinked brightly. Coldly. He held a mouthful of coffee on his tongue before he tackled his food once more. The bread was fresh. Good crust. He felt his body lose a little of its weariness; one leg sank into the sand; probably the desert was not too bad in the winter time, at some oasis, town or city.

He signalled to Isaac Jacobs who was wandering through the crowd of crewmen, walking sleepily, balancing his heaped up mess kit, coffee cup in the midst of the hash. Zinc's beard shone weirdly, crazily red in the light. He pushed his way past a couple of gesturing men and stepped on a smoldering log someone had dragged from the campfire.

"Goddammit," he exclaimed, wobbling, balancing. "Almost got myself badly singed. Gotta watch where we step in this desert." His teeth flashed in a grin intended for Dennison. Dennison grunted and nodded, his mouth full, his eyes narrowed to friendly slits.

"Sit down on the tree."

"How goes it?" Zinc asked, sitting, his mess kit on the trunk alongside.

"Not bad. Any news?"

"Sure, Raub shorted me on hash and bread--that's news!" Zinc said, spooning food.

"I heard Chuck say that a unit of the 604th is trailing us; somebody picked up their radio."

"I wouldn't mind seein' ole Sutter and Reynolds again," Zink said, sopping hash onto a lump of bread, bowing his legs around his kit.

The fire was sparking and sending out low flames: for several minutes the dune came nearer, seemed taller, more ominous. When the flames flared the dune retreated.

Zinc's face, because of his beard, appeared round and oriental; a hint of satire, of his good humor, was apparent as he chewed and watched the fire, the coming and going men. His hair, badly cut, trimmed by a madman, was greasy, in contrast to his scrubbed whiskers. He was built like a jockey--small boned, and lightly muscled. Staring at Dennison, he rolled his chocolate eyes expressively.

"This stuff, this hacked up meat, is easier to eat than the gunk they fed us yesterday," he said. "A pan of salmon's not my idea of chow in the desert."

"Yeah, it was lousy," Dennison agreed.

"I'm gettin' me more of this hash, when I'm done."

"Sure ... there's plenty."

"Raub got here plenty early..."

"Great logistics ... I'll have more hash before the flies move in," said Dennison.

"Flies ... flies ... they're everywhere when we stop ... a fine way to go to hell ... carried there by flies!"

"How's your stomach?" Dennison asked. "Any better this morning?"

Yesterday, at a noon halt, Zinc had held to a tread and vomited, gasping, his face white above his beard. During the morning run he had been hurled against the stock of his machine gun.

"I'm doin' all right," Zinc said "My guts have settled into place--somehow. Maybe the muscles inside are knittin' together again or whatever. I can breathe okay. No pain."

He chuckled faintly. "It was one hell of a rotten jolt, and came near puttin' me out of running. I think this food will stay down."

"You'll be okay," Dennison said.

Zinc flaunted a hunk of bread.

"As long as I can eat I can manage," he exclaimed.

The fire had attracted more of the Corps; some sat on the palm tree; two perched on a bed roll; others squatted on the sand; several sat on oil drums; some ate with their backs to the flames; others loafed about the kitchen. When Raub waved a mess kit and yelled, Dennison got up and crossed the sand to the wagon.

"More hash ... more coffee," he said, offering his pan.

"Sure man," said Raub.

Dennison stared at him while he spooned hash, sliced bread, and poured coffee: he was a far off guy, slow, sloppy, small, with black rimmed spectacles and a black wad of a moustache, the image of a grubby Parisian painter though he had never painted or been outside of Georgia until the war.

"Did you have a tough time, bringing the kitchen forward?" Dennison shouted.

"Yeah ... bad findin' you guys in the black ... bad truck ... but weah heah."

To Dennison he sounded unreal: where the hell was Georgia? Where was the US? All these men ... here ... how had they gotten here? The dune became real but the conflict was unreal.

Settling his cup on the kit he asked himself whether he should eat more? What about being wounded on a full belly? Was it worse with the belly full? Some said....

"Heah, heah," said Raub. "I've got some sinkahs for you. Would you all like a couple?"

"Huh ... I guess so..."

Raub opened a cupboard door--a stainless steel door in the side of his kitchen--and pulled out a cellophane bag and passed doughnuts to Dennison, one at a time, hooked over a finger.

Dennison grinned.

"Good boy, Raub."

"Mum's da word. Quick, hide'em, while we're alone." Raub frowned, imagining GI's storming over the sand, howling for doughnuts across the counter. "Jus' remember, when your folks sends you all some stuff, jus' remember me again."

"I'll remember."

Dennison returned to Zinc and munched a doughnut underneath his nose--sitting down beside him.

"See how it's done!"

"How'd you rate that?"

"Reach in my jacket ... there's another sinkah ... you all likes 'em."

Zinc appreciated Dennison's fake accent, fished for the doughnut, and bit into it.

"Perfect."

Hunkered on the tree, they finished their food and drank more coffee. They stopped talking. Dennison lit a cigarette and offered his pack to Zinc, who accepted one. They had stopped talking because of fear. Fear was in the cigarette. In the sand.

"Landel was nervous as hell yesterday," Dennison began. "He acted as if the whole Africa Korps was on him!" He remembered Landel bellowing over the tank intercom, storming about supplies. Using the radio he screamed at officers, berating them when they answered.

"Operation haywire," Zinc commented, recalling the outburst.

"Colonel Morris says he'll report Landel ... Landel was drunk on Monday ... well, hell, we need a break," he said, wanting a leave, a week, two weeks, a month away from the assaults. Let some other guy knife his way through the Anadi pocket. Let some other crew hammer at the men entrenched at Anadi. Anadi was nothing. Never could mean anything.

"Morris is bad," Zinc said. "He couldn't take it yesterday, couldn't talk some of the time. One of his men got shot through the head. Their tank conked out ... a faulty timer."

Again they stopped talking, already feeling the heat of their bus, the perspiration drenching their legs and arms and backs; they felt the lunging of their machine; they heard the sob of the motor, the bang of pistons, the bark of the exhaust.

Fear slid down the dune, sat with them, picked at the grains of sand, shuffled through the dying fire, rubbed their faces, old fear, present before every attack.

They heard the far off shelling, felt it in their feet.

A nerve began to tremble in Dennison's right hand.

He looked at his hand, stared.

He thought of the little village of Ermenonville, his E, thought of his years there, his aunt's home, those gawky French windows in grey stone walls; he thought of his uncle's writing desk in his room upstairs, a desk usually littered with maps and photos and calculations--pigeonholes ready to burst.

As he peered at the sand under his shoes he saw the fishing tackle in his own room ... rod and gun rack. He could almost see the park at E, the oaks, ash, chestnut, willow ... the miniature island where Rousseau had been buried ... the Petit Lac reflected the tall Lombardies on the island ... a swan--swimming sedately--was part of the scene ... the ivy walled chateau.

Millard sat on the tree trunk, yakking, repeating rumors, speculating: each man had something to say about the terrain that was ahead: unfolding a map, some went over the lay of the land together. Wiping their mess kits half way clean with handfuls of sand they tossed them into a bin behind Raub's kitchen.

By now the fire was out.

Flashlights bloomed and died. Lanterns blinked.

Seated men, men standing in groups, became death figures.

Dennison walked slowly, head bent; Zinc followed him; Millard followed.

Their tank was parked among other machines behind the shack where they had slept, almost at the base of the great dune. The bulk of each tank was something cut out of the night. As Dennison popped on his flash, rocks and gravel mixed with the deep sand ruts left by the treads.

A mechanic's spotlight had been trained on their M4 Sherman: she was a dusty blob twenty-four feet long, nine feet wide and eleven feet high. Paint had been chipped off innumerable places. Her starboard side had sunk down where the sand had given way under her weight. She weighed thirty-five tons, and carried three machine guns, a 75 mm turret cannon. Walking up to her, Dennison kicked sand off his shoes against the armor plating.

"Where in Christ's name have you been?" Landel screamed, appearing out of the dark, flashlight in hand.

"Just finished eating," Dennison yelled.

"Here's your helmet," Landel yelled. "I found it lyin' on the floor of the bus. My god, man, can't you keep anything! You bastards always lose our stuff."

"I'm wearing my helmet," Dennison yelled. "That's Zinc's helmet."

Landel's flashlight winked out; the mechanic's vivid spotlight went out; the darkness seemed to alter the tone of the captain's voice, make it more irritable:

"Who the hell's dickering with that light? What's the matter! This is no blackout! Gotta check!"

He stumbled across sand ruts, his flash poking the sand and rocks. In a matter of seconds the mechanic's light snapped on. Dennison had climbed on top of their tank when Landel returned. Landel grabbed his leg and yelled:

"Dennison, you and Zinc carry our quota of 75 mms and all the stuff you can lug. Snap into it! We've got to get out of here; we've a hell of a lot to do before we can pull out. Millard," he screamed: "MILLARD, Milla-ard. Grab yourself! Go with Zinc. Go with Dennison. Bring mms to our tank. I'll be inside ... you can feed it to me."

The three walked away, avoided a blown-up tree and its branches. Tricky, bombed sand sent Zinc pitching on his belly. He got up with a grunt, not a word. Their bearded faces leered at each other in the winking light; a halftrack blocked their way; the wind was coming up and slapped dust at them as they snaked along one behind the other.

"A rotten place to lug supplies," Millard snapped. "Why not move our bus and then pick up the shells?"

Shadowy light remained on Millard's face: how old he had become: Millard Evans, twenty-six, now a middle-aged farm hand, face seamed, ugly. His mouth was too big, flabby, because he had lost several front teeth. Only the eyes were young, kind, normal.

"Here ... over here, here's the dump," Dennison said. His flash yellowed boxes of ammunition and supplies spread on a giant tarpaulin.

"Let's not drag the stuff ... gotta keep sand off those boxes ... you know what that could mean!"

"Had sand in my gun yesterday," Zinc said. "Couldn't swivel it for awhile."

Working fast, they lugged mm, cannon shells, gasoline, water tins, cans of grease and oil. Someone got the idea of ripping tarpaulin and wiping off the machine gun cartridges before lugging them. The path to the tanks became crowded; the sand got very loose; lights stabbed the junked sand, scraped the dune's side and seemed to drag down more sand, more dust, more darkness.

The three greased their stauffers and rollers and cleaned the cab. Dennison filled transmission grease cups, the cups of the stuffing box, and those of the bevel-gear case. He checked fuel lines for leakage. Starting the motor, revving it, he glanced at his wristwatch again and again: the radium dial obsessed him, tension mounting with the jerk-jerk of the second hand, the thudding of the motor ...

Outside, he bumped into Chuck Hitchcock, his hulky body coming out of the night, his helmet yanked low: Chuck was the youngest crewmate.

"Here, help me," he exclaimed, handing Dennison a wrench.

"Okay, where?"

Chuck's handsome blond features expressed great pain: he resented the war, he hated Libya; he hated the tanks; the old happy days had been his boyhood days in Wisconsin, on his dad's farm. Agilely, he jumped onto a sand layered tread, motioning Dennison to come.

He had found a cracked plate and together they fought to remove it or replace it. Everything they touched was sandy; sand spat at them, rasped their hands, got into their mouths, abraded their knees as they knelt on the steel.

A sliver of steel jabbed Dennison's hand; he smashed savagely at a bolt with his wrench; a shell boomed among the machines; there was an enormous rattle of steel as gravel and rocks struck steel; men shouted; sand ripped from the great dune; smoke shut off the sky.

"They've got a line on us," Chuck yelled. "Lights out ... lights out!"

We're in for it now, Dennison thought. Something went wrong: we're always blundering, blundering ... the Nazis are supposed to be miles away from here:

"Climb inside, Chuck ... we can go!"

Dennison tightened the bolt, checked another.

Stripping off his jacket, wiping his hands on it, he climbed inside, the chill interior amazingly dark and foul with gasoline. Another shell struck, banging furiously. Darkness meshed with silence! Someone flipped on the cab lights; Dennison jazzed the motor, Landel dove inside; Millard was okay; Zinc was bolting the turret; the cab light went out, leaving behind the pure black of steel.

Shellfire was constant now, rocking the tank: the steel walls became paper partitions, likely to bend inward, collapse at any moment.

In his driver's seat, Dennison adjusted his driving slits, Landel beside him, unfolding his map, spreading it across his legs by flashlight.

During a jab of silence Dennison thought over the route briefed for them the day before: starboard, around the great dune; northeast by road for six kilometers; then north: was that right? Well, he could rely on Captain Fred Landel's directions.

Bolted inside, the cab light seemed something pitiful, sick and trapped; then a bulb flashed on at the rear, muscling the naked shoulders and waists of the crew, glazing the unstacked shells. Somebody coughed over the intercom. The rear light got doused; another bulb popped on where Chuck was working at a bolt on his gunnery seat, tilting the pad to a new angle. Millard, squatting on the floor, was wiping shell cartridges with an oiled rag. On the port side, Zinc swung his machine gun from left to right, his beard level with the gun, bristling, crazy.

With lights extinguished, the walls, the roar, the stink of gas and oil crammed the men. Dennison shifted the powerful Chrysler motor into second and swung away from the great dune. Although the cooling fan was rotating, the engine had already heated the cab.

Dennison glanced at his wristwatch.

Darkness, viewed from inside the rocking Sherman, from inside steel, appeared blacker: it had the appearance of glass, a sheet of tinted Plexiglas. A shell, exploding in the distance, resembled a fake dawn. Pushing down with his palms, Dennison gripped the clutch levers. Feeling jailed, stunned, he eyed first the left port and then the right. He expected a signal and blinked to keep his eyes focused, swiping his face to stay alert.

Some sort of communication was coming in over the radio.

Rocks tilted the machine; Dennison shifted gears to ease the treads; as the bus jolted over rocks he flooded the engine and it snorted and backfired and spat into the dark. Carefully he coaxed the engine into third and fourth, down-shifting into second.

Now a green signal bobbed in front indicating: turn, to port. In time the light became a code, and Dennison read it painfully: it read: armored attack ... small.

He jabbed Landel's arm and Landel jabbed him back: their prearranged signal for mutual understanding. Connecting his phone, Dennison yelled:

"Okay ... attack ... where they attacking from?"

"I'll try the radio," Landel shouted.

Light was papering the horizon with its desert paper, how ancient, how wrinkled that flap of sand: good, to get out of that black stuff, can pilot this box: there are tanks to starboard, not bad!

As Dennison watched the creep of dawn a flare ripped the sky and hung suspended, rocking, kicking, sucking everything inside its brilliance.

Instantly, he spotted a Nazi gun, mounted on a dune-rise, a silhouette of men and gun, the flare exploding behind the gunners. He shouted at Landel but a shell blew up beside the Sherman and hurled it half around. Dennison toppled from his seat--the air knocked out of his lungs. He thought: We're hit ... we'll catch on fire! Back at his controls, he cut the racing motor and wobbled out of the line of fire, Landel babbling incoherently over the intercom.

Another shell.

"Port side ... port!" Landel yelled.

The treads caught, slipped, jerked, the M4 flopping from side to side; the rumble of the treads, rolling unevenly, drowned the shellfire. Their grinding was like the beating of pneumatic hammers on metal sheets. It seemed to the crew that the interior darkness became part of the noise, whirled around with it, cyclotronic, snagging thought and muscle.

Dennison's signaller appeared and led the tank to a strip of packed sand behind a lofty dune; he leaned forward to relieve a cramp in his side and wet his lips with his tongue, craving a drink. A shell boomed. The signaller said stop.

They're waiting for dawn, Dennison thought.

I've got to rest a little ... got to have some water.

Unable to speak, he tapped Landel's shoulder and indicated his mouth: lights in the cab flickered on Landel's face, his twisting lips.

"Okay," Dennison heard on the phone.

As he drank and sensed the cool decency of water, he was afraid, afraid he would never have another drink, never get out, never have a chance to walk through fields or woods, stoop to cup water from a stream ...

The darkness, the waiting, the crash of shells, the steel: it was both pain and the unknown.

His hand shook as he gave the canteen to Landel.... Strange, dark inside but growing light outside.

He had wandered through a low ceilinged cave as a boy, on the heels of a guy who carried a dim lantern ... this was another cave, a cave that moved. He shivered from the heat and his dripping sweat. Sweat trickled along his arms, down the inside of his forearms and into his palms.

With his port visor open he watched the dawn: it would soon free him from the signaller's microscopic dot. He wet his lips with his tongue and eased against his seat.

Someone was jabbering on the phone; the radio was wheezing instructions; Landel was yelling ...

The quiet was uncanny, no motor running, no shellfire: Dennison knew that he dozed: he glanced at his wristwatch nervously; he glanced through his slit across the desert, across slab after slab of unfamiliar ground where yellow light exposed columns of dust: tanks or trucks were there, rolling north: dust, sand, heat, rolling heat, rolling sand and dust.

Zinc was talking to Chuck on the phone.

"There's our signal!" Landel yelled.

"Let's go," Chuck called.

A shell dumped a spout of sand that became a ragged blur, it was grey inside the tank now; the faces of the crew were grey; grey clouds hung in the morning light.

Zinc was thinking of Ohio, dawdling on a quiet elm street; Millard was shoving at the gum around a painful tooth: the thing had to be extracted. Fred Landel had his palms palmed over his eyes, his brain shut out; Chuck had thrown his shirt around his shoulders, knotted the sleeves around his neck.

Dennison jockeyed the engine, thinking:

If I could go to Bizerte and lie in bed and sleep ... could write a letter ... I should ...

He felt the treads digging in; they tossed sand to the rear; the bus rolled through a wadi, climbed into the sun that was burning ahead. Something in the rocking motion, the rise and fall, made him feel that he was driving over the bodies of wounded men. He seemed to see across treeless fields, across horizons, across Africa, across Europe, across Asia--into a snowland: there was time to ride through forests, time to ski ...

Shell flames seared his thoughts.

He wanted to swing back, put the Sherman into reverse, turn, rush toward the rear--retreat. He wanted to open a steel door, jump out, run, blunder away from the din, away from the stench of gas and oil.

Landel scribbled something on his knee pad and handed it to Dennison. As Landel yelled on the radio transmitter, Dennison bent over the scrawl and forced his brain to come together and make sense:

Entering Anadi--Armed Corps.

What was Anadi?

Dennison had to jerk his machine away from an abutment of rocks; then it was smooth going: he shot the bus into faster gear: they were rolling at forty: they got to fifty, the heat mounting, billowing.

They were in formation with other tanks in their Corps.

Visibility: a hundred miles.

Blank sand.

Rolling.

He heard somebody open fire with a machine gun: it was Zinc: then their 75 pounder whammed into action.

Landel signalled slow.

Dennison observed a tank to starboard, tank inside a cloud of dust and sand; the tank began zigzagging; the machine on the port side was driving straight ahead. He opened his visors to better vision. For seconds he watched his compass dial.

North-north east ...

Chickens flapped wildly along a street.

Anadi, appearing out of sand, was a cluster of mud huts, brick huts, doors sagging on leather hinges, scraped white walls, white roosters, bashed dome, a toppling minaret, more Libyan dust. From a brick compound, pierced by a jagged hole, a cannon fired at the Sherman, spreading smoke and yeasty light into the street.

A radio tower, designed like a potato masher, appeared through smoke and dust. A shell made the Sherman swivel. Lights failed inside. Dennison rolled forward slowly. The lights went on. Dennison had a moment to catch a glimpse of tiled roofs, barred windows, a bleached garden with broken benches, a dead woman. A pair of dogs dove through an open doorway. The door shut.

Where was the cannon, firing out of the compound? Dennison coaxed his bus over cobbles, over a low barricade, close to a white wall; there a poster displayed a veiled woman, smiling. God, he thought, are there really women here?

Maybe I can get a drink ... rest ... maybe ... maybe eat ...

Smoke choked the street, brown smoke, acrid: it filled the space from house to house, street side to street side: it seemed to be working its way between the cobbles.

Dennison's eyes slid over his indicators, oil gauge, gas gauge, temperature, compass, ammeter, water gauge.

He tried to remember how many of their tanks were supposed to converge on Anadi but a shell crashed on the thought: he held his mouth open, expecting another detonation. The treads scrambled over bricks, smashed a door, travelled on paving, zigzagged, knocked down fence posts.

The ventilation fan seemed to have stopped.

Dust increased.

It was steel, desert, shells, more steel.

Can't see through the goddamn dust ... why doesn't it clear up? Christ, how my shoulders ache! What have they got in this rotten little town that we need so badly?

Twenty tanks, thirty tanks in this town ...

Now, now I can see. Okay, we push ahead ... okay go ...

A streetcar lay on its side--broken glass everywhere. Every house window was shuttered. Doors had been boarded over, were padlocked or x'd with planking as if the war could be shut out. White flags fluttered on roof tops--dirty white rags. Sandbags, with Egyptian lettering on them, leaned against an iron fence that leaned against a damaged truck. Nazi dead lay on paths in a circular rose bed, flowers tangled around their arms and legs, around rifles and helmets. Flowers. Bushes.

A lifeless dog lay in front of the Sherman and reminded Dennison of a dog he had owned in E, a brown dog: here Tubby, here Tubby. Dog eager to lick your hands and grin. Cocker. Here Tubby.

The treads of the tank spun over gravel: Zinc's machine gun destroyed an emplacement on a roof: Millard's gun mowed down three men, rushing along an alley.

Landel signalled and they rumbled along another alley and the cannon blew apart the front of a store where Nazi gunners were firing. Above a dome, perhaps a mosque, a shell burst, hurling bricks and stucco over doors, the Sherman and along a street.

Dennison jazzed the bus down a wide street and townspeople fled ... ten or twelve on one side, bunched together, men and women, their clothing white and blue; their turbans white. Landel swung his machine gun to kill them: several dropped, a youngster, a boy, stumbled into the gutter, and lay there.

Spitting on the tank wall, Landel cursed them:

You goddamn sons of bitches ... why the hell are you out in the street ... don't you know no better?

Even with all the ports open the air inside the cab writhed. Gun powder stung their eyes and throats. The crewmen's faces were haunted. They stared out of ports and slits, leered, grimaced, mad, incredulous, exhausted, hungry, thirsty, deaf.

Dennison saw the sun directly ahead as the prow wrenched upward ...

Somewhere, sometime, he must do something about the sky, study it, understand its composition, figure out how it originated, whether it altered at night, how it was influenced by storms, changes in temperature.

Only a week ago Al had died on one of the morning attacks: Landel had bellowed through the intercom: he had seen Al crash onto the floor: they had wanted to lug him outside, into the air, but he had died in Dennison's arms, his head saturated with blood, a bullet in his brain.

Yeah, Al had liked the sky. They had talked about it. He liked the sun. Al had wanted to buy a farm, have some horses and a cow. Horses not cars. He had talked about horses at camp: they had been buddies at Camp Manley. Yeah, they had put in days together, fishing at a nearby pond, hiking through Texas fields ... bluebonnets....

Dennison observed other tanks: M3's and M4's, on a side street, the machines parked one behind the other, the crews still inside. A signal Corps flag appeared in the doorway of a two story building. A Corps flag wagged on a roof. Dennison drove his bus into a treeless square, and stopped, settled deeper into his seat, and asked Landel for the canteen.

As he drank, he read Landel's scrawl:

Stay!

In another section of Anadi, shells were gutting, lofting smoke, sand and dust.

The canteen water sent a chill through Dennison; a fleck of London hovered behind his eyes, streets with trees, fog, people waiting for a double-decker, kids leaning over a bridge rail, Big Ben, the grey Thames flowing ... he thought of Al again: Al had been twenty-three, a graduate of Western Reserve: the bullet had torn his ...

Landel checked the gas gauge.

Okay, gasoline.

Suddenly, they were off, a tank almost in front of Dennison, a tank toward the rear. At the first intersection, they separated, to mop up. A barricade had been erected on a street between low, white walls; there were trees to one side, delicate plumes of tamarisk, tamarisk in a row--trying to beat the desert and its heat.

Again every window was shuttered, even second floor windows. Grey shutters. Mauled shutters. Paintless.

Nobody was defending the barricade. The treads moaned over sandbags and piles of masonry. As Dennison topped the barricade a Nazi tank opened fire, firing head-on, a squad of infantrymen armed with Brens squeezed together behind it.

The tank's swastika burned in Dennison's brain: he spun his bus to the left, increased speed, shot ahead, cut to the right; he yelled through the intercom to Chuck, ordering him to open fire. Chuck's 75-pounder boomed. Dennison tried to signal Landel but grew confused. Why was the Nazi tank motionless? Was it some sort of trick?

Again he swung his tank to one side and then spurted forward as fast as she would roll. If the commander of the German bus was stalling, what the hell was he figuring?

Chuck steadied his gun--his body a part of it: steady boy, steady. Look, the Nazi turret is revolving. Wait, Chuck heard Landel's command to let go. As Dennison pivoted the Sherman, he pulled the trigger.

The 75 pounder hit the Nazi prow and threw the tank to one side. Millard fed another shell to Chuck. The Nazi dropped a shell behind the Sherman: it exploded so close its force threw Landel to the floor. Smoke drenched the ports. Chuck's gunfire tore open the Panther's armor plate and ripped off a tread and port gun--gapping the machine.

The infantrymen, with their Brens, froze: they still expected help from their smashed tank: they signalled each other and began to fan out as Dennison stared, his bus motionless. The sun was beating down: the smoke was clearing: dust was rolling up from somewhere: pigeons flew low: like a Hollywood prop the antenna mast on the Panther bent, and then collapsed onto the cobbles.

Landel was first to come to:

He whirled his machine gun on the half petrified infantrymen: he was too fast and depressed the barrel and bullets clattered across cobbles and rubble. Some of the soldiers crouched behind the tank. Others ran. A man fell. Then no soldiers: they had melted away.

Dennison tried to follow them and then returned to the square where other M4's were parked, near a small stone fountain and several olive trees.

Now, he thought ... I can rest ... get outside ... some water ... wet my face ... walk ... eat ...

Egging himself outside, he stumbled to the fountain where GI's were standing, and splashed water on his face; removing his helmet, he splashed his head, staring into the shallow white tiled pool. A single fish was swimming: or was it a trick of the mind? Alive? Or coloration? And that bubble: were there still bubbles in the world?

He splashed his face again, the tank forgotten.

Water, air, trees, a grey-grey something, a gnarled something!

A lizard scuttled up a branch, stopped, flicked its tail, puffed its body, and stared inquisitively.

A cat slunk out of a bombed house and crossed the square and brushed against a GI, meowing, wobbling.

"I'll be damned ... a mangy cat," croaked Zinc, his hands in the fountain: he flopped water over his face and soaked his shirt.

Dennison heard Zinc's words faintly: it would be hours before the tank deafness wore off.

More crewmen milled around, jostling, swearing. A fat guy pounded Landel on his back as though he had won the war: he had seen Landel's bus knock out the Nazi machine. Landel pointed overhead. Planes roared by; low on the horizon, a dozen Fortresses crawled through a dusty sky.

Dennison picked up the cat and stroked it.

As the line of men washed and drank, a boy scuttled from one of the houses, carrying a clay bottle of water: he offered it to the men nervously, speaking French, talking jerkily, as if something had injured his tongue. He could not get it into his head that the crewmen were temporarily deaf; his mother had told him they might not understand his French; he thought that was the trouble.

Dennison drank from his bottle--cool, cool.

He explained that the Corpsmen were deaf; then, as Dennison handed back the bottle, the boy began to shout and point: he indicated the roof of one of the buildings across the square.

"Look, Monsieur ... look, on the roof ... the roof of the mayor's house! See! There's machine gun ... it's pointed this way! Maybe somebody can ... see, the gun is moving ... they're getting ready."

Dennison had difficulty understanding the boy's jargon; when he got it straight he yelled at the nearest crewmen. The warning spread. Someone at the fountain, a skinny guy in oily jeans, raced across the square and lobbed a grenade.

It fell short. At once the gunmen fired.

A bullet chipped Dennison's arm, and the waterboy dropped, Millard fell, slumping heavily against the basin of the fountain; the cat scampered for shelter, leaves fell from the olive trees.

Seconds later, another grenade wiped out the roof gun and gunners ... planes roared overhead ... Millard was dead; the water-boy lay motionless ... Zinc began bandaging Dennison's arm.

Two minutes, or was it three? Or five?

"It's nothing," Dennison objected. "I'm okay. We'd better see about the kid."

"I know it's not bad ... a nick. Hold still!" Zinc yelled.

They were crouched alongside the fountain, Zinc's first aid kit on the rim. Millard faced the olive trees and the many ripped off leaves around him. Dennison thought that his face had become years older: oil had spattered his chin. His lowered lip sagged, exposing his missing teeth. Landel was bending over him, checking for his ID, his dog tag. Landel's greasy bald head filled Dennison with great bitterness: it said:

Here we are, who cares! In Africa, who cares!

Who will bury us?

The waterboy was moving.

"Hold still," Zinc commanded.

"Now there are only four of us to crew our tank," Dennison yelled.

"So what!" Zinc yelled.

"Four of us," Dennison repeated.

"We can manage, Chuck is good."

Dennison wondered what Millard's wife was like: had she loved the guy or was the beneficiary sum worth far more? His hands trembled: death was such a crappy business. In Ohio death wasn't like this! In Ohio, there were preachers, graves with names and dates on them.

When Zinc had taped his arm they carried the waterboy, carried him into a house across the square, banging on a door, shoving him inside when two women opened. A bullet had smashed his leg. The kid moaned and flopped his arms. He was bleeding badly.

Dennison liked his bright face, his gaunt, nomadic build. He respected his courage: that business with the water bottle, the spotting of the roof gunners. Kneeling and sitting on the tiled floor of someone's living room he and Zinc did their best to bandage the boy's leg. Dennison tried to talk to him but he couldn't come to. People crowded around, yapping, yapping: he saw their mouths going.

Speaking French he yelled at a woman:

"Try to locate a Red Cross man!"

The veiled figure hovered over the boy, her blue boubous was flecked with something white.

"Médecin," she mumbled.

Dennison and Zinc risked a third of their stock of bandages: they rebound the break, padding it.

"Good boy, good boy," Dennison said to himself. "Nice kid, nice kid!" Zinc said.

According to Landel, the Anadi mess was a mere delaying action, a hinge in the Nazi retreat. Millard was left, to be trucked to a base. The tanks gulped water. A supply tank furnished gas and oil. Landel, Zinc and Chuck and Dennison worked steadily, with a few minutes for food.

Where's the thermos? Where's the coffee? Cigarettes? God, thought Dennison, where now?

A radio screamed: Advance to Beramet.

A merchant, with a yellow and blue turban on his head, was opening a double door, a pack of dates lay on his table, a girl was prostrate on a cot, two camels appeared, a pigeon flew.

There was no opportunity to remember the olive trees: Dennison shut his eyes: he belched and swayed in his seat: the hatch banged shut, was bolted shut: he shifted his controls ... Remember?

His arm stung where the bullet had nicked him; he minded the heat; already the roaring of the tank had lost some of its noise: he was growing deafer.

Over the intercom--far away--he heard Landel:

"There's a concrete pillbox ahead!"

Why the hell should we knock it out! Whose pillbox was it? Why was it there? Where was the damn artillery? Asleep! Must be some other M4's around! Or an M18! Maybe the rest of the Corps was lost on the desert--in some hellish place. Thoroughly angry, swiping sweat from his face, he decelerated to 5 mph. Let some other bastard wipe out the pillbox!

Landel indicated starboard and they swung close to a brick wall, snailed along it, rounded a corner, and there, near a chapel, was the pillbox, white, dirty, plastered with faded movie posters. Before Dennison could shift gears the crew in the box let go and a shell blew bricks out of the wall and shrapnel crashed against their armor plate.

Landel signalled.

Dennison bent forward in his seat and wet his lips with his tongue, and felt the blood flow from his head: he thought: going to conk out. Must have canteen, soak my handkerchief, sop my face. Better tell him, better tell him ...

"Side street ... go side street."

Dennison obeyed automatically.

Zinc and Chuck bawled at each other.

"Get shells ready ... ready, Chuck..."

Swinging roundabout, they caught the pillbox from an angle: its cannon was futile, just a rod of steel: methodically, Chuck trained his 75; his first shell overshot but the second crushed the concrete dome; the third shell, aimed low, burst open a side.

Machinegun triggered, visors wide opened, Landel accounted for the crew, his blood boiling:

He was yelling, whistling, screaming.

Barbed wire fenced the box and Dennison smashed it, treads burying the spirals, the port tread crushing remains of the pill box.

Thinking of the canteen, he got it and sopped his handkerchief: water, face, water, the turret flung open, now he could breathe. Water, a little more water ... there was plenty of water!

As they sped onto a highway the surface seemed annoyingly, deceptively smooth: probably mined.

Watch it, boy!

"Mined?" he asked Landel.

"Safe," Landel reported, doubting their luck.

He had sopped his head and underneath the open turret, his face shone like an Inca ceremonial head: a scratch under one eye was bleeding; his naked shoulders were soaked; he leaned against the side of his seat, mouth gaping ...

He hated the day, hated the bad luck, hated losing Millard. He called himself a fool for permitting his men to crowd about the fountain. Should have known, should have. It was Dennison's fault for not reconnoitering. Give him hell tonight. Tonight ... well, they'd be midway to Ghat. The swaying tank, the roaring treads made him clamp his eyes.

Someone was yapping on the radio.

On the road, beside a bombed truck, lay a crippled GI. The fellow raised his arms--appeared to see the oncoming tank--but Dennison could not avoid him without crashing off the highway. He had no chance to diminish his speed and zoom aside since they were clocking forty. Dennison's nerves buckled, his spine stiffened, his throat contracted painfully, his hands shook: the Sherman raced over the man in a flash and yet Dennison saw him die--could see him underneath the treads--felt him gasp, heard him scream.

"Jesus Christ ... I killed him ... I killed one of our guys ... Jesus Christ..."

Sun was beating through the turret, stabbing the desert. Desert heat swirled with engine heat.

If the highway is mined!

Landel was using his periscope.

The viewer showed an even expanse.

Souped-up, they were hitting sixty.

Was it riskier to cross a mine at top speed? What would the explosion do, heel then over, crumble a tread, stove in the floor, belch out the walls? ... In the white walled house, the Arab, in the yellow-blue turban, was opening the shutters to his windows ... did he sell dates?

In Texas, while piloting his training tank, he had thought of the rags and litter on the ground as the bodies of men. Excellent imagination. Useless. Absurd. Such thinking had not hardened him. It was just another kind of fear. Another kind of folly. His hands were still trembling.

Nothing had prepared him for the first dead in Africa, that first week in Africa, when men got crushed underneath his treads: then it had seemed to him that he had crushed them himself, mashed then with his own weight. He had dreamed then, for many nights, of arms and hands struggling against pressure, faces blotted into nothingness. He had longed to climb out of his machine, kill himself, go, go somewhere.

And now?

Beramet appeared on the road ahead ... palm trees, white one-story buildings, olive trees, tamarisk.

Through radio transmission he knew that their tank forces were pincering: the town was to be grabbed by nightfall.

Light shimmered in front, misty pools of it, mirage water, the desert--port and starboard--was undulating with heat and light: heat, combining a scab of dust, wavered over Beramet: a single point, a blue minaret, broke through.

An MP slowed Dennison: standing beside his motorcycle, black glasses over his eyes, tropic hat slapped down low, he seemed a little insane as he swatted at flies. The dust on his cycle matched the dust on his fatigues. Dust was approaching, trailing from a stream of converging trucks, half-tracks, tanks, cars, and ambulances.

Dully, Orville stared at his compass ... so this was Beramet? Where, in Beramet, would they stop, climb out, rest?

In a few minutes the compass began quivering: they were in the thick of street fighting, Arabs dodging from house to house, Nazis firing from doorways, windows, firing machine guns, firing rifles. GI's opened a front. A grenade exploded. Sand gushed up. Another grenade forced sand through the visors and ports of the bus. Both Dennison and Landel coughed violently. Dennison leaned forward, his back soaked, his arms soaked, the cushion behind him clumsy, lumped.

Urine sloshed across the floor.

He forced his brain above the shaking tank and roar of fighting. Hell, how lunatic, self-preservation and fear clawing each other. Eyes on the street havoc, he moved his machine as directed. Sometimes he saw Arabs firing, sometimes Nazis, sometimes smoke blotted everything. Something crumbled and fell through dust. Blinding sunlight took over as the Sherman crept forward.

Gradually through radio communications, through signals with Landel, he became aware that the Beramet probe was almost over ... now he noticed that his hand was scratched and he licked the scratch absently, groggily. It seemed to him that it was some other person's hand.

It seemed to him he was very old (these had been days not hours): in this world there was only pain and everyone hoped to die. In this world there was the torture of sound being tortured. Following a deserted street, he observed death at the next corner, sitting on an oil drum.

He snarled at himself for having joined the Corps, for having thrown in his lot with Landel. A concentration camp would have been better. Time could never obliterate these memories. The brain was permanently wounded. He tried but could not tap the future: he was too exhausted, too hot--as Landel ordered "stop" Dennison doubled over, craving water: he wanted to lie down in water: he wanted to die.

That night, sleeping in the open, death woke him. He woke shaking, remembering, half-remembering ...

On Sunday, eleven tanks and two half-tracks were compelled to halt because of gas shortage: they squirmed into a wadi below a hundred meter red cliff topped by a single dead tree, an acacia that had been dead and stark for fifty years or more.

Crewmen called the place "the dam" although there had been no water there for many seasons. The dam was a low, concrete wall that crossed the wadi. Its concrete apron bedded a few of the Shermans. Landel, hoping the cliff might afford some protection, had suggested they make a halt until supply tanks and trucks could catch up.

Flies were everywhere: they were inside the tanks; they were outside on the treads, guns and turrets--on weeds, rocks, sand. They zoomed into food the crews tried to eat. They crept over hands and faces and necks as men tried to work. They bit. Singly and by the dozens, they came from below, from above, left, right, and flew into eyes, ears, mouth. Men slapped at them, swore at them, shouted at them.

They crawled over K-rations.

Dennison and Zinc, sharing rations, sprawled below the cliff, troubled by the flies. Zinc poured cold coffee from a thermos. With a rag over his face, Dennison was determined to rest as long as possible, doze perhaps. He felt himself drift perhaps ten minutes: how long he never knew.

A bomb hurled him, dragged him through gravel and sand.

Through a torn spot in the rag he saw the tree on top of the cliff fall; he heard rocks and gravel avalanche onto the tanks, rocks and then a dribble of sand.

A second bomber flew over but dropped no bombs.

In a kind of back-flash, he recognized that the second plane was a reconnaissance plane, following their tell-tales across the desert. Like infallible radar the ruts could lead bombers to "the dam." Scrambling to his feet, dropping the rag, he raced for his tank.

A plane swooped low: a black wall of sand met Dennison and spun him around; as he fell he saw the tread of a Sherman expand like a rubber band and slice a man across his waist and chest: the man did not scream. God, Dennison groaned. Another bomb flattened Dennison: Jesus, how many did they have upstairs! The scream of steel on steel mingled with the roar of falling rocks. A bomb with a bent fin howled as it dropped.

He burrowed into sand to avoid hurling metal: he imagined Zinc, Chuck, Landel, dead.

Pain twisted his back.

Silence ...

Getting up, he stumbled across the gully. He found crewmen there, crouched behind boulders and camel grass. Somebody had spread a tarp overhead to cut down on the spray of sand. Nobody said a word. Presently, Chuck Hitchcock came crawling, blubbering, mouth gaping: crawling on hands and knees he banged into a rock. A blast of sand had sandpapered his eyes: lids and eyeballs were ingrained, a sand and blood inlay.

As Dennison dragged Chuck under the tarp he realized he would never see again: he tried to shield his wounded face, the man sobbing, breathing in gasps, his blond, pallid face distorted.

He won't play billiards again, Dennison thought, remembering Chuck's stories about billiard games at the University of Wisconsin.

A bomb crashed and a tank exploded: it seemed to leap into the air--the whole Sherman--fell into ensheathing fire. It was visible to everyone under the tarp. Sand fountained. Ignited gas and oil spouted: machine gun bullets began to ricochet. Metal whizzed past.

Another bomb exploded.

"Let's run for it!" Dennison shouted.

"Get out of here! ... get out of here!" someone roared.

Dennison and a fellow, Jim Harrington, grabbed Chuck, and rushed him down the wadi, swaying, pitching, dragging. They began to gasp. Chuck was sobbing. Dennison thought every step was getting them nowhere; yet Landel appeared out of a wall of smoke, his head plastered with dirt. He slid an arm under Chuck and the three carried him into a thorn thicket out of the wadi and laid him on the sand.

"I'm blind!" Chuck cried. "I'm blind! Help me!"

Another bomb geysered sand: it left a fog of sand, everyone coughing and spitting. Men tied rags or handkerchiefs or shirts over their face. So, it was sand, not flies. The heat sweated the sand into the flesh. So, it was heat, heat coming down from the cliff.

"Can't see our bus" Dennison shouted, trying to estimate damage. He snuffed and continued coughing.

Suddenly, he grinned, and began to shake: the flies are gone, the bomb's got rid of the flies! He laughed loudly, throwing back his head.

"No flies ... no flies ... the bombers killed our flies!"

"Shut up," Landel said, hitting him.

"No flies!"

Landel hit him again.

Dennison crumpled to the sand: he knew what Landel meant: he realized too, in spite of his hysteria, that he was lucky to have escaped: cradling his head on his arms he attempted to blot out Chuck's raving.

With the last bomber gone, the crewmen came to life, swatting off sand and dust, huddling, at first in little groups. In twos and threes they began checking, climbing on their machines, crawling inside. Out of nowhere supply trucks arrived.

"Gas," the men said.

"Gas."

Zinc pointed to some butterflies, flying close to the sand, headed past the Shermans.

Dennison rubbed his face: they can really fly: yellow butterflies ... beyond them, in the face of the sun, the heat puffed and writhed; a slight wind kicked up dust. A section of the wadi cliff had toppled and sand had buried snouts and sides of several machines and both half-tracks: the sand had acted as a cushion protecting treads and armor plate. Men began to dig ... gas tanks got filled ... motors started ... tanks pulled away ...

Dennison led Chuck by the arm, Chuck moaning and trembling. They both fell into a sand hollow. Directly in front of Dennison lay a pair of arms, intact from finger to shoulders, the dog tag visible on the wrist, above the greasy fingers.

Lawrence, Dennison saw:

Lawrence Robinson, from California.

Dennison jumped away, shrank back, dragging Chuck, almost hurling him down, bumping into Landel.

"What's wrong with you?" Landel scoffed. "Watch where you're going! A pair of kooky arms scare ya!"

Without hesitating, Dennison whirled on Landel, and knocked him down: he tried to jump on him but Chuck clung to him, moaning, saying "no ... no..."

"Jeez, man!" Landel gulped. "Are you nuts again?"

"That was Lawrence Robinson," Dennison yelled. "Larry Robinson ... it could have been me!"

"Fuck you," said Landel, picking himself up, remembering a corner of the Argonne, where men's bodies had been blown about like chips. Glaring at Chuck's bloody eyes he felt no pity for him: he felt they should save themselves for their machines and the job of fighting: let scabs go to hell!

But remembering his job as captain he ordered Dennison to take Chuck to Corporal Willits ...

"He's over there ... he's Red Cross ... take him, then let's get our bus rolling. He's not been hit. Not bad!"

"Not bad," Dennison said to himself, angrily.

He saw himself returning to Base Camp with Chuck; he would see him hospitalized; on leave, he would rest by the ocean; ships would be unloading; the surf would be warm; he'd have good chow.

Assisting Chuck, Dennison sat down by him as Willets examined the lidless eyes: in the sun the imbedded sand glistened like glass; blood glistened like glass. Chuck was trembling, his hands quivering on his lap, fingers wholly uncoordinated.

Willets was talking kindly to Chuck.

"Can you hear?" Dennison asked, bending close.

"No."

"Willits is looking after you ... he's from the Medical Corps..."

"Who?"

"Willits."

"He a doctor?"

"Medical Corps."

"Where am I?"

"By a half-track ... there are wounded here ... Willits and Cobb are helping the men ... we'll be moving out of this gully..."

"Don't go, Dennison."

"Can you move your head ... to the side? ... I want to put medication in your eyes," said Willits.

"Okay."

"The stuff won't hurt."

"Okay."

"Hold still."

"Light me a cigarette, Dennison."

"Sure..."

Dennison began fumbling through his clothes, expecting his cigarettes to be shredded; the pack was badly squashed but he straightened a cigarette, lit it, and put it in Chuck's mouth.

Chuck drew a puff or two and then pain doubled him up as smoke trailed across his eyes; the cigarette dropped to the sand; rolling his head from side to side, he groaned, and flailed his arms.

"My eyes ... my eyes!"

"Keep your hands off them!" Willits ordered.

"Are they so bad?"

"Yeah ... they're bad--keep your hands down..."

The wind shook a dwarf thorn tree behind him.

"Lift your head up ... higher ... I'm using more medication ... soothing..."

"Can ya gimmie a drink?"

"I will," said Dennison.

Willits was a dark skinned man, very Italian, with greying moustache and grey animal-kind eyes. When Dennison returned with water, he nodded at him, jerked his head toward Chuck, then shrugged his shoulders: hopeless.

"Now you keep your hands off your eyes ... I'm gonna put cool antiseptic salve on a bandage, real loose ... gonna put that around your head ... over your eyes ... we'll get you to a doctor soon as we can ... I'll use the transmitter ... others ... other guys ... you know ... get help ... they need help..." Groggily, he went on repeating, talking to himself.

Chuck was still shaking as Dennison walked away--back to his machine.

He and Zinc removed shovels from the rear of the tank: it was slow digging but they released a tread, cleaned the hatches, freed the guns: Landel had a shovel: there was no Al, no Millard, no Chuck: climbing inside Dennison switched on lights, checked dials, checked the intercom and radio: something about the white interior helped.

Switching on the transmitter he shouted:

"Dennison calling ... Lieutenant Dennison calling ... calling X2B ... calling X2B ... Dennison reporting for Fred Landel ... M4-221 reporting ... bombers caught us at point L-T ... place we call "The Dam" ... tanks badly damaged ... several wounded ... one man dead ... can you send medics? Dennison calling ... can you hear me?..."

A little of the horror abated: there was promise in the lights around him, in the transmitter, the old seat cushion, the thermos on the floor, the gleam of dials: with the earphones over his ears he waited.

The radio spluttered:

"X2B ... we read you ... roger ... we've got you on the maps ... news has been coming in ... we know your conditions ... medical help enroute ... tanks moving forward ... medical help coming ... tanks coming ... pass on the word ... over..."

Climbing out of the tank, into the dying day, Dennison notified officers and crewmen. Enjoying a smoke he perched on the rear of his bus: crews were shoveling sand away from the tanks, bedding treads with tarp and gravel. A star specked the horizon. For an instant, for several minutes, he contemplated the ancientness and greatness of this continent: perhaps some of that greatness could resurrect mankind. How absurd the steel hulks, primitive without claiming any antiquity, primordial because of weight and shape. Yet their hellish threats were not absurd. They had crawled into sand as if it was their birthplace, as if returning home after millennia.

After dusk, after the takeover of the sky, tanks, trucks and halftracks arrived: there were two makeshift ambulances, a corps of medics: "the dam" became an encampment, a black-in of men and steel. Dennison, at the door of the ambulance, did his best to break through to Chuck who was lying beside an unconscious GI.

It seemed to Chuck, as he fought his pain and depression, he was losing his best friend: everything was out of proportion as he talked to Dennison.

" ... sure ... sure ... and you know there's my sister in London. You've got to meet her ... somehow you've got to meet her. She's, she's pretty ... was the prettiest girl in Racine ... She's stationed at Red Cross ... Dalton Station ... Red Cross ... Dalton ... remember ... if you are ever in London on leave ... remember ... Jeannette..."

The roof lights in the ambulance blinked off.

The chauffeur said: we're shovin' off.

"Here ... take her pic ... her photo from my billfold ... here ... tell her I sent you ... take it ... you can find her ... send me word when I'm at Hopkins ... tell me ... find her..."

"Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

London, Dennison thought, as he shovelled away more sand: I'll never see London again. Perspiration made his hands slip on the shovel handle. He and Zinc were digging by lantern light, their shadows mugging each other: arms, heads, legs, shovels, machine. They were able to hear the hissing sound of sand. Nearby someone revved a motor.

In the light of a tank, Jeannette's photo showed a beautiful woman. Slipping it into his billfold he called her his pinup.

"Hell ... I'm hungry," he said to Zinc.

"There's chow," said Zinc. "I saw the truck ... yeah, there's chow," he repeated, rubbing his beard. "We gotta get some sleep ... gotta sit ... rest." He was trying to rub away intestinal pain with his right hand: he had strained muscles as he helped load wounded into the ambulances. Somebody had given him a sticky candy bar, he could still taste it; maybe it would stay down.

"Chuck's had it ... he's lost his sight ... he's..."

He went on mumbling to himself.

He and Dennison had located Robinson by flash. Dennison had brought his arms and placed them across his mutilated body, on a stretcher in a converted supply tank. Robinson's ID fell beside the tank and Zinc brushed off sand and stuck it inside Robinson's torn shirt and buttoned the shirt over the crushed leather.

"Well, he doesn't have to be buried here," Dennison said, folding some canvas over him. "Who's better off ... Chuck ... or Robinson? Chuck or..."

Zinc was too weary to reply; his eyes were swollen from the heat, sand, and lack of sleep: numb, he stumbled toward the chow wagon, shoes sinking into the sand: everything he saw was indistinct: everything difficult.

Behind trucks, sitting on the sand, on gasoline drums, oil drums, boxes, the crewmen ate, no light, no smoking.

Shivering as night came on, the two bedded together on the floor of a truck, under blankets and tarpaulin. Wind scraped at the tarp with a sandpapering sound: it tapped on the truck cab and clicked on its glass.

"We attack early in the morning," Dennison said.

"I know," Zink said.

"Hope we have luck."

"Yeah."

Overhead, Libyan sleep was dropping lower and lower: Dennison squinted at the stars, wondering how many more miles they had to travel before the war ended. Three stars burned in a ragged triangle: gradually, the upper star assumed a greenish pallor. While digging out Robinson's body a star had glittered above the cliff ...

Dennison felt the expanse of the desert around him, felt its thousands of square miles. Pulling the tarp over his head he imagined himself in a grotto, Atala's grotto: ah, that pitiful story: beauty obliterated by superstition, by folly: lovely Atala had been his companion in Ermenonville, as boy, she and her Chactas ... Chactas the blind man ... the lover ... the wanderer ... Doré's wonderful engravings--those days in E ...

And now ...

The desert rustled the tarpaulin. The truck swayed.

Still cold, Dennison hunched closer to Isaac, needing all of the warmth he could steal: his arms and shoulders ached: sand grubbing had done that: sand, he felt it in his shoes, in his shin, between his fingers ...

Poor Chuck ...

Soon, dawn threw out its flag of light; soon men were yelling, talking, pushing, urinating, shitting, coughing, eating ...

Motors throbbed.

The radio in a truck blared boogie-woogie, from Casablanca.

Dennison read his wristwatch.

Their tank motor refused to start.

Landel transferred them to another Sherman--number 58. 58 started easily, warmed easily, and they rolled out of the gully, rolled across a flat of sand and sandstone that could have served as an airport, the full moon its beacon.

Everything about the new tank pleased Dennison: it was a pleasure to get away from the old bus.

Little by little, he coaxed 58 into top speed, glancing at his watch, leaning back against the seat, the cushion solid. A shaft of light came in. The periscope was excellent. The viewer clean. He leaned forward and wet his lips with his tongue, something like a smile on his face.

Landel was occupied with his map, his phone wobbling against his Adam's apple, black, cancerous: his bald skull teetered stiffly, pencil between his fingers.

Directly in front of 58, a tank rolled along, another M4, grey, lobbing up dust.

Dennison contrasted its size with the immensity of the desert.

The M4 climbed out of a bomb crater, flicked its fantail, ducked, disappeared.

Dennison realized that the men inside were as lonely as he: men riding inside nothingness, gaping at dunes and flats of sand.

Wasn't that a knock in the motor?

What was that strange vibration in the port tread?

Wasn't that a clicking sound in the transmission shaft?

And the motor temperature?

Heat began to close in.

Driving ports were wide open, the turret was open, the fan was rotating; yet it was growing hot rapidly. Dennison mumbled to himself about the vents. The roaring of the treads knocked the roof of his brain; he felt that the old deafness was returning.

When gasoline and oil fumes increased he let up on acceleration but not before Zinc came down with a harsh coughing spell.

Fear came ...

It crawled along his spine, yesterday's fear, last week's, the past mucking up death, Robinson's arms in the sand, Al screaming, a village gouting smoke and fire. He saw, as in another world, another man's world, his years in Ithaca, at Cornell. The bronze figure of Ezra Cornell was hazed by leaves--then blurred by falling snow. He saw tree-fogged paths winding to his flat on the hilltop above Cayuga. He saw the lake gleaming, blue as a smudged blueprint. He saw himself rowing with the university crew, his body synchronized to the dim bodies of his mates: Locksley ... Neilson ... Murphy ... Lee ...

Lee was coxswain:

Steady boys, steady now ...

But all this was dead: his mother was dead: Aunt Therèse was dead, Uncle Victor, Landel and Zinc were dead: all were travelling through a fog, a distant fog.

Without being aware of it, Dennison began to rub his neck at the base of his skull. His head was pounding. He wanted to drink. He wanted to close his fingers around a tangerine, strip the peeling, smell the strong smell. His mother used to buy tangerines at Christmas, tangerines from California, tangerines and purple grapes, oranges, avocados--pile them on a platter on the dining table.

He wanted a piston to jam, he wanted the radiator hose to split.

He longed to sleep during the afternoon or all night.

Sleep, he thought, sleep ...

* * *