Part 2

"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.