Part 3

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.

"Medecin," 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 ...