Chapter 3 No.3

Dennison examined the lanky civic tower of the town of Bretten, across the Roer River: he noticed the Teutonic coat-of-arms on its tiled side, the ivy climbing its brick walls. He guessed the tower might be 12th century. The clock face was of bronze and brass. The time was 8:10. Lowering his binoculars, he checked the buildings below the tower, then he studied the expanse of hedgerows between the town and the river.

"Can we get through those goddamn hedgerows?" Landel shouted.

"Yes," Dennison yelled.

As he raised his binoculars, at 8:12, he saw the tower explode: the disintegration directly inside the lens appalled him: dust burst from the ancient bricks and mortar, the big clock leaned, crumpled, its gears protruded, a hand tore off, brass inlay twisted, ivy rippled and fell. Bronze and brass gears shot upward, outward, pitched down onto roof tops, accompanied by a shower of debris.

Dennison lowered his binoculars, feeling that he had seen time destroyed: he said nothing.

A series of explosions ripped across the town as the heavy U.S. bombardment got under way: roofs collapsed, walls collapsed, fires broke out, smoke enveloped streets. With another glance at the base of the clock tower, Dennison leaned against his tank and witnessed the destruction as wave after wave of bombers dropped from a mackerel sky. He was architect enough to gauge the losses and realize how costly it would be to reconstruct after such bombings.

And the guys in those houses ... had they been born for that kind of death? Where was man's dignity? His sanity? Landel had a broad grin on his face: it said let the whole lousy German country blow up like this!

The Nazis have had it coming to them, had it coming to them for years: fucking around with their militarism! Bastard Hitler! Jew killer! Maniac!

Landel was sorry the war was drawing to a close.

Bretten ... what a sleazy town!

He timed their advance, eager to push on and crash his tank against opposition: kill. He wished he could invade Germany at the command of a tank division!

Zinc was tightening bolts on the hedge blades: large knives the crew had fixed across the front: without them it was impossible to buck the hedges. The blades gleamed in the bombed sun. Zinc's face shone, clean and fresh: after several days of good food and sleep he appeared rested. The length and toughness of the blades were in contrast to his jockey-built body and boyish face. Helmet on the ground, the wind whipped his hair.

Lord, Lord, he said to himself, they're sure as hell wipin' out that pretty town ... listen ... listen. Ah, there goes a rough one. There's another! Jesus! Yet he did not pause to watch.

Bolts tight, he opened the tank turret and dropped inside, started the engine and began dickering with the carburetor, adjusting it to a faster, more dependable idle. Swiftly, expertly, he dumped in two quarts of oil--tossing away the empties.

Good engine, good V-8, good horses, good wiring.

They had twenty-two machines ready for this attack, most of them parked in a ruined dockyard along the Roer: tumbled bricks, fallen beams, smashed glass everywhere: four-by-fours, bent girders, bent pipes, and mauled boats around: a life preserver dangled from a post near Zinc: HEINRICH VARNA was lettered in red.

Orville, Zinc and Landel had tank 9: a fifteen ton Lee, measuring twenty by eight, nine feet high at the turret. 9 was tough, battered, lame on the port side. Rough terrain had knocked off some of her grousers. Zinc knew how to nurse the Chrysler engine but it drank excess water and extra oil. Her armament was first rate: her machine guns had been reconditioned and a new 78 cannon had been installed--for Landel.

Zinc lit a cigarette under the open turret, feet dangling from the driver's seat.

Jesus, god, we ought to be on our way--they don't know how to coordinate nuthin'--them brass. Peeling a stick of gum he chewed it quickly, spitting on the floor, longing for his 18-footer, slipped on the Vermillion River. As neat a boat as any! She could tack round like a frog.

With Millie they had sailed across Lake Erie, good ole windy Erie ... sunny weather, lie back, drink beer, toss the cans over ... Millie crawlin' over me, unzipping my zipper ... ah, Millie ... Millie ... good Buckeye kid ...

Suppose she's moved away by now: she said she was gonna move ... in her last letter ... job with the county welfare ... what a screwy kid ... beer and more beer ... but she wasn't fat ... now, now do you want to make me pregnant!

She liked it when we went to the synagogue ... Isaac, when you get back, sure ... you'll see, it was better to wait till after the war.

She'll have my letter pretty soon.

Okay, okay ... there's the signal: now, we'll move forward, we'll settle that dumb town, clean it up proper ... okay, I got the signal ... yeah, I've bolted the turret ... okay, Dennison, you okay? Okay, Captain? Okay ...

Caterpillar fashion the tanks crawled from the dockyard and headed for a pontoon bridge across the river: radio reported it should be a routine crossing, keep to the center, the artillery will throw in everything for cover.

The road leading to the bridge had craters and shelled potholes. Fog appeared.

Landel complained bitterly.

The bridge wobbled.

9 shook the planking violently: Dennison clung to his controls, feeling that the bus might keel over on the port side; the motor went sluggish; treads dragged; a Sherman in front of 9 bent the flooring; swayed, then shot ahead.

Say, Dennison thought, that guy's good. Send him to Indianapolis!

Waiting for radio communications, he leaned against the seat and wet his lips with his tongue. Crooked springs in the cushion jabbed him and he tried to avoid them by inching to one side. He wanted a drink. He wanted to rush across the bridge, rush through the town, finish. Wasn't this crossing something Napoleonic?

Through his periscope he tried to penetrate the smoke that hovered over Bretten: he remembered the pattern of hedgerows and remembered the route they had to follow to knife their way through: the rows worried him: supposing their engine conked.

There was a dangerous delay on the bridge, the pontoons fluctuating, exhausts smoking, GI's streaming past on the starboard, jogging by the hundreds. What's the delay, fussed Landel. He roared on the intercom.

Carefully, Dennison eased 9 along, working the carburetor gingerly: he edged to the starboard, increasing his speed little by little, fighting for space with the jogging GI's.

"We'll make it ... we'll get across," he muttered through the phone. "Here we go again! Hang on! Nah, have to cut speed ... have to give those guys a chance ... better run it on the center ... better chance ... won't tilt ... won't tilt..."

"Slow ... slower," Landel yelled. "Watch it ... watch it!"

The bridge had submerged as they approached the town, water sloshed across, brown, crawling with oil slicks.

A GI, wearing an orange helmet, gun belted, wigwagged the route into town. Yet water deepened and chunks of wood floated across the pontoons in front of Dennison. He wallowed through a quagmire at the last pontoon; down she dropped to solid ground with a terrific bump; slobbering and smoking she climbed a grade, the hedges to the right.

Would the terrain support her weight?

Were there minefields?

Word had gotten around that the Nazis were to stage a last ditch stand here: SS troops, reserves, god knew what all: the engineers had had ample time to plant mines, there was no doubt about that: earlier Landel had picked up radio warnings: three divisions in the vicinity. Now it was mud, smoke, hedgerows, hedgerows, with red leaves, red hedgerows raked by gunfire.

A week or so ago the Corps had lost eight tanks to skillfully laid mines and tank traps.

Dennison braked and brought 9 around to avoid a pile of rocks a farmer had heaped up for a boundary.

"Hedgerow," Landel belted through the phone.

"Okay!"

Does the fool think I'm blind?

Slicing through the first was rough: branches and leaves swept over the periscope and viewer, climbed onto the cab, then toppled to one side. The ground held. They climbed toward Bretten. Smoke foamed out of a tree. A shell exploded. Climbing higher, 9 ran into machine gun fire. Dennison snaked the bus, falling, rising, smashing bushes. Leaning forward in his seat he tried to say something to Landel.

Landel grabbed the butt of his gun: he had no notion of being caught: if the Nazi gunners raked their underbelly it would not be because he was slow: where were they: camouflaged: over there, higher, behind those bushes ... yes?

A tank appeared, off starboard, a Pershing, traveling fast.

Zinc detected riflemen behind a hedge: through a slot in the smoke he shot low, retracing, raising the muzzle, screaming his anger as he triggered the gun.

"You won't get away ... I've got you..." he yelled.

9's motor was working hard: she was doing her best at 8 mph, the heat increasing, hitting against the white walls, oozing out the ports, clogging the ceiling: African, German heat. Heat of combat swung the machine.

Landel's burst, as Dennison cut through a hedgerow, accounted for men at an anti-tank gun: the men were assembling it, one was rigging the tripod, another hoisting the barrel: gun, knapsacks, rifles, and ammunition spun into the air. Machinegun slugs plowed into a fellow as he attempted to flee. With a half turn, Dennison rolled over the gun crew and crushed men and gun.

A shell burst beside 9.

Another detonation, and they were in the midst of a barrage, explosive forces yanking at the treads, hammering at the armor plate, slugging mud and gravel against the turret, smoke and acid penetrating inside.

The tank rocking, Dennison stopped until the smoke cleared: they stripped to the waist and dumped their shirts on seats and floor. The sky crackled. The sky flamed. Dennison let the engine idle--he felt the pressure of shellfire on his skull, outside and inside his skull.

Landel was firing: the recoil of his gun made him snap open his mouth and hang his jaw. The cab reeked of cordite and powder.

Move ... advance, Landel signalled.

Dennison worked the tank over rough ground, butting, rearing. He beat his hands on his knees to limber them. A shell hole gaped directly in front; he swung his bus expertly. His mind was numb: he was unafraid: he felt he would get Landel and Zinc through. When the tank stalled, the treads circling, circling, Dennison swore shrilly.

His hands felt greasy and he rubbed then over his trousers and on the seat cushion.

Landel signalled:

Left

Dennison watched the compass fluctuate, watched the gas gauge, the engine temperature: heat was climbing.

Smoke bombs were dropping.

Some bastard should bob up with a flame thrower, he told himself. Here he comes from behind that hedge. Look at those infantrymen retreating ... now we'll cross that plowed field ... other M4's ... cross together ... what did they raise here, wheat? Isn't that a horse over there, across the field?

As they advanced it was curious how the smoke trapped them and then exposed them. Several houses appeared out of the smoke trap; riflemen fronted one of the houses; others rushed into a small barn; a geyser of earth and smoke replaced the barn.

Dennison grinned when the barn disappeared.

He observed a grove of elm trees: are we lost? No grove was indicated on the maps! He tried to signal Landel but a plunge of the machine almost pitched him out of his seat. Shellfire sprayed white, like flung salt, over the line of vision.

Not on any map!

Up front someone was signalling: standing in the path of their tank he waved both arms. An officer? Some Nazi trick, Dennison thought. Then he saw another GI and identified them as Americans. The nearest GI had his helmet squashed over his eyes; stooping, he pointed to the ground. Hands upraised, he signalled stop.

Without hesitating he rushed to their bus and beat on a forward port. Landel let him inside.

"Minefields," the GI screamed.

"What?" Landel yelled. "Can't hear!"

"Minefield!" the sergeant yelled.

"Louder."'

The fellow grabbed at Landel's leg pad and scribbled on it:

TURN AROUND. STOP OTHERS. USE RADIO. MINEFIELD. SIGNAL OTHERS.

"No use turning our bus around," Landel shouted.

"Radio ... the radio," the sergeant shouted.

"Ok," Landel yelled, reading his lips.

Dennison took over the transmitter.

They had stopped near a woodland; other tanks grouped around them; the barrage had lifted.

It was chilly: the autumn air nipped their nakedness: they huddled behind their machines, talking, urinating, smoking: as soon as they could they donned shirts and jackets: the earth, they discovered, was peppered with apples, exploded from nearby trees--part of the woodland.

Zinc picked up a red-yellow apple, bit it, and smiled.

Dennison grinned as he bit one.

"Come on, Captain, have one!" Zinc said.

"Worms."

But he picked up an apple and found it delicious.

A crewman from their Corps, a corporal named Jim Moore, ran up, flopping his hands and jerking his head crazily.

"What the hell's the matter with you?" Dennison shouted.

Moore could not hear him, and yelled:

"Mine!"

"What?"

"Mine ... minefield."

"Yeah ... sure ... we know. That's why we're here, Jim. Have an apple!" Jim shuffled over, flopping his arms, coughing, lurching, eyes glazed.

"He's nuts!" Landel said.

His apple was wormy and he threw it down and tried another. Apples ... apples ... we stand around eating apples ... there's some way out of this ...

Biting and sucking the apple, he circled his tank, trying to get a lay of the land, looking for other GI's who might have information, instructions. Dennison had climbed inside, and was radioing: perhaps information was being broadcast. By now six machines had lined up along the woodland, some of them using foliage for camouflage.

Low flying planes ripped the sky.

Another tank approached Dennison and Zinc.

A GI's face was scrawled with grime and sweat, his helmet had been ripped; he carried shirt and jacket over his arm--the knuckles of one hand were bloody.

"Where's the mine?" he bellowed.

"Dunno," said Zinc.

"How many tanks we lost?"

"Where's the mine?"

"Apple?"

"What?"

"Have an apple."

"Can't hear ya."

"Sit down."

"Cigarette?"

"Had to wait ... dangerous..."

Landel appeared, mud on his clothes. Squatting by Zinc, he hollered:

"Get in the bus!"

"Wait?"

"No, get inside!"

"Hell no, let's wait here," Zinc objected.

"All of us inside ... we move!"

"Where?"

Nobody had a chance to hear that directive: a shell exploded: Zinc dropped his apple, picked it up, and cleaned it warily. Landel and Dennison settled onto their seats; the heat clamped around them: leaving the turret open had not cooled the bus.

Dennison had stuffed apples into his pockets ... what were they expecting, a signal? Landel unfolded his map, he munched an apple carefully, read his wristwatch, and wiped his face with the back of his hand. Grease streaked his jaw. He thought it must be blood till he stared at his fingernails. Sagged in his seat, Dennison saw him bite the apple, saw him dig grease from under his nails, welcoming this respite.

It wasn't so long ago Mother and I strolled about Heidelberg ... we had spent two or three weeks there, boating, climbing, sampling pastries, sight-seeing.

Munching his apple he began to despise the tank, began to fling his mind: Landel ... look at him, chewing away on his apple! Damn ass!

In Heidelberg they had strolled along the Neckar, boats and bridges, chinks of river between trees and houses.

She had sketched a castle that had a heraldic glove chiselled above the door.

A girl had waited on him in a shop, a slender girl, very blonde, very blue-eyed: a woman to lie with ...

Dreams ...

A GI brought Landel a message.

He read it and passed it to Dennison.

Head West. No minefields.

"I hope they know what they're doin'!" Dennison yelled.

West ... he consulted the compass.

Dennison warmed the motor and chewed an apple and swung 9 west, west across dry ground, climbing gradually. The treads beat down a hedgerow. The cab was getting hotter so they stripped and climbed and wormed 9 and filed through a woodland and crossed a field. The battle swept around them. Battle without immediate barrage. For Dennison driving became a matter of mechanical movement, goading of muscle, endurance of heat, tolerance of gasoline stink, smell of oil and gun powder ...

Dennison was amazed to see a flock of sparrows in a hedgerow.

At the top of a slope he saw Jeannette's face.

What are you doing there?

9 was working toward the port side.

He braked.

Dead Nazis lay in front, their bodies in a clot of equipment: they were sprawled in a maw of bicycles, smashed machine guns, duffle, rifles, coils of telephone wire, helmets.

Dennison remembered that their infantry had fought here yesterday. Last night's rain had soaked the dead men ... their bodies were sinking into the ground, into weeds and grass.

They blurred as he jazzed 9.

A saddle sloped below the tank and he nosed the bus along it seeing a machine gun emplacement on the next crest, its sandbagged front standing out. Dennison signalled Landel and Landel loaded his gun, swaying, grabbing for handholds, helmet slipping.

For a dozen yards the slope was easy going: it seemed to be sod all the way: then the ground leveled to a sort of pasture, oddly green, brilliantly green: vaguely, Dennison tried to figure out why the green was different: his brain was too tired to register. Green snagged at the treads and then he caught the flash of water; before he could swerve, before he could brake, he felt 9 sink.

No amount of power budged her.

Cleverness at the controls meant nothing: he reversed both treads, tried the port tread, tried the starboard tread, 9 bogged deeper and deeper. They were trapped in a runoff, a swampy catch basin--mud and water under tractionless treads. Sweat poured down Dennison's face and he wiped it from his eyes, scrutinizing Landel, aware now that Landel had been yelling at him as he struggled to extricate 9.

"God," he groaned, "we're stuck, sure as hell."

Stop, Landel signalled.

Grabbing a note, Dennison wrote:

Motor overheated

Landel scribbled:

Don't leave tank. Intercom out.

As he read the scrawl, Dennison thought he would rush outside: Landel's grey face and jittery scrawl maddened him; he thought angrily: we can't crawl out of here--we'll die in this hole. Then he recalled the machine gun emplacement above them.

He wiped his face--waited.

Bullets ripped across 9's cab: they crawled and re-crawled over the armor plating. Battening their ports they checked their ammunition, checked the fan, checked the turret bolts.

In a short time Landel returned their gunfire, using all of his skill: he lobbed four single shots, waited.

Dennison stumbled to the rear to urinate.

He bumped against Zinc who was clinging to his gun, blacked out: their half-naked bodies slapped. Locating their canteen, Dennison passed it to Zinc who drank, canteen tipped up, his eyes shut. Shoving Zinc into the driving seat, he took over his gun.

How good to stand up. Yet he had to fight off sleep. Swaying against the machine gun butt he drowsed, trusting Landel, Captain Fred Landel. If the bastards unlimbered an anti-tank gun or hurled grenades or mounted a flame thrower! If!

Probably the Nazis were trapped in their own emplacement.

Let somebody else wipe them out!

Anyhow, 9's beat. Battery weak.

Maybe another tank could drag her free.

Maybe ... a requiem of shells!

Tonight ... what time was it?

Tonight was a long way off.

He shivered and drowsed. Sleepily, he fingered his automatic, and found its steel warm.

... Bretten's bombardment seemed to be going on and on.

... The clock tower was still exploding.

... His world shifted, perception by perception.

... Christ, it had been a tussle, piloting the tank to the Roer River: debris: men and trucks: fog along the river: mental fog: like London fog: walked and walked in the fog: that was in Tunbridge (or was it Tunbridge?): that was the night he had slept with Raymonde: the hearth in her room had a Solomon's seal on each tile: they had talked and talked: warm: warmth of her body: nice little breasts: nice and warm: warm covers: Raymonde very tired: warm ...

... Strange--that hammering sound: mortar shells?

... Strange, Zinc asleep.

... Strange, to be an Ithacan!

He woke when a shell rocked the tank. He shouted.

He felt inside the stomach of death. When could they crawl out? Another shell whined. His throat tightened. He felt cold and buttoned his shirt and zippered his jacket and licked his lips and listened: was Landel shouting? Was it dark outside? It seemed to him that 9's motor was running. Bending over Zinc, he tested the switches. No, the motor was not running. Zinc was asleep.

Fumbling about, reaching for Dennison, Landel pulled him close and yelled:

"No ... they'll shoot you down."

"You stay ... try the radio ... I get nothing ... stay."

The flesh under Landel's eyes was quivering.

He realized he could not weather out their rescue: frantically, he clawed at the jacket: an hour, another hour.

"I'll make it ... get help. Fire my gun!"

"Hell, they'll cut you down."

"No ... they don't return my gunfire ... when I fire ... nothin!"

"A trick," Dennison warned.

"No," Landel said

"Hell," Dennison yelled.

Landel was gone.

Dennison lined up the emplacement, arching and depressing the gun accurately: there was no return fire when he fired. He fired again. Five minutes. Ten. No return fire.

Perhaps Landel had made it by now.

Dennison eased into the seat, wondering about Zinc.

He was still asleep; his sleeping face was repulsive; his warped body, his jockey body, was repulsive.

Eyes on the emplacement, he studied its arrangement of sandbags, ripped off branches, wilted and shredded leaves: he estimated that four or five men had done the job: why had they selected this location? The emplacement looked old, a week, a month. Some sort of rear guard. They could have depleted their stock of ammunition. They could have retreated.

He slept.

Zinc woke.

He fished in his pocket for an apple and ate it. Somewhere they had K-rations on board. Without lighting the cab (it was dark now), he brought out the rations and the canteen. They ate and slept. Fired guns and ate. Cheese, K, chocolate bars. Without tasting anything they ate everything. The radio was out because the battery was low. Water was oozing over the floor: the bus had sunk that far. They had to sit with their shoes on the dash or on the walls of the tank. As their hearing returned to normal they talked a little. It seemed to them that the radium hands of the chronometer were glued to the dial.

There was no shelling except in the distance.

It was colder.

Raising his jacket collar, Zinc thought of home: home and steam radiators, his dad smoking his pipe, the neighbor kids ... yeah, they poked fun at my hair ... Red ... Red ... banter across his dad's grocery counter ... why you little Jew pissant, how the hell are you? Heah, runt, reach me a box of saltine crackers ... no not that size ... the giant one....

At school they pestered him, name, age, color of hair ... His dad had said, over and over, get yourself a job, boy, the sooner the better. Life had been stupid until Millie came along, Millie and his boat. Millie wouldn't fail him: her letters (he tapped his pocket), kept him going.

Eyes on his machine gun slot, he mouthed chocolate and it adhered to his teeth and stuck between them and clotted his palate (the bar had threads on it from his pocket); he tongued the piece down with a sticky tongue.

He imagined himself thumbing a magazine, the fold-out of a naked girl: someday, soon, he'd have time to read the Sunday comics; someday he'd find a 32-footer in the classifieds, Buick engine, cabin good condition, sleeps 4, galley, 2-way radio--terms ... a price he could afford ... someday he'd open a deli and make damn good money.

Somehow the lull in the shelling became threatening: it was ugly, heavy, a part of the armor plate, part of the menace of the emplacement.

Dennison hunched his legs, unzippered his trousers, and picked lice from among his hairs. He searched with the help of his flash. On his belly the engine scar seemed to have a thicker scab; he tested the scab and scratched it soothingly.

He wanted to masturbate but something prevented him, perhaps the eye of the compass. He swayed, let himself sag, when he shoved back against the cushion the bent spring bothered him.

Apple cores floated on the water.

Change, that was it: war was change, if nothing else, the slap of rain, slug of wind, whistle of death. Fear had its changes too. Fear was possessive. Then change was possessive. Change ... you ate and slept and that was change.

Your scrotum shrank between your legs. Another change. Your genitals crawled inside your body. Your penis crawled in. Sometimes shellfire drove them in, penis and scrotum.

Sanctuary.

Abruptly, clearly, Jeannette spoke to him: "Orv, don't stare at the floor like that ... turn out your flash ... you've got to get out of that bus ... crawl out ... tell Zinc ... both of you have to leave ... do something about getting out ... get up..."

He dragged himself to the engine and leaned against it.

Can't stay here ... move!

Eyes to the periscope he submerged: below surface he observed his mother painting a watercolor, a stand of trees along the Nile, brilliant green against brilliant sun on the river: The torpedo raced toward Persepolis, sand, Persian sand, sun, flies, flies on the ruined city, flies in the shah's palace: another ruin to the starboard: flies on our food: the dune moved: this was Notre Dame, its buttresses bombed, water high along the apse: wasn't that bell from Claude Debussy's music?

Water had flooded the Louvre, or was it the bombings that had wrecked the building? Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa lay on the floor. Gold was washing over the frame: if he hurried he might save the painting. Save? How?

Hunkered over, cold, he felt he had been isolated for years: everywhere was the impenetrable: dazed, he sagged against the wall; then, peering out, he realized the sky was a flame above the emplacement. So Bretten was burning. Shelling grew distinct. Burning clouds seemed to be approaching.

Dennison regarded the sand bags for a long time.

"They're gone," he said to Zinc, hand on his shoulder.

"There's nobody up there. See. Look. Nothing. See in the light from the sky, nothing. Landel ran for it. He got away. Come on ... let's get out of this mess..."

Through wavering light from the town and the clouds he thought he saw somebody stumbling toward 9.

"Zinc, look, somebody's coming."

"Where?"

"It's Landel."

They waited, waited.

It was nobody and Zinc sank into pain. Dennison lit his flash and fumbled about for their canteen. Shaking its near-emptiness, he drank, then pushed it at Zinc, who drained it.

"Bah, it tastes bad."

"Let's go."

"Where?" Zinc asked.

"Look at the sky ... there's light enough for us to see ... Bretten's done for..."

"What about Landel?" Zinc asked.

"Hell with him!"

"Then, let's go."

He found his flash; the canteen was floating on the tank floor, cap off; Dennison unbolted the turret; as he spun a bolt he felt for his automatic; leaning down he yelled at Zinc:

"Have we any grenades?"

"No grenades."

Outside, in the protection of the tank, they saw that their shovels were still wired to the cab. They thought of putting the bus in action. Could be safer than wandering. What about the battery? Gas but not enough juice. Splashing in water they walked a few steps.

"Hopeless," said Dennison.

"Leave the damn thing."

Crewmen appeared--stepped out of the dark, the sky coloration on their helmets: there appeared to be eight or ten, plastered with mud, sopping, their flashlights hooded. A guy loosened his helmet strap and said:

"I'm Captain Kernie. You two alone?"

"Bogged down ... our bus..."

"No battery power," said Dennison.

"Gas?"

"Yeah, we lost two tanks ... nearby ... hey, Walt, get a battery ... get Mack to help you ... bring a battery ... we'll put this bus back in action..."

"Captain went for help, hours ago," Dennison said.

"What about the machine gun emplacement?" Zinc asked.

"My guys wiped it out ... crew's dead," said Kernie.

"Good."

"There's timber ... logs ... by the woods ... We'll put your bus on rollers ... have her out in no time."

Zinc unwired a shovel.

"We're in luck," said Dennison mournfully.

Light crept over Kernie's face, then face and light went. His men placed scraps, logs, branches, replaced the battery, the engine fired. Cab light went on. Zinc reloaded his gun--sleep at his elbows.

9 backfired, rocked, rolled, apple cores bobbed on the floor, floated toward the rear. Easing the bus forward, on a rise, the water began to drain. Someone in Kernie's gang banged on the driving port.

Dennison worked her to the starboard, slipping, slipping; but she began to climb, stuck, climbed. With a wild teetering the treads grabbed and rolled away, rolled steadily downhill, to solid ground. Kernie and his crewmen had melted away.

Zinc stood beside Dennison.

He mopped the periscope with a rag.

In the cab light, dial light, they smiled at each other.

The down terrain held tough: the land had been tilled but was sodded: 9 rolled through a maze of vineyards and truck gardens. When a hedgerow blocked their way, Dennison sliced through it, slewing. He followed the remains of a paved road. Smoke mushroomed. Instinctively, he wobbled the tank. A shell hole gaped. Then another. A shell careened, spraying shrapnel. The cushion crushed against Dennison's testicles and pain tore through his body and magnified the roar of the engine and the treads. Nauseated, he could not see: blobs shook in his brain. Bending over, he closed the ignition.

A shell threw dirt and rocks onto 9.

Mouth open, both waited, clinging to their seats.

Another shell whined, then became a rumble.

His will drained from him: the nerves in his arms and hands ached: he tried to talk to himself as earth spouted over the port side, another shell at the rear. Something rattled and clanged. Light spat: every aperture admitted flame: it glazed their hands, their faces, the walls, the instruments. Shrapnel pounded blows.

Recoiling, Zinc's brain slid in on itself, whimpering, grimacing like a monkey, something Neanderthalic: he doubled up on the floor by the engine, head on his arms, legs jerking: death was here!

Dennison jabbed his hands into his stomach: Christ, not to vomit. Opening his mouth over and over, he tried to lessen the concussions.

Why can't it stop? Stop ... yes ... this muck ... those arms in the sand, those flies on Robinson's arms ... dust, all that heat, arms, hands, wrists, arms ... we got away ... we got away ... got to get away from this ... I'm comin, back, Jean ... I'm going mad, Chuck and I.

"No, Zinc, I'm all right. Okay, the shelling's stopped ... I'll drive ... we'll make it out of this!"

What, what was this?

It was Paris ... and they were stripping her in the street, the beautiful Princesse de Lamballe ... they were hacking off her breasts ... they were hacking off her legs ... Do you speak French? May I help you, mademoiselle? Long live the guillotine! Vive la révolution!

Dennison saw his dad lying on the floor of his little Renault: he was seriously wounded: nobody was helping him: his tank lay on its side.

Dennison was urinating on the floor.

He would not drive the tank again: he would refuse to drive any tank: what could they do? They could do their damnedest and he would go AWOL. But now, now the shelling had stopped, just cut itself off, leaving a ditch of silence.

He tried to figure out the cessation: it seemed to him it was his duty to figure it out: he must unravel enigmas, supply answers. That was what life was for.

The bent springs in the cushion bored into his back and he leaned forward and wet his lips with his tongue. Fingers and arms trembling, he cupped his head in his hands, closed his eyes.

Miraculously--he felt he was a boy, playing the game he used to play, playing soldiers on the living room floor: he had his troop in line and rolled something against them and they reeled and fell, the entire line fell.

And something else: the half-frozen needle of a phonograph was spinning music for their skating on Beebe Lake, light-hearted music. The chimes of the library tower struck ten o'clock in solemn notes. A girl was skating with him, Cathy Bowers: her slip-on sweater hugged her, they hugged each other, circling the lake quickly, their skates scraping softly.

But it was over ...

The barrage was over; yet he could not stir; he began to count the minutes on the chronometer; the greenish face of the chronometer was trying to say something; he inched forward a little, inched more, pushed the brake lever. Presently, he considered all of the dials:

Got to check, got to see where the shell hit us, got to estimate ... estimate the damage ... got to climb out ... put on my flash ... climb ...

He signalled Zinc with his flash; Zinc responded; together they left the bus, the air acrid with smoke, as if burned in a filthy oven, raw with slugged mud.

At the bow, with dimmed lights, they stooped over the starboard tread. Then the port tread. Plates had been torn out and the entire tread had been folded back like a strip of hide: there was no power there: they could do nothing to restore mobility.

Dennison motioned Zinc inside the cab.

"I'll destroy our maps," he said.

"What? Couldn't hear you."

He could not repeat himself.

Risking interior lights, he gathered the maps, ripped them into shreds, tramped them underfoot. Thinking of clips for his automatic he shoved them into his pocket. His helmet. Jacket. Was that all? No canteen? No thermos? No apples?

"Okay," he said.

"The ammunition," Zinc yelled.

"Leave it."

"Not much ... outside."

He hurled his belts; Dennison threw out Landel's shells; the floor was a mess of sludge and they slipped as they worked.

"Put out the lights."

"Lights out."

Behind the bus they crouched down for cigarettes: as Zinc lit his fag something expanded inside him: a vague, battered sense of freedom: freedom? He wasn't sure what kind it might be. He sucked in smoke, looked up: something was there?

Dennison felt no loss: he had had enough of 9: enough, enough, that thought continued as they slogged down a slope: he was sorry for his Isaac Jacobs, so small, so vulnerable: he led him across barren fields, toward the Roer, expecting shellfire, expecting death.

It was a long way to the Roer River, black-walking. They had to avoid corpses, had to avoid barbed wire, shell holes: their dimmed lights were sometimes useless. They thought they remembered a farm house and argued about it, then stumbled on, uncertain. Seeing lights they became more cautious, stopping, waiting, listening. MP's challenged them, and one of them acted as guide to the remnants of their division.

Men from the Corps had bedded down in a barn; they might be crowded there; somebody suggested the country church: there was room at the rear: shellfire had blasted the small, gothic thing: its altar was a contrivance of boards and tarp and cross. They entered through a gaping wall. Windows of antique glass remained: blue, rose, yellow, mauve against the night. Both stopped to see leaded glass on bits of steel.

Dennison recognized Landel, woebegone on a pew, his head and neck bandaged, face drawn, hand to his mouth, his beard peppered with grey. A medic was adjusting his neck bandage, talking.

Dennison had hoped Landel was dead.

He refrained from speaking to him: motionless, wanting to sit or lie down, he rubbed his hands over his jacket, unsteady, hating his grime: he smelt his own stench: he craved a drink. Zinc, too, hesitated, ready to buckle from fatigue.

GI's sprawled on pews, lay in the aisles, sat on the altar platform: they were sleeping, eating, talking, smoking, bedding down. The beautiful window had died. Coleman lanterns sputtered on tables, pews, ledges. Dennison and Zinc headed for the altar where there seemed to be space to lie down. Before they could reach it, Fred Landel saw them, approached them.

"Hey, you guys!" he shouted, his neck injury paining him. "What's eating you? How'd you make out?"

Zinc faced about, without a word, helmetless, his filthy face and clothes a little dirtier than most of the others.

Dennison looked at Landel scornfully.

Landel's eyes were bloodshot; he, too, was filthy, mud-spattered; he raised an arm, stopped, resentful of his crewmen, aware, by their attitudes, they had marked him off.

"Couldn't find help ... shrapnel hit me..." Why should I make excuses: can't they see? "What happened to 9?"

"Tank's done for," Dennison yelled.

"You guys just walk off and leave it?"

"Naw, we put it in mothballs!" Zinc cracked.

Landel took a long look at him.

"Shell hit us ... we lost a tread," said Dennison.

"Lost a tread," Zinc repeated, smiling, knowing that sleep was going to knock him out at any moment.

"I'll get us another machine," Landel yelled.

Pain was flashing through his head; he walked to a pew and sank down on it, moaning. Far off, he heard Dennison say something about getting washed, getting something to eat, Landel wasn't sure.

Okay ... okay ... am I crackin' up? There were slits in the floor, cracks, slits ... a cockroach was busy ... there had been swarms of cockroaches in Panama, cockroaches, fever, heat. Arm hooked over his eyes, lying on the pew, he sank into a fitful sleep.

Dennison and Zinc found a wash basin and some soap, and then ate, ate without exchanging a word, nine of them at a table made out of a door, an army cook doling grub: the men humped over their food, jaws mechanical: stew ... canned peaches ... bread ... coffee.

Dennison hoped that food would stop a cramp in his belly. His eyes fixed on a fork: it seemed to him that the tines were moving, the handle was forming a half circle. Something peeled off in his mind: he felt he was at home: the fork had a "D" on it: Mama was humming in the kitchen: there were candles on their dining table: he felt about in his pocket for a pack of matches to light them.

More GI's jammed the church, most of them yammering for food.

"Jesus Chriz ... if it ain't Dennison! Hiya!"

"Hi, Pete ... Hi, Vic ... ,"

Pete and Vic were tankmen out of Sherman 446, grizzled, smiling, punch drunk; they had participated in attacks with Dennison, always helpful: both were New Yorkers, Vic had been a physics major at NYU, Pete was a cutter, in a suit shop, in Harlem.

"How did you guys make out?" Pete asked.

"We lost our bus."

"9?"

"Yeah." Dennison was biting a section of a peach.

"What's news about the minefield?" Zinc asked.

"We lost twenty-three," said Vic, squeezing himself in at the table.

"Twenty-three tanks?" yelled Dennison.

"Twenty-three men," Vic said. "Wounded ... dead ... don't know how many..." Elbows on the table he covered his face with his hands. Near him a pot of stew was puffing.

"It's been a hell of a day!" said Pete, standing behind Dennison. "They had their minefield planned ... they know they're licked but they make us fight on and on. Dumb. All that waste of life." He picked his nose mournfully, his bleary eyes on the crowded church, the milling GI's, the men at the door-table.

"Bretten's ours," said a lieutenant at the table. "We took it a couple hours ago."

"Will there be street fighting?" someone asked.

"I don't know."

"Jus' lemme sleep," said Zinc, liking his cup of coffee. God, it smelled good.

"The Germans are burning their towns as they retreat," someone said.

"We've got them on the run!" said Vic.

Vic and Pete ate, others left the table, an officer was asleep over his food; medics sat down, complaining of lack of supplies.

Dennison and Zinc bedded down on hay and straw, a light from a Coleman somewhere in the distance, Red Cross men aiding the wounded, a GI on guard, in case of fire. Soon every sag in the hay and straw slept a man. A sergeant had his bazooka beside him. Someone, screwed up in his fatigues, curled up tight as a ball, had a puppy in his arms.

There was no such thing as a peaceful interval: men came and went throughout the night: a wounded man died: a patrol was lugged in on a stretcher: doctors whispered and hovered: toward morning there was a lull and during that lull water began to spread throughout the church. Someone thought it was the rain ... but it was not raining. The fire guard saw straw drifting on the water, then he observed a man's boot floating by: getting up he splashed about, mumbling, asking questions, mumbling:

"Lie still over there ... I'll find out what's wrong ... no, it ain't rainin' ... maybe it poured somewhere nearby ... sure a lot a water comin' in from somewhere..."

With his flash he waded outside: water had inundated the yard in front of the church and it seemed to be inches deep: as the guard stood on the lowest step a GI splashed by, with a lantern, rifle crooked in his arm.

"Heh, what's up?"

"River's flooding," the GI bellowed.

Someone with a racking cough warned the guard the Roer was rising rapidly: Nazi's are flooding us out. Inside the church the guard began waking men, asking everyone to spread the word: already the water was ankle deep. The wounded had to be shifted at once. Lights and flashlights took over. All of the pews had water around them.

The general hubbub woke Dennison.

"We're being flooded out," someone explained.

Dennison woke Zinc.

Grabbing his shoes and jacket, he scrambled higher on the pile of straw and hay; putting on his shoes he hollered at the men around him.

"Where do we go?"

"Outside."

"What for?"

"Everybody out!"

"Almost dawn."

"Yeah, gettin' light."

Dennison spotted Landel and waded across flooded straw to wake him: he woke with a groan and grabbed at his head and neck.

"We're being flooded ... it's the Nazis ... they've opened steel flood gates up the river ... the Roer's flooding ... it's on the radio," Dennison shouted.

Icy water eddied about Landel's pew where other men lay: the swift moving water carried straw, hay, a man's jacket, wood chips, towels, bandages.

"Too many flashlights!" somebody yelled.

"Douse the lights!"

"Give a guy a chance!"

"There's a hill behind the church ... everybody's going there!"

Men were evacuating GI's on stretchers.

Outside, it was cold but windless, the stars were numerous around a new moon. A jeep soused through the rising flood, its black-out lights weak. Shelling had resumed but it was in the distance. Lights flickered behind the ruined church: at the rear of the building a truck was loading wounded.

Dennison returned to the church to aid a wounded youngster who had a serious stomach laceration: he got him a new blanket, water, and found him an orderly ...

" ... got hit at a minefield ... got me bad ... Eeee ... not hard, Doc. Not so hard, like ... Eeee..."

The orderly very abrupt, very savage, told the tanker to shut up, lie down.

The fellow stared at Dennison and then at the medic: he stared beardedly at the ceiling as the doctor gave him an injection: he had the face of someone who had suffered malnutrition most of his life.

"See if you can get him into a truck or ambulance," the doctor suggested, limping off through the icy water.

Dennison secured stretcher bearers.

Landel had disappeared. Zinc was nowhere. Someone squawked a walkie-talkie and the two-way sputtering began as officers conferred by the tarpaulined altar, water already at the steps; all lights had dimmed; it was almost day.

Going outside to piss, Dennison heard a puppy whimpering; at first he could not see it, then there it was, at his feet, padding through muck. Lifting it, he recognized it as the stray the officer had been holding. The collie pup's belly and paws were cold; it cried and snuggled; Dennison popped it underneath his jacket. He was comforting it when Zinc tapped him on the arm.

" ... Radio says that sluice gates on the Roer were opened during the night ... our whole area is flooded ... hell ... You an' me an' Landel are to transport wounded guys in a Lee." Zinc was playing with the pup's ears. "Where'd you pick up this lil guy?"

"Here ... in the water."

"Whatcha gonna do with him?"

"Stash him in the church ... leave him..."

"The river's a mile or two wide in places," Zinc said.

"Do you know where the tank is--the one we're to use?"

"Sure ... I know."

"Let's go," Dennison said. Reentering the church, he placed the pup on a pew. "Gotta go, old boy ... gotta go ... just stay there and yelp."

A lingering glance at the antique windows, then he followed Zinc toward the hill behind the church: a ditch drenched them to the knees: swearing, they floundered ahead, past a group of tanks, to the Lee, higher on the slope, out of the menacing flood water.

"That's her!" Zinc yelled.

"Okay."

Fred Landel was inside, in the driver's seat, warming the motor: the cab was jammed with wounded, some standing, leaning against walls, some on the floor, huddled against each other.

"Where do we go?" Dennison asked Landel, mouth to his ear.

"You drive!" said Landel. "We go to Gex ... I have the map ... I know the route ... take a long look at those red lines; let's pull out of this goddamn place ... lights out ... we leave the wounded at a Red Cross station ... (he jabbed the map with his forefinger) ... I'll let you know ... sit down ... check the dials ... lights out ... this bus has had it rough..."

As they got rolling, the sunlight was filtering, but the clouds were thick and seemed on the verge of blanketing the sun. Dennison drove carefully, trying to familiarize himself with the Lee: he had piloted others but this one was different and he wanted to work out any differences; the engine power, the tread maneuverability, gear shift, traction, carburetion? He had tried to memorize the route and compelled his mind to re-establish landmarks.

God, it was raining!

Rain and more mud, lousy traction, anything to foul us up! The Lee was climbing a slope, doing well: no flooding here. Beyond this slope there was supposed to be a road; he was to follow that paved road, toward Gex. Yeah, there it was ... a road, trees, fences, farms in the distance.

"You'll have to help me," a fellow screamed, grabbing at Dennison's leg. "It's my knee ... shrapnel ... Aaah-hhh!" Pain-sobs gushed out of him as he pawed at Dennison. Dennison slowed and stopped the tank.

"Let me see your knee," he yelled.

His kneecap was dangling, bleeding: Dennison and Landel could do no more than press it into position, re-bandage. Dennison crouched beside him, using his flashlight: again and again he was aware of leaves, leaves and sunlight: he was not sure where. The GI was sobbing.

A Red Cross official beat on the forward door; Landel admitted him; somehow he managed to find room, his face rain streaked, satchel in his arms, a bayou figure: the gaze fixed on some everglade of the mind.

Okay, Landel signalled.

Okay.

Landel felt the jolting of the bus: pain, from his neck wound, was beating through him.

"Where?" the Red Cross man asked.

"Gex."

The Lee crawled by a winery, a bombed complex, dinosaur ribs of buildings, passed rows of barrels, tall grass waving in the rain: some of the barrels were moulded: the road curved in a long curve; there, at the apex of the curve, was the Red Cross station, aerial designation and the familiar flag. No one appeared.

An ambulance had a jack under its differential.

Landel, Zinc and Dennison assisted the wounded; they climbed out; Landel climbed back into heat, began checking their armament, began arming his gun.

Dennison glared numbly at a strip of black sky as he drove away. Zinc fussed about with his gun, pleased that he had space to move around. Landel, making every effort to shake his pain, hanging to the sides of his seat, was remembering Panama, nights of pleasantry, dancing, Cuba Libres, marimbas, time, that was the time, time for a cigarette, time for a drink.

A shell boomed in front.

Widening his ports, Dennison observed a Sherman ejecting shoelaces of black smoke; as he drew nearer flames spouted and enveloped the tank completely.

Go on, came the signal.

Dennison leaned back in his seat and wet his lips with his tongue ... destroy ... shall we destroy?

I suppose there's a lot of tall grass in Wisconsin.

She wants ...

The terrain is solid ... no road ... fields ... Gex is a mile or so in front ... the radio was crackling ... Landel at the dials ... the Lee rolled and rolled again ... they passed under trees ... they passed a giant barn with two cows visible in a stall ... there were no hedgerows ... they passed a country school ... they passed a row of burning homes and rolled into Gex ...

Gex ... Gex ... what about the guys who had burned to death in that Sherman?

Gex ...

God, it was raining hard.

An awkward four-legged windmill was batting at the rain.

"Gex, Gex!" exclaimed Landel, and closed his eyes and hung on, worried that the gas indicator was so low.

Gex was smoke and paved streets and ravaged buildings, a man fleeing, a gunnysack over his shoulder. Girders jabbed out of ripped apartments. Burning beams smoked in cottages. In a hotel fire escapes were twisted. Again more smoke ...

A squad of riflemen sniped from a smashed grocery.

"Get them," Landel ordered.

Their guns began to pound and Dennison wormed his bus closer and closer to the grocery: the bow crushed its windows and wall: the bow seemed to be raiding for meat and potatoes. Gunfire shredded the glass counters. Machinegun bullets cut down the store's sign: it fell. Bullets tore into a refrigerator.

No riflemen escaped.

A narrow street, trees along one side ...

Dennison read bakery and meat market and wondered when he would sidle up to a counter and order a loaf of whole wheat..."four center-cut pork chops." And in the coffee shop, how about liverwurst and beer?

What a way to enter a town! Gex: who wanted Gex? What would the USA do with Gex? Right now, a beefsteak was worth more!

"Who's that guy?" he yelled on the intercom.

A helmeted GI blocked a doorway in a ruined building and flagged the tank; other GI's spewed from an aperture left by a shell; Dennison hesitated to stop the Lee under the riddled wall, yet he obeyed.

Inside de-ribbed apartments he saw a fireplace, book shelves, shoes on a carpeted floor, clothes on wardrobe hangers, a toilet ... on a brass plate: Dr. Horace Kreutger, Child Specialist. A church dome glistened in a sewage of light.

The helmeted GI in the doorway was signalling ...

Starboard ... sharpshooters ... balcony ... port.

Dennison sent the bus to the port, crawled over garbage in an alley, saw a piece of sky, and then the sharpshooters on a grilled balcony.

Zinc fired and a fellow sagged to his knee, another dropped his rifle on the balcony floor, another began dragging a wounded comrade, both crawling on hands and knees: the wounded man seemed to be shouting: his dentures popped from his mouth, bounced and smashed in the street. Landel killed the remaining pair.

A GI appeared, wig-wagging, a walkie-talkie in his big, hairy arms, his helmet cockeyed. Reporting into his w-t he paced the Lee; as it swung onto a main street, the motor responded sluggishly, as if running out of gas, and Dennison worked the choke. As he glanced through the periscope he noticed the GI walking on the sidewalk, swinging one arm, talking as he walked. A shell exploded: the GI, his w-t, bones and flesh splattered across the walk. Another 77 blew up the paving in front of the Lee: a roof collapsed, mixing steel and concrete.

Dennison reversed.

Following the main street, deserted shops and stores on both sides, he saw something drop from a second floor--a mattress. It fell across the tank's prow, swayed, fell again.

Dennison rammed an empty swastika jeep. From second floors machine guns raked a GI patrol, wiping it out, the men dying in the gutters.

Telephone wires whipped around a lamppost.

It was no longer raining.

Landel began directing Zinc: their guns accounted for several SS outside a drugstore. Waiting for smoke to clear, Dennison moved along the street where machine gunners were mounting their gun in a building named Zorn: ZORN was carved on the fa?ade in tall letters: under shellfire, Zorn crumbled as they passed.

For Dennison, the grief of other attacks was returning, muddled, violent, hobnailing his brain.

This is our last attack, he told himself: gasoline low: stop: not any more: not any more: Gex is a ruin: we'll be able to rest ... rest ... a little rest ...

Mouth open, he longed for a cool drink, remembering the apple cores floating on the floor of 9.

Who was that walking along the street?

Jeannette, get off the street!

Jean ... what are you doing here?

Can't you hear me?

Oh, Christ, my head!

He bent forward and wet his lips with his tongue.

Before he could stop the tank it plowed into a wall and stopped with a great shock. Landel screamed. Zinc fell. Landel grabbed hold of Dennison and beat him with his fists, the pain in his wound galloping through his body. He sobbed and babbled; Zinc had to yank him off, and restrain him.

"What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you?" Landel shouted.

Dennison could not figure out what had happened: he could not understand why the Lee was out of action: he asked Zinc if they had been hit.

In spite of his deafness, he heard Landel ask:

"Why did you ram the wall?"

"Do what?"

"Why did you hit the wall?"

Dennison waited for several seconds.

"I don't know what happened."

"You rammed into this wall--you fool!"

"I went blank."

"Let 'im alone!" Zinc shouted.

"Shut up!" Landel yelled.

"I went blank .... that's all," Dennison repeated.

They rested a few minutes and then began creeping along, patrolling the main street, under radio orders, their guns silent, the enemy nowhere. Stopping at a barricaded intersection, where trees had fallen under bombing, where heaps of rubble smoked, the radio announced the official take-over of Gex.

They were radio-ordered to park with other machines under trees fringing a town garden: roses and shell holes, benches and crushed benches, paths that stopped suddenly: a small bronze figure was still upright under branches: the three men crawled from their cab and sat on a low stone wall, faces black, clothes grease-caked, bloody.

Zinc showed Dennison a gashed hand.

"How did you get hit?"

"Oh ... I dunno."

"Need some iodine?"

"Umm."

"Open your hand."

"Can't."

"Open it, Isaac."

Zinc grinned boyishly.

Tenderly, Dennison opened Zinc's hand; he found an emergency kit in the Lee and cleaned the wound: all of the time he felt the fresh air on his face and realized he was breathing something worth breathing. He promised himself he would soon have something to eat.

"Shall I bandage it tighter?"

"No ... like it is."

"Okay now?"

"Yeah ... but awful tired."

"Me too."

"Where's Landel?"

"Gone for water."

"Ah."

A little later, Zinc said:

"I'm gonna marry Millie when I get back."

"What?" Dennison cried.

"Nuthin'."

Landel offered them water from a thermos.

"I've had some ... it's okay."

Zinc drank, Dennison drank, then it went the rounds once more.

"I'm beat," Landel said.

They nodded.

That night, after grub, they slept in a handsome 17th century residence near the park, in a bedroom on the second floor, under elegant drapes, elegant table cloths, in mahogany beds: a silent place, gilded wallpaper, ormolu furniture, golden carpet. Before falling asleep, Zinc washed and scrubbed with perfumed soap in a basin painted with forget-me-nots. In his sleep he thought of his boat, an ephemeral boat, but it was his boat ... he dreamed of a wedding ceremony, people tossing rice ... his injured hand relaxed ... but his face burned and his head throbbed violently from time to time.

Landel slept uneasily in his bed, a feverish night: he had gulped down aspirin from the emergency kit, then he added codeine, a double dose in the night: tomorrow, he asked himself, tomorrow? He was unsure. How could he continue?

For Dennison it was a problem to relax: he floated on his mattress, under the layers of drapery: his subconscious was uncomfortable: he heard his mother say:

"I think we've had more snow this year than we've had for years."

Of course this was played back a number of times.

In another dream a man whispered:

"Jeannette ... Jean..."

She was sitting on the grass by a lake, a picnic basket beside her, a blue scarf around her head: her eyes were marvelously blue: she was smiling: she was saying with her smile: come on, lunch is ready, let's eat.

"Darling," he said, aloud.

He awoke, shivering, angry with himself for having slept without his jacket. Putting it on, he climbed back into bed, and pulled the draperies closer, a rumble of low-flying bombers shaking the room.

... They continued to fight in Germany.

... Christmas was dead and gone.

... Time?

Eight Shermans boiled along an autobahn, the paving was excellent, one gradual curve sliding into another. Telephone lines, on stubby poles, wandered across fields into a weak sun. Villages lay upside down in a river.

As he drove, Dennison thought of shaving, recalled the whiff of Yardley soap, the rasp of his razor. Maybe, someday, somewhere, an electric shaver ... maybe after shave lotion ... maybe ...

He was doing thirty-five, thirty-seven, third in line, in the left lane. Heat boiled on its endless tread; noise rushed under the floor, rushed overhead, rushed along the walls.

They had a new crewman, a fellow from Chicago, a swarthy, husky outfielder, smart, good-natured, with a shock of black hair and black eyes: Paul Murphy; PM, the guys called him.

PM was hanging onto Dennison's driving seat as the freeway peeled by: he was reading the speedometer, tickled by Dennison's skill and recklessness. His eyes glistened; there was a silly grin on his face; he wanted to be able to drive a tank like this. As the bus rocked along smoothly, approaching fifty, he waved his arm at Zinc.

But Landel was squirming, resentful of such speed: he could think of a dozen reasons for disaster: his neck ached and he did not look forward to a ghastly jolt. For several weeks he had been sneaking off, drinking heavily, talking little: he was involved in the art of deception--the alcoholic's art. He bellowed through the phone, "cut your speed," then slumped against the armor plate, mouthing a small flask.

He bellowed again, this time at PM, signalling him to his machine gun.

God, Dennison thought, he doesn't leave anybody alone.

Dennison had requested a transfer--any unit: after his injury at the Roer River, Landel was often violent, word and action. He often fell asleep on duty. During some of his binges he went homo.

"Maybe he figured I was someone else," Dennison told Zinc. "Did he come at you?"

"Sure ... sure! But, lord, I haven't cracked up yet! We'll wrangle transfers, you and I. Have to..."

The driver in front of Dennison was losing speed: he was far to the right, too close to the shoulder.

"Steady, steady," Dennison mumbled to himself. "If you go slower, make it steady ... watch yourself."

What's the number on his turret: 6 ... 7 ... 67? Is that right? The 67 was nearly obliterated. The tank's armor was rust colored, mud and grease smeared, but somebody, at a depot or relay point, had slapped on yellow paint across one side and it was as though the machine sported a yellow crab, its pincers toward the prow.

So Chuck Hitchcock killed himself in a Brooklyn hospital! ... poor guy! Made it to the fire escape, blind as he was! Ten floors. God, to drop ten floors. Three seconds. Right on a paved driveway. He was out of his mind. Perhaps not. Dennison had Jeannette's note--dirty and crumpled--in his billfold. Had it for days, unable to reply. Where was he to get it mailed? In Berlin? What was there to say? What did she expect? Dear Jean: so sorry your brother bumped himself off! With those sightless eyes of his, what could he do? Not even Cyclops!

Better off.

With a jerk, 67 swung violently to starboard: its starboard tread left the highway, and the machine seemed to balance on one tread, race on one; then the highway shoulder crumbled and the bus spun over and over into a gravelled ditch, to stop bottom-up: the whole thing registering on Dennison, sucked inside his brain through his driving viewer.

"Tank over!" he bellowed, braking his machine gradually. He yanked Landel's arm, and shook it. "She'll catch fire," he bellowed. "Landel ... 67's in the ditch! Rolled over fast! Can we open her hatches?"

He was yelling at himself.

Landel was alert.

A tread of their tank sank and Dennison yanked her straight, centered her on the road, slowed, and brought her to a halt behind 67, smoke belching from the upended machine.

Sweat was running down his face and he wiped it off as he unstrapped his seatbelt.

The blow must have stunned 67's crew: Ben was there: his shoulder injury would cripple him: Carson was there ...

The men were dumped together between machine guns, cannon, ammunition, thermos, gasoline, wrenches, oil, heat.

Dennison was alongside the Lee.

From their firebox at the rear, he grabbed two Pyrenes: he handed one to Zinc and raced for 67, slipping on mud: he dropped the extinguisher but snatched it and squirted chemicals on the yellow paint smear, on the turret.

"Somebody get a shovel ... hunt for a crowbar ... tear open ... let them out! Smoke's choking them ... they can't see a thing!

"Here, PM, squirt this on the motor area," he shouted: he realized that PM could not hear and he shoved the extinguisher into his hands.

He began to unwire a crowbar from his own machine, his fingers awkward; he tried to steady himself; smoke was ballooning; the Pyrenes were whitening the smoke. Using all his strength he wrenched off the bar and rushed back to 67. Machinegun bullets were bursting inside. Now Landel was discharging an extinguisher.

PM had run back to his bus. Now he nosed 67 over: with a huge thud, and a great cloud of white smoke, she flopped onto her side. Another tankman attempted to beat open a driving slot, to admit air.

Handkerchief over his face, Dennison climbed onto 67, to force a hatch. Somebody might be there, ready to be dragged out. Hell, the guys couldn't see!

Raising his bar he rammed it: smoke blinded him but he struck again: the steel rebounded: there was less smoke: he struggled to breathe: probably they were dead: Carson, Ben, Townsend, Lee, Arthur. Yet there might be a chance ... must be a chance ... must be ...

Slipping, he fell off the tank and somebody helped him up, and he whirled for one of the forward ports. Sweat drenched his hands and face. He gripped the bar tighter and drove at the little door and it seemed to give and he hammered at it again, coughing.

I've got a crack ... lean forward ... hit closer to the rim ... can't see ...

His handkerchief dropped. He couldn't stop coughing. When smoke blew away he looked about and saw that nobody was using the extinguishers: were they empty? Everyone had backed away.

Goddammit ... I'll open that starboard door ... I'll hack it open with my bare hands!

He rammed and the door yielded. He slammed at it again and it gave a hair. He hit it again with every ounce of muscle. His hands slipped and he almost toppled.

He hit nearer the lock: a steel shaving gave way: hurling himself against the bar, the lock snapped; he pressed down, and the door opened.

Breathing in gasps, he threw the little door wide.

Smoke, black smoke, crawled out of the cab.

Crewmen pushed Dennison aside and crowded close to 67. Leaning against his tank, Dennison watched them, unseeing, unmoving: glad to be away from 67. He wanted water but could not ask for it. In spite of himself he vomited green slime.

Too late ... there's nothing anybody can do ... I was too late.

Nobody can crawl inside: the guys are dead: they've been dead for ... it's done: it's over: maybe that's something:

"It's over," he yelled.

Ben and his injured shoulder: Ben said he was going to get well: Ben was majoring in math ...

Carson was a nice guy ...

Arthur said I'm the one and future king ...

Dennison coughed and blinked and walked about and wet his lips with his tongue.

"You nearly got yourself killed," Landel barked at Dennison. He waved his fire extinguisher at 67. "They're dead ... fried to a crisp ... you were a damn fool!"

Dennison barely understood ... he nodded.

Rubbing his eyes, he tried to lessen the sting of the smoke, the acid of burning rubber, the force of fear ... Presently, he saw Zinc beside him with a canteen of water in his hands.

"Drink."

He helped Dennison swab his face and sop his neck, his own hands trembling; he appeared a little idiotic without his helmet, his hair going every which way, but he smiled insanely. Grease streaked his forehead and beard and one ear was blobbed with oil.

All tanks had halted: tankmen sat and lay on the freeway or on the shoulder: the sun was ugly in a salve-like cloud: in a woodland a B-29 hung in some trees, strips of wing metal flashing.

Harold Stragoni, in one of the last tanks to pull up, hurried to Dennison and Zinc.

"Is that your tank ... did you lose your tank?"

"No."

"67 turned over ... burned."

"Hit by a shell?"

"Turned over."

PM came up.

"I looked inside ... with my flash ... they're incinerated to nuthin' ... clothes all burned ... It's too hot to climb inside..."

Zinc inspected the machine: walking around it, he noticed the yellow paint, flaked grease, dented armor, damaged cannon, a broken grouser. In Akron there had been a truck crash, the cab catching fire--this same incineration. In spite of that vivid Ohio memory he wanted a glimpse of Arthur--no matter how charred. Arthur was a man ... but Zinc could not identify anyone: just reddish stuff, a leather helmet, a hand, guns. Sadly, he rejoined Dennison and they lit cigarettes.

"There was a broken grouser ... maybe that caused 'er to flip," said Zinc mournfully.

"Maybe."

Landel fished his binocular from its case; focusing it he scrutinized the woodland, the intervening fields, a remote farm, its heap of manure, haystacks.

"We ought to bury our guys," someone said.

"Yeah ... let's bury them," Stragoni said, filling his pipe, shaking tobacco back into a leather pouch.

"Nobody's gonna bury them!" Landel yelled. "They're buried already." Fools for sentiment. "We've got to shove out of here. We'll be spotted ... our buses all along the highway!"

Near a wire gate he caught a solitary figure: the figure reminded him of his father before they imprisoned him: the field man had the same defeated air, the same stoop.

Their company commander, Colonel Fraser, bumped up in a fast jeep: he and his staff did not have much to say: his brown, middle-aged face expressed great chagrin: maps under his arm he checked 67, one of his lieutenants scribbling in a field book.

"You were right behind her," he said to Landel. "Did you see her go over?"

"I didn't see her go over."

"I saw her ... she seemed to travel on one tread ... drop to the shoulder ... maybe a broken tread," Dennison said.

Landel grasped the Colonel's shoulder:

"Here, here ... look..."

He pressed his binocular into Fraser's hand.

"See ... see that M129, dangling in those trees ... they're readying a mortar there ... we've got to clear out!"

He began gesturing, calling to the crewmen:

"Out of here ... everybody ... into the tanks ... mortar fire!"

He hustled from man to man. By the time Fraser had spotted the mortar, Landel had men bee-lining.

Fraser ordered the tanks to roll. He and his staff piled into their jeep.

Dennison tossed the crowbar onto the floor of their machine, swung into the bus, dropped wearily onto the driving seat. He permitted himself time for a long, long swig: water was incredible. When you're dead you don't drink much, he told himself. He passed the canteen to Zinc who passed it to Landel.

"Goddamn the Wehrmacht!" Landel shouted.

Water wet his fingers and wrists, rolled off oil and grease.

"What hellish luck!" Dennison shouted.

"Let's go!" Landel yelled.

Switch on, the cylinders whammed into action; other tanks had raced ahead; in an instant Dennison passed 67; as they roared on a mortar shell exploded far from its target, geysering dirt.

This section of the autobahn had been shelled and Dennison kept the bus at thirty, leery of potholes, treads rolling in unison, the motor synchronizing, the highway a slant of light.

Jeez, he thought, we didn't get away any too soon!

He scrunched deeper into his seat, wanting to ease his shoulders: that crowbarring had been rough! Well, here was one up for Fred Landel, old eagle eye! The grumbling of the engine was satisfying. This bus was in order.

A sign read 8 K Olpe.

"Olpe!" Dennison muttered through the phone.

"What?" Zinc yelled.

"Olpe ... Olpe lies ahead!"

He knew exactly what lay ahead because he had seen so many ruined towns: pulped houses, streets galled and scrambled, downed trees, power plant in bits, splintered telephone poles, church sheltering a crucifix.

Ten dead lay on the road: he recognized their uniforms: he knew, as he drove past them, that some of the men had been riding motorcycles and bicycles. Their motorcycles had swastikas on their sidecars.

The sign read 7 K Olpe.

World world, went the treads.

Water dripping from a brown jar is white, he thought. Honey in a comb is thick. Goat's milk tastes strong. The desert is yellow in places, streaked, as though the mistral had ... yeah, and those fly-coated arms in the wadi...

Robinson's arms raced ahead on the autobahn, raced the tank, very white, flecked with sand...

Chuck was good at assembling an automatic rifle...

How far was it he could throw a grenade?

Dennison's back was paining him more acutely: he felt the drag of the crowbar, the weight and friction of it:

Gonna be lame tomorrow, lame in my arms and back.

Tomorrow, tomorrow I'll be back in E ... I'll stroll along the Nonette ... that book in the attic ... Chateaubriand ... she had read Atala to him, dwelling on the most melancholy passages ... Atala's burial ... that book in the attic ... I'll re-read those passages ... book bound in red leather ... memories from ...

His head was throbbing as they entered Olpe, a yellow cat crouching in front of someone's empty cottage. It spat at the crewmen as they climbed out, parked to grab some air: the town was dead: alone, on a slab of masonry, Dennison rested his head on one hand. Other tanks rolled in, stopped. It would be dark in an hour or so. They would be eating soon?

How he wanted the roar of the tank to seep out of his brain, wanted some of the filth to ooze from his body.

He wanted a place alone. Better alone in this bombed town than never alone! Better to die in a field! A B-29 flying low, conspicuous ...

In Britain there had been Spitfires and De Havilands: constantly aloft: this B-29 was a reconnaissance plane circling lower and lower: the bomber was reaching a danger point: was it out of fuel, was the crew about to bale out?

Climbing a big mound of garbage he saw chutes billow; then came the twisting dive, smoke from the cockpit area as the plane went down. Five chutes were swaying, drifting. A black column headstoned the crash site. Dennison jumped from the garbage pile and informed some of the crewmen. At once several GI's took off, dog trotting through the dusk, toting small arms. Dennison was glad to run, glad to be on the go across a field--free of armor.

The first chute man, tangled in his chute, lying on his side, lying behind bushes, opened fire with his submachine gun, almost killing PM. Bullets cropped weeds and grass around him.

"Look, you goddamn ass! We're not Nazis!" shrieked PM, flat on his belly...

"How do I know who you are! Some of you bastards talk English," the airman yelled.

"Yeah, well, I'm from Chicago, see. I used to clean up the loop every day for eighteen bucks a week. Dee is my uncle. I'm in the 321st ... all of us are in the 321st. We just crawled into this lousy town. Put down your tommy gun: I'll show you some snapshots? Okay?"

"I guess so, but keep your hands up! Don't fuck around!"

In a moment they were shoulder-slapping and pumping hands; within a short time the tankmen located three more flyers--one with a smashed leg. Someone hacked a willow and thin pine poles and Dennison and Zinc improvised a jacket litter.

On the way into Olpe they located the other flyer, his parachute shot down. Dennison was stung by his death: he felt the tragedy of his broken body: he looked into Zinc's face: but he was looking at something else: everyone here about the same age, Dennison thought: all trapped. Another kick from death! Death, lousy death, that insatiable hellion! He wanted to defy death. He wanted to kick it in the ass. He wanted the world to know what death was doing!

Smog was filtering over Olpe's dumpage: the brick and stone walls, a slate roof, the beams and plaster: nearly every structure had been shambled. Olpe had been known for its oil refinery but shelling had dug and re-dug earth, pipes, storage tanks, cracking gear.

They carried the pilot into a ruined inn: somebody had already explored the town and led them there: somebody rounded up a medic: Dennison, Zinc, Landel and PM bedded down in the low T-shaped building that still had a giant elm tree in front.

Debris was everywhere, broken dishes, broken window glass, dangling plaster, a disemboweled sofa, ripped out wiring, pulverized bricks and tiles: Dennison walked through the rooms as through a surrealist museum: finding burlap and a mattress he lay down and unbuttoned his trousers and scratched and then lay motionless.

No food had come.

One of the flyers hung a flashlight and its swaying light crawled about, expressing hate. Other crewmen bedded down. Dennison's mind had nothing to tell him so he wriggled underneath the sacking and hunger became his anesthesia. Turning his hands palm-up, he gazed at them, one at a time, dozed, and then slept.

Landel was vomiting from pain, lack of food, alcohol, and fatigue. Crouched in a corner, he had an empty bottle beside him.

Whiskey would help! He shrugged: who's Johnny Walker? Down in Panama, years ago, the gambling rooms of the Palacio Rivas had been fabulous: coco palms in a lush garden, macaws on perches, gardenias floating on the swimming pools ... lovely whores ... copitas. But he had gotten drunk and killed a man, shot him through the lungs and heart ...

When the war ended he planned to settle in Germany and horn in on the black market graft: army supplies, PX supplies: sell, buy, swap: a sure way to stack up the dough!

PM was snoring.

Zinc lay on his side, watching one of the B-29 guys mess with his lighter: a nearby tankman removed his shoes and sox and massaged his feet: Zinc felt the smallness of his body: other men had something to be proud of: muscles were jerking around his mouth: he rubbed the muscles halfheartedly: closing his eyes he tried to think of home but home had not existed for a long time. Mom had been dead for four or five years ... Millie ... where was she? He turned onto his back. It seemed to him his spine was injured. Certainly something was wrong with his stomach: there were too many aches there.

A cloudy moon hung above Olpe ... in the gutted inn night was eventful: food began arriving in the early hours: the old walls heard a few cheerful sounds; the smell of food roused some of the men.

Sometime in the night Landel woke, chilled, afraid: he couldn't find a cigarette and woke Dennison and asked him for his pack. He tried to talk to him--wishing to talk about his past: most of all he simply wanted to talk. Drags on his Luckies helped. He found a blanket. That helped. With Dennison lying nearby he thought of admitting what a bastard he was and yet that seemed stupid: everything seemed stupid, everything was stupid, torn apart, like Olpe.

Under the ribs of an adjoining building--a long shed--fifteen or twenty tankmen ate breakfast, fog around them: fog had seeped in with a yellowish thickness, a thickness that seemed related to old masonry, old walls and crumbling plaster. The eaters appreciated the hot food, untroubled by the fog; as they ate they simply stared.

Go to Morb ... Panzers ... Serious.

That was the morning radio directive: the Corps was dispatched onto the autobahn again, now crammed with one-way military and civilian traffic. It began to drizzle as the Shermans and Lees grumbled forward; then the drizzle changed to a downpour that sloshed over turret, periscope and viewer. Dim-outs popped on. Olpe traffic jammed: a jeep had crashed: a truck had stalled: a civilian truck resembled an oiled animal under its flapping tarp.

Memory's belt began in Dennison's brain:

The Gestapo, the man said at breakfast ... the Gestapo ... they did their best to get information from the Maquis ... they were trying to round up the Maquis ... they were ... Fritzes ... that's what the guy at breakfast called them ... said he had fought in North Africa ... said ...

... Okay, send us back to Olpe; at least there is something to eat there ... what was that radio message?

... Slow, slow, now pass, shift into second, watch that fool, he doesn't know how to drive ... funny, Zinc squatting there, asleep maybe ... Landel looks bad ... too much rain, German rain.

When the tanks reached Morb, at 9 kilometers, military cops, outside a battered school, flagged them past an artillery battery: 88's, 102's and 4.2 mortars were snorting over. General Jake Marlin had his trailer in the field--a zigzag gash in its gleaming aluminum side, his flag soggy.

Why had they been directed to Morb?

Obviously, there were no Nazis here.

Low-flying bombers were passing.

The radio was sputtering misinformation.

On a side street the crews had a chance to oil and gas up, time to urinate, time to drink, time for a chew of gum, time to smoke and talk.

Dennison wandered into a wrecked cottage: plaster crunched underfoot; he straightened a picture on the wall; he listened to the punch of shells; fragments fell from the ceiling as percussions went on. A door opened.

That was a school, had been a school:

Today we'll confine our lessen to Siberia. Do any of you know anything special about Siberia? Can you give us an idea of its size? How about you, Hermann?

What good was it, sending kids to school? They have been attending school since the Romans, or was it before the Romans? Have schools stopped war? Nobody through all those centuries has had a peace class. He grinned, as he leaned against the battered doorframe of the little cottage.

Again he listened to the constant shellfire.

Tanks into action, somebody signalled.

Action!

"Get going!"

"Okay."

"Okay."

Dennison turned over the driving controls to PM and PM smirked his pleasure like a kid: he settled into the driving seat, checked the controls, thinking fast, confident. Landel gave him a wigwag. Then 248 hunched forward, the tracks working evenly; the motor revved smoothly.

Dennison punched PM, and they swung left.

A latch of his mind was fastened to the periscope.

Starboard sank into a pothole; they floundered through other potholes, now following the side of a small river, other tanks in front. Smoke gnarled the sky. They were in a section of Morb, streets, houses. Port side a shell exploded. Something clanged against 248, clanged like a bell. The bus rocked, and Dennison stared anxiously at PM. PM grunted.

The tanks moved through smoke walls down a street: as if propelled through a tube, through a tunnel, Nazis rushed toward 248. They bunched. They fell. Some retreated down a cul-de-sac. Scrambling across barbed wire and fencing, PM followed.

Realizing that the men were trapped, Dennison fired slowly: he tried to account for each man, firing PM's gun: he shouted and fired, shouted and fired: this was the same, knocking out wooden ducks at the fair.

Three down, four to go.

So, the tank was an improvement on the Trojan horse!

Smoke closed in.

Frames flitted by, image after image, scenes without continuity, a sciamachy of trees, people, Greeks, Russians, a cloud, a room, Jeannette, children's face, a cactus in a steamy conservatory, a swan, a wounded boy. On the walls of a latrine he read: THE LAST SEVEN WORDS.

PM was circling, circling.

A shell shook 248.

Dennison ducked to avoid the concussion: he rapped his shoulder on the gun butt: he was angry and fired blindly, and wet his lips with his tongue.

Men were escaping, dozens of them.

Dennison fired in rage, fired at the windows of an apartment: he riddled a closed door: he chipped off stucco: he fired into a pine tree: his shooting jag was warming his belly. 248 swung around a corner.

"Watch out for that concrete slab!" Dennison warned.

PM did not hear.

One of the tracks grazed it.

Dennison signalled again.

His eyes were watering from the heat and smoke.

PM was hit by bullet splash and stopped the tank: fumes and heat almost overwhelmed the crew as they worked over him, Zinc swabbing. Dennison was remembering Al, remembering....

PM waved them off: No, I'm not down for a count of ten! No, let me get back at the controls!

"Where?" he asked Landel.

"How much gas have we?"

"Quarter."

Landel briefed his map, fingers uncertain, eyes uncertain, wanting to stall, to call a halt.

The radio had conked.

Turn back he scribbled.

Back?

Where?

Near the guns, near the trailer, by the school ... men had camouflaged Jake Marlin's trailer with a huge camouflage net ... Dennison and Zinc found a patch of grass in front of the school and settled down, cross-legged, like Ojibways, the grass uncut and weedy.

Zinc chewed a grass blade.

"PM does all right," he said.

"Huh?"

"PM does all right."

"He's good," said Dennison.

"He's gone to see a medic."

"Scratch ... not bad."

"Good."

"Good."

"Tired," Zinc admitted, unlacing his shoes to ease his feet, cigarette creasing his mouth: he was no longer in Morb but was tacking along Lake Erie, on his boat, Millie snuggled down among cushions.

Dennison felt that hate was moving closer, was controlling his hands and arms: grubbing his jackknife out of his pocket he scraped grease from his nails, from his fingers: who was that freckled guy, with dirty beard, sunken eyes? Was that Landel, over there jawing with men? Why hadn't he been killed?

He tossed the butt of his cigarette away, lay back on the grass, fell asleep. Unopposed, they stormed along a narrow street: men with a flame thrower had gutted a tank: 248's guns destroyed the thrower in a giant swoosh of flames: on the margin of his mind, beyond the roar, he saw a wire of light, filament: his mind shut around it: he lost track of time: he clamped his jaws.

North.

That was Landel's scribble.

Leaning forward a little, Dennison wet his lips with his tongue.

* * *