Instantly, he spotted a Nazi gun, mounted on a dune-rise, a silhouette of men and gun, the flare exploding behind the gunners. He shouted at Landel but a shell blew up beside the Sherman and hurled it half around. Dennison toppled from his seat--the air knocked out of his lungs. He thought: We’re hit ... we’ll catch on fire! Back at his controls, he cut the racing motor and wobbled out of the line of fire, Landel babbling incoherently over the intercom. Another shell. "Port side ... port!" Landel yelled. The treads caught, slipped, jerked, the M4 flopping from side to side; the rumble of the treads, rolling unevenly, drowned the shellfire. Their grinding was like the beating of pneumatic hammers on metal sheets. It seemed to the crew that the interior darkness became part of the noise, whirled around with it, cyclotronic, snagging thought and muscle. Dennison’s signaller appeared and led the tank to a strip of packed sand behind a lofty dune; he leaned forward to relieve a cramp in his side and wet his lips with his tongue, craving a drink. A shell boomed. The signaller said _stop_. They’re waiting for dawn, Dennison thought. I’ve got to rest a little ... got to have some water. Unable to speak, he tapped Landel’s shoulder and indicated his mouth: lights in the cab flickered on Landel’s face, his twisting lips. "Okay," Dennison heard on the phone. As he drank and sensed the cool decency of water, he was afraid, afraid he would never have another drink, never get out, never have a chance to walk through fields or woods, stoop to cup water from a stream ... The darkness, the waiting, the crash of shells, the steel: it was both pain and the unknown. His hand shook as he gave the canteen to Landel.... Strange, dark inside but growing light outside. He had wandered through a low ceilinged cave as a boy, on the heels of a guy who carried a dim lantern ... this was another cave, a cave that moved. He shivered from the heat and his dripping sweat. Sweat trickled along his arms, down the inside of his forearms and into his palms. With his port visor open he watched the dawn: it would soon free him from the signaller’s microscopic dot. He wet his lips with his tongue and eased against his seat. Someone was jabbering on the phone; the radio was wheezing instructions; Landel was yelling ... The quiet was uncanny, no motor running, no shellfire: Dennison knew that he dozed: he glanced at his wristwatch nervously; he glanced through his slit across the desert, across slab after slab of unfamiliar ground where yellow light exposed columns of dust: tanks or trucks were there, rolling north: dust, sand, heat, rolling heat, rolling sand and dust. Zinc was talking to Chuck on the phone. "There’s our signal!" Landel yelled. "Let’s go," Chuck called. A shell dumped a spout of sand that became a ragged blur, it was grey inside the tank now; the faces of the crew were grey; grey clouds hung in the morning light.