From time to time Coleman would lift the headpiece of his armor above the pile of rubble in front of us and take a quick look out over the big open square toward where the enemy was holed up on the other side. About half the time he'd draw small arm or automatic fire.
"Those birds must have infrared eyepieces too," he says as he sets down.
"Ah they ain't even got mecho-armor," I says.
"No, but they have body armor and helmets with quite a bit of stuff in them."
"I'll bet they ain't got anything like we got." I was feeling pretty fine right then thinking how much better off we was than the poor joes in the infantry. We don't just fight in our suits, we live in 'em. They ain't only a mechanized suit of armor, they're our barracks, messroom and latrine and all radiation and rain proof. We got more fire power than a company of infantry and more radio equipment than a tank.
"You know there's lots worse ways of fighting a war," I says. "You climb into one of these babies and they seal you up like a sardine but at least you're warm and dry and you don't even have to use your own feet to walk. You got a nice little atomic power pack to move you around."
"You couldn't move the legs of one of these things if you had to," the Sergeant says.
"It ... it just seems like a kind of funny way to fight a war," White says, talking like he always did, as though he had to hunt for every word before he said it.
"What's funny about it? They been fighting it this way for ten years, haven't they?" I demands.
"I guess so ... I don't know...."