The three greased their stauffers and rollers and cleaned the cab. Dennison filled transmission grease cups, the cups of the stuffing box, and those of the bevel-gear case. He checked fuel lines for leakage. Starting the motor, revving it, he glanced at his wristwatch again and again: the radium dial obsessed him, tension mounting with the jerk-jerk of the second hand, the thudding of the motor ...
Outside, he bumped into Chuck Hitchcock, his hulky body coming out of the night, his helmet yanked low: Chuck was the youngest crewmate.
"Here, help me," he exclaimed, handing Dennison a wrench.
"Okay, where?"
Chuck's handsome blond features expressed great pain: he resented the war, he hated Libya; he hated the tanks; the old happy days had been his boyhood days in Wisconsin, on his dad's farm. Agilely, he jumped onto a sand layered tread, motioning Dennison to come.
He had found a cracked plate and together they fought to remove it or replace it. Everything they touched was sandy; sand spat at them, rasped their hands, got into their mouths, abraded their knees as they knelt on the steel.
A sliver of steel jabbed Dennison's hand; he smashed savagely at a bolt with his wrench; a shell boomed among the machines; there was an enormous rattle of steel as gravel and rocks struck steel; men shouted; sand ripped from the great dune; smoke shut off the sky.
"They've got a line on us," Chuck yelled. "Lights out ... lights out!"
We're in for it now, Dennison thought. Something went wrong: we're always blundering, blundering ... the Nazis are supposed to be miles away from here:
"Climb inside, Chuck ... we can go!"