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.
Zinc was thinking of Ohio, dawdling on a quiet elm street; Millard was shoving at the gum around a painful tooth: the thing had to be extracted. Fred Landel had his palms palmed over his eyes, his brain shut out; Chuck had thrown his shirt around his shoulders, knotted the sleeves around his neck.
Dennison jockeyed the engine, thinking:
If I could go to Bizerte and lie in bed and sleep ... could write a letter ... I should ...