Pain twisted his back.
Silence ...
Getting up, he stumbled across the gully. He found crewmen there, crouched behind boulders and camel grass. Somebody had spread a tarp overhead to cut down on the spray of sand. Nobody said a word. Presently, Chuck Hitchcock came crawling, blubbering, mouth gaping: crawling on hands and knees he banged into a rock. A blast of sand had sandpapered his eyes: lids and eyeballs were ingrained, a sand and blood inlay.
As Dennison dragged Chuck under the tarp he realized he would never see again: he tried to shield his wounded face, the man sobbing, breathing in gasps, his blond, pallid face distorted.
He won't play billiards again, Dennison thought, remembering Chuck's stories about billiard games at the University of Wisconsin.
A bomb crashed and a tank exploded: it seemed to leap into the air--the whole Sherman--fell into ensheathing fire. It was visible to everyone under the tarp. Sand fountained. Ignited gas and oil spouted: machine gun bullets began to ricochet. Metal whizzed past.
Another bomb exploded.
"Let's run for it!" Dennison shouted.
"Get out of here! ... get out of here!" someone roared.
Dennison and a fellow, Jim Harrington, grabbed Chuck, and rushed him down the wadi, swaying, pitching, dragging. They began to gasp. Chuck was sobbing. Dennison thought every step was getting them nowhere; yet Landel appeared out of a wall of smoke, his head plastered with dirt. He slid an arm under Chuck and the three carried him into a thorn thicket out of the wadi and laid him on the sand.