"Hell," said Wallis, morose yet comfortable with a tailor-made cigarette. "If you guys want to start a extra war, go to knockin' Chicago. That's all."
Coffee looked at his wrist-watch again.
"Got ten minutes yet," he observed. "Say, you must know Pete Hanfry—"
"Sure I know him," said the enemy prisoner, scornfully. "I waited on him. One day, just before us reserves were called back home...."
In the monster tank that was headquarters the general tapped his fingers on his knees. The pale white light flickered a little as it shone on the board where the bright sparks crawled. White sparks were American tanks. Blue flashes were for enemy tanks sighted and reported, usually in the three-second interval between their identification and the annihilation of the observation-post that had reported them. Red glows showed encounters between American and enemy tanks. There were a dozen red glows visible, with from one to a dozen white sparks hovering about them. It seemed as if the whole front line were about to burst into a glare of red, were about to become one long lane of conflicts in impenetrable obscurity, where metal monsters roared and rumbled and clanked one against the other, bellowing and belching flame and ramming each other savagely, while from them dripped the liquids that made their breath mean death. There were nightmarish conflicts in progress under the blanket of fog, unparalleled save perhaps in the undersea battles between submarines in the previous European war.
The chief of staff looked up; his face drawn.
"General," he said harshly, "it looks like a frontal attack all along our line."
The general's cigar had gone out. He was pale, but calm with an iron composure.
"Yes," he conceded. "But you forget that blank spot in our line. We do not know what is happening there."