The Project Gutenberg eBook ofForward, Children!

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofForward, Children!This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.*** This is a COPYRIGHTED Project Gutenberg eBook. Details Below. ****** Please follow the copyright guidelines in this file. ***Title: Forward, Children!Creator: Paul Alexander BartlettRelease date: January 19, 2014 [eBook #44717]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Al Haines*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FORWARD, CHILDREN! ***[image]CoverForward, Children!byPaul Alexander BartlettTitle: Forward, ChildrenAuthor: Paul Alexander BartlettPublisher: My Friend PublisherAddress: #101, 654-3 Yeoksam-Dong. Kangnam-Ku, Seoul, KoreaRegistration Number: 16-1534Date of Registration: October 17, 1997Copyright © 1998 Steven Bartlett. All rights reserved.Printed and bound in Republic of Korea.First Printing: March 10, 1998ISBN 89-88034-03-1Project Gutenberg edition 2014Forward, Children!was published in 1998 in Korea, nearly a decade after the author's death. The author’s literary executor, Steven James Bartlett, has decided to make the novel available as an open access publication, freely available to readers through Project Gutenberg under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, which allows anyone to distribute this work without changes to its content, provided that both the author and the original URL from which this work was obtained are mentioned, that the contents of this work are not used for commercial purposes or profit, and that this work will not be used without the copyright holder’s written permission in derivative works (i.e., you may not alter, transform, or build upon this work without such permission). The full legal statement of this license may be found athttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode[image]Creative Commons LogoOTHER BOOKS BY PAUL ALEXANDER BARTLETTWhen the Owl Cries(novel), Macmillan, 1960.Available as a free downloadable eBook in a variety of formats from Project Gutenberg:https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40245.Wherehill(collection of poems), Autograph Editions, 1975.Adiós, Mi México(novelette), Autograph Editions, 1979.Spokes for Memory(collection of poems), Icarus Press, 1979.The Haciendas of Mexico: An Artist’s Record, University Press of Colorado, 1990.Voices from the Past – A Quintet: Sappho’s Journal, Christ’s Journal, Leonardo da Vinci’s Journal, Shakespeare’s Journal, and Lincoln’s Journal, Autograph Editions, 2007.Available as an illustrated printed edition from Amazon.com:http://www.amazon.com/Voices-Past-Paul-Alexander-Bartlett/dp/061514120X/ref=sr*1*1/102-5793561-6667321?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1177817149&sr=1-1Available as a free downloadable eBook in a variety of formats from Project Gutenberg:https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39468Lincoln’s Journal(the fifth novel ofVoices from the Past).Available as a free downloadable audiobook from:http://archive.org/details/VoicesFromThePast-LincolnsJournalSappho’s Journal, Autograph Editions, 2007.Available as a separately printed illustrated edition from Amazon.com:http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb*sb*noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=9780615156460&x=0&y=0Available as a free downloadable eBook in a variety of formats from Project Gutenberg:https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39467Christ’s Journal, Autograph Editions, 2007.Available as a separately printed illustrated edition from Amazon.com:http://www.amazon.com/Christs-Journal-Paul-Alexander-Bartlett/dp/0615156452/ref=sr*1*1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325740964&sr=1-1Available as a free downloadable eBook in a variety of formats from Project Gutenberg:https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39400Available as a free downloadable audiobook from:https://archive.org/details/VoicesFromThePast-ChristsJournalTO THE YOUTH OF THE WORLDAllons, enfants de la patrie,Le jour de la gloire est arrivé!--La MarseillaiseForward, children of our country,the day of glory is at hand.Forward, Children!byPaul Alexander BartlettINTRODUCTIONSteven James BartlettForward, Children!is a gripping anti-war novel. It brings vividly back to life the experience of WWII tank warfare as it was fought and endured by soldiers in the tank corps. The novel is also a story of love in French Ermenonville, where Rousseau lived during the last period in his life and was buried.The titleForward, Children!comes from the opening line ofLa Marseillaise, the French national anthem (Allons, enfants de la patrie).Forward, Children!is a novel that was long in the making. Paul Alexander Bartlett completed the first manuscript ofForward, Children!in the years before the outbreak of the second world war. He had been deeply affected by the first world war, by the horrors and suffering it caused. Wishing to bring to readers a convincing and powerful first-hand experience of that war, he portrayed in the first version ofForward, Children!the hardship and terror of tank warfare as it had been conducted by the American Expeditionary Forces Tank Corps during World War I.Renowned English novelist, poet, and critic Ford Madox Ford thought highly ofForward, Children!, and shortly before his death devoted a large part of an essay published in theSaturday Review of Literatureto praise for the novel, urging its publication."Forward, Children!... is the projection of the life of a fighting soldier in the A. E. Tank Corps in France. It is so to the life that for some days after reading it, the writer's nights were rendered heavy by the return of the lugubrious dreams that for years after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles attended on his slumbers. When you readForward, Children!youarein a tank crawling amidst unspeakable din and unthinkable pressure up the sides of houses, and down the banks of dried-up canals, crashing through the walls of factories.... [I]f not on artistic grounds then at least for the public weal this book should be published and widely circulated."Ford Madox Ford died two weeks after this essay was published in 1939. In the subsequent years, with the attention of the world now fixed on WWII, Bartlett decided to rewriteForward, Children!to portray tank warfare in the ongoing world war. He had already become knowledgeable about tank warfare in the first world war and he now researched the conditions and accounts of tank fighting in the second. As a result,Forward, Children!builds on the author's attempt to stand in the combat boots of the tank soldiers of both world wars and conveys to the reader an account of their experience with unforgettable realism.Forward, Children!was ironically never published during the author's life, despite the strongest commendations the work received not only from Ford Madox Ford, but also from John Dos Passos, who remarked: "Praise from Ford Madox Ford is praise indeed. The descriptions of tank warfare are vivid and as far as I know unique. This is a very, very good novel."Russell Kirk added his admiration for the novel: "Permit me to commendForward, Children!The novel attains a pathos rare in war novels. The scenes of battle are drawn with power. Bartlett is an accomplished writer." Pearl Buck, Nobel Laureate in Literature, wrote: "He [Bartlett] is an excellent writer.Forward, Children!is an excellent piece of work, with fine characterizations."Upton Sinclair wrote: "I foundForward, Children!extremely interesting and convincing. I think it is one of the best descriptions of fighting I have ever read. In fact, I can't remember any account of tank fighting in such detail and [which is so] convincing." James Purdy remarked: "Forward, Children!ranks with the best books--its anti-war message is inescapable. It is an important book and [Bartlett is] an important writer."Forward, Children!eventually came to interest a small press in war-scarred Korea; in 1998, the press published the book in a limited edition that has reached few readers. To remedy this, the author's literary executor has decided to re-publish the book in open access form as an eBook to be made freely available to readers through Project Gutenberg.Whatever the obstacles have been that so often stand in the way of authors, and that plague the world of publishing, after many, many decades it is time forForward, Children!to reach its readers.ABOUT THE AUTHORPaul Alexander Bartlett (1909-1990) was both a writer and an artist, born in Moberly, Missouri, and educated at Oberlin College, the University of Arizona, the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City, and the Instituto de Bellas Artes in Guadalajara. His work can be divided into three categories: He is the author of many novels, short stories, and poems; second, as a fine artist, his drawings, illustrations, and paintings have been exhibited in more than 40 one-man shows in leading galleries, including the Los Angeles County Museum, the Atlanta Art Museum, the Bancroft Library, the Richmond Art Institute, the Brooks Museum, the Instituto-Mexicano-Norteamericano in Mexico City, and many other galleries; and, third, he devoted much of his life to the most comprehensive study of the haciendas of Mexico that has been undertaken.Three hundred and fifty of his pen-and-ink illustrations of the haciendas and more than one thousand hacienda photographs make up the Paul Alexander Bartlett Collection held by the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection of the University of Texas, and form part of a second diversified collection held by the American Heritage Center of the University of Wyoming, which also includes an extensive archive of Bartlett's literary work, fine art, and letters. A third archive consisting primarily of Bartlett's literary work is held by the Department of Special Collections at UCLA. Bartlett's book about the history and life on the haciendas, including a selection of his illustrations and photographs, was published by the University Press of Colorado in 1990 under the titleThe Haciendas of Mexico: An Artist's Record.Paul Alexander Bartlett's fiction has been commended by many authors, among them Pearl Buck, Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, James Michener, Upton Sinclair, Evelyn Eaton, and many others. He was the recipient of numerous grants, awards, and fellowships, from such organizations as the Leopold Schepp Foundation, the Edward MacDowell Association, the New School for Social Research, the Huntington Hartford Foundation, the Montalvo Foundation, Yaddo, and the Carnegie Foundation. His novelWhen the Owl Criesreceived national acclaim; his fine art has been exhibited throughout the United States and in Mexico; his poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies and has been published in individual volumes of his collected poetry. Bartlett was very prolific and left to the archives of his work many as yet unpublished manuscripts, including poetry, short stories, and novels, as well as more than a thousand paintings and illustrations.His wife, Elizabeth Bartlett, a widely published and internationally recognized poet, is the author of seventeen published books of poetry, more than one thousand individually published poems, numerous short stories and essays in leading literary quarterlies and anthologies, and, as the founder of Literary Olympics, Inc., served as the editor of a series of multi-language volumes of international poetry to honor the work of outstanding contemporary poets.The author of this Introduction (Paul and Elizabeth Bartlett's only child)] apparently inherited their writer's gene and has published books and articles in the fields of philosophy and psychology.* * * * * * * *Forward, Children!PORTRAITOrville Dennison was five feet eleven inches tall and weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. He had the body of an athlete, the body of a crewman and a tennis player.His eyes were brown with flecks of grey in them. He had brown hair and combed it straight back and when it was long it bulged out on the sides and had waves that crossed from ear to ear, waves that were sun bleached on the top.His nose was aquiline, his mouth was thin-lipped and rather small. He had large ears. His eyebrows were bushy and his lashes were long and thick. His forehead was broad but was not unusual except that it was very smooth while the skin of his face, which was rather florid, had enlarged pores here and there.His hands were wide across the back and his fingers were strong; his shoulders and arms were muscular.He walked quickly with a natural swing.He had a ready smile and even teeth.His voice was pleasant.He was twenty-four.One was struck by the sadness in his face, the careworn lines about his mouth and eyes.1Landel shook Dennison's shoulder."Whatcha want?" Dennison mumbled, raising himself on one elbow and unconsciously pushing aside his blanket."The supply trucks have come," Landel yelled."Who's come?""The trucks and tanks are here. Three trucks have brought supplies. We've got food. Are you awake? Hey, do you hear me?""What did you say? Sure, sure, I'm awake," Dennison replied hazily. He squinted and ducked as Landel shot the beam of his flashlight directly into his face.Landel knelt down beside Dennison and fumbled about the floor of the abandoned plank and sandbag irrigation shack for his tank helmet. His tall body almost filled the place. His bald head looked repulsively bald to Dennison--something surgical."I let ya sleep a little longer than the other guys," Landel yelled. "Yeah, you needed sleep." He shifted his flashlight around the crude shack, over the mounds of blankets where their crewmates had been sleeping."Our kitchen's here! The trucks are here ... three of them," he repeated."We've got something hot to eat," he hollered. "Are you awake?" He pushed Dennison--shoved him against the floor. "Come on, get out of here!""What time is it?" Dennison asked."Nearly fifteen ... we've got to get moving," Landel crabbed. He found his helmet underneath a sandy, greasy blanket and stuck it on. "Raub's got here with his kitchen ... so, let's go ... okay? Now?" He was talking to himself, spitting out words, annoyed by the day's problems, war's problems. He rose from his knees and, stooping low to keep from cracking himself against the roof, edged, crab-fashion, toward the door."I'm leavin' ... I'm goin'," he cried."I'll be along in a minute," Dennison said, yawning and propping himself against the wall, legs and shoulders feeling stiff.Landel reappeared."Go on ... I'm awake!" he shouted. "See you at the chuck wagon.""We've got to eat quick ... we've a hell of a lot to do," Landel screamed, his head in the doorway. He zoomed his flashlight into Dennison's eyes, like a warning, and walked off.Angry, Dennison rubbed his hands over his bearded face, slumped down onto the floor again.Through the doorway he caught glimpses of the flashlights and lanterns of men headed for the kitchen: legs and lights passed with metronome jerkiness across the sand: dust came up from beneath boots. Shellfire rumbled in the distance, a sound that had in it all the vacuity of the African desert.A jab of wind dribbled sand through the doorway and shook sand from the make-shift roof of the shelter where only yesterday gunners had been trapped emplacing a gun.Dennison smelled the stench of gasoline and grease from the tanks and a tank dump nearby; he could smell the gas and grease on his clothes; it seemed to swirl around him.The incoming air was chilly.Shivering, he hauled a blanket around him and with his shoulders against a sandbag, lit a cigarette. As his lighter flared he noticed his squashed, grease-pocked helmet; sleepily, he reached for it and placed it across his lap, pressing it down, making it a part of him. One hand holding his pack of cigarettes, the other bringing a cigarette to his mouth, he tried to think.It seemed to him that he had dreamed during the night.The tip of the cigarette glowed encouragingly.Yes, he had dreamed about the library tower, the chimes, the sounds travelling down the hill slopes, down toward Lake Cayuga, the tower and the sounds blurring. Kids were sitting in the library, at long tables, faces, faces. There seemed to be an elm tree at the far end of the reading room, snow, lake ...He tried to remember the sound of those chimes.Huddled against sandbags, he drowsed and as he drowsed he saw a campfire in the woods somewhere, students standing around the fire, some of them singing. A guy was playing his harmonica, muting his music by cupping both hands over the instrument ...Dennison's arms and hands had fallen asleep.Yesterday the pace across the desert had been formidable, the heat increasing, a shortage of water, the water warm and sickening, nothing at all to eat at noon ...He shook his hands and arms to bring back the circulation, groaning, cold, the exhaust of a tank stinking and coughing nearby. The sound brought with it the sensation of violent pitching, the distress of gasoline and oil fumes, the threat of shellfire at close range.Shoving his sweater inside his trouser, adjusting his belt, he knelt and fished about: his helmet had rolled heedlessly and bumped against the wall: recovering it, he strapped it on, tilting it over his forehead, aware of its grime.Slipping on his leather jacket, yanking the zipper, he wormed about the blankets for his mess kit and stepped out into the open, feeling sand drop off his clothes.Outdoors, his cigarette tasted better and he inhaled deeply to help wake up. The chilly air nipped his face and hands, as he stood motionless urinating.Behind the shack rose a tangle of rusty machinery from an irrigation pump, the machinery snarled over a cannon-sized conduit, the pipe's mouth toward the sky. The stars seemed closer because of the junked pipes and gears: the sky, utterly cloudless, was defiant: in a few hours its sun would be hammering, leading on and on, sand gobbling sand, dunes blurring into hills: heat and flies would move it together, thirst would be everywhere.A G.I. scuffed by, coughing and spitting."Raub's here," he called, noticing Dennison and his cigarette. "We're ready to eat!" He coughed again.Dennison wet his lips with his tongue and swallowed."I'm right behind you," he said. "Wait a second ... I've got my flashlight. Here, Millard!"He pulled his flash from his jacket pocket and walked behind his crewmate--the sand deep, their boots scuffing, the flashlight wobbling as if asleep."Gonna get hot today," Millard hollered."Can't hear you," Dennison hollered."Any news on the radio?""What was it you said?"Raub had his kitchen under lopsided leafless trees and a scabby fire of branches burned close to it, kitchen and blaze hidden behind a dune, an enormous crested thing with skeletal brush and camel grass growing on its side. Gaunt, set off by stars, it threatened the kitchen and men, hung, swollen, a thing of unbelievable weight. Yellow light crept up the slope and bounced off the scarred steel of the field kitchen. Steam gushed from pots at the rear of the stove; the air smelled of coffee and hash.His flashlight in his pocket, Dennison worked his way through sixty or eighty men, brushing sand out of a mess kit with a dirty handkerchief and the palm of his hand. It seemed to him that he had done this many times."Hi," he greeted one of the Corps."Hi, Dennison ... Hi. Goddamn desert, cold. Freeze off your ass." The man drained his coffee and then blew into the bottom of his cup. "Coffee's good," he said."Give me a cup of coffee," Dennison said to Raub, at the kitchen: Raub had his coffee pot raised for pouring, his face smudged, his eyes puttied with sleep; cups were scattered along the kitchen counter in front of him, some of them clean."Howdy, any news from you guys?" Raub asked, tilting the pot, arm extended across the counter, the pot steaming. He smiled at Dennison, liking him: Dennison reminded him of a fellow back home, in Atlanta, a boy he'd grown up with."You ought to know the news," Dennison said, "you just came in with your outfit, so what's the news? What's up?""Not a damn thing! Here, hold still, have some hash. Hungry? It's not bad stuff.""Sure," Dennison said."Fill'er up," Millard said, behind Dennison. "I could eat anything!"The Corpsmen wore regulation uniforms or the coveralls of the mechanic; there were a number in fatigues; some men wore helmets; they were an unshaven lot. Their khaki did not count for much: they were all of a piece: their greasy, oily, gasoline messed clothes stuck to their greasy, oily bodies; they had not washed in days. No water, no inclination.They appeared strangely alike in the firelight, each with a bush on his face, each with a crew cut or helmet, each with his mess kit or cup of coffee.A shell thudded behind the great dune."Hell, I hope they don't lay a line on this fire," Millard said, moving a few yards away from the kitchen to allow others to queue up.His pan filled, Dennison stepped out of line and pushed his way through the crewmen."Captain Meyers had guys pull some of the wood out of the blaze," a fat sergeant told Dennison."They're not near enough for a hit," Dennison belched cheerfully, spooning some hash."Christ, there's a village burning up over there, beyond that dune," somebody yelled. "What's a piddling campfire alongside a village! We'll be out of here in an hour. It'll be our turn to let them have it!"Dennison found a hollow and sat down on a dead tree, a palm, a frondless bole; shoes sliding into the sand, he resumed eating, spooning and chewing slowly, listening to the men talk, noticing the stars now and then. The pan burned pleasantly in his hand and he shifted it about and spooned another spoonful of hash, his mouth sticking out, his nose in the steam.On one side of him, Millard was shouting:" ... Why, you know the drag of those cylinders, the lousy combustion; why, man alive, the Panzer tanks withstand the desert heat a hell of a lot better than our machines. Why..."Somebody was yelling for more hash.Somebody beefed:"We've got fifteen Sherman tanks in reserve ... I'll bet we never use them!"Dennison was familiar with some of the voices and the familiarity helped: the fire was encouraging: the hash was really hot: there was more at the chuck wagon. Coffee too.Yesterday ... he tried to shut off the memory as he would a tap, but memory trickled through: Jesus, the vast terrain they had covered, that whamming through the sand, screwing round to avoid rocks, ducking behind a dune, climbing to fall into the direct fire of a Panther, her guns blazing ...Luck, nothing but luck had pulled them out of that jam.You never could tell, maybe they would have a lucky break today ... maybe it wouldn't get too hot inside the bus; maybe there might be enough water, stuff that was fit to drink ... they could travel across some comparatively level ground, none of the loose sand to baulk the treads. And food? Maybe they'd have something to eat, a chance to eat outside the tank.It was a wretched kind of hope, the same hope that everyone got up with every morning--but it was hope. Gazing at the smoke from the fire, he followed it upward where the sky was a thousand stars, no New York sky; even through the smoke the points blinked brightly. Coldly. He held a mouthful of coffee on his tongue before he tackled his food once more. The bread was fresh. Good crust. He felt his body lose a little of its weariness; one leg sank into the sand; probably the desert was not too bad in the winter time, at some oasis, town or city.He signalled to Isaac Jacobs who was wandering through the crowd of crewmen, walking sleepily, balancing his heaped up mess kit, coffee cup in the midst of the hash. Zinc's beard shone weirdly, crazily red in the light. He pushed his way past a couple of gesturing men and stepped on a smoldering log someone had dragged from the campfire."Goddammit," he exclaimed, wobbling, balancing. "Almost got myself badly singed. Gotta watch where we step in this desert." His teeth flashed in a grin intended for Dennison. Dennison grunted and nodded, his mouth full, his eyes narrowed to friendly slits."Sit down on the tree.""How goes it?" Zinc asked, sitting, his mess kit on the trunk alongside."Not bad. Any news?""Sure, Raub shorted me on hash and bread--that's news!" Zinc said, spooning food."I heard Chuck say that a unit of the 604th is trailing us; somebody picked up their radio.""I wouldn't mind seein' ole Sutter and Reynolds again," Zink said, sopping hash onto a lump of bread, bowing his legs around his kit.The fire was sparking and sending out low flames: for several minutes the dune came nearer, seemed taller, more ominous. When the flames flared the dune retreated.Zinc's face, because of his beard, appeared round and oriental; a hint of satire, of his good humor, was apparent as he chewed and watched the fire, the coming and going men. His hair, badly cut, trimmed by a madman, was greasy, in contrast to his scrubbed whiskers. He was built like a jockey--small boned, and lightly muscled. Staring at Dennison, he rolled his chocolate eyes expressively."This stuff, this hacked up meat, is easier to eat than the gunk they fed us yesterday," he said. "A pan of salmon's not my idea of chow in the desert.""Yeah, it was lousy," Dennison agreed."I'm gettin' me more of this hash, when I'm done.""Sure ... there's plenty.""Raub got here plenty early...""Great logistics ... I'll have more hash before the flies move in," said Dennison."Flies ... flies ... they're everywhere when we stop ... a fine way to go to hell ... carried there by flies!""How's your stomach?" Dennison asked. "Any better this morning?"Yesterday, at a noon halt, Zinc had held to a tread and vomited, gasping, his face white above his beard. During the morning run he had been hurled against the stock of his machine gun."I'm doin' all right," Zinc said "My guts have settled into place--somehow. Maybe the muscles inside are knittin' together again or whatever. I can breathe okay. No pain."He chuckled faintly. "It was one hell of a rotten jolt, and came near puttin' me out of running. I think this food will stay down.""You'll be okay," Dennison said.Zinc flaunted a hunk of bread."As long as I can eat I can manage," he exclaimed.The fire had attracted more of the Corps; some sat on the palm tree; two perched on a bed roll; others squatted on the sand; several sat on oil drums; some ate with their backs to the flames; others loafed about the kitchen. When Raub waved a mess kit and yelled, Dennison got up and crossed the sand to the wagon."More hash ... more coffee," he said, offering his pan."Sure man," said Raub.Dennison stared at him while he spooned hash, sliced bread, and poured coffee: he was a far off guy, slow, sloppy, small, with black rimmed spectacles and a black wad of a moustache, the image of a grubby Parisian painter though he had never painted or been outside of Georgia until the war."Did you have a tough time, bringing the kitchen forward?" Dennison shouted."Yeah ... bad findin' you guys in the black ... bad truck ... but weah heah."To Dennison he sounded unreal: where the hell was Georgia? Where was the US? All these men ... here ... how had they gotten here? The dune became real but the conflict was unreal.Settling his cup on the kit he asked himself whether he should eat more? What about being wounded on a full belly? Was it worse with the belly full? Some said...."Heah, heah," said Raub. "I've got some sinkahs for you. Would you all like a couple?""Huh ... I guess so..."Raub opened a cupboard door--a stainless steel door in the side of his kitchen--and pulled out a cellophane bag and passed doughnuts to Dennison, one at a time, hooked over a finger.Dennison grinned."Good boy, Raub.""Mum's da word. Quick, hide'em, while we're alone." Raub frowned, imagining GI's storming over the sand, howling for doughnuts across the counter. "Jus' remember, when your folks sends you all some stuff, jus' remember me again.""I'll remember."Dennison returned to Zinc and munched a doughnut underneath his nose--sitting down beside him."See how it's done!""How'd you rate that?""Reach in my jacket ... there's another sinkah ... you all likes 'em."Zinc appreciated Dennison's fake accent, fished for the doughnut, and bit into it."Perfect."Hunkered on the tree, they finished their food and drank more coffee. They stopped talking. Dennison lit a cigarette and offered his pack to Zinc, who accepted one. They had stopped talking because of fear. Fear was in the cigarette. In the sand."Landel was nervous as hell yesterday," Dennison began. "He acted as if the whole Africa Korps was on him!" He remembered Landel bellowing over the tank intercom, storming about supplies. Using the radio he screamed at officers, berating them when they answered."Operation haywire," Zinc commented, recalling the outburst."Colonel Morris says he'll report Landel ... Landel was drunk on Monday ... well, hell, we need a break," he said, wanting a leave, a week, two weeks, a month away from the assaults. Let some other guy knife his way through the Anadi pocket. Let some other crew hammer at the men entrenched at Anadi. Anadi was nothing. Never could mean anything."Morris is bad," Zinc said. "He couldn't take it yesterday, couldn't talk some of the time. One of his men got shot through the head. Their tank conked out ... a faulty timer."Again they stopped talking, already feeling the heat of their bus, the perspiration drenching their legs and arms and backs; they felt the lunging of their machine; they heard the sob of the motor, the bang of pistons, the bark of the exhaust.Fear slid down the dune, sat with them, picked at the grains of sand, shuffled through the dying fire, rubbed their faces, old fear, present before every attack.They heard the far off shelling, felt it in their feet.A nerve began to tremble in Dennison's right hand.He looked at his hand, stared.He thought of the little village of Ermenonville, his E, thought of his years there, his aunt's home, those gawky French windows in grey stone walls; he thought of his uncle's writing desk in his room upstairs, a desk usually littered with maps and photos and calculations--pigeonholes ready to burst.As he peered at the sand under his shoes he saw the fishing tackle in his own room ... rod and gun rack. He could almost see the park at E, the oaks, ash, chestnut, willow ... the miniature island where Rousseau had been buried ... the Petit Lac reflected the tall Lombardies on the island ... a swan--swimming sedately--was part of the scene ... the ivy walled château.Millard sat on the tree trunk, yakking, repeating rumors, speculating: each man had something to say about the terrain that was ahead: unfolding a map, some went over the lay of the land together. Wiping their mess kits half way clean with handfuls of sand they tossed them into a bin behind Raub's kitchen.By now the fire was out.Flashlights bloomed and died. Lanterns blinked.Seated men, men standing in groups, became death figures.Dennison walked slowly, head bent; Zinc followed him; Millard followed.Their tank was parked among other machines behind the shack where they had slept, almost at the base of the great dune. The bulk of each tank was something cut out of the night. As Dennison popped on his flash, rocks and gravel mixed with the deep sand ruts left by the treads.A mechanic's spotlight had been trained on their M4 Sherman: she was a dusty blob twenty-four feet long, nine feet wide and eleven feet high. Paint had been chipped off innumerable places. Her starboard side had sunk down where the sand had given way under her weight. She weighed thirty-five tons, and carried three machine guns, a 75 mm turret cannon. Walking up to her, Dennison kicked sand off his shoes against the armor plating."Where in Christ's name have you been?" Landel screamed, appearing out of the dark, flashlight in hand."Just finished eating," Dennison yelled."Here's your helmet," Landel yelled. "I found it lyin' on the floor of the bus. My god, man, can't you keep anything! You bastards always lose our stuff.""I'm wearing my helmet," Dennison yelled. "That's Zinc's helmet."Landel's flashlight winked out; the mechanic's vivid spotlight went out; the darkness seemed to alter the tone of the captain's voice, make it more irritable:"Who the hell's dickering with that light? What's the matter! This is no blackout! Gotta check!"He stumbled across sand ruts, his flash poking the sand and rocks. In a matter of seconds the mechanic's light snapped on. Dennison had climbed on top of their tank when Landel returned. Landel grabbed his leg and yelled:"Dennison, you and Zinc carry our quota of 75 mms and all the stuff you can lug. Snap into it! We've got to get out of here; we've a hell of a lot to do before we can pull out. Millard," he screamed: "MILLARD, Milla-ard. Grab yourself! Go with Zinc. Go with Dennison. Bring mms to our tank. I'll be inside ... you can feed it to me."The three walked away, avoided a blown-up tree and its branches. Tricky, bombed sand sent Zinc pitching on his belly. He got up with a grunt, not a word. Their bearded faces leered at each other in the winking light; a halftrack blocked their way; the wind was coming up and slapped dust at them as they snaked along one behind the other."A rotten place to lug supplies," Millard snapped. "Why not move our bus and then pick up the shells?"Shadowy light remained on Millard's face: how old he had become: Millard Evans, twenty-six, now a middle-aged farm hand, face seamed, ugly. His mouth was too big, flabby, because he had lost several front teeth. Only the eyes were young, kind, normal."Here ... over here, here's the dump," Dennison said. His flash yellowed boxes of ammunition and supplies spread on a giant tarpaulin."Let's not drag the stuff ... gotta keep sand off those boxes ... you know what that could mean!""Had sand in my gun yesterday," Zinc said. "Couldn't swivel it for awhile."Working fast, they lugged mm, cannon shells, gasoline, water tins, cans of grease and oil. Someone got the idea of ripping tarpaulin and wiping off the machine gun cartridges before lugging them. The path to the tanks became crowded; the sand got very loose; lights stabbed the junked sand, scraped the dune's side and seemed to drag down more sand, more dust, more darkness.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!"Dennison tightened the bolt, checked another.Stripping off his jacket, wiping his hands on it, he climbed inside, the chill interior amazingly dark and foul with gasoline. Another shell struck, banging furiously. Darkness meshed with silence! Someone flipped on the cab lights; Dennison jazzed the motor, Landel dove inside; Millard was okay; Zinc was bolting the turret; the cab light went out, leaving behind the pure black of steel.Shellfire was constant now, rocking the tank: the steel walls became paper partitions, likely to bend inward, collapse at any moment.In his driver's seat, Dennison adjusted his driving slits, Landel beside him, unfolding his map, spreading it across his legs by flashlight.During a jab of silence Dennison thought over the route briefed for them the day before: starboard, around the great dune; northeast by road for six kilometers; then north: was that right? Well, he could rely on Captain Fred Landel's directions.Bolted inside, the cab light seemed something pitiful, sick and trapped; then a bulb flashed on at the rear, muscling the naked shoulders and waists of the crew, glazing the unstacked shells. Somebody coughed over the intercom. The rear light got doused; another bulb popped on where Chuck was working at a bolt on his gunnery seat, tilting the pad to a new angle. Millard, squatting on the floor, was wiping shell cartridges with an oiled rag. On the port side, Zinc swung his machine gun from left to right, his beard level with the gun, bristling, crazy.With lights extinguished, the walls, the roar, the stink of gas and oil crammed the men. Dennison shifted the powerful Chrysler motor into second and swung away from the great dune. Although the cooling fan was rotating, the engine had already heated the cab.Dennison glanced at his wristwatch.Darkness, viewed from inside the rocking Sherman, from inside steel, appeared blacker: it had the appearance of glass, a sheet of tinted Plexiglas. A shell, exploding in the distance, resembled a fake dawn. Pushing down with his palms, Dennison gripped the clutch levers. Feeling jailed, stunned, he eyed first the left port and then the right. He expected a signal and blinked to keep his eyes focused, swiping his face to stay alert.Some sort of communication was coming in over the radio.Rocks tilted the machine; Dennison shifted gears to ease the treads; as the bus jolted over rocks he flooded the engine and it snorted and backfired and spat into the dark. Carefully he coaxed the engine into third and fourth, down-shifting into second.Now a green signal bobbed in front indicating: turn, to port. In time the light became a code, and Dennison read it painfully: it read:armored attack ... small.He jabbed Landel's arm and Landel jabbed him back: their prearranged signal for mutual understanding. Connecting his phone, Dennison yelled:"Okay ... attack ... where they attacking from?""I'll try the radio," Landel shouted.Light was papering the horizon with its desert paper, how ancient, how wrinkled that flap of sand: good, to get out of that black stuff, can pilot this box: there are tanks to starboard, not bad!As Dennison watched the creep of dawn a flare ripped the sky and hung suspended, rocking, kicking, sucking everything inside its brilliance.Instantly, he spotted a Nazi gun, mounted on a dune-rise, a silhouette of men and gun, the flare exploding behind the gunners. He shouted at Landel but a shell blew up beside the Sherman and hurled it half around. Dennison toppled from his seat--the air knocked out of his lungs. He thought: We're hit ... we'll catch on fire! Back at his controls, he cut the racing motor and wobbled out of the line of fire, Landel babbling incoherently over the intercom.Another shell."Port side ... port!" Landel yelled.The treads caught, slipped, jerked, the M4 flopping from side to side; the rumble of the treads, rolling unevenly, drowned the shellfire. Their grinding was like the beating of pneumatic hammers on metal sheets. It seemed to the crew that the interior darkness became part of the noise, whirled around with it, cyclotronic, snagging thought and muscle.Dennison's signaller appeared and led the tank to a strip of packed sand behind a lofty dune; he leaned forward to relieve a cramp in his side and wet his lips with his tongue, craving a drink. A shell boomed. The signaller saidstop.They're waiting for dawn, Dennison thought.I've got to rest a little ... got to have some water.Unable to speak, he tapped Landel's shoulder and indicated his mouth: lights in the cab flickered on Landel's face, his twisting lips."Okay," Dennison heard on the phone.As he drank and sensed the cool decency of water, he was afraid, afraid he would never have another drink, never get out, never have a chance to walk through fields or woods, stoop to cup water from a stream ...The darkness, the waiting, the crash of shells, the steel: it was both pain and the unknown.His hand shook as he gave the canteen to Landel.... Strange, dark inside but growing light outside.He had wandered through a low ceilinged cave as a boy, on the heels of a guy who carried a dim lantern ... this was another cave, a cave that moved. He shivered from the heat and his dripping sweat. Sweat trickled along his arms, down the inside of his forearms and into his palms.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 ...He felt the treads digging in; they tossed sand to the rear; the bus rolled through a wadi, climbed into the sun that was burning ahead. Something in the rocking motion, the rise and fall, made him feel that he was driving over the bodies of wounded men. He seemed to see across treeless fields, across horizons, across Africa, across Europe, across Asia--into a snowland: there was time to ride through forests, time to ski ...Shell flames seared his thoughts.He wanted to swing back, put the Sherman into reverse, turn, rush toward the rear--retreat. He wanted to open a steel door, jump out, run, blunder away from the din, away from the stench of gas and oil.Landel scribbled something on his knee pad and handed it to Dennison. As Landel yelled on the radio transmitter, Dennison bent over the scrawl and forced his brain to come together and make sense:Entering Anadi--Armed Corps.What was Anadi?Dennison had to jerk his machine away from an abutment of rocks; then it was smooth going: he shot the bus into faster gear: they were rolling at forty: they got to fifty, the heat mounting, billowing.They were in formation with other tanks in their Corps.Visibility: a hundred miles.Blank sand.Rolling.He heard somebody open fire with a machine gun: it was Zinc: then their 75 pounder whammed into action.Landel signalledslow.Dennison observed a tank to starboard, tank inside a cloud of dust and sand; the tank began zigzagging; the machine on the port side was driving straight ahead. He opened his visors to better vision. For seconds he watched his compass dial.North-north east ...Chickens flapped wildly along a street.Anadi, appearing out of sand, was a cluster of mud huts, brick huts, doors sagging on leather hinges, scraped white walls, white roosters, bashed dome, a toppling minaret, more Libyan dust. From a brick compound, pierced by a jagged hole, a cannon fired at the Sherman, spreading smoke and yeasty light into the street.A radio tower, designed like a potato masher, appeared through smoke and dust. A shell made the Sherman swivel. Lights failed inside. Dennison rolled forward slowly. The lights went on. Dennison had a moment to catch a glimpse of tiled roofs, barred windows, a bleached garden with broken benches, a dead woman. A pair of dogs dove through an open doorway. The door shut.Where was the cannon, firing out of the compound? Dennison coaxed his bus over cobbles, over a low barricade, close to a white wall; there a poster displayed a veiled woman, smiling. God, he thought, are there really women here?Maybe I can get a drink ... rest ... maybe ... maybe eat ...Smoke choked the street, brown smoke, acrid: it filled the space from house to house, street side to street side: it seemed to be working its way between the cobbles.Dennison's eyes slid over his indicators, oil gauge, gas gauge, temperature, compass, ammeter, water gauge.He tried to remember how many of their tanks were supposed to converge on Anadi but a shell crashed on the thought: he held his mouth open, expecting another detonation. The treads scrambled over bricks, smashed a door, travelled on paving, zigzagged, knocked down fence posts.The ventilation fan seemed to have stopped.Dust increased.It was steel, desert, shells, more steel.Can't see through the goddamn dust ... why doesn't it clear up? Christ, how my shoulders ache! What have they got in this rotten little town that we need so badly?Twenty tanks, thirty tanks in this town ...Now, now I can see. Okay, we push ahead ... okay go ...A streetcar lay on its side--broken glass everywhere. Every house window was shuttered. Doors had been boarded over, were padlocked or x'd with planking as if the war could be shut out. White flags fluttered on roof tops--dirty white rags. Sandbags, with Egyptian lettering on them, leaned against an iron fence that leaned against a damaged truck. Nazi dead lay on paths in a circular rose bed, flowers tangled around their arms and legs, around rifles and helmets. Flowers. Bushes.A lifeless dog lay in front of the Sherman and reminded Dennison of a dog he had owned in E, a brown dog: here Tubby, here Tubby. Dog eager to lick your hands and grin. Cocker. Here Tubby.The treads of the tank spun over gravel: Zinc's machine gun destroyed an emplacement on a roof: Millard's gun mowed down three men, rushing along an alley.Landel signalled and they rumbled along another alley and the cannon blew apart the front of a store where Nazi gunners were firing. Above a dome, perhaps a mosque, a shell burst, hurling bricks and stucco over doors, the Sherman and along a street.Dennison jazzed the bus down a wide street and townspeople fled ... ten or twelve on one side, bunched together, men and women, their clothing white and blue; their turbans white. Landel swung his machine gun to kill them: several dropped, a youngster, a boy, stumbled into the gutter, and lay there.Spitting on the tank wall, Landel cursed them:You goddamn sons of bitches ... why the hell are you out in the street ... don't you know no better?Even with all the ports open the air inside the cab writhed. Gun powder stung their eyes and throats. The crewmen's faces were haunted. They stared out of ports and slits, leered, grimaced, mad, incredulous, exhausted, hungry, thirsty, deaf.Dennison saw the sun directly ahead as the prow wrenched upward ...Somewhere, sometime, he must do something about the sky, study it, understand its composition, figure out how it originated, whether it altered at night, how it was influenced by storms, changes in temperature.Only a week ago Al had died on one of the morning attacks: Landel had bellowed through the intercom: he had seen Al crash onto the floor: they had wanted to lug him outside, into the air, but he had died in Dennison's arms, his head saturated with blood, a bullet in his brain.Yeah, Al had liked the sky. They had talked about it. He liked the sun. Al had wanted to buy a farm, have some horses and a cow. Horses not cars. He had talked about horses at camp: they had been buddies at Camp Manley. Yeah, they had put in days together, fishing at a nearby pond, hiking through Texas fields ... bluebonnets....Dennison observed other tanks: M3's and M4's, on a side street, the machines parked one behind the other, the crews still inside. A signal Corps flag appeared in the doorway of a two story building. A Corps flag wagged on a roof. Dennison drove his bus into a treeless square, and stopped, settled deeper into his seat, and asked Landel for the canteen.As he drank, he read Landel's scrawl:Stay!In another section of Anadi, shells were gutting, lofting smoke, sand and dust.The canteen water sent a chill through Dennison; a fleck of London hovered behind his eyes, streets with trees, fog, people waiting for a double-decker, kids leaning over a bridge rail, Big Ben, the grey Thames flowing ... he thought of Al again: Al had been twenty-three, a graduate of Western Reserve: the bullet had torn his ...Landel checked the gas gauge.Okay, gasoline.Suddenly, they were off, a tank almost in front of Dennison, a tank toward the rear. At the first intersection, they separated, to mop up. A barricade had been erected on a street between low, white walls; there were trees to one side, delicate plumes of tamarisk, tamarisk in a row--trying to beat the desert and its heat.Again every window was shuttered, even second floor windows. Grey shutters. Mauled shutters. Paintless.Nobody was defending the barricade. The treads moaned over sandbags and piles of masonry. As Dennison topped the barricade a Nazi tank opened fire, firing head-on, a squad of infantrymen armed with Brens squeezed together behind it.The tank's swastika burned in Dennison's brain: he spun his bus to the left, increased speed, shot ahead, cut to the right; he yelled through the intercom to Chuck, ordering him to open fire. Chuck's 75-pounder boomed. Dennison tried to signal Landel but grew confused. Why was the Nazi tank motionless? Was it some sort of trick?Again he swung his tank to one side and then spurted forward as fast as she would roll. If the commander of the German bus was stalling, what the hell was he figuring?Chuck steadied his gun--his body a part of it: steady boy, steady. Look, the Nazi turret is revolving. Wait, Chuck heard Landel's command to let go. As Dennison pivoted the Sherman, he pulled the trigger.The 75 pounder hit the Nazi prow and threw the tank to one side. Millard fed another shell to Chuck. The Nazi dropped a shell behind the Sherman: it exploded so close its force threw Landel to the floor. Smoke drenched the ports. Chuck's gunfire tore open the Panther's armor plate and ripped off a tread and port gun--gapping the machine.

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Title: Forward, Children!Creator: Paul Alexander BartlettRelease date: January 19, 2014 [eBook #44717]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Al Haines

Title: Forward, Children!

Creator: Paul Alexander Bartlett

Release date: January 19, 2014 [eBook #44717]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FORWARD, CHILDREN! ***

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Forward, Children!byPaul Alexander Bartlett

Forward, Children!

Paul Alexander Bartlett

Title: Forward, ChildrenAuthor: Paul Alexander BartlettPublisher: My Friend PublisherAddress: #101, 654-3 Yeoksam-Dong. Kangnam-Ku, Seoul, KoreaRegistration Number: 16-1534Date of Registration: October 17, 1997Copyright © 1998 Steven Bartlett. All rights reserved.Printed and bound in Republic of Korea.First Printing: March 10, 1998ISBN 89-88034-03-1

Printed and bound in Republic of Korea.

First Printing: March 10, 1998ISBN 89-88034-03-1

Project Gutenberg edition 2014

Forward, Children!was published in 1998 in Korea, nearly a decade after the author's death. The author’s literary executor, Steven James Bartlett, has decided to make the novel available as an open access publication, freely available to readers through Project Gutenberg under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, which allows anyone to distribute this work without changes to its content, provided that both the author and the original URL from which this work was obtained are mentioned, that the contents of this work are not used for commercial purposes or profit, and that this work will not be used without the copyright holder’s written permission in derivative works (i.e., you may not alter, transform, or build upon this work without such permission). The full legal statement of this license may be found at

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode

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OTHER BOOKS BY PAUL ALEXANDER BARTLETT

When the Owl Cries(novel), Macmillan, 1960.

Available as a free downloadable eBook in a variety of formats from Project Gutenberg:https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40245.

Wherehill(collection of poems), Autograph Editions, 1975.

Adiós, Mi México(novelette), Autograph Editions, 1979.

Spokes for Memory(collection of poems), Icarus Press, 1979.

The Haciendas of Mexico: An Artist’s Record, University Press of Colorado, 1990.

Voices from the Past – A Quintet: Sappho’s Journal, Christ’s Journal, Leonardo da Vinci’s Journal, Shakespeare’s Journal, and Lincoln’s Journal, Autograph Editions, 2007.

Available as an illustrated printed edition from Amazon.com:http://www.amazon.com/Voices-Past-Paul-Alexander-Bartlett/dp/061514120X/ref=sr*1*1/102-5793561-6667321?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1177817149&sr=1-1

Available as a free downloadable eBook in a variety of formats from Project Gutenberg:https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39468

Lincoln’s Journal(the fifth novel ofVoices from the Past).

Available as a free downloadable audiobook from:http://archive.org/details/VoicesFromThePast-LincolnsJournal

Sappho’s Journal, Autograph Editions, 2007.

Available as a separately printed illustrated edition from Amazon.com:http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb*sb*noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=9780615156460&x=0&y=0

Available as a free downloadable eBook in a variety of formats from Project Gutenberg:https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39467

Christ’s Journal, Autograph Editions, 2007.

Available as a separately printed illustrated edition from Amazon.com:http://www.amazon.com/Christs-Journal-Paul-Alexander-Bartlett/dp/0615156452/ref=sr*1*1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325740964&sr=1-1

Available as a free downloadable eBook in a variety of formats from Project Gutenberg:https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39400

Available as a free downloadable audiobook from:https://archive.org/details/VoicesFromThePast-ChristsJournal

TO THE YOUTH OF THE WORLD

Allons, enfants de la patrie,Le jour de la gloire est arrivé!--La MarseillaiseForward, children of our country,the day of glory is at hand.

Allons, enfants de la patrie,

Le jour de la gloire est arrivé!

--La Marseillaise

Forward, children of our country,

the day of glory is at hand.

Forward, Children!

Paul Alexander Bartlett

INTRODUCTION

Steven James Bartlett

Forward, Children!is a gripping anti-war novel. It brings vividly back to life the experience of WWII tank warfare as it was fought and endured by soldiers in the tank corps. The novel is also a story of love in French Ermenonville, where Rousseau lived during the last period in his life and was buried.

The titleForward, Children!comes from the opening line ofLa Marseillaise, the French national anthem (Allons, enfants de la patrie).Forward, Children!is a novel that was long in the making. Paul Alexander Bartlett completed the first manuscript ofForward, Children!in the years before the outbreak of the second world war. He had been deeply affected by the first world war, by the horrors and suffering it caused. Wishing to bring to readers a convincing and powerful first-hand experience of that war, he portrayed in the first version ofForward, Children!the hardship and terror of tank warfare as it had been conducted by the American Expeditionary Forces Tank Corps during World War I.

Renowned English novelist, poet, and critic Ford Madox Ford thought highly ofForward, Children!, and shortly before his death devoted a large part of an essay published in theSaturday Review of Literatureto praise for the novel, urging its publication.

"Forward, Children!... is the projection of the life of a fighting soldier in the A. E. Tank Corps in France. It is so to the life that for some days after reading it, the writer's nights were rendered heavy by the return of the lugubrious dreams that for years after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles attended on his slumbers. When you readForward, Children!youarein a tank crawling amidst unspeakable din and unthinkable pressure up the sides of houses, and down the banks of dried-up canals, crashing through the walls of factories.... [I]f not on artistic grounds then at least for the public weal this book should be published and widely circulated."

Ford Madox Ford died two weeks after this essay was published in 1939. In the subsequent years, with the attention of the world now fixed on WWII, Bartlett decided to rewriteForward, Children!to portray tank warfare in the ongoing world war. He had already become knowledgeable about tank warfare in the first world war and he now researched the conditions and accounts of tank fighting in the second. As a result,Forward, Children!builds on the author's attempt to stand in the combat boots of the tank soldiers of both world wars and conveys to the reader an account of their experience with unforgettable realism.

Forward, Children!was ironically never published during the author's life, despite the strongest commendations the work received not only from Ford Madox Ford, but also from John Dos Passos, who remarked: "Praise from Ford Madox Ford is praise indeed. The descriptions of tank warfare are vivid and as far as I know unique. This is a very, very good novel."

Russell Kirk added his admiration for the novel: "Permit me to commendForward, Children!The novel attains a pathos rare in war novels. The scenes of battle are drawn with power. Bartlett is an accomplished writer." Pearl Buck, Nobel Laureate in Literature, wrote: "He [Bartlett] is an excellent writer.Forward, Children!is an excellent piece of work, with fine characterizations."

Upton Sinclair wrote: "I foundForward, Children!extremely interesting and convincing. I think it is one of the best descriptions of fighting I have ever read. In fact, I can't remember any account of tank fighting in such detail and [which is so] convincing." James Purdy remarked: "Forward, Children!ranks with the best books--its anti-war message is inescapable. It is an important book and [Bartlett is] an important writer."

Forward, Children!eventually came to interest a small press in war-scarred Korea; in 1998, the press published the book in a limited edition that has reached few readers. To remedy this, the author's literary executor has decided to re-publish the book in open access form as an eBook to be made freely available to readers through Project Gutenberg.

Whatever the obstacles have been that so often stand in the way of authors, and that plague the world of publishing, after many, many decades it is time forForward, Children!to reach its readers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Alexander Bartlett (1909-1990) was both a writer and an artist, born in Moberly, Missouri, and educated at Oberlin College, the University of Arizona, the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City, and the Instituto de Bellas Artes in Guadalajara. His work can be divided into three categories: He is the author of many novels, short stories, and poems; second, as a fine artist, his drawings, illustrations, and paintings have been exhibited in more than 40 one-man shows in leading galleries, including the Los Angeles County Museum, the Atlanta Art Museum, the Bancroft Library, the Richmond Art Institute, the Brooks Museum, the Instituto-Mexicano-Norteamericano in Mexico City, and many other galleries; and, third, he devoted much of his life to the most comprehensive study of the haciendas of Mexico that has been undertaken.

Three hundred and fifty of his pen-and-ink illustrations of the haciendas and more than one thousand hacienda photographs make up the Paul Alexander Bartlett Collection held by the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection of the University of Texas, and form part of a second diversified collection held by the American Heritage Center of the University of Wyoming, which also includes an extensive archive of Bartlett's literary work, fine art, and letters. A third archive consisting primarily of Bartlett's literary work is held by the Department of Special Collections at UCLA. Bartlett's book about the history and life on the haciendas, including a selection of his illustrations and photographs, was published by the University Press of Colorado in 1990 under the titleThe Haciendas of Mexico: An Artist's Record.

Paul Alexander Bartlett's fiction has been commended by many authors, among them Pearl Buck, Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, James Michener, Upton Sinclair, Evelyn Eaton, and many others. He was the recipient of numerous grants, awards, and fellowships, from such organizations as the Leopold Schepp Foundation, the Edward MacDowell Association, the New School for Social Research, the Huntington Hartford Foundation, the Montalvo Foundation, Yaddo, and the Carnegie Foundation. His novelWhen the Owl Criesreceived national acclaim; his fine art has been exhibited throughout the United States and in Mexico; his poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies and has been published in individual volumes of his collected poetry. Bartlett was very prolific and left to the archives of his work many as yet unpublished manuscripts, including poetry, short stories, and novels, as well as more than a thousand paintings and illustrations.

His wife, Elizabeth Bartlett, a widely published and internationally recognized poet, is the author of seventeen published books of poetry, more than one thousand individually published poems, numerous short stories and essays in leading literary quarterlies and anthologies, and, as the founder of Literary Olympics, Inc., served as the editor of a series of multi-language volumes of international poetry to honor the work of outstanding contemporary poets.

The author of this Introduction (Paul and Elizabeth Bartlett's only child)] apparently inherited their writer's gene and has published books and articles in the fields of philosophy and psychology.

* * * * * * * *

Forward, Children!

PORTRAIT

Orville Dennison was five feet eleven inches tall and weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. He had the body of an athlete, the body of a crewman and a tennis player.

His eyes were brown with flecks of grey in them. He had brown hair and combed it straight back and when it was long it bulged out on the sides and had waves that crossed from ear to ear, waves that were sun bleached on the top.

His nose was aquiline, his mouth was thin-lipped and rather small. He had large ears. His eyebrows were bushy and his lashes were long and thick. His forehead was broad but was not unusual except that it was very smooth while the skin of his face, which was rather florid, had enlarged pores here and there.

His hands were wide across the back and his fingers were strong; his shoulders and arms were muscular.

He walked quickly with a natural swing.

He had a ready smile and even teeth.

His voice was pleasant.

He was twenty-four.

One was struck by the sadness in his face, the careworn lines about his mouth and eyes.

Landel shook Dennison's shoulder.

"Whatcha want?" Dennison mumbled, raising himself on one elbow and unconsciously pushing aside his blanket.

"The supply trucks have come," Landel yelled.

"Who's come?"

"The trucks and tanks are here. Three trucks have brought supplies. We've got food. Are you awake? Hey, do you hear me?"

"What did you say? Sure, sure, I'm awake," Dennison replied hazily. He squinted and ducked as Landel shot the beam of his flashlight directly into his face.

Landel knelt down beside Dennison and fumbled about the floor of the abandoned plank and sandbag irrigation shack for his tank helmet. His tall body almost filled the place. His bald head looked repulsively bald to Dennison--something surgical.

"I let ya sleep a little longer than the other guys," Landel yelled. "Yeah, you needed sleep." He shifted his flashlight around the crude shack, over the mounds of blankets where their crewmates had been sleeping.

"Our kitchen's here! The trucks are here ... three of them," he repeated.

"We've got something hot to eat," he hollered. "Are you awake?" He pushed Dennison--shoved him against the floor. "Come on, get out of here!"

"What time is it?" Dennison asked.

"Nearly fifteen ... we've got to get moving," Landel crabbed. He found his helmet underneath a sandy, greasy blanket and stuck it on. "Raub's got here with his kitchen ... so, let's go ... okay? Now?" He was talking to himself, spitting out words, annoyed by the day's problems, war's problems. He rose from his knees and, stooping low to keep from cracking himself against the roof, edged, crab-fashion, toward the door.

"I'm leavin' ... I'm goin'," he cried.

"I'll be along in a minute," Dennison said, yawning and propping himself against the wall, legs and shoulders feeling stiff.

Landel reappeared.

"Go on ... I'm awake!" he shouted. "See you at the chuck wagon."

"We've got to eat quick ... we've a hell of a lot to do," Landel screamed, his head in the doorway. He zoomed his flashlight into Dennison's eyes, like a warning, and walked off.

Angry, Dennison rubbed his hands over his bearded face, slumped down onto the floor again.

Through the doorway he caught glimpses of the flashlights and lanterns of men headed for the kitchen: legs and lights passed with metronome jerkiness across the sand: dust came up from beneath boots. Shellfire rumbled in the distance, a sound that had in it all the vacuity of the African desert.

A jab of wind dribbled sand through the doorway and shook sand from the make-shift roof of the shelter where only yesterday gunners had been trapped emplacing a gun.

Dennison smelled the stench of gasoline and grease from the tanks and a tank dump nearby; he could smell the gas and grease on his clothes; it seemed to swirl around him.

The incoming air was chilly.

Shivering, he hauled a blanket around him and with his shoulders against a sandbag, lit a cigarette. As his lighter flared he noticed his squashed, grease-pocked helmet; sleepily, he reached for it and placed it across his lap, pressing it down, making it a part of him. One hand holding his pack of cigarettes, the other bringing a cigarette to his mouth, he tried to think.

It seemed to him that he had dreamed during the night.

The tip of the cigarette glowed encouragingly.

Yes, he had dreamed about the library tower, the chimes, the sounds travelling down the hill slopes, down toward Lake Cayuga, the tower and the sounds blurring. Kids were sitting in the library, at long tables, faces, faces. There seemed to be an elm tree at the far end of the reading room, snow, lake ...

He tried to remember the sound of those chimes.

Huddled against sandbags, he drowsed and as he drowsed he saw a campfire in the woods somewhere, students standing around the fire, some of them singing. A guy was playing his harmonica, muting his music by cupping both hands over the instrument ...

Dennison's arms and hands had fallen asleep.

Yesterday the pace across the desert had been formidable, the heat increasing, a shortage of water, the water warm and sickening, nothing at all to eat at noon ...

He shook his hands and arms to bring back the circulation, groaning, cold, the exhaust of a tank stinking and coughing nearby. The sound brought with it the sensation of violent pitching, the distress of gasoline and oil fumes, the threat of shellfire at close range.

Shoving his sweater inside his trouser, adjusting his belt, he knelt and fished about: his helmet had rolled heedlessly and bumped against the wall: recovering it, he strapped it on, tilting it over his forehead, aware of its grime.

Slipping on his leather jacket, yanking the zipper, he wormed about the blankets for his mess kit and stepped out into the open, feeling sand drop off his clothes.

Outdoors, his cigarette tasted better and he inhaled deeply to help wake up. The chilly air nipped his face and hands, as he stood motionless urinating.

Behind the shack rose a tangle of rusty machinery from an irrigation pump, the machinery snarled over a cannon-sized conduit, the pipe's mouth toward the sky. The stars seemed closer because of the junked pipes and gears: the sky, utterly cloudless, was defiant: in a few hours its sun would be hammering, leading on and on, sand gobbling sand, dunes blurring into hills: heat and flies would move it together, thirst would be everywhere.

A G.I. scuffed by, coughing and spitting.

"Raub's here," he called, noticing Dennison and his cigarette. "We're ready to eat!" He coughed again.

Dennison wet his lips with his tongue and swallowed.

"I'm right behind you," he said. "Wait a second ... I've got my flashlight. Here, Millard!"

He pulled his flash from his jacket pocket and walked behind his crewmate--the sand deep, their boots scuffing, the flashlight wobbling as if asleep.

"Gonna get hot today," Millard hollered.

"Can't hear you," Dennison hollered.

"Any news on the radio?"

"What was it you said?"

Raub had his kitchen under lopsided leafless trees and a scabby fire of branches burned close to it, kitchen and blaze hidden behind a dune, an enormous crested thing with skeletal brush and camel grass growing on its side. Gaunt, set off by stars, it threatened the kitchen and men, hung, swollen, a thing of unbelievable weight. Yellow light crept up the slope and bounced off the scarred steel of the field kitchen. Steam gushed from pots at the rear of the stove; the air smelled of coffee and hash.

His flashlight in his pocket, Dennison worked his way through sixty or eighty men, brushing sand out of a mess kit with a dirty handkerchief and the palm of his hand. It seemed to him that he had done this many times.

"Hi," he greeted one of the Corps.

"Hi, Dennison ... Hi. Goddamn desert, cold. Freeze off your ass." The man drained his coffee and then blew into the bottom of his cup. "Coffee's good," he said.

"Give me a cup of coffee," Dennison said to Raub, at the kitchen: Raub had his coffee pot raised for pouring, his face smudged, his eyes puttied with sleep; cups were scattered along the kitchen counter in front of him, some of them clean.

"Howdy, any news from you guys?" Raub asked, tilting the pot, arm extended across the counter, the pot steaming. He smiled at Dennison, liking him: Dennison reminded him of a fellow back home, in Atlanta, a boy he'd grown up with.

"You ought to know the news," Dennison said, "you just came in with your outfit, so what's the news? What's up?"

"Not a damn thing! Here, hold still, have some hash. Hungry? It's not bad stuff."

"Sure," Dennison said.

"Fill'er up," Millard said, behind Dennison. "I could eat anything!"

The Corpsmen wore regulation uniforms or the coveralls of the mechanic; there were a number in fatigues; some men wore helmets; they were an unshaven lot. Their khaki did not count for much: they were all of a piece: their greasy, oily, gasoline messed clothes stuck to their greasy, oily bodies; they had not washed in days. No water, no inclination.

They appeared strangely alike in the firelight, each with a bush on his face, each with a crew cut or helmet, each with his mess kit or cup of coffee.

A shell thudded behind the great dune.

"Hell, I hope they don't lay a line on this fire," Millard said, moving a few yards away from the kitchen to allow others to queue up.

His pan filled, Dennison stepped out of line and pushed his way through the crewmen.

"Captain Meyers had guys pull some of the wood out of the blaze," a fat sergeant told Dennison.

"They're not near enough for a hit," Dennison belched cheerfully, spooning some hash.

"Christ, there's a village burning up over there, beyond that dune," somebody yelled. "What's a piddling campfire alongside a village! We'll be out of here in an hour. It'll be our turn to let them have it!"

Dennison found a hollow and sat down on a dead tree, a palm, a frondless bole; shoes sliding into the sand, he resumed eating, spooning and chewing slowly, listening to the men talk, noticing the stars now and then. The pan burned pleasantly in his hand and he shifted it about and spooned another spoonful of hash, his mouth sticking out, his nose in the steam.

On one side of him, Millard was shouting:

" ... Why, you know the drag of those cylinders, the lousy combustion; why, man alive, the Panzer tanks withstand the desert heat a hell of a lot better than our machines. Why..."

Somebody was yelling for more hash.

Somebody beefed:

"We've got fifteen Sherman tanks in reserve ... I'll bet we never use them!"

Dennison was familiar with some of the voices and the familiarity helped: the fire was encouraging: the hash was really hot: there was more at the chuck wagon. Coffee too.

Yesterday ... he tried to shut off the memory as he would a tap, but memory trickled through: Jesus, the vast terrain they had covered, that whamming through the sand, screwing round to avoid rocks, ducking behind a dune, climbing to fall into the direct fire of a Panther, her guns blazing ...

Luck, nothing but luck had pulled them out of that jam.

You never could tell, maybe they would have a lucky break today ... maybe it wouldn't get too hot inside the bus; maybe there might be enough water, stuff that was fit to drink ... they could travel across some comparatively level ground, none of the loose sand to baulk the treads. And food? Maybe they'd have something to eat, a chance to eat outside the tank.

It was a wretched kind of hope, the same hope that everyone got up with every morning--but it was hope. Gazing at the smoke from the fire, he followed it upward where the sky was a thousand stars, no New York sky; even through the smoke the points blinked brightly. Coldly. He held a mouthful of coffee on his tongue before he tackled his food once more. The bread was fresh. Good crust. He felt his body lose a little of its weariness; one leg sank into the sand; probably the desert was not too bad in the winter time, at some oasis, town or city.

He signalled to Isaac Jacobs who was wandering through the crowd of crewmen, walking sleepily, balancing his heaped up mess kit, coffee cup in the midst of the hash. Zinc's beard shone weirdly, crazily red in the light. He pushed his way past a couple of gesturing men and stepped on a smoldering log someone had dragged from the campfire.

"Goddammit," he exclaimed, wobbling, balancing. "Almost got myself badly singed. Gotta watch where we step in this desert." His teeth flashed in a grin intended for Dennison. Dennison grunted and nodded, his mouth full, his eyes narrowed to friendly slits.

"Sit down on the tree."

"How goes it?" Zinc asked, sitting, his mess kit on the trunk alongside.

"Not bad. Any news?"

"Sure, Raub shorted me on hash and bread--that's news!" Zinc said, spooning food.

"I heard Chuck say that a unit of the 604th is trailing us; somebody picked up their radio."

"I wouldn't mind seein' ole Sutter and Reynolds again," Zink said, sopping hash onto a lump of bread, bowing his legs around his kit.

The fire was sparking and sending out low flames: for several minutes the dune came nearer, seemed taller, more ominous. When the flames flared the dune retreated.

Zinc's face, because of his beard, appeared round and oriental; a hint of satire, of his good humor, was apparent as he chewed and watched the fire, the coming and going men. His hair, badly cut, trimmed by a madman, was greasy, in contrast to his scrubbed whiskers. He was built like a jockey--small boned, and lightly muscled. Staring at Dennison, he rolled his chocolate eyes expressively.

"This stuff, this hacked up meat, is easier to eat than the gunk they fed us yesterday," he said. "A pan of salmon's not my idea of chow in the desert."

"Yeah, it was lousy," Dennison agreed.

"I'm gettin' me more of this hash, when I'm done."

"Sure ... there's plenty."

"Raub got here plenty early..."

"Great logistics ... I'll have more hash before the flies move in," said Dennison.

"Flies ... flies ... they're everywhere when we stop ... a fine way to go to hell ... carried there by flies!"

"How's your stomach?" Dennison asked. "Any better this morning?"

Yesterday, at a noon halt, Zinc had held to a tread and vomited, gasping, his face white above his beard. During the morning run he had been hurled against the stock of his machine gun.

"I'm doin' all right," Zinc said "My guts have settled into place--somehow. Maybe the muscles inside are knittin' together again or whatever. I can breathe okay. No pain."

He chuckled faintly. "It was one hell of a rotten jolt, and came near puttin' me out of running. I think this food will stay down."

"You'll be okay," Dennison said.

Zinc flaunted a hunk of bread.

"As long as I can eat I can manage," he exclaimed.

The fire had attracted more of the Corps; some sat on the palm tree; two perched on a bed roll; others squatted on the sand; several sat on oil drums; some ate with their backs to the flames; others loafed about the kitchen. When Raub waved a mess kit and yelled, Dennison got up and crossed the sand to the wagon.

"More hash ... more coffee," he said, offering his pan.

"Sure man," said Raub.

Dennison stared at him while he spooned hash, sliced bread, and poured coffee: he was a far off guy, slow, sloppy, small, with black rimmed spectacles and a black wad of a moustache, the image of a grubby Parisian painter though he had never painted or been outside of Georgia until the war.

"Did you have a tough time, bringing the kitchen forward?" Dennison shouted.

"Yeah ... bad findin' you guys in the black ... bad truck ... but weah heah."

To Dennison he sounded unreal: where the hell was Georgia? Where was the US? All these men ... here ... how had they gotten here? The dune became real but the conflict was unreal.

Settling his cup on the kit he asked himself whether he should eat more? What about being wounded on a full belly? Was it worse with the belly full? Some said....

"Heah, heah," said Raub. "I've got some sinkahs for you. Would you all like a couple?"

"Huh ... I guess so..."

Raub opened a cupboard door--a stainless steel door in the side of his kitchen--and pulled out a cellophane bag and passed doughnuts to Dennison, one at a time, hooked over a finger.

Dennison grinned.

"Good boy, Raub."

"Mum's da word. Quick, hide'em, while we're alone." Raub frowned, imagining GI's storming over the sand, howling for doughnuts across the counter. "Jus' remember, when your folks sends you all some stuff, jus' remember me again."

"I'll remember."

Dennison returned to Zinc and munched a doughnut underneath his nose--sitting down beside him.

"See how it's done!"

"How'd you rate that?"

"Reach in my jacket ... there's another sinkah ... you all likes 'em."

Zinc appreciated Dennison's fake accent, fished for the doughnut, and bit into it.

"Perfect."

Hunkered on the tree, they finished their food and drank more coffee. They stopped talking. Dennison lit a cigarette and offered his pack to Zinc, who accepted one. They had stopped talking because of fear. Fear was in the cigarette. In the sand.

"Landel was nervous as hell yesterday," Dennison began. "He acted as if the whole Africa Korps was on him!" He remembered Landel bellowing over the tank intercom, storming about supplies. Using the radio he screamed at officers, berating them when they answered.

"Operation haywire," Zinc commented, recalling the outburst.

"Colonel Morris says he'll report Landel ... Landel was drunk on Monday ... well, hell, we need a break," he said, wanting a leave, a week, two weeks, a month away from the assaults. Let some other guy knife his way through the Anadi pocket. Let some other crew hammer at the men entrenched at Anadi. Anadi was nothing. Never could mean anything.

"Morris is bad," Zinc said. "He couldn't take it yesterday, couldn't talk some of the time. One of his men got shot through the head. Their tank conked out ... a faulty timer."

Again they stopped talking, already feeling the heat of their bus, the perspiration drenching their legs and arms and backs; they felt the lunging of their machine; they heard the sob of the motor, the bang of pistons, the bark of the exhaust.

Fear slid down the dune, sat with them, picked at the grains of sand, shuffled through the dying fire, rubbed their faces, old fear, present before every attack.

They heard the far off shelling, felt it in their feet.

A nerve began to tremble in Dennison's right hand.

He looked at his hand, stared.

He thought of the little village of Ermenonville, his E, thought of his years there, his aunt's home, those gawky French windows in grey stone walls; he thought of his uncle's writing desk in his room upstairs, a desk usually littered with maps and photos and calculations--pigeonholes ready to burst.

As he peered at the sand under his shoes he saw the fishing tackle in his own room ... rod and gun rack. He could almost see the park at E, the oaks, ash, chestnut, willow ... the miniature island where Rousseau had been buried ... the Petit Lac reflected the tall Lombardies on the island ... a swan--swimming sedately--was part of the scene ... the ivy walled château.

Millard sat on the tree trunk, yakking, repeating rumors, speculating: each man had something to say about the terrain that was ahead: unfolding a map, some went over the lay of the land together. Wiping their mess kits half way clean with handfuls of sand they tossed them into a bin behind Raub's kitchen.

By now the fire was out.

Flashlights bloomed and died. Lanterns blinked.

Seated men, men standing in groups, became death figures.

Dennison walked slowly, head bent; Zinc followed him; Millard followed.

Their tank was parked among other machines behind the shack where they had slept, almost at the base of the great dune. The bulk of each tank was something cut out of the night. As Dennison popped on his flash, rocks and gravel mixed with the deep sand ruts left by the treads.

A mechanic's spotlight had been trained on their M4 Sherman: she was a dusty blob twenty-four feet long, nine feet wide and eleven feet high. Paint had been chipped off innumerable places. Her starboard side had sunk down where the sand had given way under her weight. She weighed thirty-five tons, and carried three machine guns, a 75 mm turret cannon. Walking up to her, Dennison kicked sand off his shoes against the armor plating.

"Where in Christ's name have you been?" Landel screamed, appearing out of the dark, flashlight in hand.

"Just finished eating," Dennison yelled.

"Here's your helmet," Landel yelled. "I found it lyin' on the floor of the bus. My god, man, can't you keep anything! You bastards always lose our stuff."

"I'm wearing my helmet," Dennison yelled. "That's Zinc's helmet."

Landel's flashlight winked out; the mechanic's vivid spotlight went out; the darkness seemed to alter the tone of the captain's voice, make it more irritable:

"Who the hell's dickering with that light? What's the matter! This is no blackout! Gotta check!"

He stumbled across sand ruts, his flash poking the sand and rocks. In a matter of seconds the mechanic's light snapped on. Dennison had climbed on top of their tank when Landel returned. Landel grabbed his leg and yelled:

"Dennison, you and Zinc carry our quota of 75 mms and all the stuff you can lug. Snap into it! We've got to get out of here; we've a hell of a lot to do before we can pull out. Millard," he screamed: "MILLARD, Milla-ard. Grab yourself! Go with Zinc. Go with Dennison. Bring mms to our tank. I'll be inside ... you can feed it to me."

The three walked away, avoided a blown-up tree and its branches. Tricky, bombed sand sent Zinc pitching on his belly. He got up with a grunt, not a word. Their bearded faces leered at each other in the winking light; a halftrack blocked their way; the wind was coming up and slapped dust at them as they snaked along one behind the other.

"A rotten place to lug supplies," Millard snapped. "Why not move our bus and then pick up the shells?"

Shadowy light remained on Millard's face: how old he had become: Millard Evans, twenty-six, now a middle-aged farm hand, face seamed, ugly. His mouth was too big, flabby, because he had lost several front teeth. Only the eyes were young, kind, normal.

"Here ... over here, here's the dump," Dennison said. His flash yellowed boxes of ammunition and supplies spread on a giant tarpaulin.

"Let's not drag the stuff ... gotta keep sand off those boxes ... you know what that could mean!"

"Had sand in my gun yesterday," Zinc said. "Couldn't swivel it for awhile."

Working fast, they lugged mm, cannon shells, gasoline, water tins, cans of grease and oil. Someone got the idea of ripping tarpaulin and wiping off the machine gun cartridges before lugging them. The path to the tanks became crowded; the sand got very loose; lights stabbed the junked sand, scraped the dune's side and seemed to drag down more sand, more dust, more darkness.

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!"

Dennison tightened the bolt, checked another.

Stripping off his jacket, wiping his hands on it, he climbed inside, the chill interior amazingly dark and foul with gasoline. Another shell struck, banging furiously. Darkness meshed with silence! Someone flipped on the cab lights; Dennison jazzed the motor, Landel dove inside; Millard was okay; Zinc was bolting the turret; the cab light went out, leaving behind the pure black of steel.

Shellfire was constant now, rocking the tank: the steel walls became paper partitions, likely to bend inward, collapse at any moment.

In his driver's seat, Dennison adjusted his driving slits, Landel beside him, unfolding his map, spreading it across his legs by flashlight.

During a jab of silence Dennison thought over the route briefed for them the day before: starboard, around the great dune; northeast by road for six kilometers; then north: was that right? Well, he could rely on Captain Fred Landel's directions.

Bolted inside, the cab light seemed something pitiful, sick and trapped; then a bulb flashed on at the rear, muscling the naked shoulders and waists of the crew, glazing the unstacked shells. Somebody coughed over the intercom. The rear light got doused; another bulb popped on where Chuck was working at a bolt on his gunnery seat, tilting the pad to a new angle. Millard, squatting on the floor, was wiping shell cartridges with an oiled rag. On the port side, Zinc swung his machine gun from left to right, his beard level with the gun, bristling, crazy.

With lights extinguished, the walls, the roar, the stink of gas and oil crammed the men. Dennison shifted the powerful Chrysler motor into second and swung away from the great dune. Although the cooling fan was rotating, the engine had already heated the cab.

Dennison glanced at his wristwatch.

Darkness, viewed from inside the rocking Sherman, from inside steel, appeared blacker: it had the appearance of glass, a sheet of tinted Plexiglas. A shell, exploding in the distance, resembled a fake dawn. Pushing down with his palms, Dennison gripped the clutch levers. Feeling jailed, stunned, he eyed first the left port and then the right. He expected a signal and blinked to keep his eyes focused, swiping his face to stay alert.

Some sort of communication was coming in over the radio.

Rocks tilted the machine; Dennison shifted gears to ease the treads; as the bus jolted over rocks he flooded the engine and it snorted and backfired and spat into the dark. Carefully he coaxed the engine into third and fourth, down-shifting into second.

Now a green signal bobbed in front indicating: turn, to port. In time the light became a code, and Dennison read it painfully: it read:armored attack ... small.

He jabbed Landel's arm and Landel jabbed him back: their prearranged signal for mutual understanding. Connecting his phone, Dennison yelled:

"Okay ... attack ... where they attacking from?"

"I'll try the radio," Landel shouted.

Light was papering the horizon with its desert paper, how ancient, how wrinkled that flap of sand: good, to get out of that black stuff, can pilot this box: there are tanks to starboard, not bad!

As Dennison watched the creep of dawn a flare ripped the sky and hung suspended, rocking, kicking, sucking everything inside its brilliance.

Instantly, he spotted a Nazi gun, mounted on a dune-rise, a silhouette of men and gun, the flare exploding behind the gunners. He shouted at Landel but a shell blew up beside the Sherman and hurled it half around. Dennison toppled from his seat--the air knocked out of his lungs. He thought: We're hit ... we'll catch on fire! Back at his controls, he cut the racing motor and wobbled out of the line of fire, Landel babbling incoherently over the intercom.

Another shell.

"Port side ... port!" Landel yelled.

The treads caught, slipped, jerked, the M4 flopping from side to side; the rumble of the treads, rolling unevenly, drowned the shellfire. Their grinding was like the beating of pneumatic hammers on metal sheets. It seemed to the crew that the interior darkness became part of the noise, whirled around with it, cyclotronic, snagging thought and muscle.

Dennison's signaller appeared and led the tank to a strip of packed sand behind a lofty dune; he leaned forward to relieve a cramp in his side and wet his lips with his tongue, craving a drink. A shell boomed. The signaller saidstop.

They're waiting for dawn, Dennison thought.

I've got to rest a little ... got to have some water.

Unable to speak, he tapped Landel's shoulder and indicated his mouth: lights in the cab flickered on Landel's face, his twisting lips.

"Okay," Dennison heard on the phone.

As he drank and sensed the cool decency of water, he was afraid, afraid he would never have another drink, never get out, never have a chance to walk through fields or woods, stoop to cup water from a stream ...

The darkness, the waiting, the crash of shells, the steel: it was both pain and the unknown.

His hand shook as he gave the canteen to Landel.... Strange, dark inside but growing light outside.

He had wandered through a low ceilinged cave as a boy, on the heels of a guy who carried a dim lantern ... this was another cave, a cave that moved. He shivered from the heat and his dripping sweat. Sweat trickled along his arms, down the inside of his forearms and into his palms.

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 ...

He felt the treads digging in; they tossed sand to the rear; the bus rolled through a wadi, climbed into the sun that was burning ahead. Something in the rocking motion, the rise and fall, made him feel that he was driving over the bodies of wounded men. He seemed to see across treeless fields, across horizons, across Africa, across Europe, across Asia--into a snowland: there was time to ride through forests, time to ski ...

Shell flames seared his thoughts.

He wanted to swing back, put the Sherman into reverse, turn, rush toward the rear--retreat. He wanted to open a steel door, jump out, run, blunder away from the din, away from the stench of gas and oil.

Landel scribbled something on his knee pad and handed it to Dennison. As Landel yelled on the radio transmitter, Dennison bent over the scrawl and forced his brain to come together and make sense:

Entering Anadi--Armed Corps.

What was Anadi?

Dennison had to jerk his machine away from an abutment of rocks; then it was smooth going: he shot the bus into faster gear: they were rolling at forty: they got to fifty, the heat mounting, billowing.

They were in formation with other tanks in their Corps.

Visibility: a hundred miles.

Blank sand.

Rolling.

He heard somebody open fire with a machine gun: it was Zinc: then their 75 pounder whammed into action.

Landel signalledslow.

Dennison observed a tank to starboard, tank inside a cloud of dust and sand; the tank began zigzagging; the machine on the port side was driving straight ahead. He opened his visors to better vision. For seconds he watched his compass dial.

North-north east ...

Chickens flapped wildly along a street.

Anadi, appearing out of sand, was a cluster of mud huts, brick huts, doors sagging on leather hinges, scraped white walls, white roosters, bashed dome, a toppling minaret, more Libyan dust. From a brick compound, pierced by a jagged hole, a cannon fired at the Sherman, spreading smoke and yeasty light into the street.

A radio tower, designed like a potato masher, appeared through smoke and dust. A shell made the Sherman swivel. Lights failed inside. Dennison rolled forward slowly. The lights went on. Dennison had a moment to catch a glimpse of tiled roofs, barred windows, a bleached garden with broken benches, a dead woman. A pair of dogs dove through an open doorway. The door shut.

Where was the cannon, firing out of the compound? Dennison coaxed his bus over cobbles, over a low barricade, close to a white wall; there a poster displayed a veiled woman, smiling. God, he thought, are there really women here?

Maybe I can get a drink ... rest ... maybe ... maybe eat ...

Smoke choked the street, brown smoke, acrid: it filled the space from house to house, street side to street side: it seemed to be working its way between the cobbles.

Dennison's eyes slid over his indicators, oil gauge, gas gauge, temperature, compass, ammeter, water gauge.

He tried to remember how many of their tanks were supposed to converge on Anadi but a shell crashed on the thought: he held his mouth open, expecting another detonation. The treads scrambled over bricks, smashed a door, travelled on paving, zigzagged, knocked down fence posts.

The ventilation fan seemed to have stopped.

Dust increased.

It was steel, desert, shells, more steel.

Can't see through the goddamn dust ... why doesn't it clear up? Christ, how my shoulders ache! What have they got in this rotten little town that we need so badly?

Twenty tanks, thirty tanks in this town ...

Now, now I can see. Okay, we push ahead ... okay go ...

A streetcar lay on its side--broken glass everywhere. Every house window was shuttered. Doors had been boarded over, were padlocked or x'd with planking as if the war could be shut out. White flags fluttered on roof tops--dirty white rags. Sandbags, with Egyptian lettering on them, leaned against an iron fence that leaned against a damaged truck. Nazi dead lay on paths in a circular rose bed, flowers tangled around their arms and legs, around rifles and helmets. Flowers. Bushes.

A lifeless dog lay in front of the Sherman and reminded Dennison of a dog he had owned in E, a brown dog: here Tubby, here Tubby. Dog eager to lick your hands and grin. Cocker. Here Tubby.

The treads of the tank spun over gravel: Zinc's machine gun destroyed an emplacement on a roof: Millard's gun mowed down three men, rushing along an alley.

Landel signalled and they rumbled along another alley and the cannon blew apart the front of a store where Nazi gunners were firing. Above a dome, perhaps a mosque, a shell burst, hurling bricks and stucco over doors, the Sherman and along a street.

Dennison jazzed the bus down a wide street and townspeople fled ... ten or twelve on one side, bunched together, men and women, their clothing white and blue; their turbans white. Landel swung his machine gun to kill them: several dropped, a youngster, a boy, stumbled into the gutter, and lay there.

Spitting on the tank wall, Landel cursed them:

You goddamn sons of bitches ... why the hell are you out in the street ... don't you know no better?

Even with all the ports open the air inside the cab writhed. Gun powder stung their eyes and throats. The crewmen's faces were haunted. They stared out of ports and slits, leered, grimaced, mad, incredulous, exhausted, hungry, thirsty, deaf.

Dennison saw the sun directly ahead as the prow wrenched upward ...

Somewhere, sometime, he must do something about the sky, study it, understand its composition, figure out how it originated, whether it altered at night, how it was influenced by storms, changes in temperature.

Only a week ago Al had died on one of the morning attacks: Landel had bellowed through the intercom: he had seen Al crash onto the floor: they had wanted to lug him outside, into the air, but he had died in Dennison's arms, his head saturated with blood, a bullet in his brain.

Yeah, Al had liked the sky. They had talked about it. He liked the sun. Al had wanted to buy a farm, have some horses and a cow. Horses not cars. He had talked about horses at camp: they had been buddies at Camp Manley. Yeah, they had put in days together, fishing at a nearby pond, hiking through Texas fields ... bluebonnets....

Dennison observed other tanks: M3's and M4's, on a side street, the machines parked one behind the other, the crews still inside. A signal Corps flag appeared in the doorway of a two story building. A Corps flag wagged on a roof. Dennison drove his bus into a treeless square, and stopped, settled deeper into his seat, and asked Landel for the canteen.

As he drank, he read Landel's scrawl:

Stay!

In another section of Anadi, shells were gutting, lofting smoke, sand and dust.

The canteen water sent a chill through Dennison; a fleck of London hovered behind his eyes, streets with trees, fog, people waiting for a double-decker, kids leaning over a bridge rail, Big Ben, the grey Thames flowing ... he thought of Al again: Al had been twenty-three, a graduate of Western Reserve: the bullet had torn his ...

Landel checked the gas gauge.

Okay, gasoline.

Suddenly, they were off, a tank almost in front of Dennison, a tank toward the rear. At the first intersection, they separated, to mop up. A barricade had been erected on a street between low, white walls; there were trees to one side, delicate plumes of tamarisk, tamarisk in a row--trying to beat the desert and its heat.

Again every window was shuttered, even second floor windows. Grey shutters. Mauled shutters. Paintless.

Nobody was defending the barricade. The treads moaned over sandbags and piles of masonry. As Dennison topped the barricade a Nazi tank opened fire, firing head-on, a squad of infantrymen armed with Brens squeezed together behind it.

The tank's swastika burned in Dennison's brain: he spun his bus to the left, increased speed, shot ahead, cut to the right; he yelled through the intercom to Chuck, ordering him to open fire. Chuck's 75-pounder boomed. Dennison tried to signal Landel but grew confused. Why was the Nazi tank motionless? Was it some sort of trick?

Again he swung his tank to one side and then spurted forward as fast as she would roll. If the commander of the German bus was stalling, what the hell was he figuring?

Chuck steadied his gun--his body a part of it: steady boy, steady. Look, the Nazi turret is revolving. Wait, Chuck heard Landel's command to let go. As Dennison pivoted the Sherman, he pulled the trigger.

The 75 pounder hit the Nazi prow and threw the tank to one side. Millard fed another shell to Chuck. The Nazi dropped a shell behind the Sherman: it exploded so close its force threw Landel to the floor. Smoke drenched the ports. Chuck's gunfire tore open the Panther's armor plate and ripped off a tread and port gun--gapping the machine.

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