ing my head out of the turret now. As far as these stemsll let
me. Which isnt far. Theyre a solid mass on top of the machine. And
beside it. I'm going to take a few tools and make for the engine. Only
thing to do. Can't sit here and describe grassroots to you dogrobbers
all day long. See if I can't get her running and back out. Then I resign
from the state of California. Right then. This is SMT7 leaving the
transmitter for essential repairs and signing off."

For hours the reports kept coming in, all in identically the same vein:
rapid progress followed by a slowdown, then either engine trouble or a
failure to keep rendezvous by another tank, all messages concluding
alike: "Now leaving transmitter." It was no use for field headquarters
frantically to order them to stay in their tanks no matter what
happened. They were young, ablebodied, impatient men and when something
went wrong they crawled out to fight their way through a few feet of
grass to fix it. Afterall they were in the heart of a great city. Their
machines had burrowed straightforwardly into the grass and no threats of
courtmartial could make them sit and look silly till help arrived and
they were tamely rescued. So one by one they wormed their way out to fix
the ignition, adjust the carburetor, or hack free the cogs which moved
the tracks. And one by one their radios became silent and were not heard
again.

The captain went from cockiness to doubt, from doubt to anxiety, and
then to anguished fury. He had been so completely confident of the
maneuver's outcome that its failure drove him, not to despair, but to
anger. He knew most of the tankdrivers personally and the picture of
these friends trapped in their tiny, evernarrowing pockets of green sent
him into a frenzy. "SMT1--that's Lew Brown. Don't get out, Lew--stay
where you are, you jackass. Stay where you are, Lew," he bellowed into
the unresponsive loudspeaker.

"Jake White. Jake White's in four. Said I'd buy him a drink afterwards.
Joke. He's a cocacola boy. Why can't you stay inside, Jake? Why can't
you stay put?"

Unable to bear it longer, he rushed from field headquarters shouting,
"Let's get'm out, boys, let's get'm out," and would personally have led
a volunteer party charging on foot into the grass if he had not been
forcibly restrained and sympathetically led away, sobbing hysterically,
toward hospitalization and calming treatment.

The captain's impulse, though impractical, was shared by all