nded
Germans.

Then a sudden and unexplainable sense of disaster caused McKnutt to
look round. One of his gunners lay quite still on the floor of the
tank, his back against the engine, and a stream of blood trickling
down his face. The Corporal who stood next to him pointed to the
sights in the turret and then to his forehead, and McKnutt realized
that a bullet must have slipped in through the small space, entering
the man's head as he looked along the barrel of his gun. There he lay,
along one side of the tank between the engine and the sponson. The
Corporal tried to get in position to carry on firing with his own gun,
but the dead body impeded his movements.

There was only one thing to do. The Corporal looked questioningly at
McKnutt and pointed to the body. The officer nodded quickly, and the
left gearsman and the Corporal dragged the body and propped it up
against the door. Immediately the door flew open. The back of the
corpse fell down and half the body lay hanging out, with its legs
still caught on the floor. With feverish haste they lifted the legs
and threw them out, but the weight of the body balanced them back
again through the still open door. The men were desperate. With a
tremendous heave they turned the dead man upside down, shoved the body
out and slammed the door shut. They were just in time. A bomb exploded
directly beneath the sponson, where the dead body had fallen. To every
man in the tank came a feeling of swift gratitude that the bombs had
caught the dead man and not themselves.

They ploughed across another trench without dropping into the bottom,
for it was only six feet wide. Daylight had come by now and the enemy
was beginning to find that his brave efforts were of no avail against
these monsters of steel.

All this time the German guns had not been silent. McKnutt's tank
crunched across the ground amid a furious storm of flying earth and
splinters. The strain was beginning to be felt. Although one is
protected from machine-gun fire in a tank, the sense of confinement
is, at times, terrible. One does not know what is happening outside
his little steel prison. One often cannot see where the machine is
going. The noise inside is deafening; the heat terrific. Bombs shatter
on the roof and on all sides. Bullets spatter savagely against the
walls. There is an awful lack of knowledge; a feeling of blind
helplessness at being cooped up. One is entirely at the mercy of the
big shells. If a shel