The Trojan Beam

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The officer dropped his hand. His crew could not see his face, for he stood on the obser­vation platform with his head in a steel turret. But the hand was enough. The twin engines roared, the great tank lurched like a huge monster just awakened and began to trundle forward.

The officer, looking left and right, had the curious vision of thickets slowly moving across the country. It was strange, he thought, that with war developed as a science so many of the old tricks remained in use. How many times in the long tale of history had an army advanced under cover of bushes and branches? It was no more than a moment's specu­lation before he turned his atten­tion to keeping his machine to its place in the forma­tion.

The weather was filthy. Sleet made it difficult to see any­thing much smaller than a house at 200 yards, and the wind which cut in through the obser­vation louvres felt like a knife sawing at his face. No doubt excellent condi­tions for an advance, in the tactical consider­ation of the author­ities, but not so good for the men who had to do the work. However, there was some conso­lation in being a tank man and not one of the infantry who would be following.

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