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wrote his name, rank, and number on a piece of paper and left this under a rock close to the head. Then they drove away, too exhausted to feel much emotion other than shock at the suddenness of the gunner's death. The thought uppermost in Barnes' mind now was that his crew was reduced from four to three. They were all capable of firing the guns in an emergency and he told Perm that when the need arose he would act as gunner. As they moved along the rail track Barnes stood in the turret, map in hand, and his mind weighed up the situation grimly. At least they had almost full fuel tanks, which meant that they could travel one hundred and fifty miles along the roads, a distance which would be reduced by fifty per cent once they began moving across country, but this was the only credit point he. could muster. One crew member short, the wireless out of action, no knowledge of where Parker might be: they almost resembled a warship sailing into uncharted seas with no means of communicating with its base. Half his mind pondered the dubious likelihood of rejoining his troop while the other half toyed with the glimmer of an idea which was to grow. Whatever happened, they must find a really worthwhile objective.
    A mile from the tunnel the track reached a level crossing and it was at this point where they turned off the railway line and began to move along a second-class road which ran between low hedges bordering fields of poor grassland. Six miles farther on they should turn right along a road which would take them into the rear area behind Etreux. But where were the armies?
    Standing upright in the turret Barnes strained his ears for sounds of gunfire, strained his eyes for sight of smoke or planes. The fields stretched away, empty; the sky, a vault of pale blue, stretched away uninhabited. The uncanny feeling grew, a feeling of men moving into unexplored territory. The tank tracks ground forward at top speed, the engines throbbed with power, as though determined to enjoy to the full this race across open country after the confinement inside the tunnel, and then Barnes saw the first traces of battle - the faint marks of tank tracks in the fields, the occasional crater where a shell or bomb had exploded, and as they proceeded along the deserted road the traces became more frequent, less reassuring. At one point Barnes ordered Reynolds to halt while he got down to'examine wrecked vehicles by the roadside. They were~ burnt-out tanks, five of them, and they were French Renault tanks which looked as though they had fought the entire German Army on their own, A little farther along the_road he stopped again and Penn climbed but with him to look at a mess of French equipment. In the ditch, rifles lay there as though they had been thrown down in panic flight from something awful and overpowering. When Barnes picked one up he found the weapon was still loaded. A few yards farther along there were abandoned Army packs, abandoned helmets, all French. Search as he might, Barnes could find no German equipment. Two of the helmets were occupied, the bodies lying on their backs facing the sky. Then more rifles, all of them loaded.
    'I don't like the look of it,' said Barnes. 'The loaded rifles, I mean. It looks as though they just ran for their lives. Tanks against men, probably.'
    'They've retreated, then,' remarked Penn quietly. 'Looks like it. A helluva lot must have happened while we were bottled up in that tunnel. According to the map there's a village about five miles farther on - we should get news there. I may halt Bert outside and go in on foot. I don't like the look of this at all.'
    'It could be Jerry who has retreated,' said Penn thoughtfully. 'Parker may be on the Rhine now.'
    'Wars don't move at that speed, Penn, not in either direction. As to Jerry retreating, I still don't like the look of those loaded rifles in the ditch - they smell of French retreat. We'd better get on.'
    As they moved along the road Barnes saw more and more