The whole rhomboidal steel coffin lurched terribly to and fro with each jerk of its spindly legs over the annihilated terrain. The going joke among the crews was that they were called landships because you had to find your sea legs to survive roiling around inside one of them. Every step thundered like an artillery shell. The heat was suffocating. Twin six cylinder petrol engines dominated the space, exposed as they thrumped along, spewing oil and venting noxious gases directly into the compartment. The coughs and sputters of the women kept time with the relentless clomping of the steel legs over the muck of shellholes.

Before the war, Claire's only mechanical expertise was helping around her family's bicycle repair shop, but now she was hunched over the infernal beating hearts of the machine, black as a chimney sweep with grease and grime, her slender fingers calloused and singed, knock-kneed with exhaustion, and drenched in sweat as she did her duty of tending to the beast.