A Certain Solitude By
Susan M. Ballard
The branches, like spectral arms, reached up to touch the sky. Clouds scuttled overhead, and it was too early in the morning for the mist, creeping between barren tree trunks, to have burned off.
Saunders crouched behind the tumble of boulders, finally taking a moment to catch his breath. He pushed the helmet back on his head and wiped a grimy sleeve back across his eyes. He was exhausted - tired beyond belief. The battle had gone on forever, or had it only seemed that way?
Men, his squad, lay scattered around him - so many corpses - just bodies now without souls. Saunders tried to reconcile himself to the fact that he was alone and that the suffering of his men was over. Their soft moans or harsh cries no longer came to torture him.
Saunders sat back against a fallen tree, watching the rising sun burn off the mist. Somewhere across the clearing lay the bodies of his enemies. If there were any still alive, he couldn’t hear them. Maybe they’d been spirited away by their companions. The sergeant didn’t know, and to his own dismay, couldn’t have cared less. He pulled out a cigarette, his last, and the Zippo from his left shirt pocket. Lighting the Lucky, he inhaled deeply. The very familiar act brought him a bit of comfort, and he allowed his tense body to relax.
He slipped the lighter back into a deep jacket pocket. His hand came away sticky wet, and absently, Saunders brought his fingers up to stare at them. The blood was dark and shiny, and there was a lot of it, but the sergeant felt neither pain nor fear. He was beyond that. He leaned back and closed his eyes, inhaling the rich cigarette smoke, flicking the butt away when he was finished.
Almost asleep, he hard it - a voice calling to him, so soft - distant, but getting closer, calling him by name.
Shaking off his fatigue, picking up the Thompson submachine gun from where it rested near his thigh, Chip Saunders got shakily to his feet.
Dawn had broken fully now and the forest around him was thick with the stink of death and the aura of the chaos that had been. Again the voice called out. Nearer now, and familiar - so familiar, but the blonde sergeant couldn’t quite place it.
He staggered forward, the right side of his field jacket a bloody torn mess stuck wetly to his body. He cradled the Thompson close to his chest and edged forward, the calling voice always just out of reach, until he came to a thicket.
Crouching low, slinging the machine gun, Saunders got on his hands and knees and crept into the wandering labyrinth of tangled blackberry vines. In the very center was a tiny clearing, and in the clearing a soldier lay on his belly, dressed in GI khaki. The stripes on his sleeves showed him to be a buck sergeant.
Saunders crawled forward even as the low soft voice enticed him onward. At the soldier’s side, Saunders reached out his hand to turn the man over. His arm trembled, and he felt suddenly sick to his stomach.
“Was it you calling? Was it you?” he urged as he rolled the GI over onto his back. But the blue eyes that stared up into his were glazed. The chest no longer rose and fell, and no pulse beat in the wrist. The dead man’s right side was bloody and the blood had soaked into the ground beneath him. His thick blonde hair was tousled and matted, and his Thompson rested only inches from his body.
Saunders stared down at the man. The voice came again - whispering, calling to him - close now, pleading, and he understood.
“It’s me,” he answered as he gazed down at his own face. “It’s me.”
* * * * Hans Munzer sat among his men - dead - all of them. The quiet was complete until he heard the voice - soft, distant and so terribly familiar. Rising unsteadily from his protected position, Sergeant Munzer followed the voice....
Copyright 1993, Susan Balnek-Ballard. All rights reserved.
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