Twilight

by

Susan Balnek-Ballard

        Being born in the Bronx and raised there until past his seventeenth birthday had saddled Chip
Saunders with the accent he was never able to shake.  It also had the unfortunate tendency to give
people the wrong impression of the young man.  He was no urban illiterate, but intelligent,
sensitive and well-read.  His intelligence was common knowledge to anyone who knew him even
vaguely.  It had served him well in his latest profession - buck sergeant in the United States Army
currently serving in the European Theater of Operations, specifically Belgium, winter 1944.
        Sensitivity did not serve him as well as intelligence and he had been chewed out
thoroughly by his lieutenant only that evening for siding with one of his men, Private Kirby,
against a lieutenant from Baker Company.
        Saunders had been respectful enough, but respectfully adamant.  He wouldn’t give an
inch.  Kirby might be a goof-off, perpetual, but never light fingered as Lieutenant Hawthorne had
intimated.
        Saunders had held himself under rigid control, light complexion going brick red to the
roots of his blonde hair, while Hanley had given him what for - in front of Hawthorne.  He’d held
it in, offering a perfectly executed salute before turning a tight one hundred eighty degrees and
exiting the tent Lieutenant Hanley was using as a temporary base of command.
        Cold wind buffeted him, threatening to steal his breath, picking up the bit of trailing snow
and throwing it back into his face with stinging force.  Saunders turned up his jacket collar, pulled
on his wool gloves and favored the lighted tent behind him with a final backward glance.
        He was angry, but it was more than anger.  He was disappointed and hurt.  He and Gil
Hanley had been buddies once, good natured sparring partners, a lifetime ago, in England before
Omaha, before Saint Lo, before the Lieutenant had gotten a field commission that had driven a
wedge between them.  Still...Hanley should’ve trusted him enough to back him.
        The squad wasn’t on call so Saunders, head down, hands jammed deep into jacket
pockets, made the tent he shared with them his destination.
        Ducking low, he pushed the flap aside.  The friendly bantering of the man ceased abruptly,
and Saunders felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather.
        Kirby spoke first, the expression on his thin face accusatory, his nearly black eyes hard,
unnaturally so.  There was no trace of the usually good-natured GI.  “Swensen was there.  He was
passin’ by the lieutenant’s tent.  He said he heard Hanley chewin’ you out....”  Kirby swallowed
hard.  He too felt betrayed and hurt at what he’d been told, at what he had believed to be the
truth.  “Swensen...he said you never stuck up for me, Sarge!  Never said a thing...just let Hanley
and Hawthorne bury me.  Why, Sarge?”
        “Yeah, what’s goin’ on, Sarge?  You know Kirby would never do what Hawthorne said. 
Why didn’t you....?  Why?  Why?”  A chorus of voices overlapped and ran together.
        Saunders heard none of the words.  What he did hear was his men’s lack of confidence...in
him.  They should’ve had enough faith to know better...enough to never believe a gossip like
Swensen with his unreliable and never-ending sources of bullshit.
        Saunders closed his eyes against the disappointment, pivoted and vanished back out to be
enveloped by darkness and swirling snow dust.
        He turned away from the camaraderie the lights in the deepening twilight offered and into
the absolute solitude of the woods.  The silent beckoning darkness matched his melancholy mood
and Saunders lost himself in thought - memories of other times, other places, better and worse. 
Thompson slung over his shoulder, hands again stuffed into jacket pockets, Saunders walked.  His
steady pace ate up the miles; time something to be lost track of.
        The numbing cold overtook him in slow increments.  He recited poetry softly to himself,
here, where there was no chance of being overheard - of being chided for his sensibilities.  He
recited Poe, not the sad, disturbing later poems, but some of the work written while the man still
had the ability, the reason, like Saunders, to forget and lose himself in better times.  The soft
sound of his own voice intoning the gently worded lines, brought the sergeant comfort.

        “I have been happy, though in a dream.
        I have been happy and I love the theme:
        Dreams!  In their vivid coloring of life
        As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife
        Of semblance with reality which brings
        To the delirious eye, more lovely things
        Of Paradise and Love - and all my own!
        Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known”

        Saunders nodded to himself at the truth he found in the words, stopping to lean against the
rough bark of a tree and gaze languidly up into the newly clear sky.
        Fumbling with stiff fingers in an inside shirt pocket, Saunders withdrew his Zippo,
meaning to use the flame to check his watch for the time.  The lighter dropped from nerveless
fingers into the thick powder of snow somewhere out of sight near his feet.
        “Damn!” He cursed, feeling around for the keepsake, a gift from his brother, Joey, given
to Saunders before Chip had left for North Africa, engraved with a short sentiment and the date. 
It was the possession he prized above all others.
        After long minutes and no results, Saunders cursed again vigorously under his breath, a
bad night following on the heels of a worse day.  A rotten exhausting patrol in the frigid cold had
cost him a good soldier, a good man, then his confrontation with the Lieutenant and the squad.
        “That caps it!  That just caps it all!”
        The snap of a broken twig sounding like the crack of a rifle shot had Saunders down, the
Thompson gripped in both hands.  Another snap and the Sergeant sidestepped to the left, thinking
to fade back into better cover.  Instead, his boot found empty air and he fell over a sharp drop-off,
hitting the bottom twenty feet down with a bone jarring crunch, rolling further down a decline,
finally coming to rest against a rock outcropping.
        For a few minutes there was a cushion of painless shock as Saunders fought for his breath. 
Then there was the black realization that he was in a world of hurt.
        The Sergeant lay on his belly, face turned to the side, left arm pinned beneath him, the
right outstretched.  The pain centered mostly in his left shoulder though his head hurt as well. 
Blood was pooling beneath him, melting what snow his body had not, staining a wide area bright
crimson in the full moonlight.
        With his good arm, he attempted to push himself up, crying out at the hot wicked pain that
robbed his strength and sent him back to the ground.  Several tries exhausted him and left the
soldier whimpering in the pain and cold.  Soon the cold became the overwhelming factor,
blocking even the agony of the shoulder.
        
        
        “Where’s Saunders?”  Hanley’s voice jolted the men out of sleep.  It wasn’t the
Lieutenant’s usual voice, which, in itself, was often enough to make them either jump to or
cringe.  This was different all right.  It was sharp with worry.
        Kirby, Caje, Littlejohn, Doc and Billy were instantly awake, pawing sleep out of their eyes
with clumsy fingers, glancing over to Saunders’ usual spot.  His bedroll was neatly tied, both
blankets folded on top.
        Caje and Kirby exchanged bewildered looks while Caje answered the officer, who
glowered impatiently down at the group from his impressive height.  “We...uh...we don’t know,
sir.  We thought he was with you or gettin’ something to eat when he didn’t show by 2200.”
        The men began talking at once as each offered what he believed to be an explanation for
Saunders’ disappearance or questioned the man next to him as to what he believed was going on.
        “Knock it off!”  Hanley silenced them with a wave of a gloved hand.  “It’s now 0200. 
Saunders is not in this camp.  I know.  I have searched it.  If he’s not here with you, then he’s out
there somewhere.”
        Even in the close confines of the tent, Hanley could see the plumes of his breath.  If
Saunders was out there and for whatever reason hadn’t returned - lost, taken prisoner, (this being
highly unlikely since the krauts had been pushed far back), or injured, his prospects for survival
were less than promising.  “Volunteers only to search for him.  If you want to go, saddle up. 
Bring extra blankets.”
        In no more time than it had taken Hanley to finish his three sentence explanation, the men,
all of them, were on their feet, silent now, pulling on boots, getting their gear together, nodding at
Hanley as they stepped past him and out into the night.
        It wasn’t difficult for Caje to pick up Saunders’ bootprints after they had separated from
the others at the outskirts of the small encampment.  The trail was meandering and long.
        After an hour, it was Kirby who broke the silence, whispering to Doc in a string of
breathless sentences.  “I musta hurt his feelins’ pretty bad before...in the tent.  I jumped on ‘im
hard, Doc, without knownin’ what really happened.”  Kirby searched his jacket for a cigarette,
found one and lit it.  The flame from the Zippo illuminated his face and reflected the misery in the
dark eyes.
        Doc sighed and hitched his medic’s knapsack up to a more comfortable position on his
shoulder.  “It wasn’t only you, Kirby.  It was all of us....Shoulda kept our mouths shut till we
heard the truth from the Sarge or the Lieutenant.”
        “Goin’ off half cocked never got anybody...”  Kirby continued, the rest of his mumbled
sentence lost to the picked-up wind as he hurried to catch up with Caje and the Lieutenant
stopped ahead.  Doc shrugged and picked up his pace, Littlejohn and Billy behind him doing
likewise.
        Caje’s narrow, strong-boned face was tightly drawn and considerably paler than usual as
he peered over the edge of the drop-off and turned to the officer.  There was no need for him to
say what Hanley could see for himself.
        Before the rest of the squad could move up, Hanley and Caje were already scrambling
down a relatively traversable spot close to the drop-off.  But Doc, standing on high ground,
squinting down, could see the body as the two men reached it, Hanley kneeling, a hand already on
Saunders’ shoulder.
        “Don’t touch him!  Wait for me!  Don’t move him!”  Doc warned as he began his own
descent.  Kirby, Littlejohn and Billy were on his heels, slipping and sliding their way down.
        Doc knelt as Hanley made space for him at Saunders’ side.  He pulled off his gloves and
slid a hand beneath the sergeant’s field jacket, resting it against his back.  He felt shallow, slow
respirations, assuring the men crouched around him, “He’s alive.”
        Gently, Doc ran his hands down Saunders’ spine and across his ribs, checking for serious,
visible damage.  He could tell by the crooked way the sergeant’s shoulder rested on the ground
that it was dislocated.  The moon was bright, but to check the head injury, the medic asked Kirby
to get them the small flashlight from his bag.
        Carefully and with Hanley’s help, Doc managed to roll Saunders over.  Using the
flashlight, he panned it into both the non-com’s eyes.  Reaction seemed sluggish, but the pupils
were equal.  The injury to the head was probably a relatively minor scalp wound though blood
loss was significant.  And the sergeant had lost so much body heat he could no longer shiver in the
dense cold as the rest of the men were doing.
        Orders were given and obeyed.  A fire was built while Doc prepared to realign the
sergeant’s arm with his shoulder.
        Vaguely, Saunders sensed the activity going on around him. He couldn’t yet feel the heat
of the fire Littlejohn and Billy had started or the warmth from Hanley’s body as he held Saunders
in the shelter of his arms while Doc swathed him in wool blankets from head to foot.
        He did, however, feel the quick agony when the medic put his arm back into the socket it
had been wrenched from.  That he felt, before the morphine he’d been give had had a chance to
work.  He moaned into it, feebly pushing back into Hanley’s chest.  
        Dawn was already sending creeping rays of new light across the horizon before Saunders
began regaining his senses.  Doc was kneeling at his side, pressing a mess cup to his lips.  The
rising steam was fragrant, and Saunders wanted the hot coffee badly enough to risk inching a hand
out from beneath the blankets to grasp the container and hold it close.
        “Good.  That’s it, Sarge,” Doc encouraged as the non-com sipped the coffee, its sugared
warmth fanning out to envelope a body now wracked with chills.
        Finished, Saunders let his hand drop back against his chest while the medic passed the cup
back to Caje, who squatted behind him.  Doc tucked the gloved hand back beneath the blankets.
        “You on patrol?”  Saunders questioned the men whose faces pressed close around him
and were plastered with varying degrees of relieved smiles.
        “Nah, Sarge,” Kirby piped up, “we came out to get ya!”  It was the Lieutenant who....” 
Kirby’s explanation was cut short by Hanley, still at Saunders’ back supporting him.
        “That’s enough, Private.  I can speak for myself.”  And the Lieutenant went on to explain
the situation as he’d seen it and the steps he’d initiated to locate Saunders.
        The Sergeant nodded thoughtfully, sighing.  “Stupid of me to come out so far...wanderin’
off like a green kid.  Putting your lives at risk comin’ out here...that wasn’t too smart either,
Lieutenant.  Not that I don’t appreciate it.”
        At his back, Hanley allowed himself a brief smile Saunders was unable to see but could
hear in the voice.  “Since you’re chewing out your lieutenant, Sergeant, you might as well do it
right and go all the way.  Yesterday...I was wrong. I should’ve stuck up for you against
Hawthorne, you and Kirby.  I knew you were right - had to be.  I’ve never known you to be so
damn stubborn about something you weren’t absolutely sure of.  Chew me out now, because it’s
the last chance you’ll get without risking a court martial.”
        Saunders slowly shook his head.  “No, sir.  You thought you were right at the time.  I
can’t fault you for that.  And you admitted you were wrong.  That takes guts.”  A violent bout of
teeth rattling shivers cut Saunders’ words short. 
        Kirby held out a cigarette.  Saunders nodded and accepted the Lucky between his lips. 
Caje leaned forward, flipped open a Zippo and lit the smoke.  He palmed the lighter, showing it to
the Sergeant.  Sun glinted off the bit of engraving on the side, a few words and a date.
        Disentangling his hand from the blankets, Saunders reached out to accept the coveted
lighter from the Cajun.  “Thanks,” he whispered, the heartfelt word directed at Caje, but meant
for them all.  “Thanks.”
        

        Saunders woke, consciousness returning sluggishly as he fought against the lassitude just
to open his eyes.  It was full daylight and the sun was blinding against the white snow expanse. 
He squeezed his eyes shut against the harsh glare and when he decided to open them again, there
was a presence blocking most of the light.
        But what the hell was going on?  He was still cold, muscle stiffening and bone chilling.
The only mercy in it being the pain of his dislocated shoulder was somewhat numbed by the all-
enveloping cold.
        Where were Hanley, Doc, Caje, the rest of the squad?  Where was the fire and the hot
coffee and the offer of comfort and protection?  Gone or never there in the first place?  Squinting
up at the figure looming over him, concentrating hard to discern it, Saunders came to a bitter
conclusion - never there in the first place!
        Barely, just barely, the Sergeant could make out the silhouette of a man and then some
details if he focused hard enough.  It was a soldier, a soldier in a German uniform, most likely a
straggler, his Mauser was pointed steadily at the American nearly buried in drifted snow.  The
only part of Saunders visible was his face, white patches marking areas of frostbite on cheeks,
nose and chin.  His wide blue eyes and puffs of warm breath from parted lips were the only signs
of life.  The German jacked a round into his rifle, the action sharp and loud in the stillness of the
forest.  Chip Saunders closed his eyes.
        
        
        The crack of a rifle shot woke Hanley from a sleep that had been both restless and filled
with nightmares.  He’d dreamt of Saunders - alone somewhere, helpless, hurt and the guilt that
had driven Hanley, in his dream, out in the cold to search for him, that and the friendship that
never should’ve gone stale.
        “Thank God!  A dream!  Thank God!”  He murmured to himself as he sat up in his bedroll
and wiped cold sweat from his face across a jacket sleeve.
        Kirby poked his head into the tent, his face an open book as far as his emotions were
concerned.  Kirby was scared - scared white.  “Lieutenant!  Did ya hear that?  It was a shot! 
Coulda been a Mauser - out in the woods - and Lieutenant!  Sarge is gone missin’!  Never slept in
his ‘roll!”
        Hanley had a look of disbelief frozen onto his face and at a lack of response, Kirby
stepped into the tent, raising his voice, shrilling, “Lieutenant!  Sarge is gone!  Krauts in the
woods!  Lieutenant?  Lieutenant Hanley?”
        Gil Hanley closed his eyes.








Copyright 9/93, Susan Balnek-Ballard.  All rights reserved.