Hanley's arm thrown over his shoulder, Saunders and his burden made their way through the waist-high grass of an old farm lot, past battered sheds and outbuildings, and over the wreckage of rusted equipment lying dangerously hidden in the weeds. The farm they were on was so old, it had probably been derelict even before the war!
With the sun blazing down on their bare heads, how long had they been walking? One hour, two hours? They were now behind enemy lines—the lines had shifted since this morning's meeting with Capt. Jampel at Company CP. As shown by the machine gun at the bridge, where their jeep had crashed, the Germans held this sector now.
Under Hanley's dead weight, Saunders' knee gave way and he slipped. Coming down on the rusted remains of an old harrow, its metal tines upturned in the earth, he cried out, cutting the outer edge of his hand. He let Hanley fall not-so-gently to the ground, the high weeds instantly swallowing the lieutenant.
Now, that's all he needed—lockjaw. Hanley's wound had used all their sulfa, but he had a bandage left in his own kit. Tearing open the package with his teeth, gingerly holding his hand out, blood dripping, he bound it up a few times, then tucked the end of the bandage into one of the layers of gauze. He realized with a pang that he should have saved it for the lieutenant's still-bleeding wound.
"Come on, Gil," he said, trying to lift him from the grass. Even though Hanley was coming around again, he was unable to make an effort to stand on his own. He rose, but only through Saunders' ebbing strength.
As the tall, dark-featured man threatened to 'slip' out again on his sergeant, Saunders walked him through the old farm lot, past battered sheds and outbuildings and into an old barn, its doors slanted at an odd angle as if the building might tumble down at any minute.
Kicking up some old, broken straw into a pile for a bed, he laid his burden down and then fell beside him in a dead heap. Leaning back against the boards of a stall, he hung his head and breathed out. Hanley, feverish, groaned again. Still breathing hard from all his exertions, Saunders reached for his own canteen and gave him a few sips of water, then in a still, unhurried kind of way, he looked down at him while Hanley labored to talk.
"Where … where are we, Saunders?" he asked, his voice weak, strained. His hand beat the air as if he was swatting flies. Saunders caught it and laid it down on Hanley's shirt-front, patting it once to calm him.
Still breathing hard from all of his afternoon's exertions, Saunders tried to calm him with words, too, but these were words he didn't have much confidence in.
"Lieutenant—Gil, we're safe now in a barn. There're no Germans here. You can rest. I'll get us back after I study the map."
"What about the Germans?" asked Hanley, having missed most of Saunders' speech.
They were behind German lines. Getting them both back safe and sound wouldn't be easy. The sergeant laughed a little shakily, realizing that. He was tired. The afternoon's struggled with a barely conscious man had worn him thin as paper, and he really didn't want to move at all.
"I said, sir, no Germans here. We're safe enough. We're in an old barn."
"Are they here?"
"Who, Lieutenant?"
"The people who own … ah!" Hanley had shifted a bit, his back aching, "the farm?"
"No, sir. It's not been used as a farm for a lot of years. Everything's rusted." Saunders brought his hand up and looked at it again, worriedly thinking about tetanus.
"No Krauts?" asked Hanley, beginning to irk his favorite NCO.
"No, sir. Like I told you, we're safe."
That may not have been strictly true. Over the not-too-distant hills, the thrum of artillery fire could be heard, but Saunders had no wish to alarm a wounded man.
"That's good to know," Hanley finished. His entire speech had been made with a languid voice and closed eyes. Now he drifted off to sleep while Saunders pulled the tommy gun off his back and took out his map to study.
Even while he tried to put the incident at the bridge out of his mind in order to concentrate on the map in the here and now, his mind kept returning to it. Saunders driving, they had left the meeting with Jampel to return to that part of the sector where 1st Squad was dug in, facing the German lines across a swampy bottomland. Shots from the 'nest' above the road took out one of the tires on his side, then the other.
Hanley had been hit a second before the tires blew. He doubled over, but Saunders was only able to spare him a passing glance. Careening out of control, the jeep in its forward momentum couldn't stop, but leaped the wall of the stone bridge, a short, but sturdy barrier, and started its descent. The sergeant had one opportunity to save Hanley, shoving him out of the jeep on Hanley's side. One last Kraut bullet hit the gas tank directly under the driver's seat as Saunders, with his Thompson slung over his shoulder, tumbled out, falling to the stream about twenty feet below. The ruptured tank exploded in midair, sending a shock wave through his system and deafening him with its roar. Then he hit the water, struck the side of his neck on a rock embedded there, one of hundreds of similar rocks, and lost consciousness for a few moments—long enough to swallow a lot of water, but not long enough to drown.
When he awoke, the rocky stream was cold and the current strong, but it wasn't all that deep. Panting and hurting, he sat up against a rock, maybe the same one he'd hit in his fall. Soon two of the three Germans from the machine gun nest on the hill above the bridge—they hadn't been there when he and Hanley had driven through earlier on their way to Jampel's meeting—flew down to drag him out of the water. The remaining German went up to the bridge to find the passenger, who was plainly an officer by the white mark on his olive-green helmet, a helmet he was now no longer wearing. It had rolled to the other side of the bridge, and the German didn't bother with it. He did yank off Hanley's carbine from his shoulder, tossing it aside, along with his web belt.
Saunders' own camo-covered helmet was lost in the water among the rocks. Like Hanley's, no one expended any effort to fish it out when he was fished out of the water. Stripping his tommy gun off his back and removing his web belt, which carried his Colt .45 in addition to his canteen, Saunders' own Germans searched through his jacket. Finding extra mags and a map, they threw it all onto the bank of the stream. He had used up his two hand grenades that morning making mincemeat out of another machine gun battery.
Even against the odds, and feeling lightheaded, he threw one of the men off and leapt on him, hands around his throat, while the second Kraut made ready to bash Saunders in the head with his rifle. Just then the third man on the bridge cried out, "Dieser ist tot!" This one's dead.
At the apparent hesitation of the two men he was wrangling with, Saunders went back to his throttling job, but shouldering the rifle, the second man grabbed him under the arms and pulled him off, allowing his buddy to breathe again. Saunders was shoved up the rocky hill to the road, pushed until he came to where Hanley lay close to the wall. He was very still, lying near where the jeep had plunged off the bridge in a spectacular nose-dive.
Seeing Hanley's blood blossoming on the stones under the lieutenant's back, Saunders looked up at the Germans, all three of them not moving, waiting to see what he would do, then he looked back down at Hanley's pale, unresponsive face. Kneeling down of his own accord, he lifted the lieutenant's head to his knee, speaking softly to his friend.
"Gil! Wake up! It's me, Sarge."
Suddenly, he caught an eye flicker inside one of Hanley's lids and realized that Hanley was only playing possum. Saunders knew he had to go along with it.
He lowered Hanley's head back, then stood up and staggered back into the wall, several of its stones missing now, sheared off by the tumbling jeep. He looked like he'd just lost his best friend, though he hadn't. Not yet. Part of his woeful appearance also had to do with the fact that the gas tank explosion had dazed him. His neck, too, was already purpling from the rock he'd hit in the water. Swelling had begun under his ear and along his jaw. Feeling his throat with one hand, he thought he was choking. Swallowing didn't help. He could breathe, but found it almost too painful to speak.
"Where were you going?" asked a man with a feldwebel's insignia, the commander of the three-man machine gun squad.
"Saunders," he croaked. "Sergeant. 227-06-22."
"You were driving the jeep—you had to have had a plan of where to go."
His throat really hurt. "I repeat—" but was cut off.
"Bring him along!" shouted the feldwebel to the men behind him. "Search the other one, then throw him in the stream."
The two privates reached into the lieutenant's green jacket and pulled out two box magazines for his M1 carbine and a hand grenade, but when they stooped to pick up the 'dead' man in order to toss him off the bridge, Saunders intervened, throwing himself upon the man who had hold of Hanley's feet. Dropping them, the private staggered back, fell, and Saunders, falling beside the soldier, braced one hand behind the private's head and wrapped his other arm around his neck, snapping it.
The second private dropped Hanley's shoulders to the roadway and leapt in to pull Saunders off the first man. Both hands clenching his jacket, he pitched him into the wall, bending him across it. Saunders was being pushed back, further and further across the gap in the wall. Finally, he got a hand free and covering the man's face, used it to push the private's head back, throwing him off. Just as the feldwebel triggered a round, the private darted forward again, the bullet catching him in the back. The man's stunned expression transfixed Saunders for a moment, but gathering his thoughts again and turning, the American rolled over the side of the bridge to take another plunge into the choppy stream. Staggering over the rocks, he labored to drag himself to the other side. All the while the feldwebel's Schmeisser, a fully automatic weapon, peppered the water around him and then chewed up the opposite bank once he made it out. He put his feet into action.
Now this angry feldwebel had two dead privates, one dead enemy lieutenant, and a rogue GI sergeant on the run. He fired half of his thirty-two rounds and then tackled the slope in pursuit of the fleeing man. Live prey was more challenging than a dead one. The feldwebel had always appreciated a good challenge.
Saunders had a head start on the German, but he was hurt, weary from two plunges into the brisk river, and he didn't know where he was going. A murder-minded Kraut was on his six, the hills in front of him seemed to rise forever, and if he didn't get back to Hanley soon – without the Kraut – Hanley would die from blood loss. It was about six kilometers, as the crow flies, back to Company CP, and only two or three to the front lines. Without the jeep, and with the two of them impaired, either distance was a long one, but he decided that if he could get back to the bridge, he'd get Hanley and try to make it to the front lines again, seek help there.
He clambered to the top of a hill covered in trees and thick vegetation, darting into the brush to lay in wait for the feldwebel. The German sergeant, a veteran soldier like himself, was moving cautiously as he struggled up the rise, crouching low in the long grass. Just at the top, he was surprised by a man leaping out upon him and tumbling with him down the slope, rolling to a wet, muddy place at the bottom.
Saunders pulled him up and planted a fist against his jaw, twisting him off to the side. The German got up off his knees and was back in short order, taking a swing at Saunders and connecting with his sore neck. Saunders fell to hands and knees, wincing in pain and taking a moment to shake the cobwebs out, even as the feldwebel tried to kick him in the ribs. Saunders deflected that by rolling over, catching his leg in both hands and upending him, landing him on his back.
One more minute and one of them would be dead. In the whole war, neither had fought hand-to-hand as hard as they did just then, rolling and striking and trying to get the upper hand. At last, one of them won that enviable prize and from behind, twisted his enemy's neck until it broke. The German, like his opponent covered in leaves and filth, lay back in the grass and expired. Saunders had killed all two of them, barehanded, and the one reason he had been so successful, outside of his own native skill, was because of the man the who lay up on that bridge above the stream. Lt. Gil Hanley.
Exhausted beyond measure, his face unrecognizable to his friends from mud and blood, he lay back against his adversary's raised knee and panted for all he was worth. Dry-mouthed, he knew where his canteen and other things were. Going back to the stream, he retrieved his tommy gun, drew up several handfuls of water, and staggered through it again. On reaching the bridge, he laid a hand on the wall and bent over double, coughing up a fit and nearly blacking out. With red-rimmed, watery eyes, he saw his friend, a friend who hadn't moved at all. Perhaps he really was dead. Maybe that eye movement he'd seen in him earlier had been a figment of a too confident imagination. Perhaps he really was alone.
"Lieutenant," he called to Hanley, as he turned him over onto his side and sprinkled both his own and Hanley's sulfa packet, retrieved from the discarded belt, on his back wound. Tearing open a bandage, pressing it into the hole in Hanley's jacket, he hoped to stop the bleeding. "Wake up, Gil, we've got to get moving. We'll have to walk. The jeep's gone."
Indeed it was. Standing nearly on its nose between the rocks of the stream, that jeep wasn't going anywhere! Very smashed-up. Saunders had given it only a passing glance before, but now he looked over the short wall of the bridge and said a prayer of thanks that neither he nor Hanley had been in that jeep when it went over. His side was worse than the other, hitting the water soonest. No, that jeep was done for and probably already knocking at the pearly gates of jeep heaven. He smiled at the thought.
It was time to get Hanley up. He'd have to walk on his own, for Saunders' dizziness had never left him, not since the tank blew up as he and the jeep fell together, almost in lockstep. He begged Hanley to get up, slapping a face a mite, then he quit and knew it was on him. Bracing against the wall, he pulled Hanley onto his shoulder. The man was not light. Thin, but tall and outfitted in combat fatigues and heavy, double-buckled boots, he was a struggle!
Then a thought occurred to the sergeant. Leaning down again, he laid Hanley on his good side—would the man never wake up!—and stepped off the bridge to get his own web belt with its bits and pieces, pistol and canteen. He also stuffed the extra mag and the map inside his wet jacket. Up on the bridge again, he knew he couldn't carry Hanley's weapons and ammo, so he decided to leave them behind. He did hook the lieutenant's canteen to his own belt.
Sweat running down his neck, today hotter than yesterday this early August, he grunted and hoisted Hanley onto his shoulder again. If anybody could have seen an American sergeant carrying his superior officer off a medieval bridge in such a bucolic setting with dead Germans all around and a busted-up jeep in the river, hind-end up, that man would have blinked twice.