Sand in the Wind (30 page)

Alpha Squad left the perimeter at a different point than usual to avoid picking up the Arvins who were supposed to accompany it. Clouds completely covered the moon, giving the sky a faint, eerie glow. The column crossed the road in front of the perimeter and walked through the remains of a burned-out native hootch. Fifty yards past it, Harmon halted his men and walked up to Tony 5. “What do you think?”

“I dunno. It’s complete shit right here, and it’s bound to get worse the farther we go. You thinkin’ about that old hootch back there?”

“Yeah, it doesn’t have a roof, but at least the ground’s high.”

“I’d hate being so close. We’d have to be bucoo careful.”

The rain became heavier. Harmon looked back toward the hootch. “Fuck it, let’s peel back around.”

As soon as they reached the hootch, Harmon got everybody down and warned them to keep low and quiet. Chalice stretched out on the hard ground placing his bush cover over his face as a shield against the rain. His rain suit offered little protection and in minutes the chilling water had seeped through it and completely soaked him. He crossed his arms tightly over his chest knowing this would make him feel warmer. Exhaustion overcame him, and he dozed off.

Chalice awoke while it was still dark, surprised that he had been able to sleep at all and with a feeling that something was wrong. Slowly sitting up, he scanned the prone bodies of the rest of the squad and realized that the person on watch had fallen asleep. Whoever’s turn it was would be by the radio. He crawled around until he located it, Payne holding the receiver. Chalice poked him in the chest. Payne bolted to a sitting position and called out in a sharp, startled voice, “I’m awake!”

Wincing, Chalice watched a few of the other men squirm around in their sleep. “A lousy one-hour watch, and you crash.”

“I was awake,” Payne whispered nervously.

“Sure you were. That’s why you were nice enough to stand my watch.”

“No!”

“Forget it. You better wake up Hamilton. It’s his watch now.” Chalice crawled back in the corner and tried to get some more sleep, but he kept waking up every few minutes. Stoker had the last watch, and Chalice saw Hamilton wake him. After Hamilton went back to sleep, Stoker stood up and walked outside the hootch. Chalice couldn’t figure out what he was doing. Stoker dropped his pants and squatted down, seemingly in answer to Chalice’s thoughts. Stoker being red haired and very light complected, Chalice mused, ‘Looked like an eclipse of the moon.’ Suddenly, excited shouts in Vietnamese rang out from inside the perimeter. Chalice immediately realized what had happened: the Arvins had been told where the ambush should have been, so they naturally assumed any movement outside the perimeter was VC. ‘The sonofabitch would have to have a neon sign for an ass.’ He lay motionless, not sure what to do and hoping the Arvins would stop yelling. Stoker was the only other person up, and his advice wouldn’t be worth much. Chalice decided to count to
ten.
If the Arvins hadn’t stopped shouting by then, he’d call out to them to try to prevent any shooting. Just as he got to
four,
a burst of automatic rifle fire whizzed by a few feet over his head. The other members of the squad scrambled around on their stomachs grabbing for their rifles.

“Marines! Marines!” Chalice yelled. The Arvins continued to shout, but held their fire. Dumbfounded whispers came from the men around him. “What the fuck’s going on?” “Who yelled, ‘Marines’?” “What were those shots?” Ignoring them, Chalice again called out, “
Marines! Marines!
”
Vietnamese voices answered, “Okay, Marine. Okay.”

Knowing that the Arvins didn’t need much of an excuse to start shooting, the rest of the platoon didn’t bother to ask any questions when Alpha returned to the perimeter. The men went back to their hootches to catch a few more hours’ sleep. As they awoke one by one, they were greeted with some unwelcome news: at three that night the whole company was to leave on a six-day operation up in the mountains, carrying full packs. The third day they would reach the heavy canopy of trees, much farther up than they had previously gone. Because the canopy would prevent their resupply until the fifth day, every man was to be issued eight meals of C-rations, two for each of the first four days. The impossibility of getting this much food into their packs, no less carrying it, would force them to leave much of it behind. Ordinarily, for an operation of this length in the mountains, the lighter and more compact long-rations would be issued. But Captain Trippitt had neglected to order them in time. Most of the men were resentful about the operation, not only because of the marching that lay ahead, but also because they felt it was Trippitt’s idea to help him get his major’s oak leaf.

7.
The Canopy

The company moved out that night with no sense of excitement, only dread of the physical torture to come. Kramer’s platoon was second in the column and the CP traveled behind its first two squads. Having the captain move with them bothered Kramer as much as it did the men, even though they knew that if any dirty work were to be done, they wouldn’t have to do it.

The point chose a trail that proved somewhat easier than the ones the men had previously traveled. By daybreak they were high above the valley floor. Their unusually heavy packs had made the climbing far more strenuous. But the men had completed this same march before, and repetition dulled their minds and the pain they were enduring.

As the sun glided towards its apex the pace of the column gradually slowed. Trippitt compensated by not taking any breaks until one o’clock. A few of the men were already suffering from the first effects of heat prostration, and the corpsmen had little time to eat after attending to them. When Trippitt passed the word to “saddle-up,” the commander of Fourth Platoon got on his radio and called in that some of his men were in bad shape and needed to rest a while longer. Trippitt rebuked him furiously before giving the company another half hour.

When the word was again passed to get ready to move out, a number of men had to be wakened from fatigue-induced sleep. A few minutes after resuming the march, they were just as exhausted as before the break, trudging forward in inattentive stupor. For another two hours they climbed steadily upward, watching for and seeing nothing but the heels of the men in front of them. Suddenly — the one thing that could have had any effect on them — a thunderous burst of rifle fire rang out from the front of the column. Not even this completely brought them back to their senses. Without bothering to take cover, they merely dropped to the ground, thankful for the unexpected respite and heedless of any danger.

Kramer got word over his radio that First Platoon had surprised five VC at the mouth of a cave. They had gotten two confirmed kills and had probably wounded some of the others. “Big fucking deal, that makes my day,” he mumbled under his breath, purposely loud enough for Milton to hear. Handing the receiver back, he looked over his exhausted men. ‘At least they’re just as fagged out as I am. We’ll be in great shape if we get ambushed.’

He heard Trippitt’s excited voice. “Kramer!”

Standing, he saw the captain’s grinning face searching him out. “Yes, sir.”

“Get this platoon moving. I wanna see what we’ve got.”

Kramer issued the command in an unconcerned tone. “Move-out.”

As they approached the cave, Chalice was the third man from the front of the platoon. Some members of First Platoon came into view as he made his way up the rocky slope. Nearing them, he could see that they were standing over the contorted, black-clad bodies of two Viet Cong — ‘The first dead I’ve seen so far,’ he thought. Chalice found himself drawn closer by a morbid curiosity, at the same time conscious of an aura of guilt enveloping him, not about the killing, but about the callousness of his curiosity.

The bodies lay side-by-side on their backs, in opposite directions. The nearer one was of a young boy, probably not even eighteen. One of his hands stretched out towards Chalice, palm up. The other hand lay across his blood-soaked chest, fingers apart with the blood drying between them. ‘Shot in the chest, two holes, at least two
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
God!
Look at his mouth.
Look at it!
’ The boy’s head was tilted as far back as it could go. His hair nearly reached his tightly shut eyes, and his mouth was wide open. A row of perfectly formed upper teeth was almost entirely visible. Chalice couldn’t take his eyes off the boy’s mouth. ‘As if his life, his whole life, escaped from inside him through his throat in one long scream.’ A series of hideous cries echoed through Chalice’s mind, none of them even closely matching the horror on the boy’s contorted face.

The rest of the platoon made their way up the trail and gathered around the corpses. Nudged by men in back of him trying to get a better look, Chalice decided to walk away. Instead, he moved closer to the other body. Its face, almost covered by unbelievably long blood-matted hair, appeared older than the first. The black Viet Cong shirt, spread open down to the waist, revealed a flabby chest. One of its pants legs was rolled up above the knee. Chalice stared at the skinny leg thus exposed. “It’s a woman,” someone said. ‘
My God!
It is a woman,’ Chalice thought. ‘The hair,
of course,
the hair, and it’s a woman’s breast.’

Appleton placed the barrel of his rifle just above her crotch. “Get some, Ramirez. It’s still warm.”

There was some laughter. Chalice glanced up at the men around him. Shocked to see smiles on most of their faces, he suddenly became conscious of the smile on his own face. ‘Why the fuck am I standing here?’ he thought, making no effort to move away.

Kovacs took a quick look at the corpses. “C’mon, break it up. You guys have seen dead bodies before.” Chalice withdrew before Kovacs had finished. Once more he glanced back. A few of the men still stood around the bodies, seemingly transfixed by the mystery the dead hold over the living.

First Platoon was scattered to one side of the caves trying to follow two blood trails and at the same time searching the brush. Trippitt stood next to the company radioman, his lips wet with excitement. Kramer, conscious of the captain’s presence, arranged his men in a half circle to provide security for the CP. Not wanting to waste any time, Trippitt ordered Third and Fourth Platoons to continue marching up the mountains. Just before the last man of Fourth Platoon passed by, he told Kramer to have his men follow them. The CP placed itself in the middle of Second Platoon as Trippitt ordered the commander of First Platoon to call his men in and take up the tail end.

The point platoon used the danger of an ambush as an excuse to slacken the pace. Trippitt, gratified by the day’s work, didn’t bother to speed them up. By late afternoon the slower pace had made little difference; the men were completely exhausted. The good fortune of finding themselves on an exceptionally large plateau, rather than anyone’s concern over the condition of the men, enabled the company to set-in somewhat earlier than had been planned. Gunny Martin delineated the perimeter and assigned each platoon’s responsibility. He also told the platoon commanders to report to the CP in forty minutes.

Kovacs had seen to the placement of the foxholes. Kramer, relieved of his pack and lying with his back against a rock, watched his men dig in. Fatigued by the march, thinking no farther ahead than to the approaching night and its promise of sleep, he was in a placid, almost fulfilled, state of mind, grudgingly admitting to himself that Trippitt’s performance had been impressive. Throughout the day he had always seemed in command of the situations that arose — never wasting words and always impelling the desired results. Although he had driven the men hard, they weren’t asked to do anything he hadn’t done. Yet still Kramer wondered, considering the jaded condition of the company, what the results of an ambush along the trail would have been.

He got up and made his way to the center of the perimeter. Not finding the CP there, he continued across until he located them just inside the far positions. They had set up in an area pockmarked with small bomb craters, eliminating the need for digging foxholes. Trippitt and Martin were heating their chow in canteen cups, the other platoon commanders sitting around them. Lieutenant Forest said in a loud drawl, “That was a smart idea, Skipper, bringing long-rations. These C-rats sure get heavy.”

“I tried to get them for the whole company, but they said there wasn’t enough. No reason why some of us shouldn’t have them.”

“No, no sir, not at all,” Forest agreed.

‘No reason my ass,’ thought Kramer. ‘Only the best for the CP.’

Trippitt noticed Kramer. “Let’s get started.” He pulled a map out of his flak jacket pocket and spread it on the ground. The platoon commanders gathered around. “We’re here right now,” he said, pointing with his stocky index finger. Kramer was surprised to see that the nail was bitten to the quick.

“We’re going to split up tomorrow,” Trippitt continued. “Forest, I want your platoon to move out at dawn. Follow the stream bed for half a klick, then bear left up this hill, here. Go right to the top of it and back down. Do the same thing with these other two hills that overlook the stream bed. You’ll be security for the column. Set-in on the last one. Kramer, I want you to do the same thing on the right. Set up on this fourth hill, here. Write down the coordinates. That way you and Forest will be overlooking the trail from opposite sides. I’ll be traveling up the stream bed with the rest of the company. When I pass between you two, you’ll peel off and follow us. We’ll make camp about two klicks higher up.” Kramer noticed that the last hill Trippitt pointed to had another, lower one, between it and the trail. Not seeing any reason why they should have to climb the higher hill, he pointed to the map and asked, “Sir, you want us to climb
this
hill?”

Trippitt, feeling he had made himself perfectly clear, answered gruffly, “That’s what I said, Lieutenant.”

The captain gave each platoon commander the coordinates for their night’s ambush before sending them back to their sectors. On the way, Kramer thought about the CP carrying long-rations while the rest of the company had to carry C-rations. It bothered him more and more as he thought about it, even though he realized that his anger stemmed as much from his dislike for Trippitt as from the fact itself.