Matterhorn: a novel of the Vietnam War Read online

  “Sure. But this time everone knows and sees through. This time the light got shined on that fucked-up county courthouse. It got shined all over the fuckin’ country. And why? Why this time? ’Cause that little black man and that pointin’ finger a his.”

  “So what chew doing, black boy? They get off. You just gonna let shit like that go down? Do nothin’?”

  “What I supposed do?”

  “You can start by protestin’ the way this fuckin’ racist Marine Corps be run ’round here. We got brothers without R & R. We got fuckin’ racist country-western crackers castratin’ our brother Parker right in front of everybody, and that same fuckin’ honky smash another our brothers in the mouth with a fuckin’ machine gun, and you, you be movin’ into management . You be part of the fuckin’ problem, man.”

  “Look to me like chuck dudes humpin’ and gettin’ killed just like splib dudes,” Jackson said, struggling to stay cool. “Chucks not gettin’ any food, just like the brothers. We be about one out of twelve just like back home.”

  “How many officers in this regiment be brothers?”

  “One.”

  “And you don’t think it racist?” China asked.

  “How the brothers gonna be officers if they don’t be squad leaders?”

  “How the brothers gonna be free if they don’t stand together?” Jackson locked eyes with China, and China stared right back.

  Mellas and Hamilton were too tired to build a hooch, so they spent the night lying next to each other in a shallow hole. It rained. They didn’t care. Gradually, the rain began to fill the shallow hole with water. Mellas dreamed he was in a bathtub and the hot water had run out. He didn’t want to get out because it was even colder out of the tub. A long way off, he could hear Hamilton’s frightened voice. “Goddamn it, Lieutenant, you got to get up and move. Please, sir, get up and move.”

  Hamilton pulled Mellas to his feet. Mellas, in the stupor of hypothermia, slowly started to move. The world around him—the dark forest, his rifle, the rain, Hamilton—seemed incoherent, whirling. Hamilton jumped around with him, grabbing him, turning him, the two of them doing a macabre dance.

  Mellas’s body responded. It began to produce heat. His mind started to clear. He stumbled off to check the lines, realizing that Hamilton had probably saved his life.

  Cassidy lay in the dark, listening to Lieutenant Hawke’s deep even breathing. He thought about how Lieutenant Mellas’s warning had probably saved several kids from hypothermia. He smiled. He might have made Marine Corps history as the only company gunny to have lost men by freezing to death in a jungle.

  He looked at his watch. 0438. Back home he would have already been fixing a silent breakfast, trying not to disturb Martha and the baby before slipping out the door. He’d start the engine and wait a moment for it to warm up, watching the darkened house. Perhaps he’d check his crisply starched uniform, or the boots or shoes he’d shined the night before, and then he’d take one last look at the house before pulling away. The few feelings that Cassidy did allow himself were either those he could express openly for the Marine Corps or those that were intimate, like his feeling for his family, which arose only in quiet moments when he was alone, waiting for cars to warm up or waking in the dark and lying very still. Cassidy knew he was lucky to be married to Martha because she would never ask him to choose between the family and the Marine Corps. If he were forced to choose, he’d choose family. But he would hesitate.

  This feeling for the Corps was why Cassidy was hurt so deeply when he found that the pin on one of his grenades had been bent straight. Gravity would eventually pull the grenade from the pin, and the grenade would explode. Cassidy moved out with the company that morning pretending nothing had happened, but he felt apprehensive and alone.

  CHAPTER NINE

  It was the fifth day without food, and the company moved in a stupor, descending from the mountains into a valley. The air pressed down on them like a towel in a steam room. Hands burned from using ropes on the cliffs. Williams’s body was putrefying faster as they descended to warmer air, and some fluid was already dripping out of the poncho. The skin on the hands had started to slough off. The feet had swelled within Williams’s boots. He stank. Flies tormented the kids who carried him.

  Hippy’s feet grew worse. He took his bootlaces off to accommodate the swelling. He looked like a sleepwalker. He would murmur to himself, “Can you take this step now?” and then take the step. He repeated this procedure hour after hour, a spirit carried by crippled feet.

  Mellas felt as if he were suffocating. He was nauseated but had nothing to throw up. His clothes clung like saran wrap. With everyone’s electrolyte balance messed up, he worried about heat exhaustion.

  They reached the valley, where a torrent of white water cut through the jungle floor to naked bedrock. Mellas decided to move in the water. Speed was now everything. Colonel Simpson had been calling Fitch every half hour for the past two days, telling him it was “imperative” that the company reach Checkpoint Echo by 1200 hours. The words kept repeating themselves in Mellas’s head, like a song that won’t go away. It is imperative you reach Checkpoint Echo by 1200 hours. Security lapsed. Maybe Marines were in trouble and they couldn’t say over the radio. They swung east, sometimes chest deep in the swift water. Their penises shrank to nubs and their scrotal sacs pulled their testicles deep up inside them. Their arms grew weary, holding their weapons up out of the water.

  Fitch told Relsnik to stop answering. It took far more juice to broadcast than to receive. In truth, there were only a couple of batteries in the whole company that had any chance of reaching another unit if the company got into the shit.

  Mellas gave up on security. He pulled in the flankers who were moving in the jungle on both sides of the river and led the company straight downstream, Vancouver on point and Mellas behind him.

  Occasionally someone fell. The current would then suck him under, his heavy pack and weapons dragging him down, until someone could reach him and help him regain his feet. Once it was Pollini. Mellas happened to be looking back at the column and saw Pollini miss Cortell’s outstretched hand and fall backward into the river. He just watched, numb like everyone else. Then he threw his pack on the bank and started wading out to the middle of the river, grabbing Hamilton’s hand and shouting orders to form a human chain. But they didn’t move fast enough. Pollini went past them like an express train on the inside track. Mellas saw him surface, right in the middle where it was deep and fast, bouncing downstream. His helmet smashed against rocks, probably saving his skull from being cracked. Mellas watched him go down for what he thought had to be the last time, but Pollini hit a big rock and it spun him over toward the shallows.

  Pollini just lay there. He was too far away for Mellas to tell if he was still breathing. The kids who’d tried to reach him with the human chain turned back exhausted. No one wanted to go the distance to get him. Mellas idly contemplated shooting him so they’d know for certain he had died. Then Pollini moved. He got to his hands and knees and stayed in that position for a long time, breathing visibly, the water flowing beneath his chest. Then he struggled to his feet, grinned, and waved.

  Hamilton raised an imaginary glass and said, “Here’s to you, Shortround.”

  Pollini hitched his pack up on his back and came grinning and splashing back to the column. Mellas whispered, “Shortround, you’re a good fucking man.”

  The river swung in the wrong direction. Mellas and Vancouver struggled up the steep south bank and faced solid elephant grass and bamboo. Mellas seriously thought of just following the river wherever it went. That would be so much easier. But he and Vancouver waded into the tangle of stalks, both of them slashing with machetes. The platoon wearily climbed out of the water and followed them into the dank oven. The steaming towel of the air smothered them in its folds.

  By late afternoon the day was dying beneath rapidly building clouds. Mellas leaned back on his pack, trying to keep the frag order out of his pounding brain, and watched huge clouds darken the tree-tops above him. If it rained, they
’d be slowed even more. If it rained, the noise would cover them and they’d be cool. If they got hit in their condition, they’d never make it out alive. It is imperative you reach Checkpoint Echo by 1200 hours. A gust of cold wind suddenly swept through the sweltering jungle air. Then the first spattering of rain fell. Then it fell in a steady continuous roar.

  The rain continued into the night. They stumbled on in the dark, the glowing green tip of the compass needle in Mellas’s hand moving before him. Then Vancouver hit a trail that headed south. Checkpoint Echo was south of them. “Take it,” Mellas said. “Fuck the ambushes.” He figured that if he died he wouldn’t have to worry about the fucking decision anyway.

  Word came up the line that Hippy had stopped moving. When Mellas reached him, Hippy could say nothing. He stood upright, swaying between two friends, his machine gun still cradled on his shoulder. He was staring emptily ahead. Mellas finally spoke. “Can you keep going, Hippy? Just a few more hours.”

  Hippy looked at him from a long way away. Then he nodded. Mellas nodded back, watching Hippy’s face. It was just the face of an eighteen-year-old kid with a peace medallion around his neck. Hippy wore a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, had straggly hair, and had the beginnings of a beard. An ordinary human face. Mellas had never really looked at one before.

  They made it to Checkpoint Echo about an hour before dawn, formed a circle, and collapsed on the ground.

  Lieutenant Stevens, the artillery liaison officer, being junior, had the early morning watch again when Fitch radioed in that Bravo Company was at Checkpoint Echo, back in communication, but with weak power sources, and waiting for further orders. He was requesting food and an emergency medical evacuation for about ten Marines, a body, and a German shepherd.

  Twenty minutes later, Stevens briefed Lieutenant Colonel Simpson when Simpson made his customary visit before breakfast. Simpson asked when they’d arrived. Stevens, knowing that Fitch was already in trouble for being slow, tried to help out by saying that they’d reached Echo around 2200 hours the night before.

  “Good. They had a good night’s rest. Tell Lieutenant Fitch to build a zone and we’ll get him in some fresh power sources. Also, send him this message.” He paused while Stevens dug out a small green note pad. “Upon resupply proceed immediately Hill 1609. Prepare LZ for future use as Fire Support Base Sky Cap. Imperative you be there 1200 hours tomorrow. Code that,” Simpson continued, “and I want those power sources delivered ASAP. That outfit’s been candy-assing enough out there. I don’t want any more excuses for them sitting on their butts.”

  Simpson started to walk out into the darkness.

  “Uh, sir, what about the emergency medevacs and rations?” Stevens asked.

  Simpson stopped. “Lieutenant, what would you do if you had command? You’ve got a company out in the bush under the guidance of completely inexperienced officers. They eat their rations too quickly and then run out because they are slowed down by immersion foot caused by their own neglect. As a consequence, they are at the moment way behind schedule in opening a very important fire support base. They are also, I presume, a little hungry and their feet hurt.” He smiled at his joke. “If they succeed in building the LZ on Hill 1609 on schedule, they’ll have all the helicopters they like by noon tomorrow. The first thing a young officer has to learn is to take responsibility for his actions and to have some pride. Pride, Lieutenant Stevens. It’s what the Marine Corps is built on.”

  Because of the Cam Lo operation, no Marine chopper could be diverted to carry a few batteries to a company in the bush. Stevens contacted every outfit he could think of. He finally found an Army Huey that was free for the morning, having carried a general from Da Nang up to Dong Ha. He talked the pilot into making a quick run.

  At Checkpoint Echo, with K-bars, machetes, and Jackson’s method of throwing their bodies against the brush, they slowly opened a small patch of crumpled, twisted vegetation in the broad valley floor. Above them on all sides, the mountains towered dark and green, their tops hidden by clouds.

  Stevens’s message to expect a Huey had come in the clear. The order to create Fire Support Base Sky Cap had come coded. All the actuals gathered around Relsnik as he worked out the code. When he read the order there was stunned silence. Mellas pulled his map from his side pocket and found Hill 1609. It was at the source of the river that flowed from the mountains to their east down to Checkpoint Echo, where it joined the river that they had followed the night before. He looked at the peaks. Their tops were hidden by clouds. Goodwin came over to him. “Where the fuck is it, Jack?” he asked. Mellas pointed. “Shit, Jack,” Goodwin said. One by one, each of the actuals looked at where Mellas’s finger was pointing. Upon seeing the location, Hawke went into the hawk dance, screeching “Sky Cap! Sky Cap! Snark! Snark! Sky Cap!” He cupped his hands and shouted “Sky Cap! Kahoo! Kahoo!” The cry echoed back. He stopped and held up both hands toward the mountains in the hawk power sign and gave two more cries of “Snark! Snark!” Then he rested both hands on the top of his head and just stood there, his back to the group, looking east toward the mountains.

  Fitch took command. “Get your medevacs ready,” he said. “We’ll be kicking off as soon as we get resupplied. We’ll have twenty minutes for chow. Don’t let them go hog wild or they’ll get sick. One C-rat, you got me? One.” Fitch again turned to squint at the barrier of green to their east. “Kendall, it’s your turn to have point. You can’t get lost going up a river.” Kendall flushed, but then smiled when Fitch and the others grinned good-naturedly at him.

  Jackson told Mellas that he didn’t want to be squad leader any longer. “I just don’t like telling my friends what to do all the time.”

  “You mean you can’t take the heat. What do you want me to do, put Cortell in charge? Or maybe you’d like Parker making the decisions?”

  Jackson looked at the ground, unwilling to meet the lieutenant’s eyes.

  “Do you think I give a flying fuck about how you feel right now?” Mellas went on. “I’ve got to have a good squad leader. I’ve got to have one.”

  Jackson fiddled with a grenade hanging from his belt suspenders. “Janc’s probably been back from R & R over a week,” he said. “He’s just sitting on his ass at VCB. I only was supposed to have it temporarily.”

  Mellas’s voice changed. “Goddamn it, Jackson, we need you.”

  Jackson looked up at Mellas. The idea made him stop. No one had ever needed him like this in his life. He tried to see it the lieutenant’s way. Cortell was probably the only other guy in the squad who could lead it. He was so smart it was scary, but Cortell’s kind of smart was deep smart. Out here, it was fast smart that counted: his kind. He’d felt OK being a fire team leader, but then Janc still carried the real load and took the consequences if he screwed up. That was just it. Janc never screwed up. Maybe he, Jackson, would, and if he did, he would never get another chance to lead again. But if he didn’t lead now, he wouldn’t get another chance either. He’d written home about being a squad leader. Imagine, him, in charge of twelve guys. His old man had never been in charge of anybody. Jackson looked at the lieutenant’s young earnest face. Fuck China. “I can take the heat, Lieutenant,” he almost whispered.

  The two of them stood there, looking at each other, silent for perhaps three seconds. Then Mellas spoke. “You’re the squad leader and I’m the platoon commander. Whether we like it or not, there it is.”

  “Yeah, there it is,” Jackson said. He started toward his squad’s sector and then turned to look back at Mellas. “But when Janc gets back, I quit.”

  “OK, Jackson. It’s a deal.”

  Half an hour later they heard the sound of a helicopter. They strained to catch a glimpse. Someone shouted and pointed. The sound grew to a roar and a dark bulb flitted briefly across the clouds and was then lost. The roar returned. Fitch popped a smoke grenade and thick red smoke began to coil upward from the foliage. An Army Huey slick flashed overhead, then banked in a graceful climbing turn to the left.

  “Big John Bravo, this is Bitterroot Seven. I’ve got a red smoke next to a blue line. Over
.”

  FAC-man’s voice came over the radio, assuring the pilot that they were by a river and it wasn’t a trap. “Wind down here is negligible. Your best approach is from the south. Zone’s secure. Over.”

  The helicopter, numbers gleaming, turned to the south, turned again, and made its approach. It set gently down, the air vibrating with the blades. The whine of the turbine ceased and the blades whiffled to a halt. The pilot, dressed in a crisp flight suit, stepped out of the bird. Cassidy had a work party ready to receive the supplies. Fitch and Hawke met the pilot at the edge of the rotor blades. Mellas, unable to hold himself back, walked out for a closer look.

  A crew member handed out two boxes of batteries to two of the work party. A third Marine stepped up, waiting for his load of C-rations. Mellas saw the crew member shrug his shoulders. The Marine turned to look at Cassidy, stunned. Mellas rushed over to the small group who were just shaking hands with the pilot. “Hey, you got any food?” he burst in.