Matterhorn Read online

  The radios crackled to life.

  “We’re committed,” Fitch said. “End radio silence. Over.”

  The company surged forward, still in single file, behind Fracasso, who emerged from the shelter of the jungle onto the defoliated crest of the main ridgeline and went running across, down the north side, spreading the platoon in a single line behind him as he went. He stopped, setting them in place, and then returned to the center, moving in a crouch behind them as they lay looking intently at their objective.

  Helicopter Hill’s bald outline wavered in the gray fog. It had changed considerably, having been made into an auxiliary LZ by the artillery battery, the trees blasted clear for forty or fifty meters from the crest, and all the remaining trees and brush killed by defoliating chemicals. The NVA had also built bunkers that were plainly visible near the top of the hill, which was about 100 meters above the ridge on which Fracasso was crouched. The ridge sloped gradually upward from him toward the west. About 300 meters from where he was, it merged into Helicopter Hill, which rose abruptly and steeply from the ridge, like a large knuckle. From the map, and from interviewing everyone he could, Fracasso knew that the much larger bulk of Matterhorn stood behind Helicopter Hill, about 600 meters to its west, hidden from his view. Matterhorn’s summit, with its flattened LZ and abandoned artillery positions, was about 200 meters higher than Helicopter Hill. That was within rifle range and Fracasso didn’t like it. For now, however, he had other things to worry about.

  Kendall and Samms set Third Platoon into position, packing everyone on the small hump behind First Platoon in tiers, thankful they had gone into the hot zone first the day before yet feeling guilty and anxious for the Marines of First Platoon, who lay silently on the ground in front of them. Mellas joined Fitch and the command post group on the top of the little hump.

  Bass and Fracasso moved from kid to kid patting rumps or legs, checking equipment, going over the smoke and hand signals for the twentieth time, comforting them with the thought of jets standing by even though everyone knew the clouds would keep the jets away. Maybe the skipper won’t send us in without air, they thought. That hope died when Fitch picked up the hook. “OK, Bravo One. Pop smoke when you want fire. Good luck. Over.”

  “Aye, aye, Skipper,” Fracasso answered. Everyone lay staring ahead at the dead shrubs and defoliated trees on the hill. Fracasso looked down the line to where Bass was crouched with Skosh. Bass was looking at him, waiting for the signal to go. Fracasso crossed himself. Then he stood up and waved his arm forward toward the hill. Bass imitated his signal for those who couldn’t see Fracasso. Every Marine rose to his feet, switched off his safety, and walked forward. There would be no running. To reach the summit of the hill in a state of exhaustion would mean almost certain death. They walked, waiting for the enemy to open fire.

  Mellas, watching First Platoon’s backs, kept asking in a whisper, “Why? Why? Why?” At the same time, immense excitement gripped him. He turned to Fitch. “You don’t need me here. I’m going with First Platoon.” And not knowing why himself, he ran to catch up with the slowly moving platoon.

  Running to rejoin them, he felt overwhelming joy. It was as if he were coming home from a lashing winter storm to the warmth of his living room. The sky seemed brilliantly blue and clear, although he knew it was overcast. If he didn’t move his legs faster, his heart would outpace his feet and burst. His heart, his whole body, was overflowing with an emotion that he could only describe as love.

  He came up beside Bass, panting from the run, and settled in on the southern downhill side of the ridge, a few meters to Bass’s right. Bass had placed himself between Jacobs’s squad, on his left, and Jancowitz’s squad, which held the middle position of the line and was draped over the ridge. Fracasso had given Jancowitz the middle position because of the skill and experience it would take to keep the squad from splitting in half if gravity and fear pulled people in its middle downhill from the ridgeline. Fracasso had placed himself just off the ridgeline on the northern side. There he could see where Jancowitz’s right flank met Connolly’s squad, which held the far right of the line, and endeavor to keep the two squads from splitting apart. At the same time he could pop up over the top of the ridge and see where Jacobs’s squad was, although he was relying heavily on Bass to keep them formed up with the rest of the line.

  They were about 100 meters from the base of the hill when a machine gun opened up from low on the hill, lacing a long line of bullets directly down the crest of the ridge, swaying slightly to both sides of the crest. The line of Marines hesitated only for a moment, ducking more from instinct than anything else. The three squad leaders, Bass, and Fracasso immediately pushed forward to maintain the deliberate walking pace. The whole line continued forward with no one right on the ridge’s crest where the machine-gun bullets kicked up mud. The gun was well placed. It denied the easiest approach to the hill, forced the attackers onto steeper ground on the sides of the ridge, and widened the gap between them.

  Fracasso ran forward of the line, just off the north side of the ridge, where the machine-gun bullets flew over his head. Hamilton ran beside him with the heavy radio. Then Fracasso popped a red smoke grenade and Hamilton radioed for Third Platoon to open up behind them.

  The morning air was shattered by the combined fire of forty rifles and three machine guns. First Platoon surged forward, now running in short bursts of speed, the kids throwing themselves to the ground to fire upward, then moving again, ever higher. The ground on the side of the hill was churning with the bullets being poured into it by Third Platoon. The Marines of First Platoon hit the steep bank, the line of advance folding in on itself in a crescent, and moved up the slope in disciplined short bursts—a movement that had been drilled into the Marines from their first day at boot camp. Some of them were shouting to keep their spirits up; some were shouting from sheer excitement. A few fired their rifles up the slope, but most simply held their fire, knowing that the angle was poor.

  About twenty-five meters up the hillside Fracasso popped a green smoke to signal Third Platoon to stop firing. Fitch called off the fire of Third Platoon to avoid hitting his own men.

  There was a second or two of silence.

  Then Helicopter Hill exploded with the steady, ear-splitting fire of heavy machine guns and the flat clatter of the solid automatic AK-47 and semiautomatic SKS rifles of the North Vietnamese Army. Now the ground beneath First Platoon’s feet spat up dirt and mud, some of it tinted dark red.

  Mellas ran forward, throwing himself behind rocks, scrambling across exposed patches, and then lunging again for any sort of cover from the fire pouring down on them. All of his being was wound up in his pumping heart and the rapidly rising heat of the blood coursing through his brain and legs. The kids were running and dodging in groups of two and three. Fracasso was trying hard to keep the platoon together. Connolly’s squad, on the north side of the ridge, was bunched together, leaving a large gap between it and Jancowitz, who had half his squad on one side of the ridge and half on the other. Jacobs, on the south side, had his squad moving forward in rushes, two fire teams shooting while the third scrambled forward.

  The NVA, no longer pinned down by Third Platoon’s fire, maintained its own fierce fire. The world seemed to turn over as Mellas watched soft flesh run against hot metal. What, moments before, had been organized movement now disintegrated into confusion, noise, and blood. The attack might have looked as if it were still being directed by the leaders, but it wasn’t. It went forward because each Marine knew what to do.

  Mellas was transported outside himself, beyond himself. It was as if his mind watched everything coolly while his body raced wildly with passion and fear. He was frightened beyond any fear he had ever known. But this brilliant and intense fear, this terrible here and now, combined with the crucial significance of every movement of his body, pushed him over a barrier whose existence he had not known about until this moment. He gave himself over completely to the god of war within him.

  A burst of machine-gun bu
llets cracked over his head as he ran parallel to the contour of the hill to try and help get the squads back together again. He heard screams for a corpsman. He ran toward the sounds and found Doc Fredrickson already there. Two kids were down, one still breathing raggedly, the other shot through the upper teeth, a gaping exit hole in the back of his head. The two remaining fire team members were still moving upward against the fire. Mellas ran after them. He saw Jacobs crouching behind a small outcropping as he moved forward against a machine-gun emplacement.

  Young scrambled up beside Jacobs, set the bipod at the end of his machine-gun barrel on a small hump, and began a steady fire against the NVA machine gun. This enabled the two remaining kids from the fire team to keep crawling up the hill, grenades in their hands.

  “Where’s Jermain?” Mellas shouted at Jacobs. “We need a fucking M-79.” Jacobs turned and looked down at Mellas, who was just below him. He pointed. Mellas raced away, using the steepness of the hill for cover. Bullets passed over his head. He found Jermain crawling cautiously upward through the thick bushes, his stubby M-79 grenade launcher pushed out in front of him.

  “We need grenades,” Mellas shouted. “Machine-gun bunker. Jacobs is going after it.” Mellas turned around, not even looking to see if Jermain would follow and not thinking for a moment that he wouldn’t. Jermain ran after him.

  The earth was spattering on the front of the small hump and on both sides of Young. His teeth were bared and his face was contorted with fear as he and the NVA machine gunner locked on each other, bullets flying between them. But Young continued firing in short disciplined bursts so as not to overheat his barrel, leaving the others free to move. Jermain shouted at Robertson and two new kids in his fire team above him to get down. Then he stood up, exposing himself to the fire, and began to pump grenades at the opening of the bunker. The NVA machine gun stopped firing.

  Then Robertson and the two other kids crawled to their knees and scrambled up to the side of the bunker to finish it off. Mellas was already running away, having done all he could. He didn’t see one of the kids crumple to the ground, shot in the back from a hidden hole to the right of the bunker. Robertson rolled forward into the cover of the bushes, throwing both his grenades into the open hole and killing the two North Vietnamese who were firing from it. Without grenades, however, he was now ineffective against the bunker with the machine gun. He lay on his back and cradled his rifle on his chest. The machine gun opened up again. Young responded. This left Jacobs to figure out what to do next.

  Mellas ran behind Jancowitz’s squad. They were bunching up, making it easier for the NVA gunners, and the terrain was forcing them, unwitting, toward the easier but far more deadly approach of the top of the ridgeline. Mellas saw Bass and screamed at him, “Get those stupid fuckers off that ridgeline.” Bass nodded, gasping for air, and ran forward, Skosh dogging his heels with the radio.

  Mellas moved straight up the hill. Pollini was there, frantically trying to clear his weapon. Pollini kept looking above him, not at his weapon, jamming the action over and over again.

  It took no time for Mellas to figure out the trap. The bushes directly in front of Pollini had been cut away from the ground level up to about two feet, and then the branches had been left in their normal state. It was a clear field of fire for a machine gun that would chop down the advancing man’s legs, causing him to fall into the bullets. “Give me that fucking rifle, Shortround,” Mellas shouted. His voice was barely audible above the noise. Pollini handed Mellas the rifle as if it might explode any second. He looked at Mellas wildly, then looked downhill to what seemed like safety. Then he grinned at Mellas. “It’s jammed, sir.”

  Mellas quickly saw that Pollini hadn’t seated his magazine completely and the upper edge was blocking the passage of the bolt. Mellas shook his head and snapped the magazine into place. He fired a short burst. The hot shell casings poured out, hitting Pollini on the side of the face. That snapped Pollini back to the situation at hand. He grinned and reached for his rifle, once again looking uphill through the tunnel of cleared brush.

  “You OK, Shortround?” Mellas asked.

  Pollini smiled, gulped, and nodded. “Yeah. Fucking stuck, huh, sir?”

  “Yeah, well, it’s unstuck now. You watch it. There’s a fucking machine gun right above you.” Mellas moved away, looking for Jancowitz.

  Pollini scrambled to his feet and darted up the hill. He ran straight up the carefully cleared path, disappearing from Mellas’s view before Mellas could tackle him.

  The machine gun opened up, and Mellas lunged behind a small lip as the bullets chopped up mud and branches. The gun stopped. In the brief silence he heard Pollini shout, “I’m hit. I’m hit.”

  Mellas hugged the earth when the gun started again, hoping Pollini would crawl back. He didn’t.

  Bass came around the side of the hill. “Who’s hit?” he asked.

  “Shortround,” Mellas said, crawling backward toward Bass, who was leaning on his side against the steep slope. Skosh was crouched at his feet trying to listen to the radio, one hand over his exposed ear.

  Bass looked up the hill. “There’s a fucking machine gun up there, sir.”

  “I know. Shortround’s alive. I heard him yell.”

  “Me too,” Bass said. “But it’s suicide to get him from here. We’ll work around it. It’s dug in but it’s not in a bunker like the other one. Maybe a Mike twenty-six.”

  Doc Fredrickson came scrambling into the relative safety beneath the hill’s crest where the three of them crouched. He leaned back against the hill, chest heaving, and stared down the long ridgeline where several bodies lay exposed. He wasn’t listening to the conversation.

  Mellas turned to Bass and grinned. “What do you think, Sergeant Bass? Is it worth at least a Navy Commendation medal if I go get him?” Mellas intended this as a joke but realized he was partially serious.

  Bass looked at him. He was not in a joking mood. “You’ll get killed up there, Lieutenant. Don’t do it.”

  Mellas was suddenly determined to get a medal; moreover, it was his fault that Pollini wasn’t on KP duty back at VCB. He turned to Fredrickson. “Wait here until I get him down.” Fredrickson was still catching his breath and didn’t respond.

  Bass said, “OK, sir, I’ll try and give you some cover. If you get killed I’ll put you in for a posthumous Bronze Star.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  Up until this moment, Mellas had felt as though he were in a movie. Now, faced with the consequences of his decision, he sensed that the film was about to break in two: sudden, searing white light, and then nothing.

  He watched Skosh and Bass crawl slowly into place to his left. He nodded at them and they raised their rifles over the lip of the hill and opened up. Mellas whirled to his feet and went charging over the small crest, throwing his body forward on the ground, firing blindly uphill, hoping to keep the machine gunner’s head down as he crawled forward.

  Pollini was sprawled on his back, feet pointing uphill toward the machine gun. Mellas hit the ground below Pollini’s head. He reached up and tried to pull Pollini downhill by dragging on his utility shirt at the shoulders. The machine gun opened up as soon as Mellas stopped firing. Mellas tugged but couldn’t get sufficient leverage to move Pollini’s weight. He cursed. He tugged again. He couldn’t move him. Bullets snapped past his ears. He fired a last desperate burst from his M-16 directly over Pollini’s body and scrambled up beside him. He turned himself around and threw himself on top of Pollini, hugging him face-to-face. Wrapping his arms around him he jacked the two of them sideways on the steep hillside and then quickly rolled downhill, pulling Pollini on top of him as he rolled. Mellas felt bullets impacting all around him. With every roll he hoped it was Pollini and not him who would catch the bullet.

  Suddenly the earth gave way and he fell over the embankment. Fredrickson was waiting there. He pulled Pollini free. Pollini’s breathing had stopped. There was blood coming from his mouth. Bass and Skosh came running around the corner of the embankment and the three of them watched in silence. The ob
jective of taking the hill and the terrific noise and confusion raging about them were forgotten as they watched Fredrickson try to save Pollini’s life.

  Fredrickson was blowing air into Pollini’s mouth, spitting out blood and vomit between breaths. He did this for at least a minute, then looked up at the other three, defeat on his face. He moved aside some matted, bloody hair on the top of Pollini’s head and exposed a small round hole. Mellas remembered that, at the top of the hill, Pollini’s helmet had been behind him on the ground.

  “There’s nothing I can do for him, sir,” Fredrickson said, grief and helplessness showing on his face. “He’s got a bullet inside his head someplace. I don’t see no exit hole.”

  Mellas nodded and looked at Bass and Skosh.

  “Fucking Shortround,” Skosh said quietly and turned away, his jaw working, looking uphill.

  The machine gun opened up, its heavy rounds slamming through the air. They heard grenades going off. Then silence. Then the machine gun opened up again.

  Mellas forgot about Pollini and ran off toward the sounds. He came upon Amarillo, who was crawling forward, and joined him.

  Sweat ran down Amarillo’s face. “Janc, sir,” he said. “He is going after that gun. He has Jackson’s team with him.”

  Mellas could see nothing of Jackson or Jancowitz. He looked behind him. A new kid was hunched over in a little ball, a bullet through his shoulder and neck. Mellas didn’t even know his name.

  Amarillo saw Mellas looking at the dead Marine. “He is too boot from ITR. He goes running up against the machine gun.”

  Mellas didn’t answer. Both of them overcame their desire to stay hugging the earth and scrambled forward.

  Jackson was moving his team in small rushes, closing in on the gun. No Marines were firing. “Where’s Janc?” Mellas shouted.

  Jackson pointed ahead. “He took off around the side, sir. We don’t know where the fuck he’s at.” Mellas now understood why no one was shooting.