Matterhorn Page 41

  There was the problem of artillery and those goddamn bunkers they’d left behind. The 105 batteries had all been pulled back to support the Cam Lo operation. The 8-inch howitzers on Sherpa had barely been able to reach the valley to the south of Matterhorn. Moreover, even if they could be moved closer, a direct hit from an 8-inch shell would probably not collapse one of those bunkers. Blakely had seen Bravo Company build them. Maybe it had been hasty to pull out of there so fast. Those were the breaks. In any case, it wouldn’t look like an unsupported attack, especially since Bravo had been the one to fuck up the air support during the initial assault and no one had lodged any complaints. And if Bainford could keep some fixed-wing on station and they did get a break in the clouds they could lay in some snake and nape and watch those kill ratios climb.

  At 2335 Fitch received the order to attack Matterhorn.

  The lieutenants stumbled and crawled to Fitch’s bunker through the foggy blackness. Their faces appeared in the entry hole lit by Fitch’s red-lens flashlight. First Goodwin, haggard but still quipping. Then Fracasso, shaken, wearing his partly shattered glasses. Finally Kendall, apprehensive, knowing it was his turn for the next dangerous task.

  Again they argued and struggled over how to take the hill. They interviewed all the kids who could remember anything about the details of the bunkers they’d built, the layout and hidden gates of the razor wire they’d put in place. Again they were hampered by terrain and weather. But now they were also hampered by their own wounded and dead. “We can’t take the wounded with us on the assault,” Fitch said. “We’ve got to secure this hill.”

  “And split our forces exactly like the fucking gooks did?” Mellas argued. “That’s the only reason we were able to get up here in the first place. We’ve got to pack our wounded with us.”

  “Maybe we could leave a squad?” Goodwin said.

  “A squad can’t cover this whole fucking hill,” Fitch said. “Besides, if they got in trouble we’d have to send back a platoon from Matterhorn to help them, if we had a platoon to send back. Then we’d be split in three, one on each hill and one in the saddle between them. All three would get the shit kicked out of them.”

  “There it is,” Fracasso said, suddenly understanding the phrase.

  They finally agreed with Fitch. An entire platoon plus the command post group would stay with the wounded on Helicopter Hill. Two platoons would assault Matterhorn. If the two assaulting platoons got into trouble, Fitch could send two squads from the platoon guarding the wounded. This would leave just a single squad guarding the wounded. If both assaulting platoons were in trouble, however, that risk had to be taken.

  “Why not just wait until we have enough horses for the job?” Mellas asked.

  “The Six feels we’ll loose the initiative.”

  “You mean he’s afraid the gooks will dee-dee and we’ll be stuck with thirteen dead and forty wounded and only a worthless hill and ten confirmed to show for it,” Mellas said.

  “There it is,” Fitch said.

  They settled on a plan that would use the fog and their knowledge of the terrain to their advantage. Two platoons would work their way through the razor wire in the darkness and attack just before dawn. It was Kendall’s turn for the hard stuff. Goodwin and Fracasso called Fitch’s flip of the coin to see who would join Kendall. Fracasso lost.

  “Who did you put in Janc’s place?” Mellas asked Fracasso.

  “Hamilton. Jackson wouldn’t take it. So I made him my radioman.”

  “They’re both good men,” Mellas said.

  Everyone was silent, looking at the map in the circle of dim red light.

  “Maybe all the gooks have dee-deed across the border,” Fitch said.

  “Yeah,” Kendall answered.

  Vancouver was the first to touch the wire. He gently pushed it upward, testing it, searching for the gate he knew was there. The wire resisted. He backed down. He crawled slightly to the left and tried again. Connolly, Jacobs, and Hamilton were doing the same thing.

  The rest of First Platoon waited, heads buried in the damp earth, almost afraid to breathe. Fracasso listened anxiously for a static burst, which would signal that Kendall and Third Platoon were through the wire and in position.

  Kendall had led his platoon quietly west through the jungle, aiming for the south side of Matterhorn. He stopped and looked at his compass. The luminescent needle swayed, then steadied. It always pointed north. Always. But what good did that do if he didn’t know whether the hill was in front of him or to his right? He gulped and shoved the compass back into its pouch on his belt. Cold panic welled up in his stomach. If they were going south . . . No, they were going west, toward Laos. But if the ridge ran south, it could be leading his platoon prematurely up the slope of Matterhorn before they could get into position on the south side. He tapped the shoulder of the kid ahead of him. “Bear a little to the left,” he whispered.

  Kendall’s platoon began heading away from Matterhorn.

  Hamilton suddenly felt the wire give easily. He felt further and located one of the stakes around which the wire was loosely secured. He crawled backward, leaving tiny scraps of a C-ration box as he went. The dull white of the cardboard could be seen up to a foot away.

  The word passed back to Fracasso. Then, as agreed, Connolly began to crawl through the gate, remembering each turn as he went, leaving a trail of cardboard. Vancouver followed, pushing his machine gun before him; his sword was tied firmly to his leg so it would make no noise. The rest followed, praying that the fog they’d cursed so many times in the past would now save them, praying against all odds that no one would be waiting for them beyond the wire, praying that the NVA had retreated in the night.

  Samms, at the rear of Kendall’s column, figured out that Kendall was headed away from Matterhorn. Furious, he started keying the handset to get Kendall’s attention. Fracasso mistook the keying of the handset to mean that Kendall was in place. He tapped the person in front of him. Three taps. Third Herd’s in place. The taps went up the line.

  Connolly emerged from the far end of the gate and began crawling to the right. The blackness, the crawling, the fear—none of it would ever end. At the same time, he didn’t want it to end. What followed would be far worse.

  Kendall heard the handset keying furiously and knew that he’d been caught doing something terribly wrong. He immediately stopped. The word passed up in low whispers.

  “We’re going the wrong fucking way.”

  Kendall, crushed by a sense of failure, groped backward along the column. His radio operator followed. They met Samms, and there was an intense flow of barely audible words. “What the fuck are you doing? I ought to shoot you right here. Now, goddamn it, you are going to follow me until we reach the fucking wire, and if I hear so much as a fucking sound you’re going to get blown away.” Kendall dropped back into the center of the platoon. Samms led the way, retracing their steps.

  Dawn would arrive in minutes. The Marines of First Platoon were lying in the mud, trapped between the wire and the enemy bunkers, waiting. Fracasso was frantic. Kendall was supposed to begin the attack. What the fuck was Kendall doing? He looked at his watch, holding it so close to his eyes that the dial was blurred. In a few minutes the light would start coming.

  All along the line, there was anguished perplexity. What happened to Third Herd? Why were they waiting in this fucking death trap?

  Fracasso wanted to cry. He wanted to turn around and crawl back through the wire, but he knew that the platoon would never make it out before daylight. Halfway in, halfway out, he’d lose most of them.

  Then Fracasso noticed the faint white of the dial of his watch, mingling with the glow of its phosphorescent hands. Daylight had not waited.

  “Holy Mary, pray for us now,” he whispered. And at the hour of our death. He lurched to his feet and roared as he threw the grenade he had been holding in his right hand. All along the line, the platoon threw their grenades as hard as they could, aiming for their former bunkers. Explosions ripped across the hill, lighting fierce and frightened faces.
Fracasso, firing his M-16 on full automatic, ran screaming up the hill, covering the short distance between them and the bunkers in about five seconds.

  “They’re fucking empty!” he shouted as he approached the first one. “They’re fucking empty!” The entire platoon surged along beside him, and everyone felt a great weight lift from his back.

  Then, from the new holes just above the old bunkers where the NVA unit, reduced in size, had moved during the night, bright fire blazed out of the gloom. Fracasso, singled out by at least five riflemen as the leader, went down instantly.

  When the fire erupted from above the empty bunkers everyone wanted to crawl underground. Several kids, in fact, went down on their knees. Had the others done the same, the attack would have stopped, and the outcome would have been a disaster. But the attack went on—not because of any conscious decision, but because of friendship.

  Jackson went running forward, more to see if Fracasso was alive than for tactical reasons. Vancouver saw Jackson heading for the lieutenant and decided that even if the platoon were in a hopeless shit sandwich he’d be goddamned if he’d let Jackson run forward alone. So he kept going. Connolly, seeing Vancouver charging forward, did exactly the same, although his mind cried out to him to merge with the great welcoming earth beneath his feet. He wouldn’t abandon a friend to go it alone. Neither would any of the others.

  Jackson, who’d been nicked on the arm by the concentration of fire on Fracasso, saw Vancouver surging ahead, shell casings flying from his machine gun. Jackson couldn’t let him go alone, nor did he see any advantage in trying to crawl back through the wire. He kept running forward, though forgetting to fire his weapon.

  A man in good condition can run 100 meters in about twelve seconds. Uphill, with rifles and ammunition, a flak jacket, a helmet, water, grenades, heavy boots, and maybe a last can of pecan roll, the run takes a lot longer. There were approximately twenty-five meters between the old bunkers and the new fighting holes from which the NVA soldiers were firing. It took approximately five seconds to cross that deadly ground. In that time, one-third of the remaining thirty-four in the platoon went down.

  Then attackers and defenders joined together and bellowing, frightened, maddened kids—firing, clubbing, and kicking—tried to end the madness by means of more madness.

  Vancouver jumped into a hole with two small NVA soldiers, firing his machine gun right up against their chests, his muzzle blasts lighting the three of them as if by strobe lights. One of them, before he died, put a bullet through Vancouver’s left arm, shattering the bone above the elbow. Vancouver clawed his way out of the hole, mad with pain but trying to reach the top of the hill. When he emerged from over the lip of the flattened top of Matterhorn, he saw the commander of the NVA unit shouting his men across the LZ to aid those defending the east approach.

  Vancouver saw the NVA officer look at him in surprise. Even in the predawn gloom Vancouver could see that the officer was no older than Mellas or Fracasso. The young man reached for his pistol, which was tied with a lanyard around his neck and rested in a shoulder holster. Several others, seeing the large Marine, his arm dripping blood, turned their AK-47s on him.

  Vancouver, unable to raise his machine-gun barrel because of his crippled arm, went to ground beneath the lip of the LZ. He rolled to the left, freeing the ammunition belt to enter the gun’s receiver. He rested the barrel of the gun on the lip of the LZ and pulled the trigger. The officer went down, wounded, and a knee of one of the soldiers firing at Vancouver was shattered. Vancouver began to pump short steady bursts across the flat LZ, forcing the NVA reinforcements to work their way around the hill the long way.

  The NVA officer, shouting, crawled to reach a former artillery pit. Soon two soldiers carrying a drum-canister machine gun joined him. The officer directed their fire against Vancouver. A burst of bullets tore the earth around Vancouver’s eyes, forcing his head down as the bullets sucked across the flat table between them. As Vancouver’s head went down the officer shouted something and a group of his men rushed across the LZ.

  Vancouver suddenly understood the game.

  As long as he could keep firing, the reinforcements were slowed, giving the platoon time to break through the line of holes. He looked behind him and saw Connolly running for a fighting hole with a grenade, and two other Marines on their knees firing at the hole to keep its occupants’ heads down. A minute was all that was needed. The defenses would be pierced. If Third Platoon made it in time, they’d overrun the enemy lines.

  The five NVA soldiers were now halfway across the LZ.

  Vancouver poked his head above the rim of earth and emptied his belt at them. Two went down wounded. Two hit the earth voluntarily and crawled for another empty artillery pit. One turned back to join the officer and the machine-gun crew, who continued firing at Vancouver.

  Vancouver’s left shoulder was torn apart by one of the gun’s bullets. His arm, already wounded, became a bloody, floppy, uncontrollable appendage.

  One-handed, he fumbled awkwardly to reload his machine gun. Large spots of gray-black obscured the feed tray and cover. He shook his head, trying to clear his vision. His single hand wouldn’t work right. It felt clumsy and slow. He heard Bass screaming at him but couldn’t understand the words. He heard Connolly’s grenade go off and saw Connolly rise from next to the hole and fire a burst into it. Muzzle blasts winked in the gloom along the line of holes.

  The NVA officer shouted again. The two soldiers in the other gun pit rose once more to move toward Vancouver. Another group emerged from the same pit as the officer.

  Just a few seconds were all Bass and Connolly needed.

  Vancouver pulled his sword from his side. He had never really expected to use the damn thing. He’d had fun joking with the new boot lieutenant and Bass and the gunny about it. He slipped out of his gun harness and emerged over the lip of the flat ground of the LZ snarling, his face black, his helmet fallen off, blond hair matted with blood. His left arm hung helpless, but in his right hand he held the sword raised above his head. He would run and scream for thirty seconds, and then it would all be over, one way or the other.

  The NVA soldiers at the machine gun couldn’t turn it on Vancouver, because he was already between their two comrades who’d started running across the LZ toward him. Both of them were now going down under his hacking sword.

  A short, thickly built sergeant from the second group of NVA soldiers ran straight for where Vancouver and the two others were fighting and then stopped short. Vancouver finished the second soldier off and turned to attack the sergeant. The sergeant pointed his rifle and fired three quick shots. Two went into Vancouver’s stomach. He sank to the ground. The sergeant fired again. Vancouver shuddered and crumpled over. The man waved his squad forward, running for the edge of the landing zone. One of the two NVA soldiers whom Vancouver had attacked cried weakly for help. Vancouver, his face in the mud, heard him and knew they would die together. That felt appropriate somehow.

  The small group of NVA reached the edge of the LZ just as Samms fought his way through the wire on the south slope. Wild with despair and shame at having left First Platoon to go it alone, he hurled himself against the wire, not bothering to find the gate. Bullets churned the dirt around him; the dim light was foiling the NVA’s aim. Samms tore at stakes, pulled the wire up, and shouted to his men through the gloomy fog. Finally, he tore free. Bleeding from his arms and legs, he rushed past the empty bunkers, heading for the line of new holes above him. Miraculously, bullets slammed past him.

  Samms saw the NVA reinforcements silhouetted against the gray dawn light. Lunging to the earth, he fired two quick bursts, watching the flight of the tracers he had interspersed after every five bullets. He quickly adjusted his aim, sending the bullets into the small group of reinforcements. Luckily for Bravo Company, Samms thought, the NVA were thirty seconds too late.

  The rest of Third Platoon went swarming past him as he emptied his magazine. His radioman, also bleeding after being torn by the wire, flopped down beside
him. Samms, heedless of the radio operator, ran forward, heading toward the fire coming from First Platoon.

  Some NVA soldiers were backing up the hill, firing as they went. Others stayed in their holes, fighting until the last.

  Samms scrambled over the top of a small acclivity on the side of the hill and came into full view of First Platoon. One of the new kids snapped his rifle around and fired a quick burst.

  Cortell jumped on the newbie, shouting, “Friendlies! Friendlies on the left!”

  Samms stared at the two of them. Two bullets were in his chest, one stopping his heart. “You dumb fucking numby,” he said calmly as sick blackness swirled into his brain and his hands and forearms started to buzz. He sank to his knees and curled over in a ball like a child going to sleep.

  The rest of Samms’s platoon came storming around the shoulder of the hill. Some stopped when they saw him lying there. Bass shouted at them, pointing at the breach in the NVA lines with his short-timer’s stick. The kids from Third Platoon, feeling disgraced at having let First Platoon down, charged through the gap, firing as they ran. They surged across the LZ, which was deserted now, and descended on NVA holes from above and behind. Whistles shrilled. Within seconds the NVA were retreating in an orderly fashion down the west slope of Matterhorn toward Laos.

  Bass ran after Third Platoon, knowing he’d have to stop them from chasing the enemy all the way down the hill and exposing themselves to counterattack. Skosh, with a rib broken by a nearly spent bullet, struggled to follow Bass. Kendall, not knowing what to do, was following his platoon.