Matterhorn: a novel of the Vietnam War Read online

  As he listened to Relsnik’s voice—Pollini, Poppa Seven One Four Eight; Jancowitz, Juliet Six Four Six Niner—Mellas retreated inside himself. How could it be possible? He analyzed his own moves from the moment he had started helping Pollini with the M-16. He’d warned him. But Pollini had gone up. He’d heard Pollini cry, “I’m hit.” Can a man with a head wound do that? But where else was Pollini wounded? What difference did that make? But Pollini had been lying with his head downhill. How did he get that way? An M-16 would surely have exploded his head, wouldn’t it? But what did a 7.62-millimeter NVA bullet do?

  Mellas kept part of his mind focused on the physical. Was it his bullet or not? That was a yes-or-no question, and he had to decide on the answer. The question that was not yes-or-no was why he had been there with Pollini in the first place. He could have stayed with the CP group. But he’d wanted to help. He’d also wanted to see what the experience was like. He’d found it unbelievably exciting. He’d wanted glory. He could have left Pollini there. Maybe Pollini would still be alive if he had. But he’d wanted to help. He’d wanted a medal. He was the one who had gotten soft and let Pollini off KP. If he’d stuck to his guns, Pollini would be alive at VCB. But Pollini had wanted to be with the company and do his share. Mellas could also have let Fredrickson, or someone else, crawl after Pollini, or waited until the fighting was over. But he’d wanted to do his share. He’d also wanted a medal.

  Mellas tried to imagine Goodwin in the same situation. There would have been no conflict. Scar would have wanted to help and he’d have wanted a medal. Helping and a medal were both good things. The fact that Pollini was dead didn’t make the desire for a medal wrong, did it? What’s fucking wrong with wanting a medal? Why did Mellas think it was bad? Why was he so confused? How did he get this way? From where did he dredge up all these doubts? Why?

  He sighed. He simply wasn’t Goodwin. He was himself—and filled with self-doubt.

  Mellas’s reverie was broken by the faint sound of voices crying, “Tubing.” Fitch and Mellas looked at each other, waiting silently for the explosions.

  “Wait one, we got incoming,” Relsnik said to the battalion radio operator. He put the handset down beside him. Pallack curled up a little. There was no sound. Then they felt the vibrations through the earth. Then, no sound again.

  “Sounds like they hit down the south side,” Mellas said, wanting to break the silence.

  “The gooners can’t adjust in the fog,” Fitch said. “Just keeping us honest, I guess.”

  They waited a minute longer. Silence. Fog. Relsnik picked up the handset and continued reading the list of medevac numbers. First and Second platoons had each lost six. Five kids were in serious need of a medevac and another twelve, though not in danger of dying, were fairly useless. Then there were fourteen who had received slight flesh wounds or nicks from shrapnel. They included Mellas, whose right hand had taken some of the blast from Jancowitz’s grenade. It looked as if he’d fallen on gravel.

  Normally, small wounds wouldn’t be reported, but Fitch had had enough of normality. He told the senior squid, Sheller, to report every nick and scratch on the hill so the medical bureaucracy could grind out Purple Hearts for as many Marines as possible. “Two Hearts and they’re out of the bush. Three and they go to Okinawa to sort socks. I’ll be goddamned if I’ll stand in their way quibbling over how wounded they got to be to qualify. Every fucking scratch, you understand?”

  Sheller undertook the task with grim pleasure.

  “Wait one,” Relsnik said. He turned to Fitch. “Battalion wants a confirmation on that body count.”

  Fitch sighed. “We haven’t killed any more. Tell them it still stands at ten confirmed and six probable.”

  “Roger that.” Relsnik keyed the handset. “Big John, this is Big John Bravo. That’s affirmative. Ten confirmed and six probables. Over.”

  There was a pause, followed by a new voice. “Wait one. I’ll put him on.” Relsnik sighed and handed the handset to Fitch. “It’s the Three.”

  “This is Bravo Six. Over,” Fitch said.

  He held the handset close to his ear, making it difficult for the others to hear, but his answers indicated that apparently the body count was too low. “That’s affirmative. We did send people out beyond the holes to count. Sir, we were attacking fortified bunkers. Over.”

  The handset blurted static, and the Three’s voice came over. “Look, Bravo Six, they had to be hurting to leave those two open-belt seven-point-six-twos behind.” Relsnik had radioed in about the two captured machine guns. One had been taken by Vancouver. The other was the one that Jancowitz had died taking. “I think you easily have twice the probables you’ve reported. Over.”

  “Tell him you killed d’ whole fucking Three Hundred Twelfth steel division, Skipper,” Pallack said. Fitch held a hand up, annoyed, trying to listen to the Three.

  “Yes, Big John Three, you’re right on that. Over.”

  “OK, Bravo Six. We’ll see what we can do here. How’s everything up there? Over.”

  “We only got enough ammo for one heavy counterattack, and we need water. How we looking on those medevac birds? Over.”

  “We’ve got them standing by, Bravo Six. Over.”

  “I’ve got five emergencies up here. If they’re not out before dark they’re going to be dead. You tell the fucking zoomies that. Over.”

  Blakely’s voice was curt, controlled. “Bravo Six, I suggest you leave the air evacuations to the forward air controller. I understand you’ve had a tough day, but you know as well as I do that flying in this kind of weather is idiotic. Over.”

  Mellas burst out, “What the fuck is sending a company of Marines out in this kind of weather?”

  Fitch waited for Mellas to finish before he keyed the handset. “I understand. Anything else? Over.”

  “We’re preparing a frag order for you ASAP. Big John Three out.”

  At the top of the hill wraithlike figures moved slowly toward the trench where the dead lay in rows, their weather-bleached boots sticking out from beneath dark ponchos made slick by the fog. Cortell waited for them there. His head was bandaged. When he felt that all who were coming had gathered, he pulled out a small pocket Bible and read some verses aloud. Jackson was silently mouthing, “Janc, why did you do it?” Fracasso stood uneasily behind Cortell. At the Naval Academy, no one had ever talked about what to do afterward.

  Fracasso had asked Jackson to take over the squad. Jackson refused. Puzzled, Fracasso talked things over with Bass, who told him the probable cause. So Fracasso switched Jackson and Hamilton, giving Hamilton the squad. Jackson hoisted the heavy radio over his flak jacket. He’d made his deal; he’d stick with it.

  The daylong twilight faded. The medevac birds weren’t coming. Kids who’d been drinking their water in anticipation of a resupply were sorry they hadn’t been more sparing. Down in the bunker where they had pulled the serious cases, Sheller watched helplessly as the dwindling IV fluid drained into the wounded. When the other corpsmen left the bunker to dig in for the night, he quietly slipped the IV tubes from two unconscious kids and poured the fluid into the bottles hanging above the others.

  Merritt, a rifleman from Goodwin’s platoon, was watching him. He was one of three wounded who were still conscious. “What are you doing, Doc?” he whispered. His torn clothes were plastered to his body by drying blood. Dirt was in everything, and there was no way to clean it out. The squids just poured antiseptic in with the dirt. A candle flickered, disturbed by the damp air as Sheller sat down. “Just changing your oil and water,” he said, smiling.

  “You took it from Meaker.”

  Sheller nodded.

  Merritt stared up at the slightly rotting logs that formed the roof of the bunker just four feet above his head. He smelled blood and abandoned fermented fish sauce and rice. “Is it wrong to want to go home so badly?” he asked.

  Sheller, smiling gently, shook his head. Merritt took a labored breath. The pain in his intestines, where he’d been hit by two bullets, one shattering his pelvis, nearly drove him into blissful unconsciousness. But he fought off enterin
g that dark realm, afraid he would never want to come back.

  “Does it mean Meaker will die?”

  Sheller looked over at the two kids he’d picked for death. He didn’t want to answer Merritt’s question. He wanted to lie, even to himself. “I think you’ll all make it,” he said.

  “Don’t fucking lie to me, Squid. I don’t have time for it.” Again Merritt took a quivering breath, biting back the scream that wanted to erupt whenever he filled his lungs. “If I’m going to live because of Meaker, I want to know it. And I want to live.”

  Sheller put his hand on Merritt’s uniform. “The thing is, we might be wasting plasma on Meaker. He keeps bleeding inside and I can’t stop it. You’re not bleeding as fast as he is.”

  Merritt looked at Sheller. “I’ll never forget it, Squid. I fucking promise.” Then he turned his head toward Meaker’s unconscious body. “Meaker, you dumb son of a bitch,” he whispered. “I ain’t never going to forget it.”

  Meaker died three hours later. Sheller and Fredrickson dragged him out of the bunker and stacked him on the foggy landing zone with the rest of the bodies.

  In the battalion operations center Simpson and Blakely debated whether or not to press the attack against Matterhorn the next day. The kill ratio looked bad—thirteen Marine KIA against only ten confirmed NVA bodies. If they could continue the action, there was a chance that they could get the ratio up to something more reportable. But how many of the enemy were on Matterhorn? Was it a full force or just a rear guard—or an advance guard? Fitch could report only that he saw movement in the bunkers, but there was no way of telling how many NVA were inside them. And now it was pitch black up there. At this moment, the NVA could be reinforcing or withdrawing.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Simpson said grimly. “We’ve got to attack. At first light.”

  Blakely knew Simpson was right. If the NVA reinforced during the night, an assault by Bravo Company would surely go badly, but those were the breaks. They were there to kill gooks. If they ran into a buzz saw, Mulvaney would get the whole fucking regiment involved and finally kick some ass up there. If the gooks had taken off for the border and it was only a rear guard, then Bravo could handle it and Simpson would look foolish not to have pressed the attack, even if it was just to get more information. That was the right move. No one could second-guess them. If they kept Bravo sitting on the hill, that could be perceived up at division as a lack of initiative.

  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 the
m 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.