Matterhorn: a novel of the Vietnam War Read online

  Once the kids were under the trees, the leeches started dropping on them. They tried to knock each leech off before it dug in and drew blood but were usually too late because they were focusing more attention on the jungle, straining to hear, see, or smell the clue that would give them, and not the North Vietnamese, the first shot.

  The leeches made full use of their victims. Mellas watched some fall onto the kids’ necks and slide under their shirts like raindrops. Other leeches would wriggle on the damp humus of the jungle floor, attach to a boot, then go up a trouser leg, turning from small wormlike objects to bloated blood-filled bags. Occasionally someone would spray insect repellent on a leech and it would fall squirming to the ground, leaving blood trickling down the kid’s arm, leg, or neck. During the patrol, Mellas began to take great pleasure in killing the little bastards and watching his own blood spurt out of their bodies.

  The fourteen-man snake moved in spasms. The point man would suddenly crouch, eyes and ears straining, and those behind him would bunch up, crouch, and wait to move again. They would get tired, let down their guard. Then, frightened by a strange sound, they would become alert once again. Their eyes flickered rapidly back and forth as they tried to look in all directions at once. They carried Kool-Aid packages, Tang—anything to kill the chemical taste of the water in their plastic canteens. Soon the smears of purple and orange Kool-Aid on their lips combined with the fear in their eyes to make them look like children returning from a birthday party at which the hostess had shown horror films.

  They stopped for lunch, setting up a small defensive perimeter. Jancowitz, Mellas, and Hamilton lay flat on the ground next to the radio, eating C-rations. They littered the jungle with the empty cans. Flies and mosquitoes materialized from the heavy air. Mellas doused himself again with repellent. It stung fiercely as it got into his cuts and bites. He found two leeches on his right leg. He burned them alive with paper matches while he ate canned peaches.

  Already tired from lack of sleep, Mellas now struggled with physical fatigue from fighting his way through nearly impenetrable brush, slipping up muddy slopes to gain a ridgeline, searching for tracks, searching for clues. He was wet from both sweat and rain. Effort. Weight. Flies. Cuts. Vegetation.

  He no longer cared where they were or why. He was glad he was new and Jancowitz was still more or less in charge, though he was ashamed of feeling that way. Three hundred eighty-nine days and a wake-up to go.

  At one point they hit a wall of bamboo they couldn’t avoid. It lay between them and a checkpoint, a ridgeline where the NVA machine gun might be. They had to hack through it. All security was lost as the kid on point took out a machete and smashed a hole in the bamboo. Soon they were in a bamboo tunnel. The ground sloped upward. It got steeper. They began to slip. The kid with the machete tired and another took his place. They needed an hour to go about 200 meters.

  Suddenly, Williams, the point man, went rigid, then slowly sank to one knee, rifle at his shoulder. Steam rose from his back. Everyone froze in position, ears straining, trying to stop the noise of their own breathing. Jancowitz quietly moved forward to find out what was happening. Hamilton, a good radioman, moved up too, as if he were part of Jancowitz’s body. Mellas followed.

  “You hear that, Janc?” Williams whispered. He was trembling and his forehead was tight with tension. They had stopped on the side of a ridge. A rivulet trickled through thick brush and plants with broad leaves. Mellas strained to hear over the sound of his breath and his pounding heart. Soon he could distinguish soft snorts, muffled coughlike noises, and a cracking and tearing of branches.

  “What is it?” Mellas whispered.

  “Gook trucks, sir,” Daniels said softly. He had slipped up behind Mellas, so quietly that this whisper frightened him. Mellas saw that Daniels was grinning and his mouth was smeared red with Choo Choo Cherry, which heightened the flush of his cheeks.

  “Gook trucks?” Mellas asked. “What are you talking about?” He turned to Jancowitz, who was watching him with mild amusement.

  “Elephants, sir,” Jancowitz said.

  “The gooks use them to carry shit,” Daniels said.

  By this time everyone had relaxed, and the squad was already in the inboard-outboard defense position, every two men alternating the direction of sight. Jancowitz pointed at Pollini and Delgado, a gentle-eyed Chicano kid whom everyone called Amarillo, because it was his hometown. These two reluctantly heaved themselves to their feet and crept out, one on each side of the squad, to act as outposts.

  “So?” Mellas asked. He was uncomfortably aware that trouble was coming his way.

  “Don’t you think we ought to call in a mission, sir?” Daniels asked.

  “A fire mission? On some elephants?”

  “They’re gook transportation, sir.”

  Mellas looked at Jancowitz. He remembered a major at the Basic School telling him to trust sergeants and squad leaders—they’d been there. The major hadn’t mentioned that the sergeants were nineteen-year-old lance corporals.

  “He’s right, sir,” Jancowitz said. “They do use them for hauling shit.”

  “But they’re wild,” Mellas said.

  “How do you know, sir?”

  At this point Daniels chimed in. “We shoot them all the time, sir. You deny the gooners their transportation system.”

  “But we’re at extreme range.”

  “It’s an area target, sir,” Daniels answered. An area target was one that covered a general location, such as troops in the field, so accuracy was less of an issue than for a single-point target, like a bunker.

  Mellas looked at Hamilton and at Tilghman, who carried the M-79 grenade launcher. They both just stared back. Mellas didn’t want to look sentimental or foolish in front of the squad. It was war, after all. Nor did he want to buck a standard operating procedure when he wasn’t really sure of his ground. He’d been told to trust his squad leaders. “Well,” he began slowly, “if you really do shoot them . . .”

  Daniels grinned. He already had his map out, and now he reached for the handset of his radio.

  “Andrew Golf, this is Big John Bravo. Fire mission. Over.”

  In his imagination, Mellas saw the battery scrambling into action as the call for a fire mission came crackling in to its fire control center.

  Moments after Daniels relayed the map coordinates and compass bearings, the first shell came through the jungle, sounding like a train speeding through a tunnel. There was a dull thud transmitted through the ground, then a louder shattering crash through the air. Then there was the sound of brush cracking and the movement of heavy frightened bodies. Daniels made a quick adjustment, and a second shell roared. Again the earth moved and the air shattered. After that, the muffled sounds could be heard no more.

  Daniels called off the mission. “They’ll be to fuck and gone by now,” he said, smiling with satisfaction.

  Jancowitz didn’t want to bother checking for results, since it meant going all the way down in the ravine. To climb back out again would take hours. Mellas agreed.

  When they finally struggled back inside the company perimeter, the squad immediately began cleaning weapons and fixing dinner, getting ready for the evening alert and the long night of watch. Jackson started his record player and Wilson Pickett’s voice floated across the tiny man-made clearing in the jungle. “Hey, Jude, don’t make it bad . . .”

  Mellas could barely drag himself up to the CP to report to Fitch. He simply wanted to collapse and sleep. Bass was already in with nothing to report—as was Goodwin, except for some tiger tracks. Ridlow, Goodwin’s platoon sergeant, however, had discovered some footprints near a stream. It was impossible to tell how many people had left them. He figured they couldn’t be more than two days old; otherwise, the rain would have washed them away.

  Mellas listened while Fitch relayed the negative reports to battalion. An entire day of patrols, and all they had proved was that someone was in the jungle, as if a downed helicopter and a bunch of dead crewmen hadn’t already proved that. He also listened while Fitch turned in
the coordinates of the footprints to the artillery battery for harassment and interdiction—H & I.

  When Fitch got off the hook, Mellas asked, “What happens if it’s a montagnard?” referring to the indigenous people who had been pushed into the mountains centuries earlier by the invading Vietnamese.

  Fitch pursed his lips. “If it is,” Fitch said carefully, “then he’s got to be working for the NVA. Otherwise, he’d have cleared out or come in to the position.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” Mellas said.

  Hawke was listening while he poured powdered coffee and sugar into a battered cup that he had fashioned from a C-ration pear can by leaving the lid attached and folding it back to make a handle. He poured water from his canteen into the can and placed it on a small wad of C-4 plastic explosive. The cup’s lower half had turned steel blue from many heatings.

  “There’s leaflets all over the fucking place telling people it’s a free-fire zone,” Fitch said.

  “You know they can’t read,” Mellas said petulantly.

  “Shit, Mellas,” Hawke cut in. “He knows it. You going to call off your H & I because it might fuck up some lost mountain man?”

  “I don’t know. I’m the new guy around here,” Mellas snapped. He was so tired that he was beginning to regret he’d even brought the subject up.

  Hawke lit the C-4 and a brilliant white flame engulfed the can, turning it cherry red and bringing the water to a rapid boil almost instantly. The action stopped the conversation until the flame died. Hawke gingerly touched the makeshift cup, now filled with boiling coffee. “Well, I’ll tell you, then,” Hawke said. “You don’t. Jim’s fucked either way. If we get attacked, and he didn’t call in H & I, he’s shit-canned. If he does call them in and kills a montagnard, he’s shit-canned too. Things have changed since Truman left. The buck’s sent out here now.”

  Fitch smiled, thankful for Hawke’s support.

  Mellas looked at the ground, sorry he’d lost his temper. “You never did say why,” he said.

  “So you don’t get your fucking ass blown away, that’s why,” Hawke said, softening when he saw Mellas look at the ground. He dabbed at the handle of the cup again and, feeling that it was safe, picked it up with his thumb and forefinger.

  “You call off H & I,” Fitch said, “and the gooks have access to this mountain like a freeway ramp. It’s my fucking troops over any lost mountain man, and it’ll stay that way. I decided that a long time ago.” Fitch looked quickly up at the darkening sky, seemingly embarrassed over his sudden speech.

  Hawke held the steaming coffee up toward Mellas. “Here. Take it.”

  “No, it’s yours,” Mellas said.

  “I make the fastest cup of coffee in I Corps. This little cup’s been with me ever since I got here. It’s the ever-flowing source of all that’s good and the cure of all ills.” He smiled and gestured again for Mellas to take it. “It even cures hot tempers.”

  Mellas had to smile. He took the cup. The coffee was sweet and good.

  Later that night, outside the perimeter in the blackness, Private First Class Tyrell Broyer of Baltimore, Maryland, on his first listening post, lay shivering, flat on his stomach, the rain seeping through his poncho. Jancowitz had paired him with Williams, from Cortell’s fire team, a steady kid who’d been raised on a ranch in Idaho. Williams’s muddy boots were next to Broyer’s face and vice versa, so they protected each other’s backs. “What’s that noise?” Broyer whispered.

  “The wind. Shut up.”

  Broyer was tempted to start keying the radio’s handset frantically, just so someone would talk to them. He didn’t care if he made one of the lieutenants mad at him for getting scared. He shivered again. There was a whirring noise. Instantly the two of them stiffened, their rifles pushing out slowly.

  “What is that noise?” Broyer whispered. “High in the air.”

  “Don’t know. Bats? Shut up, goddamn it.”

  Williams shifted and his boot hit Broyer’s face. Broyer stifled a curse and pushed his glasses back on his nose, aware of an irony—he couldn’t see a thing anyway. He slowly pushed Williams’s boot away. He put his forehead on his fists to keep his glasses clear of the ground and smelled the damp earth, feeling the cold edge of his helmet against his neck. He grabbed a handful of clay and squeezed it as hard as he could. He wanted to squeeze his fear into the clay so he could throw it away. A gust of wind hit his wet utility shirt, sending a cold shiver along his back. He started praying, asking God to stop the wind and the rain so he could just hear something. It was then that Williams reached out a hand in the dark and gently patted him on the back.

  That night, God didn’t stop the wind or the rain. The next day, however, the rain did stop for two hours, and six choppers made it in without incident, dumping Marines who were returning from sick leave and R & R, replacements, water, food, and ammunition. Along with that came a large amount of C-4 explosive to help prepare the top of the hill for the arrival of Golf Battery, which was why Bravo Company was on Matterhorn in the first place.

  Mellas grew accustomed to the tense monotony of patrolling. Days slid by, mercifully without enemy contact. Eventually the artillery battery came in, blasting out gun pits from the clay, digging in bunkers for their fire control center. Matterhorn was barren, shorn of trees. Nothing green was left in what was slowly turning into a wasteland of soggy discarded cardboard C-ration boxes, cat-hole latrines, buried garbage, burned garbage, trench latrines, discarded magazines from home, smashed ammunition pallets, and frayed plastic sandbags. Whole stretches of what had formerly been thick jungle were now exposed, the shattered limbs and withered stumps turning ashen like bones of dead animals under the overcast sky above. A small bulldozer made the top of the hill perfectly flat. Then came the howitzers, which were flown in dangling from helicopters like fishing weights. Within hours of their arrival the big guns were firing, their harsh explosions hurting ears, thudding through bodies, and, at night, shattering precious sleep.

  An intense salvo of the entire battery firing a single time-on-target jerked Mellas awake. It had been just over an hour since he had crawled into his hooch after the last hole-check of the night. Adrenaline pumped through his body. He tried to slow it down, taking deep slow breaths. Rain fell in heavy sheets in the total darkness, and the comm-wire moorings of the hooches snapped with each gust of wind. Mellas pulled his soggy nylon poncho liner tighter around him, rolled over on one side, and tucked his knees up against his chest, trying to keep what remained of the warm dampness from disappearing into the dark.

  No patrol today. It was like a reprieve.

  The arrival of the battery had considerably increased the payoff for an attack by the NVA, so Fitch had increased the patrolling radius to cover more territory. This forced the patrols to leave at dawn and left them almost no daylight when they returned. The combination of tension from the possibility of making contact and the stultifying fatigue left everyone drained and irritable by nightfall. Kids were falling asleep on watch. To fight the boredom, Mellas found himself making up patrol routes just to see various features of the terrain. He paid less and less attention to where an NVA sniper or observation team might be hiding. In fact, he was torn: he didn’t know whether to plan his patrols to avoid finding anyone or to find the NVA machine gun and bring himself to the notice of the colonel. He shifted to his other side, still not wanting to leave the poncho liner. He saw himself taking an NVA machine-gun team by surprise while they were eating their rice, surrounding them silently, and capturing the entire group. Then he was marching them back, finding out a great deal of information, and afterward being commended in front of the colonel and his staff. Perhaps there would be a newspaper story at home about the exploit—name recognition was important—and a medal. He wanted a medal as much as he wanted the company.

  Another salvo ripped sound through the ground and air, breaking off his daydream. He stared into the blackness, now totally awake, his mind focused on the problem of replacing Jancowitz, who was about to go on R & R. He had map classes to teach, jungle to clear, and more barbed wir
e to lay, but no patrol. No patrol today.

  He threw aside the thin nylon liner and sat up, his head touching the ponchos strung above him. The greasy camouflage liner smelled like urine. He did, too. Mellas smiled. He untied his soggy bootlaces in the dark and pulled at a wet boot. It came loose, leaving a damp sock, parts of it stiff with decaying blood from old leech wounds. He pulled the sock off carefully—especially in places where the wool, skin, and blood had clotted together over the leech bites and jungle rot. He imagined, from the feel of his foot, that it must look like the underside of a mushroom. A sudden gust of wind spattered more rain against the hooch. He began rubbing his feet, trying to stave off immersion foot. He’d seen pictures of it during training. When the foot was constantly in cold water, blood deserted it. Then it died, still attached to the leg, and rotted until either it was amputated or gangrene killed the rest of the body. He felt guilty suddenly for not having checked the platoon’s feet. It would look bad on his fitness report if he had a lot of cases of immersion foot.