Matterhorn (53 page)

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 objective 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.

They heard roaring bursts of fire and yelling to their left, but Mellas barely registered this. It was Goodwin’s platoon,
just released by Fitch.

In the midst of the roaring they caught glimpses of Jancowitz’s head above the bushes. He was running directly along the contour
of the hill, taking the NVA machine gun from the side. He fired a burst from his M-16. A man next to the machine gunner turned
his AK-47 on Jancowitz, but Janc kept running forward.

Jackson saw the gunner turn the machine gun toward Jancowitz. He scrambled to his feet and charged up the hill screaming,
“Janc, you stupid motherfucker. You crazy stupid motherfucker.”

Jancowitz released the spoon of his grenade as the gunner got the machine gun turned around and opened up on him. Janc seemed
to throw the grenade and go down simultaneously, bullets bursting out of the back side of his flak jacket. Then his grenade
went off—like a sudden hand clap in an empty room.

Cortell went running after Jackson, firing quick bursts at the gun pit. Then, as if jerked by an unseen hand, Cortell’s neck
snapped backward and his helmet went spinning into the air behind him. He sank to his knees, staring stupidly at his rifle,
which he was holding horizontally in front of him. Then he collapsed forward, ending up with his bare head on the ground like
a Muslim at prayer.

Jackson kept running forward, trying to reach Jancowitz. Mellas reached Cortell and rolled him over on his side. Cortell’s
knees were still folded up against his stomach in a fetal position. Blood was running off his forehead and his hair was matted
with it. He was gritting his teeth in pain. “Janc got him, sir,” Cortell wheezed. “Janc got him. Oh, Janc. Oh, Lord Jesus.”
Mellas grabbed Cortell’s gauze bandage package from his belt, ripped open the paper, and slapped it on what looked like a
furrow starting at his forehead and going back over the top of his ear. He put Cortell’s hand on the bandage, pressing it
down hard. “Don’t fucking move it,” he said.

He turned back uphill. He passed Jancowitz’s body. Blood was still oozing from beneath the back of his flak jacket. A dark
black patch was slowly spreading into both trouser legs. Three facts registered simultaneously: the machine gun was silent,
Jancowitz was dead, and the opening had to be exploited. Mellas turned to his left and saw Goodwin already moving toward him
with an entire squad. Goodwin, his natural fighting instincts functioning faster than Mellas was thinking, was already rushing
into the gap where the machine-gun fire used to be. Within seconds he and five other Marines were behind the line of holes
and bunkers. China, scrambling up the steep slope with the heavy machine gun against his chest, slammed into the earth at
the edge of the former NVA machine gun’s position. He began laying fire over the NVA fighting holes to Goodwin’s right. Mellas
immediately saw what China was doing. He kept running. He shouted at Goodwin, who didn’t seem to hear him. He ran. He made
hand signals at the Marines behind him, redirecting them behind China, taking advantage of the fact that the enemy could no
longer stand up long enough to take aim and fire because of the stream of China’s bullets. He caught Goodwin’s eye, pointed
at him, and then pointed left. He pointed at his own chest and then pointed right. Chaos slipped momentarily into order.

With Second Platoon now pouring through the gap and coming at the NVA from behind them, it seemed as if a heavy weight had
been removed. “They’re on the top! I see Scar on the top!” The cry passed all around the hillside. Fracasso and the Marines
of First Platoon surged forward. Mellas was exhilarated. All his fear had left him. He ran straight up to the hill’s crest,
Marines appearing all along the line in small groups and surging through the line of holes. Those NVA soldiers who hadn’t
been trapped in position were moving in rapid but disciplined flight down a finger to the northwest. What just seconds before
had been mad scrambling now turned into methodical and cautious destruction. Grenades were rolled into holes and tossed into
the openings of the crude log bunkers. As each NVA position fell, the one next to it became vulnerable. Any NVA soldier trying
to break for the jungle was immediately killed by fire from several directions.

Mellas met Goodwin at a short trench leading to the dark opening of a bunker. Both had their grenades out. They looked each
other in the eye briefly, then Goodwin nodded and they both swung in front of the opening, threw their grenades, and dived
to the side as the blast came ripping out of the entrance. They crawled in together, firing short bursts on automatic. Mellas
was flat on the deck and Goodwin was just behind him in a crouch so that they could fire their rifles at the same time.

There was no one inside.

Mellas started to laugh and rolled over on his back, looking up at the roof of the gloomy bunker.

“You two guys having fun, ay?” Vancouver was peering through the entrance at them, smiling. His face was streaked with sweat;
his machine gun was steaming. His sword was sheathed. “Nagoolian went thataway.” He pointed toward Matterhorn.

Mellas crawled out and sat on top of the bunker, his legs quivering so that he was unable to stand. The battle was over. There
were pitifully few dead enemy soldiers to show for it.

Goodwin moved off to set in his platoon. Ridlow, wounded in the leg, lay on the hillside, pallid with shock, and waited to
be helped up to the LZ. Mellas, still shaking, trotted down the hill to guide in the Marines of Third Platoon, who were racing
forward to set up for a possible counterattack.

Mellas passed Pollini. His eyes were frozen open. He remembered Pollini’s voice as he cried out, “I’m hit.” How could he cry
out if he’d been shot in the head? A guilty sickening thought wrenched Mellas’s stomach. Pollini’s head had been pointing
downhill. Could
he
have shot Pollini when he was firing wildly upward, trying to keep the machine gunners’ heads down?

Mellas stared at Pollini’s blank eyes. He sat down beside him, wanting to ask, wanting to explain what he’d done: that he
really had wanted to save him, not just add a medal to his list of accomplishments. He had pulled Pollini off KP because he
wanted to do right by him. He hadn’t meant for him to end up dead. But he could say none of it. Pollini was dead.

Mellas tried to put down the thought that he could have killed Pollini. It must have been the gook machine gun. He wanted
to leave the doubt behind, buried with the bullet in Pollini’s brain, but he knew he never could. If he made it out alive
he’d carry this doubt with him forever.

V
ictory in combat is like sex with a prostitute. For a moment you forget everything in the sudden physical rush, but then you
have to pay your money to the woman showing you the door. You see the dirt on the walls and your sorry image in the mirror.

Thick fog made twilight of midmorning. It hid the Marines on Helicopter Hill from the sniper fire now coming from the bunkers
that Bravo Company had built on Matterhorn. But the fog also kept the helicopters from evacuating the wounded. The Marines
dragged their dead friends to a shallow pit near the top of the hill. Mellas and Fitch sat in the dark interior of the bunker
Goodwin and Mellas had taken. The fog hung silver-gray in the entrance hole.

Fitch started crying in small silent sobs, the tears running down his dirty cheeks and dripping on the map that lay between
him and Mellas. Relsnik was transmitting medevac numbers, identifying the dead and wounded. “Zulu Five Niner Niner One. Over.”

A bored voice came back over the radio. “I copy Zulu Five Niner Niner One. Over.”

“That’s affirm. Bravo Niner One Four Niner. Over.”

“Hey, is that a Coors too? Over.”

“That’s a rog. These are all Coors. Did you copy that last? Over.”

“Roger, I copy Bravo Niner One Four Niner. Give me the next one. Over.”

And Relsnik did, reading them off one by one. The numbers would eventually lead a somber man, sickened by the job he had to
do, to some
woman’s door, to let her know that her husband or son would be coming home wrapped in rubber. The body would arrive in the
early morning hours so that the people at the airport wouldn’t be disturbed.

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?”