Sand in the Wind (12 page)

Chalice thought, ‘A hundred dead NVA, that’s where they get those ridiculous casualty figures.’

Kovacs called the CP on the radio and told them what they had found, or hadn’t found. He then ordered the point to angle back towards the road through the high ground. The men plodded on dejectedly, far more irritated about the senseless marching than at not finding any souvenirs. By five o’clock, they reached Liberty Bridge. Kovacs immediately set the perimeter. He told Alpha Squad, half of Charlie Squad, and half of Guns Squad to dig their holes in a semicircle around the far end of the bridge. Bravo Squad and the other halves of Charlie and Guns Squads did the same thing on the near side. Everybody was worn out, but the white sand proved easy to dig in and the mood of the men gradually lightened. Forsythe and Payne kidded Chalice about his being in the Arizona for the first time, “If you can call thirty yards from the bridge the Arizona.” After digging in, they had just enough time to heat some C-rations.

During his watch that night, Chalice was startled by some muffled explosions in the water around the bridge. When Payne relieved him, he found out they were from sticks of C-4 thrown into the water every hour to keep the VC from swimming up and blowing the bridge. Aside from these explosions, the night was quiet and uneventful.

Nobody bothered to wake Chalice the next morning. At nine o’clock when he got up, most of the platoon was already milling around the area. Forsythe walked up to him holding a machete. “You wanna build a hootch together?”

“Sure, it beats sleeping out in the open.” Chalice followed him to a clump of bamboo on the riverbank. A few other men were already hacking away at the stalks.

“We need three poles; one about ten feet and two about six.” Forsythe pulled a large bamboo stalk from the thicket and motioned for Chalice to hold it bent while he cut it down. “Don’t run your hands over the stalk. It’s full of tiny splinters.” Forsythe cut it down with three whacks of the machete. He then cut two smaller stalks and six pegs. They carried the bamboo back towards their foxhole, and Forsythe picked out a little knoll twenty yards behind it on which to build their hootch. First he drove the two shorter poles into the ground about nine feet apart. After hunting in his pack, he came up with some pieces of string and tied the longer pole across the tops of the two shorter ones. He and Chalice snapped their ponchos together and laid them athwart the crossbar. They tied six pieces of string to the ponchos’ dangling edges, then attached the free ends to the wooden pegs. After hammering the pegs into the ground, Forsythe stood back and looked over the hootch. “Not bad. All we have to do is dig a rain trench around it. But that can wait. Let’s eat.”

As they finished eating, Tony 5 walked over. “I just got the word on how we’re gonna operate. It’ll be like the last time: Every day we send out a squad on patrol and every night we send out an all-night ambush. We’ve got the patrol today, tomorrow the ambush, and the next day we skate.”

“How long is the patrol?”

“A klick out and a klick back.”

“Sounds good to me,” Forsythe commented. Then looking at Chalice, he added, “I hope you’re gonna appreciate this, Prof. It’s the best you’ll have it during your thirteen months.”

As Tony walked away, he called back, “We’re gonna move-out on that patrol in about an hour, be ready.”

The machine gun team on Alpha’s side of the bridge was building a hootch a few yards away. Forsythe walked over and Chalice followed him. The machine gunner was a Mexican-American named Pablo. His sharp, clean features seemed always set in the same placid yet alert expression. He wasn’t very talkative, but because of his patient manner he often found himself on the listening ends of long conversations. His assistant machine gunner, Sinclaire, talked constantly in a deep southern drawl as he helped Pablo build their hootch. He was a skinny, towheaded youth whose long legs seemed to make up four-fifths of his body. They had a radio playing, so Forsythe and Chalice sat down next to it. When Pablo and Sinclaire finished, they also sat down near the radio. Sinclaire started the conversation, “Well Professor, how do you like the bush?”

“Haven’t seen much of it yet.”

Childs walked up behind Sinclaire and said, “Don’t worry about it. He hasn’t seen much of it either.”

“I’ve seen enough to know I’ve seen as much as I wanna see.”

“Don’t sweat it. Chances are you won’t be around here too much longer.”

Pablo gave Childs a hard stare, then changed the subject. “You guys got the patrol today?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going with you. How far is it?”

“Two klicks; one out and one back.”

Pablo nodded his head. “We’ll have plenty of time to take a bath when we get back. It’ll be the first time in three weeks for me.”

They sat listening to the radio until Harmon came over and told them to form up for the patrol. As Chalice swung the machine gun ammo can over his shoulder, he asked Forsythe, “How come Pablo looked at Childs that way when he said Sinclaire wouldn’t be around too long?”

“Oh, you noticed that. Sinclaire is Pablo’s third A-gunner. The other two got blown away. While the machine gunner is firing, the A-gunner has to hold his head up and sight him in. That gives the Gooks a real nice target, and the first thing they go after is the machine guns. His first A-gunner got it right in the eye. The second one got it through the front of his helmet.”

The purpose of the patrol was to check out the riverbank. Hamilton’s fire team led off. They formed a wedge with Childs at the point. Roads walked along the bank twenty yards to his left and ten yards behind him. Bolton, a tall, awkward-looking youth, took the same position on the right. Hamilton walked ten yards behind Childs. Harmon followed directly behind Hamilton. Then came Payne with the radio and the rest of Tony 5’s fire team.

Chalice realized they probably wouldn’t find anything, but the idea of being on his first patrol excited him despite himself. Just as they had gone a kilometer and were about to turn around, Roads called out, “Got some spider holes.”

Harmon walked over to have a look, telling Chalice to follow him. There were three holes along the riverbank about two feet in diameter and five feet deep. “They’re spider holes all right, VC or NVA.
  
.
 
.
 
. Looks like they been here a long time. Don’t really mean much.”

“How do you know VC or NVA dug them?” Chalice asked.

“They’re one-man holes. We always dig holes for two or four men.”

Harmon sent the patrol a hundred yards further down the bank. Not finding anything, they turned around and headed back to the bridge. Instead of following the bank this time, they walked fifty yards away from it in case some VC had seen them head out and had booby-trapped their trail.

The patrol returned to the perimeter by one o’clock. The men spent the next few hours reading and cleaning their rifles. Kovacs passed word for a swim call for those on Alpha’s side of the bridge. Skip and Flip brought their machine gun over to provide cover. Everybody stripped down and headed for the river carrying their M-16’s.

Though the river was over forty yards across, it was only about five feet deep. When Chalice got out far enough, he started swimming, as fast and as hard as he had ever swum before. Memories of school days spent playing hooky at hidden streams ran through his mind. Now experiencing the same relaxed excitement, a sense of freedom overwhelmed him. He remembered how refreshing — and far away — the river had looked on the march out, and how much he had wanted to throw off his pack and dive into it. The other members of the platoon — their rifles lying on the bank — seemed no longer soldiers, but boys, like the ones he had played hooky with, older, less innocent, but boys. He heard them making the same comments, saw them enacting the same childish pranks. Chalice swam back towards them, for the first time realizing he was one of them, not only a member of their platoon, but a friend; their friendship based not on likes, dislikes, or abilities, but on the vagaries of chance that had put them in the same place, at the same time, sharing a common danger, possessing a common hope, all of them dependent upon the others, the symbols of their common bond lying abandoned on the bank — their rifles.

Chalice, standing waist deep in the gently flowing river, had just finished shaving. He handed the razor to Forsythe and dove forward to wash the lather from his face. The warm water felt suddenly cool against his skin. Never before had he received so much pleasure from the act of shaving. Looking towards the bank, he noticed someone filling a canteen. “Hey, what’s he doing?” Forsythe looked at Chalice questioningly. “I mean, is he going to drink
this
water? Look at it. It’s dirty.”

“Of course he is. This stuff is great compared to some of the piss we’ve had to drink. We don’t even put halazone tablets in this stuff. The only time we do that is when we drink bomb crater water, and that’s half mud.

Skip and Flip started yelling and pointing towards the water. At first Chalice thought they had spotted trouble, but then he saw some naked men chasing a large buck on the riverbank. One of them tried to grab it around the neck. The buck bolted forward and left the naked Marine lying in the sand. The frightened animal dashed towards the river and splashed by only a few feet away from Chalice. A number of men had been yelling, “Shoot him! Shoot him!” Appleton, a big, heavyset member of Charlie Squad, got to his rifle and drew a bead on the deer as it swam downstream. A few of the others yelled “Don’t shoot it,” and one of them ran up and raised the rifle barrel.

“What the fuck you do that for?” Appleton said angrily.

“Why kill it, man?”

“Whata you mean? That was a beautiful buck.” As he walked away, he mumbled to himself, “Like to ride home with that thing tied to the front of my car.”

During the next few days, Kovacs saw to it that the patrols and ambushes went according to plan, but otherwise let the men enjoy a sense of freedom that had been so lacking on the hill. On the third day a small convoy brought a load of supplies. Tony 5 distributed his fire team’s share — food, grenades, rounds, a claymore mine, C-4, and a lot of blasting caps. When he divided up the blasting caps, Forsythe objected, “I’ve already got five of them.”

“Here’s five more.”

“I’m not gonna carry ten blasting caps.”

“Your old ones might be duds.”

“Then I better blow them. We’ve got plenty.”

“It’s all right with me
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
but you better ask Kovacs first.”

Forsythe walked across the bridge, and came back smiling. “It’s okay with him. C’mon,” he said to Chalice, and they walked over to get Hamilton. “Kovacs said I should blow these blasting caps.”

Hamilton picked up an entrenching tool and pointed to the bank. “Let’s go down there.”

When they got to the bank, Hamilton dug a hole about a foot deep and buried a blasting cap, careful to leave the tip of its fuse above ground. Forsythe lit it and they took cover. A muffled explosion sent up a small puff of sand. Hamilton started digging another hole, but Forsythe said, “Wait a minute. Let’s put a little C-4 on the cap,” and he ran back to the perimeter. While he was gone, Sinclaire and Appleton came down to see what was going on. Appleton was shirtless, his paunch undulating as he walked up to Chalice. “What you guys doing, Prof?”

“Getting rid of some blasting caps.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“Forsythe went to get some C-4. Here he comes now.” By the time Forsythe reached them, he had already broken off a piece of the white plastic and molded it into a ball. Hamilton put it on the cap and buried it. The explosion was much louder than the first. Everybody seemed to be getting a kick out of it, so with each succeeding cap Forsythe made the ball of C-4 a little larger. Soon a dozen more men had gathered around. Forsythe was down to his last blasting cap when he got a sneaky look in his eyes. Hamilton knew right away what he was thinking. He started smiling and nodding as he said, “Go ’head, do it.”

Forsythe quickly unwrapped the remaining half stick of C-4 and rolled it into a ball. Everyone gathered around him laughing, most of them acting like little kids playing with matches. The large ball of C-4 completely covered the blasting cap. Hamilton dug the hole a little deeper this time. Forsythe was just about to light the fuse when Appleton stopped him. “We better not take any chances.” He picked up a sandbag and dropped it on top of the hole. Laughing, he clapped his hands together loudly and said, “Let her rip.”

As Forsythe bent down to light the fuse, everyone else started running toward a large sand dune thirty yards away. They already lay behind it when he came rushing towards them at full speed. Forsythe dived over the dune feet first, turning over on his stomach in midair so as not to miss anything. Just as he hit the ground, a large explosion shot sand in all directions. The sandbag flew fifty feet in the air. They watched in awe as it slammed down in the middle of the bridge with a loud thud. Practically the whole platoon came running towards them to find out what had happened. They lay stunned behind the dune for a few moments, then started laughing and slapping each other while rolling around in the sand.

Kovacs had been sleeping in his hootch. He came running across the bridge and tripped over the sandbag, nearly losing his balance. Red-faced, he tapped it with his foot a few times before yelling towards the men standing around the crater. “
Forsythe,
you motherfucker, what the hell was that?” Forsythe looked up wearing an expression of childlike guilt. Kovacs continued to glare at him. Forsythe lowered his head and began moving one foot back and forth in front of the other tracing an arc in the sand. “
What
—
was
—
that?
” Kovacs repeated.

Forsythe answered meekly, “It go boom.”

“So I fucking noticed.
What
go boom?”

“One of those blasting caps you said we could blow.”

“
Blasting caps my ass,
you dumb sonofabitch.
I’ll stick a blasting cap in your ear.
Dig a shitter. NO! Dig three shitters.”