Sand in the Wind (53 page)

The afternoon proved to be a repeat of the morning — long marches through rice paddies punctuated by on-line sweeps through patches of high ground. The only villes they came upon were burned-out and abandoned. Occasional signs of life failed to lead them to any Viet Cong or even any peasants. The men walked in stupors. Staggered, splashing steps would end with falls into the brown water of the rice paddies. With each tree line the men approached, their hopes rose with the thought that maybe this would be where they would set-in for the night. But again and again they found themselves trudging through the rice paddies on its opposite side.

Barely an hour of sunlight remained when a small, meagerly vegetated patch of high ground stood a half kilometer in front of Hotel Company. Each man knew that this would have to be where they would make camp. All eyes stayed fixed upon it. To many of the men, it seemed as if they were marching and marching without making any progress towards it. Finally, the high ground seemed gradually to rise up in front of them. When the head of the column was a hundred yards away from it, Trippitt ordered the company on-line. The men reacted with despair, knowing that this meant more time before they would be able to take off their packs. They moved grudgingly while arranging themselves parallel to the front edge of the high ground.

The order was given to move out. Continued reminders to stay even were ignored as the men’s thoughts fled to that moment when they would be able to drop their packs, or when they would be able to lie down and sleep for the first time in two days. The pace quickened by itself as the formation came within twenty yards of the high ground. Many of the men were driven by the desire to place their feet upon something solid instead of having them covered with two feet of water and four inches of mud. As each man stepped from the rice paddies onto the dry ground, he would hesitate, straightening his back and savoring the hard feel of dry earth beneath his feet. They could see the rice paddies on its opposite side, a mere fifty yards away; and they knew it wouldn’t be long before they could drop their packs.

Before the men began their sweep, word was passed to watch out for booby traps. Most of them were too exhausted to value this warning, and they merely concentrated on staying even with those to their sides. In a disbelieved instant, a deafening explosion tremored the ground beneath them and pushed a gust of hot, dead air along the formation. The concussion and shrapnel knocked an entire squad from Third Platoon to the ground. Amidst the moans of the wounded, men all along the line dropped to their knees, some even collapsing on their faces. Frantic orders were shouted. Corpsmen staggered to the spot where a dud 105-millimeter shell had been turned into a lethal booby trap by those it had tried to destroy.

All sounds seemed distant and hollow, as if echoing off the inside of a huge, vacant sphere. Nothing short of necessity could have prodded the men into movement. Orders were quickly followed, for lives depended upon them; but all activity was tainted by dull confusion. The faint hum of the approaching medivac chopper soon turned into a relentless drone. The men were barely able to finish sweeping the remainder of the high ground before it landed. Five wounded Marines and the remains of two others were rushed aboard.

Darkness came just as the men took up their positions within the perimeter. All the promises about digging deeper foxholes that they had made during the blooker barrage of the previous night were now forgotten. The ground was hard, and only a small fraction of the holes were deeper than a few feet. Exhausted himself, Kramer had to be aware of the condition of his men. Instead of keeping them up until nine o’clock, he gave orders for the watches to begin immediately. Each man was assigned two short watches instead of a single long one. Their fatigue drove all thoughts of danger and all awareness of pain from their minds. No one had trouble getting to sleep.

Trippitt explained the day’s plan to his platoon commanders with an assuredness that had been absent for the past two weeks. The operation had been under way for almost a month, and each rifle company had taken heavy casualties. During this period, not one Viet Cong had been confirmed killed. There had been fire fights, but nothing more than a blood trail had ever been found. While Hotel Company had had its share of casualties, they were all the result of booby traps or the Phantom Blooker. Not only had they failed to get off a single shot, but they had not even seen anything to shoot at. The expression on Trippitt’s face clearly indicated that he was expecting all this to change.

He explained that for the next few days they would be operating in the Thousand Islands. Kramer noticed that this name seemed to mean something to all of the platoon commanders except himself. It referred to four square kilometers of small patches of high ground. Very few of them were isolated by more than two hundred yards of rice paddies. At one time they had been cultivated with banana trees, papaya trees, sugarcane, corn, and various other vegetables. The remains of these fields now lay abandoned.

As soon as Kramer returned to his platoon, he told Tony 5 where they were headed. Tony’s expression indicated that he had been there before and had no desire to return. “Bad place?” Kramer asked.

“The worst.”

“Trippitt seems to think we’ll find some VC there.”

“We will.
  
.
 
.
 
. Wait’ll you see it — wall-to-wall bomb craters.”

“And there’s still VC around?”

“They don’t stay. Not even Charlie can take all that bombing.
  
.
 
.
 
. They just go there for food. Anything above ground looks like a vegetable patch. There’s probably more shit growing there now than there ever was. You won’t believe it — bomb craters lined with everything from sugarcane to eggplant. Five minutes after we get there, Childs’ll look like a walking fruit salad.”

“How can it be any worse than the shit we’ve been traveling through for the last month?”

“It’s got all the disadvantages and then some. I’ve never been in a place that we’ve taken more sniper fire. You never know where it’s coming from. If you call in gun ships, they don’t even know where to start.” Tony had been speaking in a callous, unconcerned tone, but a grim sneer appeared on his face as he added through gritted teeth, “The Phantom Blooker’ll be there.”

When Trippitt gave his men a break for lunch, they were already set-in on a crater-scarred patch of high ground just inside the Thousand Islands. Second Platoon had one of the afternoon patrols, and Roads was assigned the point. Even though the terrain was conducive to ambushes and sniper fire, Roads was far more concerned about tripping a booby trap. He couldn’t imagine himself being cut down by the crossfire of an ambush or by the carefully aimed round of a sniper; but the vision of himself stepping on a booby trap, a Bouncing Betsy, was always with him — an innocuous pop, a gray canister hanging in the air in front of his groin, the telescoped second in which his body strove futilely to escape, but as in a nightmare, became caught in a mysterious, exhausting inertia that limited all his movements to slow motion until an explosion so deafening as to be silent left him lying helpless, knowing the extent of his own mutilation and lacking the will to kill himself.

Childs was well back in the formation, no less edgy than he would have been if he were at the point. But he saw something that took his mind off the possibility of an ambush. The front of the column was moving across a lush green patch of high ground. Childs strained his eyes as he studied it, then called over his shoulder to Hamilton, “Get ready.”

“For what?” Hamilton asked nervously.

“Supper, baby, supper.”

“What do you see?”

“Don’t know yet, but I think we’re on to something.”

As soon as he stepped from the rice paddies to the high ground, Childs began scampering around picking vegetables. He called ahead, “Tell Roads to slow down.”

“We’re gettin’ behind,” Hamilton warned.

“Fuck it, man. Just start picking.”

“That shit’s green.”

“It’s okra, stupid. It’s supposed to be green.”

“Okra? Is that the stuff you made last time we were here?”

“Yeah. That’s it.”

“That shit was horrible. It tasted like come.”

“How do you know what come tastes like?”

“Fuck you.”

“Quit arguing and start picking.”

“I told you I can’t stand that shit.”

“It don’t come out of a can, does it?
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
Look, there’s squash here too. You can pick that.”

Squash wasn’t one of Hamilton’s favorite vegetables either; but after a sarcastic “Oh boy,” he also began to pick as they walked. While Childs stuffed his pockets, he noticed that Forsythe wasn’t picking anything and urged him to help. Forsythe also remembered what the okra had tasted like, but picked some anyway just to quiet Childs. He found some cucumbers, and all three men began frantically picking as they walked. When their pockets were full, Forsythe took out his bayonet and began eating one of the cucumbers. A distant burst of rifle fire interrupted him. Everyone in the column turned their heads towards the sound, many of them recognizing the unmistakable cracks of AK-47’s.

Kramer immediately headed his men towards the firing. The pace quickened by itself, but when Kramer received word over the radio that First Platoon had run into a dozen Viet Cong, he gave orders to further increase it. By the time they approached within five hundred yards, the firing had become more sporadic and was mostly from M-16’s. Thoughts of the losses they had taken without being able to fire a shot caused many of the men to be more concerned about revenge than their own safety. The pace through the rice paddies was exhausting them, but they drove themselves on in hopes of reaching the Viet Cong before they’d all escaped or been killed by First Platoon.

Soon the firing stopped completely. The last shots had come from within a tree line less than a hundred yards away. To prevent First Platoon from firing on them, Kramer had Milton call Forest. Word came back that First Platoon was sweeping through the high ground and heading straight towards them. As Roads moved within twenty yards of the tree line, First Platoon emerged from it. The two platoons met, and Kramer sought out Forest.

First Platoon had gotten three confirmed kills. They were the first by any rifle company in the battalion, and Forest was beaming. He and Kramer decided to combine their platoons for a quick sweep back through the high ground before returning to camp. Realizing that some Viet Cong might still be in the tree line, the men moved through it cautiously. This was the closest Fuller had come to being in a fire fight, and he was especially nervous. Chalice and Forsythe watched with amusement as he moved forward in a crouch, his head shifting quickly from side to side. Suddenly he started firing and yelling. The men around him crouched nervously, trying to see what he was shooting at. “I got ’em,” Fuller yelled, “three of ’em.” By now they could see what had happened. The bodies of two Viet Cong, their legs folded in front of them and their backs propped up against two trees, sat facing each other with unlit cigarettes in their mouths. Between them lay a third body, its hands folded across its chest. It was obvious to everyone but Fuller that these were the three Viet Cong killed by First Platoon.

Appleton noticed something on the chest of the prone body. He pushed aside the dead Viet Cong’s hands with his rifle barrel, exposing an ace of spades with “Hotel 2/ 5” scrawled across it. Appleton bent down and replaced the corpse’s hands over the card, at the same time saying, “When his friends see that, they’ll know not to fuck with Hotel Company anymore.”

The platoons returned to camp in plenty of time to dig foxholes and heat C-rations. It took Childs over an hour to cook the okra and squash in a canteen cup. After the first few men who tasted it had spit it out, no one else in the squad would try it. Payne told Childs he overcooked it, and suggested some more salt. Forsythe asked him if he still had the billiard ball, saying he preferred to eat it instead. Childs got up and walked away from the other men. He sat down by himself to finish what was left. After a few mouthfuls, he emptied the canteen cup on the ground, still hearing the other members of his squad joke about how good he had made the cucumbers.

Every night since the operation had begun, Hotel Company had sent out two ambushes and two listening posts. The listening posts always consisted of a four-man fire team placed fifty to a hundred yards outside the perimeter, and their instructions were to fire only if fired upon. The ambushes consisted of an entire squad and a machine gun team placed at least half a kilometer from the perimeter. It was Second Platoon’s turn to send out an ambush, and Alpha’s turn within Second Platoon.

Shortly after dusk, Hamilton gathered his men on the edge of the perimeter and warned them to keep the noise down as he always did before an ambush. He realized the Viet Cong knew that every Marine company in Vietnam sent out from two to four ambushes a night. They had been known to set their own ambushes outside a perimeter to catch the Marines as they left it. Because of the difficulty in finding their way around at night, it was usually necessary for the squads to return by the same routes they had used to reach the ambush site, and this was an added danger. Most of the companies in the battalion had taken close to twice the number of casualties on ambushes than they had inflicted. In addition to being the most risky and fruitless of all operations the Marines were asked to perform, they were also disliked because of the added marching and loss of sleep involved.

Alpha’s ambush was a short one. This didn’t cause the men to be any less wary than usual. Until they set-in, the noise of their movement would put them at a disadvantage. It made no difference whether they traveled over dry ground or through rice paddies. Tree lines supplied more cover from which they themselves could be ambushed, and the noise made by moving through rice paddies could enable the Viet Cong to pinpoint their position. Most of Alpha’s ambush route necessitated movement through water.