Sand in the Wind

by Robert Roth

  The men in the column started moving around, and Forsythe whispered, “Chalice, let’s go.”

  Sticking what was left of the toilet paper in his helmet, he jumped up and fastened his pants. ‘Only Nam could make taking an undisturbed shit a rare privilege.’ He joined the column in the middle of Bravo Squad. By the time he caught up with Alpha, the platoon had turned off the trail and stopped moving. “Where’s Hamilton’s fire team?” he asked Forsythe in a whisper.

  “The lieutenant sent them up ahead as security. This is as far as we’re going. We’ll stay here till dawn, then sweep across.”

  “You got any shit paper?”

  “A little.” He took some out of his helmet and handed it to Chalice. “Didn’t you just take a shit?”

  “I’ve been shitting twenty-four hours a day for a week. If this keeps up my ass’ll get sunburnt.” He stepped off the trail and laid his rifle and magazines down. After squatting in some high grass, Chalice immediately realized his mistake and stood up. Holding his pants with one hand and his rifle with the other, he moved over to some clearer ground. The sound of his shit splattering on the dirt was interrupted by a burst of rifle fire. ‘What the fuck is that?’ he thought while making quick use of the toilet paper. As he ran back to the column, the night exploded with bursts of rifle fire and concussions from grenades.

  Harmon yelled, “Over here!” A bright flash of light and a loud explosion ended in a rapidly expanding globe of thousands of orange white particles that disappeared at the same instant, seemingly leaving the sky darker than before.

  A voice tinged with disbelief came from the rear of the column. “Did you see that chicom?”

  Sugar Bear was kneeling on the trail where Forsythe had been. “Where’s my fire team?” Chalice asked.

  “They moved up to help. You better wait here a while.”

  Kramer reached the head of the column just as the shooting stopped. “Harmon, what’s going on?”

  Harmon’s voice shot back from twenty yards in front of them. “A Gook. He was sitting on a rock. I got within five feet before I saw him.”

  “Did you hit him?”

  “I don’t know. He ain’t dead. We’ve either got him trapped in this cave, or he headed up the next ridge. It’s too dark to tell.”

  Kramer turned around and shouted back down the column, “Valdez, take your squad up the next ridge and circle around.” Kramer and Milton moved forward until they reached Harmon. “Anybody hit?” Without waiting for an answer he turned to Milton. “Call in. Get some illumes up here.”

  “Tony, Hamilton, everybody okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Keep an eye on the cave.”

  “What cave?” Kramer asked.

  Harmon pointed to a group of barely visible boulders. “You don’t want us to move up, do you?”

  “Hell no, not till it gets light. Have them throw some frags.”

  “Hamilton.”

  “Over here.”

  “Can you get any frags in there?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Give it a try. Everybody stay down.”

  Just as Hamilton started to pull the pin on a grenade, there was a short burst of rifle fire from above. It was followed by some longer bursts. “Valdez, was that you?” Kramer shouted.

  “Yeah, he walked right into us. I could hear him breathing.”

  “Did you get him?”

  “I don’t know. He took off.”

  “Stay where you are. We should be getting some illumes soon.”

  Within minutes the entire area was lit up with the flickering glow of illumination flares. Charlie and Alpha squads searched for blood trails without finding any. In the meantime, Bravo Squad was checking out one of the caves. They found a lot of clothing, rice, and Chinese Communist grenades. By the time Alpha and Charlie joined them, the hazy light of dawn had replaced that of the illumes. Most of the platoon stood around watching Bravo empty the cave. Valdez took a lot of ribbing about his marksmanship, which he excused by saying that the way the “Gook” walked right up to him he thought it might have been someone from Alpha.

  Ski came running out of the cave waving a .38 Smith and Wesson revolver. “Hey motherfuckers, look at this.” As they passed the gun around, they congratulated him on his find. Holding the pistol in his hand, Chalice became envious. Though he’d never owned a gun in his life, he made up his mind that he wanted something like it to take home as a souvenir.

  There were two more clusters of boulders that had to be checked out. Kramer assigned them to Alpha and Charlie squads. Thinking about the possibility of getting some souvenirs, the men hurried towards them. Alpha immediately found a large cave with three small entrances. Knowing that his men might get careless thinking about Ski’s souvenir, Harmon decided to check out the cave himself. He handed Payne his M-16 and took Payne’s .45, then crawled into one of the openings. After a few minutes he called for Tony 5 and Hamilton to come in. Chalice started to follow them, but Tony 5 turned around and told him to climb to the top of the cave and stand security.

  Chalice slowly scaled the smooth gray boulders. The next ridge towered above him like a huge, forbidding parapet. He scanned it, feeling alone and vulnerable. Upon reaching the top, Chalice turned and began to kneel. The sight of the soft green lowlands stopped him. He stood high above them, and above the sun — alone.

  Only a diaphanous hint of the once thick morning mist remained, and this too was quickly being burned away by the sun’s slanting rays. Bound within the parameters of his sight, lay a minute replica of the only world he had known the past few weeks. All links between the man standing free above the valley and the soldier who trudged through its mud and dust dissolved. He pictured himself as one might picture an intriguing stranger. His eyes followed this stranger’s path from Hill 65 on his left, that orange scab upon the valley floor, to the toylike silhouette of Liberty Bridge on his right. Between these two points flowed the calm, wide river — its breadth belying its shallowness. It bowed gracefully around that white arc of sand he knew to be the park. The dusty, crater-scarred road was now no more than a thin yellow line, twisting parallel to the river. It touched upon a group of tiny gray rectangles that marked the camp they had set out from just a few hours earlier. Between the mountains and road lay a checkerboardlike configuration of multicolored rice paddies. There was something strange and methodical about them, as if constructed by ants. And across the river, stretching to the dark mountains that formed the southern boundary of the valley, lay a tract of land so feared as to give it an aura of mystery — the Arizona. A feeling of serenity engulfed Chalice, not as in one who has found an answer, but as in one who no longer cares to ask. Again he traced the paths he had taken, seeing himself not as a person, but as an insignificant, slowly moving speck against the many-hued mosaic below.

  The sound of a rifle banging against one of the boulders brought Chalice out of his reverie. Forsythe was making his way towards him. “Quite a view.”

  “I can’t remember seeing anything like it.” Chalice pointed to a group of boulders about fifty yards away on the opposite side of the trail. “Do you think there might be a cave over there?”

  “Probably, you wanna check it out?”

  “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind getting some souvenirs.”

  “We have to turn in most of the stuff we find.”

  “What about the pistol Ski found?”

  “He’s supposed to be able to keep it, but somebody in the rear who sits on his ass all day while we’re in the bush will probably steal it. You never heard about Armstead, did you?” Chalice shook his head. “They shipped him home with one arm blown away, blind in both eyes, and burns all over his face. When his parents came to visit him in the hospital, he asked them if they got his SKS. He was the only guy in the platoon with one. It was practically new, a lifer’s dream. They said they didn’t know anything about it, and when they checked they found out it had been stolen the same day his lieutenant lef
t country. From what I hear, nobody ever tried to get it back for him. . . . I’ll ask Tony if we can check out those rocks anyway.”

  A few minutes later Chalice, Forsythe, and Tony 5 headed towards the boulders. They found a narrow trail that led right to them. Tony immediately spotted a cave. He had the .45, so he entered it while Chalice and Forsythe waited outside. Chalice felt cheated because Tony would get to keep anything he found even though Chalice had spotted the boulders. Tony came right out dragging two rusty cans. As they sorted through them, Forsythe pulled out a roll of material. He started to unravel it, at the same time saying, “What the fuck is this?” It turned out to be a banner about ten feet long and two feet wide with two rows of large printed writing on it.

  Tony pulled out another one just like it, only with different words. “Hey Prof, what the fuck do they say?”

  Chalice only recognized a few words. “I can’t make it out. What do you suppose they use them for?”

  Forsythe started laughing. “Maybe they’re gonna have a convention. That’s it! We’ve captured the Viet Cong convention center.”

  Tony had been unwrapping a small package, and he now held a Viet Cong flag in his hands. “Hey you guys, get a load of this. Looks like I got my brother a hell of a souvenir.”

  Chalice became jealous and started to say something about being the one who spotted the cave, but he changed his mind and walked to the mouth of it. “Is there anything else inside?”

  “No, not a thing,” Tony answered.

  “Can I check it out anyway?”

  “Sure, here’s the .45.”

  Chalice took the pistol and crawled in. It was shaped more like a small tunnel than a cave. There wasn’t enough room to stand up, and the walls were slanted making movement inside even more awkward. Chalice crawled to the rear without finding anything. He moved back towards the entrance. Just as he was about to crawl out, he spotted a small crevice right inside the mouth of the cave. “Tony, did you check this hole?”

  “I checked the whole cave.”

  “This hole by the entrance?”

  “Everything.”

  Chalice looked down the crevice again, but turned around and started to crawl out. As he was doing so he thought, ‘What the hell,’ and turned back towards the crevice. It was about two feet across at the top, but widened out towards the bottom. He checked carefully for signs of a booby trap, then lowered himself down. There was a small opening at the base of one wall. Peering into it, Chalice could see two big aluminum tubes with a rifle butt sticking out of one of them — ‘An SKS, maybe.’ He pulled the rifle from the tube without checking for a booby trap.

  Forsythe had crawled into the cave and was peering down at him. “What have you got there?”

  “Just an SKS,” Chalice answered excitedly.

  “Are you shittin’ me? Tony! He’s got an SKS.”

  “No shit! Bring the motherfucker out.”

  Chalice handed the SKS up to Forsythe, then lifted himself from the crevice. When he got outside, Tony 5 and Forsythe seemed as excited as he was.

  Tony said, “God, how could I have missed it. I’ve wanted one of these things ever since I got over here.” He opened the magazine and took out a handful of rounds. After putting one in his pocket, he gave another to Forsythe and handed the rest of them and the rifle to Chalice. “One of those bullets could of had our names on it.”

  Tony 5 and Forsythe each picked up a tin can, and the three of them headed back to the rest of the platoon. As they approached, Forsythe saw Sugar Bear standing on a boulder and yelled out, “The Prof found an SKS.”

  Sugar Bear jumped off the boulder and met them. “Nice going, Professor. That’s a beauty.” By the time they reached Kramer, practically the whole platoon was there to meet them.

  Everyone was slapping Chalice on the back and congratulating him when Kovacs said, “Sorry Prof, that’s not an SKS. That’s an AK-47.” Chalice stood mute, knowing that an AK-47 an automatic rifle and can’t be taken home as a souvenir. There was a few seconds’ silence, then everybody started laughing. “I’m fucking with you, Professor. You’ve got yourself a lifer’s dream.”

  Appleton slapped him hard on the back. “You shoulda seen your face. You looked like somebody cut your balls off.”

  Kovacs took the rifle and opened the bayonet. Instead of the knife type, it was aluminum colored and round with four large blood grooves. Kovacs pressed it against Chalice’s stomach. “Prof, the advantage of this ice pick bayonet is that when you pull it out of somebody’s stomach, his guts come out with it.”

  The SKS wasn’t the only topic. Appleton told everybody about what had happened to Hicks. “Yeah, Good Old Hicks found something interesting too. There was this little old wire strung across one of the caves, and our boy Hicks decided to kick it out of the way.” Hicks remained silent with an embarrassed look on his face. As everybody turned towards him, he lowered his head to avoid their stares. “Now I know he says he didn’t see it, but I can’t believe that. I’m standing behind him and I hear this nice, loud pop. When I got off the ground — Hicks bowled me over on his way out of the cave — I found this pretty little 60-millimeter mortar round all rigged to go off. The primer blew, but the mortar didn’t. It’s a good thing too. It would of taken us a week to find enough of Hicks to fill a C-rat can.”

  They stood around for a few minutes kidding Hicks and passing the SKS to each other, then Kramer told Harmon to form up the men. As the platoon started along the trail, Chalice was thinking about the SKS. He remembered the way those few Marines had carried them around at the Da Nang airfield on the day he arrived in-country — the superior looks on their faces. He could picture himself strolling around in the same manner — ‘The most wanted souvenir there is, and I’ve got it.’ Realizing he was the only man in the platoon with one, Chalice felt a little guilty about it. He’d only been in-country a few weeks while some of the other men had been there twelve months. If there was any animosity towards him, it was far outweighed by the pride the others took in the fact that a member of their platoon had gotten an SKS, and that there was now one less rifle to shoot at them.

  Roads walked the point with Hamilton right behind him. Although being point man usually made him uneasy, there hadn’t been another sign of the Viet Cong and he was in a relaxed but cautious mood. This caused him to set a fairly slow pace, and no one bothered to rush him. The trail petered out and he had to blaze his own for more than an hour, but he preferred doing so because this eliminated the chance of hitting a booby trap. Pushing through a thicket of heavy brush only to be confronted by some steep rocks, he instinctively kept moving along the lower edge, not wasting time to figure out whether to go above or below. As soon as he got to their base, he found himself in a sea of elephant grass well above his head. He held his hands against his chest to protect them from being cut, and moved forward taking short, high steps. Just when he started wondering whether the grass would ever end, it opened onto a group of large, flat boulders separated by wide crevices that necessitated long jumps over them. He slowed down his pace a little in order to make it easier for those behind him. The boulders ended in a small cliff above a clearing.

  While deciding how to climb down, his eyes caught the color black — Viet Cong uniforms. Eleven of them were sitting on the edge of the clearing not more than twenty yards away from him. Roads crouched, his heartbeat quickening as a heavy warmth spread within his body. Hurriedly, he aimed his rifle, at the same time feeling a sense of absurdity about what he was doing. With his sights held steady on the back of the nearest Viet Cong, he pulled the trigger. It wouldn’t move! He pulled harder. Finally realizing his rifle was on safe, he clicked it on semiautomatic. Now afraid that the Viet Cong had heard the click, he opened fire without aiming. Instead of the loud, percussive burst of an exploding cartridge, his ears caught the sharp, hollow sound of metal hitting metal — the rifle had misfired.

  The Viet Cong scrambled to their feet and headed towards the elephant grass in a pani
c. Hamilton moved up alongside of Roads and got off a few quick shots aimed below the moving tops of the grass. Roads kneeled next to him thinking, ‘Good, got nothing against these people.’

  The rest of the platoon came tearing across the boulders only to see an empty clearing before them. Kramer ordered a search of the elephant grass. They swept through it without finding a trace of the Viet Cong. When they reached a path, Kramer told Valdez to put Charlie Squad at the point and head the platoon back to camp.

  Valdez figured that this was Hicks’s lucky day, so he made him point man. He soon regretted his choice. Hicks knew the slim chances of one man tripping two booby traps in the same day, and he set a rapid pace. All the men, especially those at the tail end of the column, were out of breath within a few minutes. Only the psychological advantage of knowing that they were headed back to their perimeter enabled them to keep up. The fast pace became more of a joke than a sore point, and the frequency of the men’s bantering complaints and curses caused Kramer to order them to keep the noise down. After an hour of steady marching, he thought about calling a five minute break. Spirits seemed high and stopping might give the Viet Cong time to set up an ambush ahead of them. Kramer decided to wait.

  Just as the front of the column started up a steep ridge and the tail end of it was descending the preceding slope with most of the platoon strung out in the barren valley between, a burst of rifle fire came from above and behind them. Kramer’s first thought was to have the men take cover. But the valley floor offered none.

  “MOVE IT!” he ordered.

  The sniper fire continued in short bursts as they ran. When the last man had reached the heavier brush of the slope, Kramer halted the column and told the men to take cover. He turned to Kovacs. “Doesn’t seem like much of a shot.”

  “He’s just harassing us.”

  Kramer called out asking if anybody thought they knew where the fire was coming from. Receiving no reply, he turned back to Kovacs. “You think there’s only one of them?”