Sand in the Wind

by Robert Roth

  Hotel Company continued to make camp in a different place each night. Ten days after leaving the battalion, they had still failed to make contact, or even to come upon any civilians. During that time, Echo Company had hit four more booby traps and Fox had hit two. Kramer was glad that so far they had been lucky, but he knew their luck couldn’t possibly continue. Each dawn threatened them with contact, and there was such a feeling of inevitability about it that he almost wished to get it over with. In addition to being edgy, his men were frustrated by the constant movement. They would set-in each night with the disgusted feeling that the next day at dawn they would again have to break camp, march all day, and set-in somewhere else. With nothing to look forward to, they became fatalistic and sometimes a little careless. All their actions seemed so meaningless, that they longed for that first bit of contact — picturing it as a fire fight, not a booby trap or a mortar attack — to prove to themselves that the physical torture of the marches and the discomfort of sleeping on wet ground were actually necessary. This was true even though they knew that their constant movement was as much for the purpose of avoiding the Viet Cong at night, as it was for seeking them out in the daytime.

  The depression of the men was most obvious in Childs, and this surprised those who had known him longest. It wasn’t that he was more irritable, this being impossible; but rather, as Forsythe put it, he wasn’t “his old, sarcastic self.”

  Dusk had just come on when Hamilton noticed Childs’s brooding figure sitting a few feet away from him. Hamilton slid over and said, “Well, we’ve been lucky so far.”

  “Guess so,” Childs answered somberly.

  “Every day without Charlie’s a lucky one.”

  “Guess so.”

  “What’s wrong with you, man?”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Cut the shit. You’re the one looking like you lost your best friend.”

  “Lost enough of them, haven’t I?” Childs answered gruffly.

  “Bullshit, you never had one.”

  Childs grinned as he lay back on the ground. “Guess you’re right.”

  “I don’t know what you’re so down about. We’ve been through this before.”

  “Who’s down?”

  “Oh, I know.” Hamilton lowered his voice as he said, “It’s what happened on Charlie Ridge.”

  “Hell no!” Childs answered truthfully.

  “Then there is something wrong.”

  “Maybe.” Childs paused for a long time before asking in a falsely casual manner, “Remember that Gook chick we saw with the napalmed face?”

  “How could I forget? What a freak-out.”

  Childs continued in a dreamy tone, making no attempt to belittle his own words. “I thought she was going to be so beautiful.”

  “Me too. That’s why it was so bad.”

  “You know, I bet she was beautiful . . . before that.”

  Hamilton would have found it hard to understand why anyone would be lastingly affected by this incident, but such a reaction from Childs seemed even more puzzling. Incapable of handling the situation in any other way, he tried to sluff it off. “All them Gook chicks look alike.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Hamilton attempted to change the subject. “Look, I don’t know what you’re so down about. You’ll be going home before I will.”

  “Not if you get blown away.”

  This remark in no way irritated Hamilton. Childs was beginning to sound like his old self. “Besides, you can always think of a way to skate back to the rear.”

  Childs again became serious as he said, “I’m tired of that shit. . . . It’s too much trouble.”

  “Too much trouble? It’s better than the bush. . . . Hey, maybe your lump’ll get bigger.”

  Childs rubbed the lump on his forearm and shook his head while saying, “It’s the same.”

  “You’ll think of a way.”

  “I shouldn’t have to. I’ve got two Hearts already. . . . That got Delaney and a lot of other guys a job in the rear.”

  “But both of yours were skatin’.”

  “I can’t help it if I didn’t get my arm blown off. Anybody else and they would have sent him to the rear.”

  “But you wouldn’t of went.”

  “I would now.”

  “Why don’t you say something to the lieutenant?” Childs thought about Kramer catching him and Hamilton in Da Nang, and he shook his head.

  “You got nothing to lose.” Childs remained silent. “I mean he ain’t Lieutenant S, but he may be all right.”

  “No!”

  “Go ahead. You got nothing to lose.”

  “All right.”

  Childs found Kramer and Tony 5 talking near their foxhole. Tempted to turn around, he stared down at Kramer and said, “How come I didn’t get a job in the rear after my second Heart?” He’d asked this question in the only way possible for him to do so, by using a cocky, sarcastic tone.

  Kramer’s first reaction was surprise. “Why didn’t you say something about this on the hill?”

  “They’re supposed to ask me.”

  “I don’t know what you expect me to do now. I can’t just send you in.” Childs realized that this was true, but he continued to stare at Kramer. “I’ll tell you what, I’ll have the next man that goes to the rear say something about it to the company master sergeant.” Still unsatisfied, Childs realized that this was about all Kramer could do. He nodded and walked away.

  After Childs had left, Kramer asked Tony 5, “How come they didn’t send for him?”

  “It’s kind of fucked up the way it works. After two Hearts, they’re supposed to let you have a job in the rear — except officers — or if you want to, you can sign a waiver and stay in the bush.”

  “He didn’t sign any waiver.”

  “Well you don’t always have to. We’re about twelve men short, and they might figure we need every man we can get in the Arizona. . . . It could be because both his Hearts were skating.”

  “That shouldn’t make any difference. Who’s to decide how bad you have to be wounded?”

  “I’ll tell you what the reason probably is. Childs has got a reputation for being a fuck-off, and they probably don’t want him.”

  “I don’t see how they can do that. Besides, he seems to know what he’s doing.”

  “He does. Next to Chief, he’s the best point man we’ve got. But that’s in the bush where you have to know what you’re doing. When things get slow, he can be a pain in the ass.”

  Kramer remembered the incident in Da Nang, and realized Tony was right. “You seem to think they should keep him out here.”

  “No. If he wants to go, they should let him. . . . But I hate to see us lose anybody now, especially a good point man.”

  “Is he the only man in the platoon with two Hearts?”

  “No.”

  “How many others are there?”

  “Just one, I think.”

  “Who?”

  “Me.”

  “How come you’re out here?”

  “I signed the waiver.”

  “What’d you do that for?”

  Tony hesitated before speaking; and when he finally did answer, he failed to mention the most important reason. “You have to take a lot of crap in the rear, real Mickey Mouse bullshit. . . . One time we had about six guys that signed waivers. I think only one got killed. . . . Kovacs had two Hearts.”

  The next day the company broke camp at dawn as usual. It would again be a long march before they would set-in. Trippitt was more short-tempered than usual, and he constantly ordered the point to quicken the pace. It was after two o’clock when they finally set-in. Trippitt radioed their position to battalion, and then passed the word to “take thirty” for lunch.

  Kramer and Tony 5 sat eating their C-rations with Charlie Squad when Ramirez asked Redstone, “What are you gonna do when you get out of the Crotch, Chief?”

  Redstone shrugged his shoulders and Appleton said, “Go on the
war path?”

  “They’d have to pay me more money than the Crotch does.”

  “Gonna stick around the reservation, eh?” Appleton joked while slapping Redstone on the back.

  Chief realized that no slight had been intended; and he was so used to this type of remark, especially from Appleton, that it had little effect on him. Although Redstone seldom did much talking, he now had the urge to speak about the main thing he’d been giving thought to since joining the Marine Corps. “That land ain’t good for anything except fillin’ holes with. My oldest brother’s been workin’ on a cattle ranch in Texas for ten years. He knows a place we can get nearby for twenty-five thousand dollars. My two cousins and my younger brother and me all joined the Crotch on the same day. When we get out, we’ll take the money and go partners on the land.”

  Kramer sat wondering how the money they saved could possibly add up to twenty-five thousand dollars. He didn’t doubt that Redstone was telling the truth, but he couldn’t see how and what chance there would be of them getting the rest of the money. Ramirez was thinking the same thing, and after waiting a few seconds, he asked, “Chief, how’s that gonna come to twenty-five thousand dollars?”

  Redstone did not hesitate to answer. He and his relatives had been too serious and careful in their plans to have left them incomplete. He shrugged his shoulders before saying, “There’s four of us — all grunts, all in Nam. Chances are we all won’t make it back.”

  For a few seconds, Kramer failed to make the connection between what Redstone had said and the fact that all servicemen were covered by ten thousand dollars military insurance. Even afterwards, he couldn’t believe what he had heard. During the time he’d been in Vietnam, little he had seen or heard had shocked him as much as these calmly spoken words. From the moment he’d stepped off the plane in Da Nang, Kramer realized he was in a new and referenceless matrix. Purposely and ruthlessly, he had stripped his mind of all inflexible preconceptions, preparing himself for anything. Yet Redstone’s words did not stem from this new matrix, but rather from the world they had all left behind; and for the first time, Kramer sensed a valid, logical connection between the two.

  Second Platoon was given one of the day’s patrols. Kramer told Charlie Squad to lead off. Ramirez was now the squad leader, and he assigned Chief the point. The men no longer assumed each patrol would finally make contact. They had gone too long without seeing any sign of the Viet Cong. This did not cause them to get careless, for they knew that eventually they would make contact. However, it was no longer a question of catching Charlie, but rather of waiting for Charlie to strike.

  The objective of the patrol was a large area of high ground, too large not to have at one time contained a ville. Chief realized this, and he approached it cautiously. A number of banana trees stood at its near edge. Redstone veered the column towards them. He spotted one with the remainder of a large bunch of bananas hanging from it. None of those left were ripe, and he scanned the ground looking for remains of the rest. Their absence told him that someone had been there recently, but he still wasn’t sure they would find anybody. Twice since the operation had begun, he’d noticed the same thing; and both times they had failed to come upon a single person. After passing a warning back down the column, he avoided an existing path and instead broke a new one.

  Chalice was fifty yards into the brush when Pablo tapped him on the shoulder and said in a low voice, “I smell Gooks.” At first Chalice thought he was kidding, but then he remembered that Pablo rarely said anything on patrols and never without a purpose. As Chalice turned and looked at him questioningly, Pablo motioned forward with his head and said, “Pass it up.” Rabbit was the man in front of Chalice. He passed the word forward only after Chalice insisted he do so, and still thinking it was a joke. By the time Chief got the message, he stood at the edge of a clearing that contained a large, inhabited ville.

  Redstone carefully scanned the village. Few faces turned towards him, and those that did quickly turned away. The villagers weren’t surprised. It was as if they had known exactly when the Marines were coming, what they would do, and how soon they would leave. Redstone had expected this. If the peasants had acted in any other way, it would have been far more disturbing to him, for it would have been something out of the ordinary. Only after he had carefully scanned everything before him, did Redstone move far enough into the clearing to allow the rest of the platoon to enter it. Tony 5 quickly divided the men into their squads and spread them out. Kramer assigned each squad leader responsibility for a particular section of the ville.

  Chalice strained his eyes to get a look at the villagers, immediately aware of how different the Arizona side of the river was. The ville looked exactly the same as those on the other side of the river, but was strikingly quieter. No children played around the hootches. Instead they stood inside them, behind their mothers or grandparents; and their large, innocent eyes stared back at him with fear and distrust. Most of the elders refused to look at the Marines. They stared down at the cooking, sewing, or whatever else they were doing. Except for a few young mothers, all the people were either extremely elderly or children. Even if he had not been told numerous times, Chalice would have sensed that the absent villagers were either dead or Viet Cong.

  In the first hootch Chalice’s fire team was to check out, a young woman sat sewing in the middle of the floor. A small boy peered from behind her back. Only once did she glance up at him, somberly and for a second. “Chao, Ba,” he said to her, using the Vietnamese greeting meaning, “Hello, Mrs.” She ignored him, and he wondered how many times she’d been abused or molested by Marines, sat listening to words she did not understand, yet knowing she was being insulted and derided. He walked towards the child and it shrank away from him. Chalice clumsily took a chocolate from his shirt pocket. So many times before, children had begged him for candy; but now he had to coax the boy to take it. The boy nibbled at the chocolate slowly, his eyes suspiciously fixed upon Chalice. The woman spoke no words, but clearly she was screaming at him to go away. Now he further understood why so many of the men had told him that every living thing on the Arizona side of the river was Viet Cong.

  Forsythe had been checking the inside of the bunker behind the hootch. He emerged from it and led his men to the next hootch. An old couple sat on the packed dirt floor. Their reactions were the same as those of the young mother. Forsythe handed Chalice the flashlight and the .45. Chalice took them to the three-by-two entrance of the bunker. Kneeling on his hands and knees, he cautiously crawled inside. Even after his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he could see nothing; so he turned on the flashlight. The musty smell almost choked him as he crept along the damp floor. It was covered with rough boards. He squeezed his hands through the cracks between them and felt nothing but dirt beneath. Next, he felt along the bamboo walls. Chalice was being extremely careful, yet his mind was only slightly concerned about the possibility of a booby trap. Instead, he tried to imagine what it was like for the old couple to spend all their nights huddled inside the bunker, listening to the bombs being dropped, knowing that the mud and bamboo would be of no value if one even came close.

  For two hours Second Platoon searched the hootches. While the faces that met them were different, the reactions were the same. As Tony 5 formed up the platoon, Chalice couldn’t help but look back at the ville. He tried to understand why these people had chosen to stay in a free-fire zone, enduring the random bombings, unable to stray from their village and its surrounding rice paddies, knowing that they lived at the mercy of every Marine with a gun who in fear might choose certain death for them to prevent his own possible death.

  Childs was assigned the point for the march back to camp. Knowing the dangers of returning by the same route they had used to approach the ville, Childs broke a new path through the sparse brush. As he neared the edge of the high ground and was able to see the rice paddies beyond it, he felt the natural tendency to become careless. But his experience caused him to overcome this. While H
otel Company had yet to hit a booby trap, Childs knew that every other company in the battalion had. Chalice was walking directly behind Childs, and his eyes were fixed upon the rice paddies a few yards away when Childs suddenly stopped and mumbled, “I knew it.”

  Chalice waited impatiently for Childs to start moving again. Instead he heard Childs repeat, “I knew it.”

  “Knew what?” Chalice asked. Childs pointed to the ground at his feet. Chalice didn’t see anything. “What is it?” Childs again pointed to the ground, but all Chalice could see was a reed bending across an opening in the brush. “What are you pointing at?”

  “Just a goddamn trip wire.”

  Chalice continued to strain his eyes without being able to see anything. “Where?”

  “Practically leaning against my ankle, stupid.”

  “The reed?”

  “Yeah!”

  Childs bent down to examine the reed. Still bewildered, Chalice was about to ask “Where?” when he moved his head and saw a glint of light flash above the tip of the reed. Whoever had set the booby trap had threaded the trip wire through the reed. Although Childs had been extremely careful, his spotting the wire was more the result of luck than anything else. The men behind them became restless, so Childs sent back word of what he had found. By the time Kramer reached the head of the column, Childs had traced the wire to a C-ration can with a grenade in it. The delay had been taken out so the grenade would explode instantly when pulled from the can. Kramer was trying to think of a way to detonate the booby trap when Childs placed his hand over the top of the can and casually yanked it away from the bush it was tied to. He handed it to Chalice, then got down on his hands and knees to search the brush for additional booby traps. In this manner, Childs crawled the twenty yards to the edge of the tree line. He took back the can with the grenade in it and placed it on top of a rice paddy dike. When the column was thirty yards away from it, Appleton, the last man, turned and shot the can off the dike, thus detonating the grenade.