Sand in the Wind

by Robert Roth

  The column soon reached the base of the hill. Though not very high and sparsely vegetated, it was far steeper than it had looked from a distance. The column bunched at its base as the haggard men fought their way up. Again something told Kramer to look at his map. Not seeing any point in doing so, he took out his canteen instead. The warm water somewhat refreshed him. As he watched the point platoon struggle towards the top, he dreaded the climb that he too would have to make. Again he was bothered by the impulse to look at his map. It was as if his own mind was refusing him a few moments’ peace. As much for the satisfaction of knowing that again Trippitt had been wrong, he finally took it out. A quick glance told him that this was the case. Seeing no point in saying anything, he nodded to himself and started to put the map away. Suddenly his dulled senses were shocked into a panic and he yelled forward, “Stop them! Stop them! It’s a minefield!”

  As the first few men disappeared over the edge of the summit, the order to halt was frantically passed forward by radio and the shouts of those men behind them. Everyone with a map took it out. Trippitt called Kramer on the radio and began to argue with him when Lieutenant Howell cut him short by agreeing with Kramer. The maps clearly showed an old French minefield atop the hill. Kramer had noticed it that morning without realizing it. Trippitt ordered those on the summit to carefully backtrack and come down. As the tenseness of the men abated, most of them began shaking their heads in relief and disgust.

  It took another half hour before the entire company made it to the top of the right hill. After digging their foxholes, the men still had time to heat some C-rations. Most of Alpha Sqaud was sitting together talking about their close call when Forsythe said, “I guess Trippitt’ll get another medal for guiding us out of that minefield.”

  A number of men agreed, and Chalice asked, “What do you mean another medal?”

  Forsythe looked up in surprise. “You guys didn’t hear?” The men around him shook their heads. “Trippitt and Martin wrote each other up for medals. Trippitt got a Silver Star, and Martin got a Bronze.”

  “For what?” Hamilton shouted.

  “For nothing, of course. It supposedly had something to do with one of the times the Phantom Blooker hit us.”

  “What the hell did they do?” Hamilton asked.

  “It ain’t what they did,” Forsythe replied. “You don’t get medals for that. It’s for what they said each other did.”

  “Well, what did they say?”

  “Something about leaving their foxholes.”

  “What about the corpsmen?” Chalice cut in. “They were the only ones I ever saw out of the foxholes.”

  Childs spoke before Forsythe could answer. “What’s the big fucking deal? How do you think these lifers get all their phony medals? By writing each other up. That’s why they don’t have time to write up anybody that does anything. . . . Who the hell wants medals anyway?”

  Hamilton was still enraged, and he said, “It ain’t a case of wanting medals. It’s a case of having Martin and Trippitt get them.”

  Childs found it hard to understand both Hamilton’s anger and surprise.

  “Listen man, you know damn well this happens all the time, at least two other times since we’ve been here. Besides, the only real heroes are the ones with notches on their rifles for the lifers they’ve killed.”

  The men nodded their heads, and Hamilton added, “I just wish somebody’d get some notches on his rifle for Trippitt and Martin before those assholes get me killed.”

  Trippitt again sent out four ambushes that night, all of them long. The men allowed to remain within the perimeter were thankful that it wasn’t their turn, but this could bring them little comfort, for they knew their turns would come. Few of them would have preferred the ambushes even if they had known the Phantom Blooker would again strike their perimeter, even if they had known beforehand that two of them would be dead by morning. No one was surprised that he had found them, nor were they surprised when they learned that one of their ambushes had been ambushed. Luck, nothing more, had prevented anyone in the ambush party from being wounded. The nervousness of a single Viet Cong soldier had saved their lives. He had fired too soon and with too little care. Solely for this reason, the ambush party had enough time to take cover.

  The next morning Hotel Company moved out as soon as the medivac chopper evacuated the dead. A helicopter had spotted some NVA soldiers disappear into a large tree line, and this was where they were now headed. When they were within a kilometer of it, the point man spotted three NVA soldiers in the open. The columns moved out after them at full speed, but the NVA soldiers ran into some thick brush and vanished. Only the more experienced of the men found it easy to believe they had gotten away.

  Trippitt immediately made camp on a small, barren patch of high ground. He then assigned patrols to three of his platoons. As soon as Second Platoon got a kilometer away from the perimeter, they came under sniper fire. No one was sure where it was coming from. Kramer picked out the likeliest thicket and advanced his platoon towards it on-line. He knew some of his men were lame, but was surprised to see so many of them struggling through the rice paddies trying to keep up. Kramer ordered the pace slowed, but this did little good.

  The formation was barely into the tree line when Kramer realized the impossibility of sweeping through it. A solid wall of brush lay before them. His men were already exhausted from six hours of marching on their swollen and bleeding feet. He ordered them to back out of the tree line, then assigned Alpha the point. The rest of the platoon followed them through the brush.

  Childs led the column. All he could think about was the possibility that the brush might become sparser. In a few minutes it did, but he was too sore and exhausted to take any real comfort from this. He merely pushed his way forward, not looking for booby traps and too tired to care, thinking that he should be in An Hoa and cursing the fact that he wasn’t. Childs didn’t have the strength to be angry, but he thought about his two Purple Hearts with disgust and resentment. He hated Kramer for not seeing that he was sent to the rear, and the company master sergeant — ‘sitting in his office’ — for keeping him in the bush. Childs was sure of one thing: something had to happen. He’d waited and waited, but nothing had changed — each day as insanely meaningless as the ones before it. Something had to happen, or Childs knew he would be forced to make it happen. Behind these thoughts, there were also vague, repetitive warnings to watch out for booby traps or an ambush; but he forced them aside with a fatalistic finality as he repeated under his breath, “Fuck it!”

  Suddenly he found himself standing in front of a Viet Cong antiaircraft position, a circular trench with a mound of earth in the middle on which a large-caliber machine gun could be placed. Now forced to become more alert, Childs pushed his resentment aside. He turned and told Hamilton to stay back. Moving slowly forward with his eyes on the ground, Childs cleared a path for the rest of the column. Little tufts of brush lay all around him. He studied the spaces between them for trip wires. In an instant, as he was about to place his foot down, Childs awkwardly jerked his body back and gazed at a tuft of brush before him. Within it lay a dull green piece of metal he knew to be part of a C-ration can. The rest of it and the grenade it contained remained buried. The rain had washed away some of the mud. For this and no other reason he’d been able to see it. Only after studying the ground around the grenade did he spot the trip wire. A tremor chilled him as he realized that he was still alive merely because of the rain and his luck in approaching the foxhole from the direction he had.

  Sure there were other booby traps around, Childs decided against searching them out. All that was necessary was for him to clear a path for the rest of the column. He pointed out the grenade to Hamilton before again moving forward, now with the same care and alertness that was usually his custom. His resentment about being in the bush gradually did return, but in no way took his mind off the dangers that lay before him.

  Childs felt relieved when he finally broke through
to the opposite side of the tree line. He was safe, but only for a while. There would be other booby traps, ones that could do to him what they had done to Chief, a better point man than he ever was. ‘No more,’ Childs told himself, ‘not much longer. Something has to happen.’

  The rest of the men joined him on the edge of the tree line, most of them dropping to the ground immediately. Childs watched, waited until he was the last man standing. He walked a few yards away and sat down by himself. Still he watched the men around him. They sat quietly in the rain, none of them having made any conscious attempt to avoid it by sitting under trees, or even by turning their faces from it like cattle. ‘Not even cattle,’ Childs thought. He knew that for himself as well as the rest of the men, rain had become a fact, something accepted without question. To help avert the chill and discomfort of it, he and those around him unconsciously dulled all their senses.

  Suddenly these barriers were shattered by a paralyzing explosion of light and a blast of thunder loud enough to send many of the men diving to the ground. Childs remained sitting, having only flinched. He didn’t even look up in the direction of the rending sound that followed, or see the huge tree branch until it had fallen around him with a dull thud. Childs sat motionless, completely enveloped in a fork of this branch which hadn’t even grazed him.

  Some of the still-startled men rushed forward to see if he was all right. They were met by a steady and outraged stare. Only the nearest of them heard Childs mumble, “Missed.” As he got to his feet, Childs stared up at the sky in rage, finally spitting out a victorious shout. “Missed, you dirty cocksucker!” Just as he finished yelling, there was a faint rumble of thunder. A grin came to his lips and he noticed a few of the men drawing back. He began to laugh violently, and some of the men joined him. Again he looked up at the heavens and shouted with exultation, “Missed, you sonofabitch!” A few of the men continued to back away, but most of them joined him in laughter. It was just dying down when a bolt of lightning scorched the ground in back of Childs. Again the men were shocked — some backing away, others standing transfixed — while Childs, who had barely flinched, began to laugh even louder. His eyes, expression, and the sound of his laughter seemed more than insane and no less than Satanic. Once more he raised his glare to the heavens and shouted in anger and triumph, “Missed again, you dirty cocksucker! . . . Give it another try!” When Childs lowered his stare to the men around him, he saw that no one was within twenty yards and all eyes were focused upon him in disbelief. This further incited him. During the few seconds he was able to control his mad laughter, Childs once more shouted to the heavens, “Try again, motherfucker! I dare you!” The startled men continued to stare at him in silence, some of them actually waiting for the lightning to strike. When Childs saw this, he taunted them with a wild, ridiculing grin and the words, “What the hell are you jerks scared of? He’s after me!” Then looking up at the sky, he added, “C’mon, asshole, I’ll give you another chance.” What had started as outrage on the verge of insanity had now transformed into a performance. Childs gloried in the disbelieving stares of those around him. He sensed and enjoyed their doubts about what they were seeing and his own sanity. He would have liked to continue, but his body felt ready to wilt and melt into the ground. Even his wild expression of triumph faded to a calm, blank stare. Still there was silence, unbroken until a few seconds later by a laugh from one of the men, then a few more. But most of those around Childs remained startled and silent.

  Kramer continued to stare at Childs, a disbelieving grin on his face, thinking, ‘More! More! I want to see more,’ once again trying to read Childs’s thoughts, wondering what possessed him. All the men were on their feet, and there was no point in doing anything but forming them up and moving out. Kramer reluctantly ordered them to do so. It was now too late to finish the patrol as planned. Instead, Kramer decided to move back through the tree line and return to camp. He switched Charlie Squad to the point and placed Alpha on the tail end.

  Childs was the last man in the column. Now that he didn’t have to worry as much about ambushes and booby traps, his thoughts turned from his experience with the lightning to how close he’d come to being killed on that day and on many other days. For the very first time, he began to resent having to walk point more than anybody else in his squad. The fact that he was the best point man didn’t satisfy him, and he kept asking himself, ‘Why me? Why me, when I should be in the rear?’ It was true that much of his success at dealing with booby traps had been due to luck rather than skill; but Childs convinced himself that all of it had been due to luck, and that this luck would soon run out. Memories of the way Chief had been killed seemed to confirm this belief. Childs had long refused trying to think of some imaginative way to get to the rear and stay there. Such exploits had given him the reputation that now kept him in the bush, a reputation he felt was undeserved. Never had he left the platoon when it was in danger. Only the meaningless working parties and guard duty had forced him, at the risk of his sanity, to escape from the bush. No longer could he wait for something to happen. He was now forced to make it happen.

  An idea that had been recurring for weeks finally took hold — a way of leaving Vietnam that left little opportunity for subsequent guilt or regret. He could have figured out easier ways; but no, he refused to make it too easy. He knew that only by refusing to kneel, by adding a last curse of bravado that would flaunt not only the universe but also its henchman, Chance, could he look back haughtily on what he had done. Childs became excited by the absurd danger of this plan too simple even to be a scheme. There wouldn’t be any phony illness to explain to doctors, or self-inflicted wounds during an artillery barrage. He’d do something crazy, yet far saner than any of the actions of those men around him. ‘No hammer for me,’ he thought as he withdrew a grenade from his pouch, at the same time slapping his flak jacket for reassurance of the protection it afforded.

  Childs jerked the pin from the grenade. It was now too late to change his mind, and the excitement of the moment took hold of him. He tilted his helmet back until it rested on his flak jacket and protected his neck. He stopped walking, so that Chalice would be out of the grenade’s range. His determination began to wane. Childs knew he had to throw the grenade immediately. He was just about to do so when a horrible thought occurred to him. He quickly reached in his pants and drew up his balls. With his hand still in his trousers, Childs flung the grenade ten yards behind him and cringed in expectation. By reflex, he almost yelled, “Fire in the hole.” Seconds seemed somehow to expand and he thought the grenade would never go off. Only the part of his body below the waist lay unprotected — ‘My poor ass. My poor ass.’ He began to squat just as the grenade exploded. Its concussion pushed him forward without knocking him to the ground.

  Chalice was startled by the explosion. He rushed back to help Childs, finding him feeling up and down the backs of his legs in disbelief, mumbling feebly, “I’m not hit.”

  “What happened?” Chalice asked excitedly.

  “I’m not even hit,” Childs said in a quietly depressed tone.

  “What was it?”

  “I can’t believe it, not even a pin prick.”

  “What was it, a booby trap?”

  By this time there were a number of men standing around Childs. “Yeah . . . yeah . . . a booby trap. Make sure I’m not hit.”

  As he said this, Childs turned around, thus exposing his shredded flak jacket. Hamilton looked at it with astonishment. “God, what a mess. . . . But not a drop of blood on you.”

  “Are you sure?” Childs asked hopefully.

  “Not a drop,” Hamilton insisted.

  Only now had the shock of the incident worn off Chalice. “God Childs, you’re the luckiest motherfucker I ever met.”

  “Yeah . . . I guess I am,” Childs answered in a stunned, disbelieving tone.

  Kramer had just stepped from the tree line into the rice paddies when he was startled by the explosion. His first thought was, ‘booby trap.’ It seeme
d impossible that so many men had been able to pass it without injury. Kramer was doubly surprised to find out the victim had been Childs. He couldn’t conceive how Childs, his best point man, could be so effective while walking point, yet inept enough to trip a booby trap when he was the last man in the column. Kramer ordered his men to move out again, thinking, ‘At least no one was hurt.’

  When Second Platoon reached the perimeter, most of the men gathered around Childs to find out exactly what had happened. The failure of his attempt had left him bewildered. Even if he’d understood the questions asked him, he would have been in no condition to think up answers. To his relief, attention was soon drawn away from him by the return of Third Platoon with three NVA prisoners, all of them wounded. The body of another NVA soldier had been left behind. It was Marine Corps policy not to risk night medivac missions for enemy soldiers. Enough daylight remained to get a chopper for the wounded prisoners, but Trippitt didn’t bother to send for one. This meant they would have to wait until morning.

  The men didn’t waste any time before starting to dig their foxholes. They not only feared a blooker attack, they expected one. For this reason there was no complaining when Trippitt passed the word not to build hootches. They wouldn’t have had time anyway, and doing so would have made them easier targets. When the foxholes were finished, barely enough daylight remained to heat C-rations. All around the perimeter, men sat in small groups, their ponchos wrapped around them as protection from the light drizzle as they ate.

  Kramer tossed aside his empty C-ration can. Bland and pastelike, at least the food had been warm. And tonight this was enough. His rotting uniform stuck to him like a coat of slime. How long had it been since he’d felt dry cloth against his skin? A month, at least. When was the last time he or anyone else in his platoon had gotten six whole hours’ sleep? Too many months ago. At least the food had been warm.