Matterhorn_ A Novel of the Vietnam War Part 1

Matterhorn_ A Novel of the Vietnam War.

by Karl Marlantes.

This novel is dedicated to my children, who grew up with the good and bad of having a Marine combat veteran as a father.

Shame and honor clash where the courage of a steadfast man is motley like the magpie. But such a man may yet make merry, for Heaven and h.e.l.l have equal part in him.

Wolfram von Eschenbach 'Parzival'

A glossary explaining slang, military jargon, and technical terms has been provided at the back of the book.

Chain of Command and Princ.i.p.al Characters(Radio call signs in italics) Matterborn, Eiger, and Sky Cap are fictional places; the other locations are real.

CHAPTER ONE.

Mellas stood beneath the gray monsoon clouds on the narrow strip of cleared ground between the edge of the jungle and the relative safety of the perimeter wire. He tried to focus on counting the other thirteen Marines of the patrol as they emerged single file from the jungle, but exhaustion made focusing difficult. He also tried, unsuccessfully, to shut out the smell of the s.h.i.+t, which sloshed in the water that half-filled the open latrine pits above him on the other side of the wire. Rain dropped from the lip of his helmet, fell past his eyes, and spattered onto the satiny olive cloth that held the armor plating of his c.u.mbersome new flak jacket. The dark green T-s.h.i.+rt and boxer shorts that his mother had dyed for him just three weeks ago clung to his skin, heavy and clammy beneath his camouflage utility jacket and trousers. He knew there would be leeches clinging to his legs, arms, back, and chest beneath his wet clothes, even though he couldn't feel them now. It was the way with leeches, he mused. They were so small and thin before they started sucking your blood that you rarely felt them unless they fell on you from a tree, and you never felt them piercing your skin. There was some sort of natural anesthetic in their saliva. You would discover them later, swollen with blood, sticking out from your skin like little pregnant bellies.

When the last Marine entered the maze of switchbacks and crude gates in the barbed wire, Mellas nodded to Fisher, the squad leader, one of three who reported to him. 'Eleven plus us three,' he said. Fisher nodded back, put his thumb up in agreement, and entered the wire. Mellas followed him, trailed by his radio operator, Hamilton.

The patrol emerged from the wire, and the young Marines climbed slowly up the slope of the new fire support base, FSB Matterhorn, bent over with fatigue, picking their way around shattered stumps and dead trees that gave no shelter. The verdant underbrush had been hacked down with K-bar knives to clear fields of fire for the defensive lines, and the jungle floor, once veined with rivulets of water, was now only sucking clay.

The thin, wet straps of Mellas's two cotton ammunition bandoleers dug into the back of his neck, each with the weight of twenty fully loaded M-16 magazines. These straps had rubbed him raw. All he wanted to do now was get back to his hooch and take them off, along with his soaking boots and socks. He also wanted to go unconscious. That, however, wasn't possible. He knew he would finally have to deal with the nagging problem that Ba.s.s, his platoon sergeant, had laid on him that morning and that he had avoided by using the excuse of leaving on patrol. A black kid-he couldn't remember the name; a machine gunner in Third Squad-was upset with the company gunnery sergeant, whose name he couldn't remember either. There were forty new names and faces in Mellas's platoon alone, and almost 200 in the company, and black or white they all looked the same. It overwhelmed him. From the skipper right on down, they all wore the same filthy tattered camouflage, with no rank insignia, no way of distinguis.h.i.+ng them. All of them were too thin, too young, and too exhausted. They all talked the same, too, saying f.u.c.k, or some adjective, noun, or adverb with f.u.c.k in it, every four words. Most of the intervening three words of their conversations dealt with unhappiness about food, mail, time in the bush, and girls they had left behind in high school. Mellas swore he'd succ.u.mb to none of it.

This black kid wanted out of the bush to have his recurrent headaches examined, and some of the brothers were stirring things up in support. The gunnery sergeant thought the kid was malingering and should have his b.u.t.t kicked. Then another black kid refused to have his hair cut and people were up in arms about that that. Mellas was supposed to be fighting a war. No one at the Basic School had said he'd be dealing with junior Malcolm X's and redneck Georgia crackers. Why couldn't the Navy corpsmen just decide s.h.i.+t like whether headaches were real or not? They were supposed to be the medical experts. Did the platoon commanders on Iwo Jima have to deal with c.r.a.p like this?

As Mellas plodded slowly up the hill, with Fisher next to him and Hamilton automatically following with the radio, he became embarra.s.sed by the sound his boots made as they pulled free of the mud, fearing that it would draw attention to the fact that they were still s.h.i.+ny and black. He quickly covered for this by complaining to Fisher about the squad's machine gunner, Hippy, making too much noise when Fisher had asked for the machine gun to come to the head of the small column because the point man thought he'd heard movement. Just speaking about the recent near-encounter with an enemy Mellas had not yet seen started his insides humming again, the vibration of fear that was like a strong electric potential with no place to discharge. Part of him was relieved that it had been a near miss but another part acted peeved that the noise might have cost them an opportunity for action, and this peevishness in turn irked Fisher.

When they reached the squad's usual position in the company lines, Mellas could see that Fisher could barely contain his own annoyance by the way he nearly threw to the ground the three staves he'd cut for himself and a couple of friends while out on the patrol. These staves were raw material for short-timer's sticks, elaborately carved walking sticks, roughly an inch and a half in diameter and three to five feet long. Some were simple calendars, others works of folk art. Each stick was marked in a way that showed how many days its owner had survived on his thirteen-month tour of duty and how many days were left to go. Mellas had also been anxious about the sound Fisher had made cutting the three staves with a machete, but he had said nothing. He was still in a delicate position: nominally in charge of the patrol, because he was the platoon commander, but until he was successfully broken in he was also under the orders of Lieutenant Fitch, the company commander, to do everything Fisher said. Mellas had accepted the noise for two reasons, both political. Fitch had basically said Fisher was in charge, so why buck Fitch? Fitch was the guy who could promote Mellas to executive officer, second in command, when Second Lieutenant Hawke rotated out of the bush. That would put him in line for company commander-unless Hawke wanted it. A second reason was that Mellas hadn't been sure if the noise was dangerous, and he was far more worried about asking stupid questions than finding out. Too many stupid comments and dumb questions at this stage could make it more difficult to gain the respect of the platoon, and it was a lot harder to get ahead if the snuffs didn't like you or thought you were incompetent. The fact that Hawke, his predecessor, had been nearly wors.h.i.+pped by the platoon did not help matters.

Mellas and Hamilton left Fisher at Second Squad's line of holes and slowly climbed up a slope so steep that when Mellas slipped backward in the mud he barely had to bend his knee to stop himself. Hamilton, bowed nearly double with the weight of the radio, kept poking its antenna into the slope in front of him. The fog that swirled around them obscured their goal: a sagging makes.h.i.+ft shelter they had made by snapping their rubberized canvas ponchos together and hanging the ponchos over a sc.r.a.p of communication wire strung only four feet above the ground between two blasted bushes. This hooch, along with two others that stood just a few feet away from it, formed what was called, not without irony, the platoon command post.

Mellas wanted to crawl inside his hooch and make the world disappear, but he knew this would be stupid and any rest would be short. It would be dark in a couple of hours, and the platoon had to set out trip flares in case any soldiers of the North Vietnamese Army-the NVA-approached. After that, the platoon had to rig the claymore mines, which were placed in front of their fighting holes and were detonated by pulling on a cord; they delivered 700 steel b.a.l.l.s in a fan-shaped pattern at groin height. In addition, the uncompleted sections of the barbed wire had to be b.o.o.by-trapped. If Mellas wanted to heat his C-rations he had to do so while it was still daylight, otherwise the flame would make a perfect aiming point. Then he had to inspect the forty Marines of his platoon for immersion foot and make sure everyone took the daily dose of dapsone for jungle rot and the weekly dose of chloroquine for malaria.

He and Hamilton stopped just in front of Ba.s.s, the platoon sergeant, who was squatting outside the hooches in the rain making coffee in a number-ten can set over a piece of burning C-4 plastic explosive. The C-4 hissed and left an acrid smell in the air but was preferred to the eye-burning stink of the standard issue trioxane heat tabs. Ba.s.s was twenty-one and on his second tour. He emptied several small envelopes of powdered C-ration coffee into the boiling water and peered into the can. The sleeves of his utility jacket were neatly rolled into cuffs just below his elbows, revealing forearms that were large and muscular. Mellas, watching Ba.s.s stir, set the M-16 he had borrowed from Ba.s.s against a log. It had taken very little coaxing from Ba.s.s to convince Mellas that it was stupid to rely on the standard-issue .45 pistols the Marine Corps deemed sufficient for junior officers. He pulled off the wet cotton ammunition bandoleers and let them fall to the ground: twenty magazines, each filled with two interwoven rows of bullets. Then he shrugged out of his belt suspenders and dropped them to the mud, along with their attached .45 automatic, three quart-size plastic canteens, pistol ammunition, his K-bar, battlefield compresses to stop bleeding, two M-26 fragmentation hand grenades, three smoke grenades, and his compa.s.s. Breathing deeply with relief, he kept watching the coffee, its smell reminding him of the ever-present pot on his mother's stove. He didn't want to go check the platoon's weapons or clean his own. He wanted something warm, and then he wanted to lie down and sleep. But with dark coming there was no time.

He undid his steel-spring blousing garters, which held the ends of his trousers tightly against his boots as protection against leeches. Three leeches had still managed to get through on his left leg. Two were attached and there was a streak of dried blood where a third had engorged itself and dropped off. Mellas found it in his sock, shook it loose onto the ground, and stepped on it with his other foot, watching his own blood pop out of its body. He took out insect repellant and squeezed a stream onto the other two leeches still attached to his skin. They twisted in pain and dropped off, leaving a slow trickle of blood behind.

Ba.s.s handed him some coffee in an empty C-ration fruit c.o.c.ktail can and then poured another can for Hamilton, who had dumped his radio in front of his and Mellas's hooch and was sitting on it. Hamilton took the coffee, raised the can to Ba.s.s in a toast, and wrapped his fingers around the can to warm them.

'Thanks, Sergeant Ba.s.s,' Mellas said, careful to use the t.i.tle Ba.s.s had earned, knowing that Ba.s.s's goodwill was crucial. He sat down on a wet, rotting log. Ba.s.s described what had happened while Mellas was out on patrol. FAC-man, the company's enlisted forward air controller, had once again not been able to talk a resupply chopper down through the clouds, so this had been the fourth day without resupply. There was still no definitive word on the firefight the day before between Alpha Company and an NVA unit of unknown size in the valley below them, but the rumor that four Marines had been killed in action was now confirmed.

Mellas tightened his lips and clenched his teeth to press back his fear. He couldn't help looking down onto the cloud-covered ridges that stretched out below them into North Vietnam, just four kilometers away. Down there were the four KIAs, four dead kids. Somewhere in that gray-green obscurity, Alpha Company had just been in the s.h.i.+t. Bravo's turn was coming.

That meant his turn was coming, something that had been only a possibility when he had joined the Marines right out of high school. He had entered a special officer candidate program that allowed him to attend college while training in the summers and getting much-needed pay, and he had envisioned telling admiring people, and maybe someday voters, that he was an ex-Marine. He had never actually envisioned being in combat in a war that none of his friends thought was worth fighting. When the Marines landed at Da Nang during his freshman year, he had to get a map out to see where that was. He had wanted to go into the Marine Air Wing and be an air traffic controller, but each administrative turning point, his grades in college, his grades in Basic School, and the shortage of infantry officers had implacably moved him to where he was now, a real Marine officer leading a real Marine rifle platoon, and scared nearly witless. It occurred to him that because of his desire to look good coming home from a war, he might never come home at all.

He fought back the fear that surged through him whenever he realized that he could die. But now the fear had started his mind churning again. If he could get into Hawke's position as executive office, then he'd be safe inside the perimeter. There would be no more patrols; he'd handle admin and be next in line for company commander. For him to get Hawke's position, the current company commander, Lieutenant Fitch, would have to rotate home and Hawke would have to take Fitch's place. That was actually quite likely. Everyone loved Hawke, up the chain of command and down. Still, Fitch was new to the job. That meant a long wait, unless of course Fitch was killed or wounded. As soon as this idea went through his head, Mellas felt terrible. He didn't want anything bad to happen to anyone. He tried to stop thinking, but he failed. Now it occurred to him that he'd have to wait for Hawke to rotate home, unless something happened to Hawke. Mellas was amazed and ashamed. He realized that part of him would wish anything, and maybe even do anything, if it meant getting ahead or saving his own skin. He fought that part down.

'How's the wire coming?' Mellas asked. He didn't really care about the task of stringing the barbed wire in front of the holes, but he knew he should appear interested.

'Not bad, sir,' Ba.s.s said. 'Third Squad's been working on it all day. We're close to finished.'

Mellas hesitated. Then he plunged into the problem he'd avoided that morning by going out on patrol. 'That kid from Third Squad come to see you about going to the rear again?' He was still overwhelmed, trying to remember everyone's name.

'Name's Mallory, sir.' Ba.s.s snorted. 'Malingering f.u.c.king coward.'

'He says he has headaches.'

'And I've got a pain in the a.s.s. There's two hundred good Marines on this hill want to go to the rear, better ones than that piece of s.h.i.+t. He's had a headache ever since he came out to the bush. And don't give me any of that Watch out 'cause he's a brother' s.h.i.+t, because there's a lot of good splibs out here that don't have headaches. He's chickens.h.i.+t.' Ba.s.s took a long drink and then exhaled steam into the cool damp air. 'And, uh,' Ba.s.s added, a slight smile on his lips, 'Doc Fredrickson has him up by his hooch. He's been waiting for you to get back.'

Mellas felt the hot sweet coffee move down his throat and settle into his stomach. He wriggled his water-wrinkled toes to keep from nodding off. The warmth of the coffee through the can felt good against his hands, which were beginning to run pus, the first symptoms of jungle rot. 's.h.i.+t,' he said to no one in particular. He placed the cup against the back of his neck where the strap of the magazine bandoleer had rubbed it raw.

'Drink it, Lieutenant,' said Ba.s.s. 'Don't make love to it.' Ba.s.s took out his pocketknife and began carving another elaborate notch on his short-timer's stick. Mellas looked at it with envy. He had 390 days left to go on his own tour.

'Do I have to deal with it now?' Mellas asked. He instantly regretted asking the question. He knew he was whining.

'You're the lieutenant, sir. RHIP.' Rank has its privileges.

Mellas was trying to think of a witty comeback when he heard a scream from Second Squad's area. 'Jesus! Get the squid! Get Doc Fredrickson!' Ba.s.s immediately threw down his stick and ran toward the voice. Mellas sat there, so stupid with exhaustion he couldn't will himself to move. He looked at Hamilton, who shrugged and finally took a sip of his coffee. He watched Jacobs, the fire team leader with the stutter from Second Squad, run up the hill and disappear inside Fredrickson's hooch. Mellas sighed and started pulling his b.l.o.o.d.y socks and wet boots back on as Jacobs and Fredrickson, the Navy medical corpsman, went sliding and skidding back down the hill. Several minutes later, Ba.s.s came walking slowly up the hill, stonily impa.s.sive.

'What is it, Sergeant Ba.s.s?' Mellas asked.

'You'd better go have a look, Lieutenant. It's the d.a.m.nedest thing I ever saw. Fisher's got a leech right smack up the hole in his c.o.c.k.'

'G.o.d,' Hamilton said. He looked up at the clouds and then back down at the steaming coffee in his hands. He raised the coffee. 'Here's to f.u.c.king leeches.'

Mellas felt revulsion, but also relief. No one could hold him responsible for something like that. Without lacing the boots, he headed down the hill toward Second Squad's position, slipping in the mud, worrying about how he would replace a seasoned squad leader like Fisher when he knew hardly anyone in the platoon.

An hour earlier, Ted Hawke had also been worrying about replacing an experienced leader. But Hawke was worrying about Mellas, who had replaced him as First Platoon commander when Hawke had been moved up to the company's number two spot, executive officer. Hawke had been in-country long enough to be accustomed to being scared-that came with every operation-but he was not used to being worried, and that worried him.

He picked up a splintered stick and began to doodle absentmindedly in the mud, tracing the pattern of a five-pointed star over and over again, a habit from grade school days that he fell into when he was trying to think. The stick was one of thousands, all that remained of the huge trees that had once stood on this jungle hilltop, just three kilometers from Laos and two from the DMZ. The hill, one of many similar unnamed hills in the area, all of them over a mile high and shrouded by cold monsoon rain and clouds, had the misfortune of being just a little higher than the others. For this reason, a staff officer sitting fifty-five kilometers to the east at Fifth Marine Division headquarters in Dong Ha had picked it to be flattened and shorn of vegetation to accommodate an artillery battery of 105-millimeter howitzers. The same officer had also named it Matterhorn, in keeping with the present vogue of naming new fire support bases after Swiss mountains. The orders soon worked their way down through regiment to the First Battalion, whose commanding officer selected the 180 Marines of Bravo Company to carry them out. This decision dropped Bravo Company and its weary second in command, Lieutenant Theodore J. Hawke, into an isolated valley south of Matterhorn. From there it took a three-day slog through the jungle to reach the top of the hill. Over the course of the next week they turned it, with the help of nearly 400 pounds of C-4 plastic explosive, into a sterile wasteland of smashed trees, tangled logging slash, broken C-ration pallets, empty tin cans, soggy cardboard containers, discarded Kool-Aid packages, torn candy bar wrappers-and mud. Now they were waiting, and Hawke was worrying.

There were smaller worries than the competence of Lieutenant Mellas. One was that the hill was at the extreme range of the lone 105-millimeter howitzer battery at Fire Support Base Eiger, over ten kilometers to the east. This problem was somewhat related to the waiting, because before they could be dropped into the valley to the north of Matterhorn, they had to await the arrival of Golf Battery, the artillery unit that was supposed to occupy Matterhorn's now bald hilltop in order to cover infantry patrols operating beyond the protective cover of the howitzers on Eiger. It was all very simple back at headquarters. Alpha and Charlie companies go into the valley first. When they get beyond the artillery cover from Eiger, Golf Battery moves to Matterhorn. Bravo and Delta companies replace Charlie and Alpha companies down in the valley, but they are now under the cover of artillery on Matterhorn. All of this allows the First Battalion to push farther north and west, continuing its mission of attacking the intricate web of roads, trails, supply dumps, and field hospitals that support the NVA's 320th and 312th steel divisions.

What wasn't in the plan was the NVA unit that shot down, with the accurate fire of a .51-caliber machine gun, the first CH-46 supply chopper that tried to reach Matterhorn. The chopper crashed in flames on an adjacent hill that the Marines in Bravo Company immediately named Helicopter Hill. The entire crew died.

Since then the clouds had lifted only one other time, four days earlier, when another helicopter from Marine Air Group 39, struggling in the thin mountain air, worked its way up to Matterhorn's landing zone from the valley to the south. It arrived with some food and replacements and departed with a number of new .51-caliber holes and a wounded crew chief. Soon afterward, word came down that MAG-39 wanted the gook machine gun eliminated before Golf Battery was brought in, particularly since the operation would entail dangling ponderous howitzers on cables beneath choppers already straining because of the alt.i.tude-choppers that would hardly be able to dodge bullets. This problem, along with another of Hawke's worries-the monsoon rain and clouds that had made air support impossible and resupply almost impossible-had thrown off the operation's timetable by three full days and brought down the wrath of Lieutenant Colonel Simpson, radio call sign Big John Six, First Battalion's commanding officer.

Hawke stopped doodling and stared down the steep hillside. Wisps of fog obscured the gray wall of jungle just beyond the twisted rolls of barbed wire at the edge of the cleared ground. He was standing just behind the line of fighting holes that belonged to First Platoon, which he had just turned over to the main source of his worry, Second Lieutenant Waino Mellas, United States Marine Corps Reserve. One of the company's outposts had radioed in that Mellas's patrol had just pa.s.sed it on the saddle between Matterhorn and Helicopter Hill and would be coming in shortly. Hawke was here to get some feel for Mellas when he was exhausted after the adrenaline-pumping tension of a patrol that hadn't found anything. Hawke had learned long ago that what really mattered in combat was what people were like when they were exhausted.

Hawke was twenty-two, with freckled skin and thick dark hair with an undertone of red that matched his large red mustache. He wore a green sweats.h.i.+rt, turned inside out so the nap showed matted and dirty, like old fustian. It was stained with sweat and had dark smudges from his armored flak jacket. His trousers were caked with mud and had a hole in one knee. He wore a billed cap, eschewing the floppy camouflage bush hats as being pretentiously gunjy. He kept scanning the tree line, his eyes darting back and forth in the search pattern of the combat veteran. The hillside was steep enough that he could see over the trees to the top of a dark layer of cloud that hid a valley far below him. That valley was bounded by another ridge of high mountains to its north, just like the ridge to Matterhorn's south. Somewhere in that valley to the north, Alpha Company had just taken four killed and eight wounded. It had been too far from Eiger for effective artillery support.

Hawke sighed heavily. Tactically, the company was out on a limb. It was a long way from help and was about to go into combat with all three of its platoons being led by corn-fed rookies. Very quietly he said, 'f.u.c.k it,' whirled, and launched the splintered stick into the ma.s.s of pushed-over trees and brush that separated the landing zone from the line of holes protecting it. Then the bluegra.s.s tune that had been invading his mind all day came back again. He kept hearing the Country Gentlemen-high harmonies, Charlie Waller's fast wrists flat-picking his guitar-singing about an entire expedition that had died in an early attempt to climb the Matterhorn in Switzerland. When Hawke put his hands to his ears to stop it, pus from an open jungle rot sore on his hand got smeared on his right ear. He wiped his hand on his filthy trouser leg, blending new pus with old pus, blood from squashed leeches, grease from a spilled can of spaghetti and meatb.a.l.l.s, and the damp clay and greasy plant matter that coated the rotting cotton of his camouflage jungle utilities.

The patrol emerged one by one from the jungle, the Marines bent over, drenched with sweat and rain. Hawke gave a silent snort of approval when he saw that Mellas was right behind Corporal Fisher, where he was supposed to be until Lieutenant Fitch, the CO, said that Mellas was ready to take the lead. Hawke didn't know how to react to Mellas. He was someone you expected to be in the wrong place, but here he was in the right place. Top Seavers, the company first sergeant, had pa.s.sed the word over the battalion radio net from Quang Tri that Mellas had gone to some fancy private college and graduated second in his cla.s.s at the Basic School. The fancy college fit with the good grades from the Basic School, but it made Hawke worry that they might have inherited someone who thought that school smarts trumped experience and heart. More worrisome was Top Seavers's comment that when Mellas had first shown up at division personnel on New Year's Day, just six days ago, he had asked for a weapons platoon instead of a rifle platoon. Seavers had concluded that Mellas was trying to avoid going out on patrols, but Hawke wasn't sure. He read Mellas not as a coward but possibly just as a politician. The commander of the weapons platoon, which traditionally had the three 60-millimeter mortars and the company's nine machine guns, lived with the company command group. So he had constant contact with the company commander-unlike the rifle platoon commanders, who were isolated down on the lines. But there weren't enough lieutenants to cover even the rifle platoons now, and with most of the action involving only a platoon or a smaller unit the machine guns were permanently farmed out to the rifle platoons, one to a squad, leaving only the mortars, which could be handled by a corporal. But Mellas didn't fit the stereotype of an ambitious officer. For starters, he didn't look any older than the kids he was supposed to command. Also, he didn't look particularly squared away, everything in its proper place, sails at perfect right angles to the wind, cultivating what an ambitious officer would call command presence. On the other hand, looking careless could just be privileged give-a-s.h.i.+t Ivy League att.i.tude, like wearing duct tape on loafers and jeans with holes in them, knowing all along that they were headed straight to Wall Street or Was.h.i.+ngton and three-piece suits. Mellas was also handsome to the point of bearing what Hawke's Irish uncle, Art, would have called the marks of G.o.d's own handiwork, a plus in civilian life but almost a handicap in the Marine Corps. Moreover, he stood in marked contrast to the other new second lieutenant, Goodwin, a much easier read. Goodwin's record at the Basic School was undistinguished, but Hawke knew he had a natural hunter on his hands. That judgment had been made during the first ten seconds he'd seen the two new lieutenants. The chopper that delivered them to the hill had taken machine-gun fire all the way into the zone. Both lieutenants had come barreling out of the back and dived for the nearest cover, but Goodwin had popped his head up to try to figure out where the NVA machine gun was firing from. Hawke's problem with Goodwin, however, was that while good instincts were necessary, in modern war they weren't sufficient. War had become too technical and too complex-and this one in particular had become too political.

Doc Fredrickson had Fisher flat on his back with his trousers pulled down, in the mud in front of Fisher's hooch. Those Marines from Second Squad who weren't on hole watch were standing in a semicircle behind Fredrickson. Fisher was trying to joke but his grin was very tight. Doc Fredrickson turned to Jacobs, Fisher's most senior fire team leader. 'Go tell Hamilton to radio for the senior squid. Tell him we'll probably need an emergency medevac.'

'E-e-emergency,' Jacobs repeated, his stutter more p.r.o.nounced than usual. He immediately started up the hill. Fredrickson turned to Mellas, his eyes serious and intent in his narrow face. 'Fisher's got a leech in his p.e.n.i.s. It crawled up the urethra during the patrol and I don't think I can get it out.'

Fisher was lying back with his hands folded behind his head. Like most bush Marines he wore no underwear, in order to help stave off crotch rot. It had now been several hours since he had peed.

Mellas looked up at the swirling fog and then down at Fisher's wet smiling face. He forced a laugh. 'You would have to find a perverted leech,' he said. He checked the time. Less than two hours until dark. A night medevac this high up and in this weather would be impossible.

'You might as well put your trousers on, Fisher,' Fredrickson said. 'Don't drink any water. It'd be a bad place to have to amputate.'

Jacobs came slipping back down the hill, breathing hard. He was stopped by Ba.s.s, just outside of the immediate circle of Fisher's curious friends. 'I p-pa.s.sed the word, Sergeant Ba.s.s.'

'OK,' Ba.s.s said. 'Get Fisher's gear packed up. Split up his ammo and C-rats. Give the lieutenant his rifle so he doesn't have to keep borrowing mine. Did he have a listening post tonight or anything?'

'N-no, we had the p-patrol today,' Jacobs said. His long but normally tranquil face now had a worried look and his broad shoulders had slumped forward. He'd been a fire team leader a few seconds before; now he had the squad.

Mellas opened his mouth to say that the decision about who would temporarily take over the squad was up to him, but he could see that it had already been made by Ba.s.s. He shut his mouth. Mellas knew that if he pulled rank he'd lose what little authority he seemed to have.

Fredrickson turned to Mellas. 'I think we ought to move him up to the LZ. He'll be starting to feel it pretty soon. No telling when the chopper's going to make it in.' He looked up at the dark swirling mist. 'If it don't get here quick, I don't know what's going to happen. I guess something inside's got to give and if it screws up the kidney or busts loose inside of him . . .' He shook his head and looked down at his hands. 'I just don't know that much about people's insides. We never got it in Field Med.'

'What about the senior squid?' Mellas asked, referring to Hospital Corpsman Second Cla.s.s Sh.e.l.ler, the company-level corpsman, Fredrickson's boss.

'I don't know. He's an HM-2 but I think he worked in a lab the whole time. He's only out here because he p.i.s.sed someone off at the Fifth Med. He's been out here a week longer than you.'

'He's worthless,' Ba.s.s spat.

'Why do you say that?' Mellas asked.

'He's a fat f.u.c.ker.'

Mellas made no reply, wondering what it took to get on Ba.s.s's good list. On the first day Mellas had arrived, desperately wanting everyone to like him, Ba.s.s hadn't made it easy. Ba.s.s had been running the platoon for close to a month without any lieutenant, and he was quick to point out that he had been doing his first tour in Vietnam when Mellas was starting college.

'That's him there,' Fredrickson said. Sh.e.l.ler, who like all company corpsmen went by the nickname Senior Squid, came huffing down the hill, his new jungle boots still black like Mellas's, his utilities not yet bleached pale by the constant rain and exposure. His face was round and he wore black-rimmed Navy-issue gla.s.ses and a new bush cover on his head. He looked conspicuously out of place among the thin, rangy Marines.

'What's the problem?' he asked cheerily.

'It's Fisher,' Fredrickson replied. 'He's got a leech inside his urethra.'

Sh.e.l.ler pursed his lips. 'Doesn't sound good. No way of getting to it, I suppose. Can he urinate?'

'No,' Fredrickson said. 'That's how we found out.'

'If he could p.i.s.s we wouldn't need you,' Ba.s.s growled.

Sh.e.l.ler looked briefly at Ba.s.s and then quickly s.h.i.+fted his eyes to the ground. 'Where is he?' he asked Fredrickson.

'He's down there packing his gear.'

Sh.e.l.ler headed toward where Fredrickson pointed. Fredrickson turned to Ba.s.s and Mellas and shrugged his shoulders as if to say 'You tell me' and turned to follow him. Ba.s.s snorted in disgust. 'Fat f.u.c.ker.'

Sh.e.l.ler had Fisher drop his trousers again. He asked how long it had been since he last urinated and then glanced up at the sky and down to his watch. He turned to Mellas. 'He'll have to be medevaced. Emergency. I'll go see the skipper.'

'Move it, Fisher,' Ba.s.s said. 'You're getting out of the bush. Get your a.s.s up to the LZ.'

Fisher grinined and started back toward his hooch, pulling on his trousers as he went. Ba.s.s turned toward the holes and shouted through his cupped hands. 'Any of you people got mail to go out, give it to Fisher. He's getting medevaced.' A general scurry took place immediately. Bodies disappeared into hooches and fighting holes, digging into the packs and plastic bags the men used to keep their letters dry.

'Jacobs,' Ba.s.s shouted, 'tell that G.o.dd.a.m.n Shortround, Pollini, to change s.h.i.+rts with Fisher. He looks like Joe s.h.i.+t the ragpicker. And tell Kerwin in Third Squad to trade trousers.' Jacobs, grateful for something to do, moved off and began collecting the most worn-out clothing in the squad to replace it with Fisher's less worn-out clothing.

Sh.e.l.ler came back up to Ba.s.s and Mellas and dropped his voice. 'He's going to be in a lot of pain. I can dope him up, but I don't know what will happen to his bladder or kidneys.'

'Well, we don't either,' Ba.s.s said, 'but we ain't been to no fancy Navy medical school.' Sh.e.l.ler looked at Ba.s.s and started to say something but changed his mind. Ba.s.s's perpetual scowl, broad shoulders, and thick arms didn't invite back talk.

'Do what you can for him,' Mellas said quickly, trying to ease the tension between the two of them. Mellas turned to Ba.s.s. 'You going to finally put that novel of yours in the mailbox?'

Ba.s.s laughed. He had fallen in love with Fredrickson's cousin, a high school senior, from a yearbook photograph. He had been writing a letter to her for several days and it was already fifteen pages long. The two of them headed back to Mellas's hooch.

'I can't believe it,' Mellas said. 'Almost Staff Sergeant Ba.s.s, hard-a.s.s, falling in love by mail.'

'Just 'cause you ain't got n.o.body to write to except your mother,' Ba.s.s fired back.

The dart hurt. Mellas remembered Anne, that last night when she turned her back on him in bed. He remembered a trip they took to Mexico, her crying on a village square, pushed beyond her limit by his drive to explore the next place. He had watched her in confusion, loving her, not knowing what to do.

Mellas crawled into the hooch and rummaged for some stationery and a pen. He decided to try to write to her. The letter came out as a cheery 'Here we are in a place called Matterhorn. I'm fine, etc.' He pasted together the gummed parts of the special envelope. In the jungle there was so much moisture that normal envelopes would stick together before anyone could use them, and in the summer water was so precious that people absolutely loathed licking anything.

'Hey, Mr. Mellas.' Every so often Ba.s.s used the formal, traditional naval form of address, to emphasize that Mellas was still a boot lieutenant.

Mellas could make no objection. Ba.s.s was perfectly correct. 'Yes, Sergeant Ba.s.s.'

'If the bird doesn't make it in and Fisher can't p.i.s.s, then what happens? Does he just fill up and bust?'

'I don't know, Sergeant Ba.s.s. I suppose something like that.'

'It's a p.i.s.ser,' Ba.s.s muttered. 'I got to go see if Skosh is still awake.'

Mellas didn't smile at what he knew was an unconscious pun. He crawled after Ba.s.s into the dark interior of his hooch, where Ba.s.s's eighteen-year-old radio operator, Skosh, was on radio watch. He was so slight that Mellas wondered how he managed to pack the heavy radio on patrols. Skosh had a dark green towel wrapped around his neck and was reading a p.o.r.nographic book that looked as if it had pa.s.sed through the hands of every radio operator in the battalion.