Distant Valor

by C. X. Moreau

  The Marine nodded that the radio was up and working and Griffin said, “We’re ready then, Staff Sergeant Whitney.” At twenty-five, Griffin regarded the staff sergeant as an old hand. Whitney had double Griffin’s time in the ranks and it showed in the way he handled himself and the platoon. He noted that the staff sergeant quietly inspected each Marine, checking their weapons and equipment. Griffin liked the staff sergeant; he was the real thing. Two tours in Vietnam sufficed to earn him the respect of the Marines in his platoon, including Griffin. As the squad leader for first squad Griffin was directly subordinate to the staff sergeant. He had gotten to know him in the past months, and he respected the man for his quiet demeanor and professionalism.

  Griffin ran a hand through his short-cropped hair and gazed across the grassy field with its coils of razor wire separating the Marines from the village. He searched the muddy village for some sign that would alert him to danger. Seven years in the Marine Corps had hardened his body, and the past months in Beirut had served to make him wary. Easily the biggest man in the platoon, he worked constantly to maintain his physical edge. Griffin understood, intuitively, that physical strength is an inherent element of leadership in an infantry squad.

  “Get ’em moving, Sergeant Griffin,” said Whitney. “I’ll be monitoring your radio traffic from the company head shed.”

  Griffin nodded and said, “Let me have the corporals. First squad, we move in five minutes. Lock and load on my command as we leave the company wire. Keep ’em apart out there. I want five paces separation all the time. Any questions?” said Griffin looking over the Marines that formed his squad.

  Griffin didn’t really expect any questions. In five months on the ground in Beirut the squad had mounted countless uneventful patrols. Endless walking past increasingly hostile faces. In the past two weeks he had noticed the obvious return of military-age men and adolescent boys to Hay-el-Salaam, as the section of Beirut near the Marines’ firebase was called. At times these young Arabs would taunt the Marines with shouts of “Khomeini good!” and “Iran good!” Griffin longed to respond as he had been trained to do. Instead he stifled his own impulses and carried out the official policy of nonconfrontation with the locals, dutifully noting their hostile taunts and gestures in every patrol report.

  The three corporals formed a loose semicircle in front of him and waited for him to speak. Contrary to his usual habit he lowered his voice, speaking so as not to be overheard. “Okay, this is the drill. Keep ’em alert. The staff sergeant says that the other two squads are reporting a lot of activity near the café at phase-line red, so let’s be heads up out there. I don’t want that passed around. Everybody is jumpy enough already, and I don’t want anyone to lose it out there and lean on a trigger. Just stay awake and make sure your fireteams do the same. Any questions?”

  “Yeah, it’s getting late, let’s get the hell out of here so we can make it back before dark,” said Downs.

  “That’s not a question, Corporal Downs,” snapped Griffin. “Get ’em ready to go, and make sure the Doc is in the middle of the squad.” Griffin looked on as Downs and the other corporals walked off toward the squad in order to make their final preparations. Goddamn Downs, he thought, he should have been a lieutenant as much as he worries. Griffin watched as Downs inspected the other three members of his fireteam, then checked his own gear. With his blond hair, fair complexion, and easy manner, Downs was a curiosity among the dark-skinned Lebanese. Downs would be the first man in the patrol, followed by his fireteam, then the other two fireteams and the machine gunners, all of which composed the squad. Downs positioned himself at the head of the squad and scanned the buildings at the edge of the village through his binoculars. Griffin watched approvingly as Downs searched each window and doorway for movement or sign of an ambush. After concluding his search Downs caught Griffin’s eye, pointed to the wire, and let the bolt go home on his rifle, signaling he was ready to step off. Griffin stood and said, “Let’s do it, first squad.” He joined the squad near its center as it shook itself out and moved to the wire. He gave the command to lock and load and noted that the bolt went home on each rifle, then asked the M-60 gunner if he was ready.

  “Born ready,” came the sarcastic reply from the squad’s smallest man, nicknamed Tiger by the others as much for his flaming red hair as his small stature. Griffin watched as Tiger slung the heavy machine gun over one shoulder, adjusted the weapon on its sling, then checked to see that the ammunition was still in place and ready for use. After exiting the wire, the squad moved north along perimeter road, a dirt track circling the western boundary of the airport and marking the outer boundary of the Marine defenses. Following perimeter road to a point about midway along Bravo Company’s section of the line the squad turned almost due east along a smaller road and headed into the village jokingly known as “Hooterville” among the Marines for the inhabitants’ custom of sounding their horns before negotiating an intersection or corner. The road junction was covered by a .50 caliber machine gun, and this had been strengthened by the presence of a tank. The tank, though, as was often the case, had been withdrawn so as not to present a tempting target to an ambitious Arab armed with an RPG.

  The squad moved past the gun emplacement and Griffin exchanged greetings with the gunner. Other members of the squad had nodded their hellos, but none had spoken. Griffin reserved that right for himself, feeling that any conversation by the squad only served to distract them.

  The Marines headed toward checkpoint 35, a platoon position about three hundred meters east of perimeter road. Before reaching the position, Downs, the point man, peered around the corner of a building, assured himself that no ambush had been set, then stepped around the corner and into the street. Griffin watched as the slack man, MacCallum, a dark muscular boy, maintained his distance from the squad’s point. Griffin wanted to assure himself that MacCallum didn’t hurry to regain visual contact with the point, and thereby set off a chain reaction that would put the whole squad in motion to maintain tactical dispersion. As the squad in front of him disappeared around the corner man by man, Griffin felt his stomach tighten. No place for an ambush, he thought. He hated having Downs and MacCallum out on point. Although both of them were good Marines, he knew that it was wrong to have one of his corporals walking point. It should have been a senior lance corporal, or even better, one of the more expendable privates. For all the necessity of having a skilled point man he was most often the first man down in a house-to-house situation. Griffin knew that his younger Marines lacked the survival instincts of Downs, and he trusted that MacCallum, Downs’s inseparable companion, would do his utmost to extricate his friend in the event of an ambush.

  Rounding the corner Griffin signaled to the radioman and said, “Phase-line green.” The man called in the squad’s position to the company headquarters. The patrol would be plotted on the company situation map by the company clerks, while radiomen relayed the position of the squad to the higher headquarters at battalion. At battalion the procedure would be repeated, and react forces would be standing by in the event of trouble. All of this was little comfort to Griffin who knew that a well-placed ambush could cripple the squad in seconds.

  The Marines rounded the corner and left the protective cover of the checkpoint and Griffin felt the hot angry stares. A few months earlier it had all been very different. The locals had been grateful to the Marines for interposing themselves between the warring factions and the Israeli invaders. The Marines had arrived and the fighting had stopped, or at least moved to other areas.

  Griffin thought of all this as his eyes constantly searched the maze of buildings the squad was moving past. No building stood without some form of battle damage, and many of these appeared to be little more than rubble held together by a connective skein of mortar. None of the windows had glass, and the shadowed interiors presented perfect cover for a sniper or enemy squad. Hooterville appeared to the Marines as some sort of real-life recreation of World War II Europe, complete with bombed-out bui
ldings and rubble-strewn streets. The only thing missing from the picture were the hordes of grateful civilians waiting to be liberated.

  Griffin’s eye left the buildings and ran over the men in front of him. He saw Downs nod and speak to an old woman standing in her doorway. Of all the members of the squad only Downs had managed to pick up a few words of Arabic. Griffin knew that Downs now spoke enough to carry on rudimentary conversations, and could make simple inquiries if it was required. His hand went to the small PRC-68 radio in the top right pocket of his flak jacket, used for intrasquad communication by the four NCOs, and he said, “Corporal Downs, keep your mouth shut.”

  “Roger that,” Downs laughed back. Although Downs had been with the squad over two years he remained something of an enigma to Griffin. Downs had the combination of education, looks, and probably family that spelled success on the outside. For Griffin, joining the Marine Corps had been the natural thing to do after graduating from high school. He hadn’t wanted to join the union like his father and brothers, and college hadn’t really been a possibility. Something about the Marine Corps had appealed to him for as long as he could remember. On his eighteenth birthday he had gone into the recruiting office and signed the papers while his father waited outside. Griffin had never even spoken to any of the recruiters from the other services. In his mind it had been the Marines or nothing.

  Downs appeared to him as more the college type. His speech and manners were different from the other members of the squad, and at times Downs struck Griffin as a little too refined for the infantry. Griffin suspected that there was some personal reason why Downs had chosen the Marines over college, but that wasn’t so unusual. Although Downs interested him more than most, and had earned Griffin’s grudging respect, he kept his own counsel, and Griffin knew little of his life prior to the Marine Corps. Even more intriguing to Griffin was Downs’s obvious ability to handle himself in a fight. Downs had never hesitated to challenge any member of the platoon physically, once even Griffin himself. Griffin had beaten him soundly, but Downs had remained quietly defiant and never made any move toward a personal reconciliation. The two eventually reached an agreeable peace, but it was on a plane closer to equality than Griffin would have preferred. Griffin knew that no infantry squad has room for more than one leader, and only Downs’s instinctive longing for solitude allowed him to remain in Griffin’s squad.

  The Marines wound through the warren of streets that comprised their patrol route encountering a variety of reactions from the local inhabitants. The battalion had been in Beirut long enough for the novelty of their presence to have worn off, and the majority of the Shiite residents gave them only passing notice. An exception to this were the young boys who, although at first fascinated by the Marines, were now beginning to test them. A favorite game among these boys was to allow a heavily armed patrol to walk by while the boys waved or saluted. Once half the patrol had moved past, the bravest among them would toss an empty can into the path of the patrol. The usual reaction was a shout of “Grenade!” and the whole squad would go to ground before the can had finished its hollow roll into the street. Once the ruse had been played out the patrol was subjected to the laughter of the boys, who instantly disappeared down an endless maze of narrow alleys.

  Lately however, a new and maddening twist had been added to the game. The can would be filled with dirt or sand to lend a more authentic sound when it struck the surface of the dirt street. Even more frustrating for the Marines was the deliberate attempt to play this drama out in front of the bemused eyes of the boys’ older brothers who had returned to the village after their safety was guaranteed by the presence of the Marines. As they rose from the dirt where they had taken cover the Marines felt the laughter of the young men, and their resentment burned inside them. Griffin knew that his squad was coiled and ready to respond to the taunts, and any signal from him, no matter how slight or indirect, would unleash five months of frustration and anger.

  He moved to the center of the narrow dirt track to more clearly observe the movement of the squad down this section of road. The Marines were correctly spaced five yards apart and walking on alternating sides of the street. The progress of the squad was slowed by the fact that only a narrow single lane was left to allow for the passage of traffic in the street, with cars parked haphazardly on either side. Pedestrian traffic moved down both sides of the street as best it could. In some spots a narrow, yard-wide sidewalk existed, but was broken by storefronts and porches of the one- or two-story buildings that lined both sides of the street. Shiite women and children moved in and out of the Marines’ path, and all manner of business was conducted from the open storefronts as the patrol moved past.

  From his vantage point in the center of the roadway, Griffin was able to observe the whole squad as it wove its way down this fairly straight length of road. He looked forward first, noting Downs some twenty-five meters ahead of him and hugging the left side of the street. As he turned to observe the rear of the squad, Griffin removed his helmet and wiped his forehead with a sleeve, motioning Tiger out into the street and around a parked car. As he put the helmet back on, he automatically canted his head rearward to settle the webbing into place. Griffin saw an arm, silhouetted against the sky, appear from behind the facade of the building to his rear. As the hand opened and the grenade sailed clear Griffin drew breath for the warning shout and gathered himself for the lifesaving leap back to the side of the road. He knew instinctively that this grenade would not be a prank. Even had he not felt it viscerally, his eye had detected the small trail of heavy black smoke that hung in the air as the grenade arced to the road below, and his ears discerned the faint hissing of the fuse burning.

  The grenade bounced once after hitting the packed earth of the roadway, then detonated. Griffin’s warning had served to give sufficient time for Tiger to throw himself over the hood of the car he had been moving past, but he was well within the five- to six-yard killing radius of the grenade.

  As he jumped onto the hood of the car Tiger rolled away from the blast, exposing as little of his body as possible to the effects of the explosion. Even before Griffin had signaled, Tiger had followed his eyes and seen the expression on his face and correctly guessed what was to follow. Shrapnel from the grenade peppered Tiger’s flak jacket, buttocks, and the rear of his legs as the blast lifted him off the hood of the car and threw him against the wall of a nearby building. The brunt of his impact against the wall was absorbed by his knees and the M-60 machine gun that he cradled across his chest. He came to rest at the bottom of the wall in the fetal position he had assumed on the hood of the car.

  D’Amico, a hulking heavily muscled rifleman appropriately nick named “Samson” by his fellow Marines, was walking just ahead of Griffin as the grenade took its short, deadly bounce. A long nail-like splinter had entered the sole of his boot, pierced the foot, and exited the top of the boot only to reenter his leg at a point just below the knee.

  As he gave the warning, Griffin had wheeled on his right foot, taken one step, and lunged over the trunk of the car closest to him. He had just clambered across the trunk and plunged headfirst to the ground below when the explosion rocked him. His head rung from the concussion and the acrid smoke burned his nostrils. The explosion had been so close that Griffin could taste the acid bitter air in his mouth and feel the heat from the blast. Even before his head cleared he was conscious of the prostrate form of Tiger, crumpled against the wall behind him. Without thinking he yelled “Corpsman up!” The call was immediately echoed down the length of the squad by others who had been farther from the point of detonation.

  Good, thought Griffin, not more than one or two men down and everybody is functioning. As he moved toward Tiger in a low, crablike motion Griffin gave the commands that would set the squad in motion. “Fix bayonets!” he screamed. “By the numbers!” Griffin knew that in the confined spaces the squad was now in a bayonet could be a deadly weapon. He also hoped to avoid the squad’s instinctive reaction to spray the ar
ea with automatic fire. This would not only waste valuable ammunition, it would doubtlessly result in the meaningless death of civilians.

  Just as they had rehearsed it a thousand times the squad now set about fixing their bayonets “by the numbers.” This involved one predesignated man from each of the squad’s three four-man fireteams attaching his bayonet while the others held their position. The tactic was designed to prevent the whole squad from lowering their weapons simultaneously while the six-inch blades were fastened to their rifles.

  Although he already felt that the grenade had been thrown by an individual who had then fled, Griffin knew the squad would have to remain in place while the casualties were checked and radio contact was made with the company.

  “Rifleman, cover the rooftops!” he ordered. Again Griffin’s command was picked up and echoed down the squad. The one designated rifleman in each fireteam now scanned the roofs while the other members searched windows, doors, and alleys for signs of movement.

  Griffin rolled Tiger away from the wall, noting the dark blotches of blood spotting the back of his camouflage trousers but correctly judging them not to be serious. As the navy corpsman scurried up, he knelt beside the inert Tiger and asked, “How’s it look?”

  “Dunno,” answered Griffin, “check him for concussion.”

  “You got it, Sarge,” said the corpsman. Griffin acknowledged the corpsman with a grunt and resisted the instinctive temptation to remind him that “Sarge” was not a term applied to sergeants in the Marine Corps. As he turned away from Tiger he heard the diminutive machine gunner curse and ask, “Doc?”

  “Yeah, Tiger. It’s me, the Doc. Be quiet a minute, okay?”

  “All right, but don’t touch me. My mother told me when I signed up that all sailors are queer.”

  Griffin moved toward the front of the car to decide what his next move would be. “Samson?” he asked.