Sand in the Wind

by Robert Roth

  The jets made their last bomb run, then streaked deafeningly low over the hill to be greeted by raised fists and more cries of, “Get some!”

  The line had been slowly moving into the mess hall. The men filled their trays and sat down at a table near the long screen window overlooking the valley. While they were eating, Chalice didn’t pay much attention to the conversation. He just stared out the window, struck by the beauty of the cool, green valley below, finding it hard to believe that there were people wandering around in it intent upon killing him and those around him, and that for the next thirteen months his whole life would center upon killing them first.

  When they returned to the platoon hootch, Payne tried to talk Tony 5 into playing some cards, but Tony said he wanted to check out Chalice first. He asked Chalice where his pack was and they walked over to it. “I’m not gonna waste my time trying to convince you because you won’t be able to imagine how bad it is, but just for the record, the humping around here is murder. It’ll really knock you on your ass. It makes anything you did at Parris Island or infantry training look like kid’s stuff.”

  “Humping?” Chalice asked.

  “Yeah, marching with packs on,” Tony answered, his expression indicating that Chalice should have at least known that. “Let’s see what you’ve got in your pack.” Chalice emptied it onto the cot. Tony 5 shook his head in disbelief. “You shitting me, man?” Pointing to an air mattress, he asked, “Who told you to bring this rubber bitch out to the bush?”

  “They issued them to all of us.”

  “I know they issue them to everybody, but that don’t mean you have to carry them around. Only the office poags are lucky enough to get to sleep on these things. Too much extra weight; get rid of it.”

  “It only weighs about four pounds.”

  Tony looked him in the eye. “Don’t you think I know how much it weighs? Look, Professor, when it comes to things like this, I give advice not orders, and I don’t waste my time saying things just to hear myself talk. Now you’re talking about carrying an extra four pounds. A week from now you won’t wanna carry an extra pencil. There ain’t one guy in this platoon that sleeps on a rubber bitch. Not because they don’t want to, but because they don’t wanna hump them. My advice is to shit-can it.” Chalice flipped the air mattress off to one side. Tony pointed to a couple of pairs of underpants. “Didn’t they tell you that it’s too hot out here to wear skivvies? You wear ’em for five days and I’ll guarantee you a terminal case of heat rash.”

  “Yeah, they told me, but I had room in my pack so I put them in.”

  “Don’t worry about your pack. We won’t have any trouble filling it up. Shit-can ’em.”

  “Okay.”

  Tony pointed to five paperbacks. “You don’t plan on humping all those books, do you?”

  “I had some more, but I left them in An Hoa.”

  “You shoulda left these too. You don’t need to hump books. The guys get all kinds sent from home; comic books, fuck books, science fiction, mysteries, everything.”

  “I wanted to read these four books in particular.”

  “There’s five here.”

  “One’s a dictionary.”

  “Man, I thought I’d seen just about everything, but you’re the first grunt I’ve ever met that carried a dictionary. I ain’t never been to college, but if you’re not sure about any of the words you come across out here, just ask me. I’ll be glad to tell you what they mean.” Chalice stood silently while Tony sifted through the rest of his gear. “Now we come to the fun part. How many grenades you got?”

  “Four.”

  “Better pick up another one somewhere. When you’re in a hole at night and you hear movement, you’ll want all you can get. How many magazines you have?”

  “Eight, that’s all they issued me.”

  “You’ll need at least twenty. Most of the guys carry twenty-five. You can get some more when somebody gets medivacked or goes to the rear. They take twenty rounds; but if you don’t want your rifle to jam, just put in eighteen. We’re one of the first battalions to get M-16’s and they jam a lot easier than 14’s. Don’t ever let me catch you with a dirty rifle. Clean it every chance you get. The last time Golf Company hit the shit, we had to recover the bodies. I saw three guys with bullets in their heads and their M-16’s lying next to them, half taken apart. When them rice-propelled motherfuckers come at you and your rifle jams, you ain’t gonna have time to take it apart and clean it. . . . How many canteens you got?”

  “Four.”

  “That’s good. If you get thirsty easy, you might wanna pick up another one. There’s three things you never wanna run out of in the bush: rounds, water, and shit paper. Shit paper’s really a luxury, but it’s a nice one. You can start putting your pack back together. One more thing, you’ll be wantin’ another type pack. These Marine Corps ones ain’t worth a shit. When we run into some Arvins, buy a Gook pack off of ’em. They hold more and they’re a lot more comfortable. Wait here. I’ll be back with some presents for you in a minute.”

  Tony returned with an ammo can, a “law” (lightweight bazooka), and some other equipment. “Here,” he said, dumping everything onto the cot. “The two newest guys in each fire team have to carry a can of machine gun ammo. They weigh about eighteen pounds and are a motherfucker to hump. Everybody in the squad has to carry either a law or a claymore mine. You’ll carry a law. Here’s a gas grenade. Chances are we’ll never use it, but somebody’s got to carry it. Do you know what this is?”

  “A trip flare, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, when we dig in at night, we set a few of these around our perimeter so Charlie can introduce himself before he falls into somebody’s foxhole. Be careful with it. It can burn the hell out of you.” Chalice nodded his head. “That’s about it. We usually got working parties all day, but Gunny Martin’s so drunk we’ll probably skate for the afternoon.”

  A half hour before dusk, Second Platoon’s hootch was alive with men getting ready to go on watch. Tony was walking around asking everybody if they’d seen Forsythe. When he reached Chalice, he asked, “You got all your gear ready?”

  “What do I need besides my rifle and magazines?”

  “Bring your grenades — just the frags, not the gas. Wear your flak jacket.” Turning to Payne, he yelled, “C’mon, put the radio on and let’s go.”

  “Forsythe ain’t even here yet,” Payne complained.

  “Let me worry about Forsythe.”

  The bunker was at the other end of the hill and well off the road. Its floor was ten by twenty feet and dug out a few feet below ground level. Sandbags protected the plywood walls. There was a large gap between the walls and the corrugated steel roof on all but the rear side. The front wall supported a heavy wooden shooting counter.

  Tony dropped his gear and looked towards Chalice. “Okay Professor, we all stay up till nine, then we each take a two hour fifteen minute watch. You’ve got to call in sid rats, situation reports, every fifteen minutes. Payne’ll show you how to work the radio. If you hear anything, and I mean anything, wake somebody up. Only fire your rifle as a last resort. The muzzle flash’ll give every Gook in sight your address. If you’re sure you’ve got movement out there, the best thing to do is throw a frag. Since it’s your first night, we’ll let you have your choice of watch, but from now on we’ll rotate.”

  “I’ll take first then.”

  “Okay, what do you want, Payne?”

  “Second.”

  “Good, I’ll take last. I’m gonna find Forsythe now. I’ll be back before dusk. Payne’ll tell you anything you want to know and then some. See you later.”

  After Tony left the bunker, Payne said, “They’re always kidding me. Don’t pay attention to ’em.” He then started repeating all the advice Tony had given Chalice. While he was going over everything for the second time, Chalice noticed someone in fighting gear approaching the bunker taking long, bounding strides. As he entered, he gave a friendly nod to Chalice and flung down
his equipment by the door.

  “Well no shit. Look who’s here. Glad you could make it, Forsythe.” Forsythe answered with a grin, “You didn’t think I’d leave you alone with a new man, did you? One shitbird in our fire team is enough.” He offered his hand to Chalice. “You must be the Professor. Tony 5 told me about you. Glad to have you in our fire team.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Tony says you graduated college. Where’d you go?”

  “Duke.”

  “No shit? I was accepted there and all ready to go — never quite made it. I’m from Raleigh.”

  “I’m from Silver Springs, Maryland. How come you didn’t go?”

  “It’s a long story. I ended up heading for California.”

  “You went to school out there?”

  “No, I just bummed around. Had a wild time. Maybe I’ll go to Berkeley when I get out of the Crotch. I get my discharge as soon as I finish my tour.”

  “Berkeley’s a cool place. I wouldn’t have minded going there.”

  “You’ve been there?” Forsythe asked with interest.

  “Quite a few times. When I was in language school at Monterey, we used to go up on weekends to watch the riots. Ever see any of them?”

  Forsythe grinned with pride. “See ’em, I was in ’em.”

  “What’d the rest of the guys in the platoon say when they found out you used to run around with all the screaming freaks?”

  “Not much. They figure anybody that hates the military can’t be all bad. . . . A lot of the guys in the platoon are wise to how fucked up this war is, practically anybody with any college.”

  “That’s good news. I was afraid I might end up in some gung ho outfit.”

  Forsythe tilted his head sideways and started grinning. “Are you fucking serious, man? The only gung ho bastards are the lifers. A lot of guys hate the Gooks, but they hate being in Nam worse.”

  Forsythe took the frags out of his grenade pouch and laid them on the shooting support. He then walked to the rear of the bunker to get his magazines and rifle. Payne, who had been unusually quiet, approached him and whispered, “You been partying?”

  Chalice heard Forsythe whisper back, “A little.”

  Payne, still whispering, asked in an irritated voice. “How come you didn’t let me in on it?”

  “You weren’t around. Besides, it wasn’t my stuff.” This ended the conversation, and Chalice didn’t think much of it except that Forsythe didn’t look as if he’d been drinking.

  A few minutes later Tony 5 returned. He and Chalice stood watch while Forsythe and Payne sat down in the rear. Tony told him to memorize the terrain so he would know his fields of fire, and also to remember the location of each upright object. “When it gets dark, the bushes and fence posts start moving. I don’t want you killing any of ’em.”

  Chalice tried to concentrate on the positions of different objects, but the peaceful beauty of the valley lulled his mind. The setting sun colored the sky with a soft red glow, its oblique rays casting long shadows along the darkening rice paddies. The green trees interspersed among the native huts seemed almost black. Some children who had been playing against the slope of the hill started heading towards the village. Two of them rode a water buffalo, their short legs barely reaching a third of the way down its broad sides. It plodded slowly home, head hanging down. Three kids in white shirts and khaki shorts followed behind it, their bare feet kicking up water as they ran. Just as they reached the village, the red glow faded into the mountains and night spread towards them from the east like drifting smoke.

  “It’s nine o’clock,” Tony said. “Professor, your watch lasts till eleven fifteen, then wake Payne. Forsythe, you’ve got third watch.”

  “How the hell did I luck out?”

  “Why don’t you try getting your sweet ass to the bunker the same time as everybody else? Your luck might change. . . . Besides, you had second watch last night.”

  “So I did. How ’bout that.”

  Tony turned to Chalice. “I’ll be sleeping right in back of the bunker. If you see or hear anything, and I mean anything, wake me up. I’m gonna crash now.”

  “Me too,” Payne said, following Tony out the door.

  Forsythe got up and walked towards Chalice. “I’m not tired yet. I think I’ll see some of the light show.”

  “Light show? You mean the illumination flares?”

  “That’s just part of it. You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  Chalice was thinking, ‘This guy has to be a head,’ when he heard a sharp pop, followed by a green burst of light above the bunker. “What was the pop before the illume went off?”

  “That’s the parachute. They fire them out of mortar tubes, and when they get high enough a little chute pops open so they float down slowly.”

  “Isn’t there enough time between the pop and the flare lighting for a Gook to hit the deck?”

  “Yeah, there’s almost enough time for him to dig a foxhole. I guess if he were riding in a tank, we’d have him dead to rights. Too bad they don’t have many tanks. . . . The guys in mortars usually keep a few around with the chutes cut off. They drop real fast, but they don’t telephone ahead. When you want to use a hand illume and you don’t want the pop, use a star cluster. They shoot five small flares that drop without a chute, still make a swoosh though.”

  “You’d think they’d be able to develop one that wouldn’t give any warning.”

  “Sure they could, but some retired general’s probably got the patent on this type.”

  While Forsythe was talking, Chalice heard a sharp, grating sound in the distance. “What was that?”

  “Oh, that’s Puff the Magic Dragon.” Forsythe leaned across the counter and pointed to their left. “Look over there. See those four big illumes? They’re the four comers of his grid square. He drops them and then fills the square with rounds.”

  “Puff the Magic Dragon?”

  “It’s some old prop plane they stripped down and filled with fifty-caliber machine guns. They say he can put a round in every square foot of a football field in less than a minute. Keep watching over there. Every fifth round is a tracer. It’s a beautiful show.”

  Chalice was still leaning across the counter. “Is that the Arizona Territory?”

  “Yeah, he works out over the Arizona practically every night.”

  Chalice saw a bright red dotted line dart down to the ground. “Wow! I’ve never seen anything like that. Looks like a mile-high neon sign. This is quite a show.”

  “Yeah, and just—” Forsythe stopped talking as the grating sound reached them again. “Did you hear it?”

  “Yeah, it’s hard to believe he’s so far away.”

  “Just think, a new and different show every night. Did you see that?”

  “Yeah, he did it again.”

  “No, I mean in the mountains.” Forsythe pointed straight in front of the bunker. “There it is again.”

  Chalice saw it this time. Within a few seconds there had been about twenty bright white flashes on the mountainside across the valley. “Is that what you meant?”

  “Yeah, those are mortars. They probably came from up there.” He pointed back to the right side of the hill.

  “How do you know they were ours? I didn’t hear anything.”

  “I didn’t either, but we probably could have if we’d been listening. They’re ours because there were so many in such a short time. The Gooks are more careful — they don’t have enough to waste. See what I mean about the show?”

  “Yeah, it’s outa sight. . . . Were you drinking this afternoon?”

  “No,” Forsythe laughed. “I don’t drink much. Where’d you get that idea?”

  “I heard you say something to Payne about partying.”

  Forsythe became suspicious. “We were just kidding around.. I better crash.” He walked towards the threshold.

  “Wait a minute. Which of these hand illumes are star clusters?”

  Forsythe turned around and walked over to th
e ammo crate. “I can’t see the labels now. Wait till an illume goes off.”

  While they stood waiting, Chalice spotted four purple and orange balls of fire shoot across the valley. “What was that?”

  “What was what?”

  “Looked like four big tracer rounds.”

  “Flying level?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Rockets then.”

  “There it is again.”

  “Yeah, rockets, incoming at An Hoa.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They were VC rockets heading for An Hoa, could of hit our company area. Maybe one landed on top of the rack you were sleeping in last night.”

  “Nice thought.”

  “You’ll have nicer ones before you get out of here.” As Forsythe was talking, an illumination flare popped over the bunker. “Here,” he said, handing Chalice a foot-long aluminum tube about an inch in diameter. “Star cluster.”

  “Can we shoot it off now for the hell of it?”

  “Naw, you’re not supposed to unless you’ve got a reason. . . . Ah, okay, why not?” Forsythe took the top off the tube and placed it on the bottom. He then raised his forearm and brought the bottom of the tube down sharply on the counter. Startled by the loud swooshing sound, Chalice stepped backwards. Five green balls of light burst above the bunker. They fell quickly towards the valley floor, casting an eerie glow upon the closest huts before disappearing. “That was cool. I wouldn’t mind sending a few of those home. They’d be great for parties.”

  “I’ve already sent about ten, really about fifteen; but some of them must have got intercepted. Here comes somebody. Halt! Who is there?”

  “Harmon.”