Sand in the Wind

by Robert Roth

  The order was passed for everybody to hold up until the line straightened. Some heavy brush lay in front of Chalice. He stared at it disgustedly, chest heaving and thankful for the rest. When given the word to start moving, he pushed his way forward. The brush thickened. He struggled with all his might, hardly making any progress. Thorns covered the branches. He had to ignore them. The brush enveloped him, squeezing tighter, defining his shape and pressing into his skin like thousands of tiny spikes. It crackled loudly around him with each small movement. Choking, unable to get enough air, he had to stop struggling for a second. The silence surprised and frightened him. He couldn’t hear or see the rest of his squad. They’d left him behind. He thrashed forward nervously. His feet stomped up and down, almost in place. Tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth, he couldn’t breathe. Again he had to stop, dizzy and exhausted. Only the thick brush kept him from falling to the ground.

  “Chalice!” Tony 5 shouted.

  “Over here.”

  “You’re way behind! Get up here! You’re holding back the whole company.”

  “I can’t get through this brush.”

  “For Christ sake, go back and come around it.” He turned and flung himself forward. The way back out proved easier than he had expected. Circling around, he came even with the rest of the platoon. Tony glared at him. “Man! Don’t get behind like that.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry.”

  “You will be if Charlie ever catches you straggling like that. . . . You really did a job on your arms.”

  Chalice looked at them, noticing for the first time that they were covered with blood. He quickly pulled out the thorns as the company began moving again. They hadn’t gone more than a few yards before Tony 5 yelled, “Kovacs, I got a bunker here.”

  Kovacs yelled back, “Hold up, everybody. Go ahead and frag it, Tony.”

  Tony 5 called Chalice over. “Watch how I do this.” The bunker was so well camouflaged that Chalice came within a step of falling into it. The entrance was a hole barely large enough for a man to pass through. Tony took a grenade out of his pouch and pulled the pin. “When I let go of this frag, hit the deck.” He lobbed it in the bunker, yelled “Fire in the hole,” and dove to the ground. The blast filled the air with dirt and small rocks. Tony told Forsythe to check out the bunker.

  When he got inside, Forsythe yelled, “Nothing here,” and crawled back out.

  The pace began to slow as more bunkers were found. Each one had to be checked. Somebody would call out “Fire in the hole,” then a grenade would go off. Everything had gone all right for a half hour when suddenly a grenade went off without any warning.

  Tony 5’s head shot up and he looked in the direction of the blast, thinking, ‘booby trap.’

  Kovacs yelled, “What the fuck was that?”

  A meek voice replied, “Fire in the hole.”

  “Well no shit,” Kovacs called back, and everybody started laughing. The incident took Chalice’s mind off his fatigue, and he felt a lot stronger.

  Around noon they reached the last tree line and set-in under its shade. Most of the men were in a talkative mood, and they kidded each other as they opened cans of C-rations. Kovacs called the platoon together. By the look on his face, it was evident that he had some good news. “The company’s gonna pull out around four o’clock. Our platoon stays behind to set up an ambush in case any Gooks are following us. When the company leaves, I want everyone to keep hidden in the tree line. Tomorrow morning we’ll hump over to Liberty Bridge and set up some bridge security. The CP is gonna be at Ladybird State Park, and we’ll be by ourselves.”

  As the men dispersed, they seemed satisfied with the news. Forsythe sat down and started cooking a can of ham and eggs. Chalice sat down next to him and opened a can of franks and beans. “Why’s everyone so happy about going to Liberty Bridge? Is it close to here?”

  “No, it’s a good five klicks; but since it’s on the river we’ll get to take baths, and the ground is white sand instead of mud — easy to dig in and cleaner. The important thing is the CP is setting-in at Ladybird State Park. That means the captain and gunny won’t be around to fuck with us.”

  “What’s Ladybird Park?”

  “A sandy place on the riverbank with a lot of shade trees. It’s pretty nice. That’s why the CP always sets-in there. . . . I’m the one who named it.” Chalice unwrapped a heat tab and set it under his can of franks and beans. He lit the tab and leaned back against a tree. A stiff breeze rustled the brush around him. For the first time since he’d gotten off the hill, he felt relaxed. A few minutes later he took the can off of the heat tab. Surprisingly, the franks and beans tasted delicious. As he dropped the empty can, Chalice said, “Good company, good food, a big shade tree, and a nice breeze; what more could you possibly want?”

  An hour after the company pulled out, Kovacs called the squad leaders together. “If any VC are around, they’re probably over there,” he said pointing to the mountains. “I’d set up an L-shaped ambush, but they can approach from too many directions. We’ll have to set-in at the bow in the tree line. Our fields of fire won’t be too hot, but it’ll be safer.” The squad leaders nodded agreement and he assigned them their responsibilities.

  The men hid in the tree line until a few minutes before dusk, then took up their positions. Chalice started digging a foxhole, but Forsythe stopped him. “This is an ambush. You never dig in on an ambush.” Glad to get the news, he flipped away his entrenching tool. As Chalice sat watching the sun dip behind the mountains, mosquitoes began to swarm around him. Forsythe saw him slapping them and handed him a bottle of insect repellent.

  Kovacs had just walked over to Tony 5, and now Tony came towards their position with a disgusted look on his face. “We just got word over the radio that somebody spotted a whole company of NVA in the foothills. There’s about two hundred, and the flyboys are probably gonna work out on ’em. We better dig in; two two-man holes. Chalice, start digging one for you and me. Hurry up.”

  The ground was hard. Chalice didn’t finish digging until an hour after sunset. When he dropped the E-tool on the back lip of the foxhole, it landed with a clang. “What was that?” Tony asked.

  They both felt around in the dark until Chalice found a large metal object about a foot-and-a-half long. “Here it is.”

  As Tony cleared the dirt away, he kept saying, “Oh no.”

  “What is it?”

  “A dud 105 shell.”

  Chalice ran his hand across it. “What’re we gonna do?”

  “We can’t move it. It might go off.”

  “But it’s right in back of our hole. What if a round hits it?”

  “We’ll never know what happened. I’ll guarantee you that. Listen Professor, if we get hit tonight, don’t fire your rifle. The muzzle flash’ll attract their fire. Just keep heaving frags.” A series of loud blasts came from the foothills. “Let’s hope they’re dropping those bombs in the right place.” The bombing continued halfway through the night. During his watch, Chalice kept looking in the direction of the explosions. Tony 5 had pointed out the different types of bombs being dropped, and now that he was alone Chalice identified them to himself. There was a large billow of orange flame — ‘Napalm.’ This was followed by some louder blasts and some white flashes — ‘Regular bombs, HE.’ He then heard a small explosion followed by many more small explosions — ‘Must be Corfam.’ The first explosion was the casing scattering hundreds of small grenades which exploded a few seconds later when they hit the ground.

  Aside from the bombing, the night passed quietly. Chalice stared at the terrain around him, trying to imagine what an attack would have been like. His curiosity caused him to feel cheated. What he had feared the night before became his disappointment the morning after. Then he spotted the 105 round on the edge of the foxhole and figured it was just as well. The CP called on the radio and said the bombing had killed over a hundred NVA, and that Second Platoon was to go up and see if they could find anything interesting. At
first the men grumbled about the three additional hours of marching, but soon thoughts of easy souvenirs buoyed their spirits and made them anxious to get started.

  Kovacs kept the pace slow and there was very little complaining along the way. Hamilton thought about finding an SKS — the Russian design, Chinese Communist-made rifle that some of the NVA carried. Unlike the AK-47, it was semiautomatic and could be kept as a souvenir. Chalice thought about what the bombs must have done to the NVA. He pictured a hundred bodies lying scattered on the ground; some missing limbs or decapitated, some charred by napalm. His thoughts tinged more with curiosity than horror; he was anxious to reach the spot where the bombs had dropped. They crossed over the first set of hills and walked through an area of fresh bomb craters without seeing any bodies. Hamilton warned Chalice not to step on any of the shiny metallic objects scattered on the ground. They were dud Corfam bombs. Chalice heard Tony 5 say, “Not a fucking thing, not even a blood trail, they didn’t get a fucking Gook.”

  Chalice thought, ‘A hundred dead NVA, that’s where they get those ridiculous casualty figures.’

  Kovacs called the CP on the radio and told them what they had found, or hadn’t found. He then ordered the point to angle back towards the road through the high ground. The men plodded on dejectedly, far more irritated about the senseless marching than at not finding any souvenirs. By five o’clock, they reached Liberty Bridge. Kovacs immediately set the perimeter. He told Alpha Squad, half of Charlie Squad, and half of Guns Squad to dig their holes in a semicircle around the far end of the bridge. Bravo Squad and the other halves of Charlie and Guns Squads did the same thing on the near side. Everybody was worn out, but the white sand proved easy to dig in and the mood of the men gradually lightened. Forsythe and Payne kidded Chalice about his being in the Arizona for the first time, “If you can call thirty yards from the bridge the Arizona.” After digging in, they had just enough time to heat some C-rations.

  During his watch that night, Chalice was startled by some muffled explosions in the water around the bridge. When Payne relieved him, he found out they were from sticks of C-4 thrown into the water every hour to keep the VC from swimming up and blowing the bridge. Aside from these explosions, the night was quiet and uneventful.

  Nobody bothered to wake Chalice the next morning. At nine o’clock when he got up, most of the platoon was already milling around the area. Forsythe walked up to him holding a machete. “You wanna build a hootch together?”

  “Sure, it beats sleeping out in the open.” Chalice followed him to a clump of bamboo on the riverbank. A few other men were already hacking away at the stalks.

  “We need three poles; one about ten feet and two about six.” Forsythe pulled a large bamboo stalk from the thicket and motioned for Chalice to hold it bent while he cut it down. “Don’t run your hands over the stalk. It’s full of tiny splinters.” Forsythe cut it down with three whacks of the machete. He then cut two smaller stalks and six pegs. They carried the bamboo back towards their foxhole, and Forsythe picked out a little knoll twenty yards behind it on which to build their hootch. First he drove the two shorter poles into the ground about nine feet apart. After hunting in his pack, he came up with some pieces of string and tied the longer pole across the tops of the two shorter ones. He and Chalice snapped their ponchos together and laid them athwart the crossbar. They tied six pieces of string to the ponchos’ dangling edges, then attached the free ends to the wooden pegs. After hammering the pegs into the ground, Forsythe stood back and looked over the hootch. “Not bad. All we have to do is dig a rain trench around it. But that can wait. Let’s eat.”

  As they finished eating, Tony 5 walked over. “I just got the word on how we’re gonna operate. It’ll be like the last time: Every day we send out a squad on patrol and every night we send out an all-night ambush. We’ve got the patrol today, tomorrow the ambush, and the next day we skate.”

  “How long is the patrol?”

  “A klick out and a klick back.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Forsythe commented. Then looking at Chalice, he added, “I hope you’re gonna appreciate this, Prof. It’s the best you’ll have it during your thirteen months.”

  As Tony walked away, he called back, “We’re gonna move-out on that patrol in about an hour, be ready.”

  The machine gun team on Alpha’s side of the bridge was building a hootch a few yards away. Forsythe walked over and Chalice followed him. The machine gunner was a Mexican-American named Pablo. His sharp, clean features seemed always set in the same placid yet alert expression. He wasn’t very talkative, but because of his patient manner he often found himself on the listening ends of long conversations. His assistant machine gunner, Sinclaire, talked constantly in a deep southern drawl as he helped Pablo build their hootch. He was a skinny, towheaded youth whose long legs seemed to make up four-fifths of his body. They had a radio playing, so Forsythe and Chalice sat down next to it. When Pablo and Sinclaire finished, they also sat down near the radio. Sinclaire started the conversation, “Well Professor, how do you like the bush?”

  “Haven’t seen much of it yet.”

  Childs walked up behind Sinclaire and said, “Don’t worry about it. He hasn’t seen much of it either.”

  “I’ve seen enough to know I’ve seen as much as I wanna see.”

  “Don’t sweat it. Chances are you won’t be around here too much longer.”

  Pablo gave Childs a hard stare, then changed the subject. “You guys got the patrol today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m going with you. How far is it?”

  “Two klicks; one out and one back.”

  Pablo nodded his head. “We’ll have plenty of time to take a bath when we get back. It’ll be the first time in three weeks for me.”

  They sat listening to the radio until Harmon came over and told them to form up for the patrol. As Chalice swung the machine gun ammo can over his shoulder, he asked Forsythe, “How come Pablo looked at Childs that way when he said Sinclaire wouldn’t be around too long?”

  “Oh, you noticed that. Sinclaire is Pablo’s third A-gunner. The other two got blown away. While the machine gunner is firing, the A-gunner has to hold his head up and sight him in. That gives the Gooks a real nice target, and the first thing they go after is the machine guns. His first A-gunner got it right in the eye. The second one got it through the front of his helmet.”

  The purpose of the patrol was to check out the riverbank. Hamilton’s fire team led off. They formed a wedge with Childs at the point. Roads walked along the bank twenty yards to his left and ten yards behind him. Bolton, a tall, awkward-looking youth, took the same position on the right. Hamilton walked ten yards behind Childs. Harmon followed directly behind Hamilton. Then came Payne with the radio and the rest of Tony 5’s fire team.

  Chalice realized they probably wouldn’t find anything, but the idea of being on his first patrol excited him despite himself. Just as they had gone a kilometer and were about to turn around, Roads called out, “Got some spider holes.”

  Harmon walked over to have a look, telling Chalice to follow him. There were three holes along the riverbank about two feet in diameter and five feet deep. “They’re spider holes all right, VC or NVA. . . . Looks like they been here a long time. Don’t really mean much.”

  “How do you know VC or NVA dug them?” Chalice asked.

  “They’re one-man holes. We always dig holes for two or four men.”

  Harmon sent the patrol a hundred yards further down the bank. Not finding anything, they turned around and headed back to the bridge. Instead of following the bank this time, they walked fifty yards away from it in case some VC had seen them head out and had booby-trapped their trail.

  The patrol returned to the perimeter by one o’clock. The men spent the next few hours reading and cleaning their rifles. Kovacs passed word for a swim call for those on Alpha’s side of the bridge. Skip and Flip brought their machine gun over to provide cover. Everybody stripped down and headed
for the river carrying their M-16’s.

  Though the river was over forty yards across, it was only about five feet deep. When Chalice got out far enough, he started swimming, as fast and as hard as he had ever swum before. Memories of school days spent playing hooky at hidden streams ran through his mind. Now experiencing the same relaxed excitement, a sense of freedom overwhelmed him. He remembered how refreshing — and far away — the river had looked on the march out, and how much he had wanted to throw off his pack and dive into it. The other members of the platoon — their rifles lying on the bank — seemed no longer soldiers, but boys, like the ones he had played hooky with, older, less innocent, but boys. He heard them making the same comments, saw them enacting the same childish pranks. Chalice swam back towards them, for the first time realizing he was one of them, not only a member of their platoon, but a friend; their friendship based not on likes, dislikes, or abilities, but on the vagaries of chance that had put them in the same place, at the same time, sharing a common danger, possessing a common hope, all of them dependent upon the others, the symbols of their common bond lying abandoned on the bank — their rifles.

  Chalice, standing waist deep in the gently flowing river, had just finished shaving. He handed the razor to Forsythe and dove forward to wash the lather from his face. The warm water felt suddenly cool against his skin. Never before had he received so much pleasure from the act of shaving. Looking towards the bank, he noticed someone filling a canteen. “Hey, what’s he doing?” Forsythe looked at Chalice questioningly. “I mean, is he going to drink this water? Look at it. It’s dirty.”

  “Of course he is. This stuff is great compared to some of the piss we’ve had to drink. We don’t even put halazone tablets in this stuff. The only time we do that is when we drink bomb crater water, and that’s half mud.

  Skip and Flip started yelling and pointing towards the water. At first Chalice thought they had spotted trouble, but then he saw some naked men chasing a large buck on the riverbank. One of them tried to grab it around the neck. The buck bolted forward and left the naked Marine lying in the sand. The frightened animal dashed towards the river and splashed by only a few feet away from Chalice. A number of men had been yelling, “Shoot him! Shoot him!” Appleton, a big, heavyset member of Charlie Squad, got to his rifle and drew a bead on the deer as it swam downstream. A few of the others yelled “Don’t shoot it,” and one of them ran up and raised the rifle barrel.