Sand in the Wind

by Robert Roth

  The moonlight revealed the nebulous outline of some high ground that would have to be skirted in order to reach the ambush site. This by itself would have increased the men’s nervousness, but the noise that had just been made caused them to be even more uneasy. Forsythe, the point man, had the choice of leading the squad on top of a rice paddy dike or through the water. Traveling along the dike would be faster and quieter, but it would place them between the tree line and the moon, thus making them better targets. Forsythe was about to choose the path through the water when a cloud passed in front of the moon and he changed his mind.

  They hadn’t traveled more than thirty yards along the dike before a loud splash caused the men to freeze in place. Fuller had fallen off it into a waist-deep rice paddy. Surprised by the water’s depth, he went completely under. Hamilton stood cringing on the dike as Fuller tried to muffle his coughing. “Do you have the ammo can?” Hamilton asked in a whisper.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well get back on the dike.”

  “I can’t find my rifle.”

  “I don’t fucking believe it,” Hamilton mumbled under his breath.

  “Here it is!”

  “Shhh. . . . Get on the dike.”

  They were already more than halfway to the ambush site. Forsythe led them the rest of the way without incident. If the squad had been at full strength, Hamilton would have divided them into three concurrent watches; but there were only ten men in the ambush party, so he divided them into two five-man groups.

  Chalice had the second watch in his group. The chilling effect of his wet clothing helped to awaken him fully as soon as his watch began. He felt uneasy, and was bothered further by his inability to figure out why. Suddenly, he realized the cause — a complete absence of sounds except for those he himself was making. No insects droned around him, no breeze stirred the brush, and no rain fell. His own breathing soon lulled and relaxed him. He remained alert for those dangers that were his responsibility, but the placid radiance of the night seemed to make this wariness unnecessary. Hearing a faint, innocuous pop, he listened intently for a repeat of this sound. Instead, he heard a distant explosion, then another.

  Hamilton had also been on watch. He crawled over to Chalice and asked, “Did you hear it?”

  “Yeah. The Phantom Blooker’s working out on the rest of the company.”

  “Sounds like he’s in that tree line we passed.”

  “I think so.”

  “I’ll call in what we know. You start working out on the tree line.”

  Chalice could barely see the patch of high ground where he thought the blooker barrage was coming from. After hearing another pop, he aimed his blooker and shot in that direction. The sound of the exploding shell returned to him unmuffled by water, and he knew his round had landed on dry ground. Chalice had no hopes of getting the Phantom Blooker. His only purpose was to silence him. He quickly reloaded and shot numerous times, all the while listening for the faint pop which he failed to hear again. It seemed impossible that he had ended the barrage so easily.

  A series of flashes came from the distant tree line. The sounds of exploding mortar rounds followed them. Hamilton had radioed the suspected position of the Phantom Blooker, and now the company mortars had zeroed in on him. Trippitt had also called in Puff the Magic Dragon, and within minutes some blinding flares burst above the suspected tree line. Their light illuminated not only it, but also the ambush site and the company perimeter. The brightness of the haloed flares awed Chalice. They seemed to illuminate the ground with a light far more intense and whiter than that of the sun. Soon he saw the tracer rounds from Puff pointing directly at the tree line. The rumble of its machine guns added to the eerie effect of the illumination flares. Chalice remembered being told that Puff’s guns could cover every square foot of a football field in less than a minute, and he felt sure that this meant death for the Phantom Blooker.

  During the four hours that the mortar and machine gun barrage continued, nothing was heard from the Phantom Blooker. At dawn the company moved on-line towards the battered patch of high ground. Alpha had been told to approach slowly from the opposite side, thus serving as a blocking force while the company moved through it. Chalice was positive that the Phantom Blooker would be found dead, and also that it had been his round that had killed him — as if the mortar and machine gun barrage had been ineffectual, and only by Chalice’s hand could the Phantom Blooker have been destroyed. He took no pride in this act. Something in his mind tried to disassociate it from himself, making it an act of fate rather than will, performed by a helpless and unthinking entity, everything having been decided when Tony 5 had handed him the blooker.

  As Chalice watched Hotel Company emerge from the tree line, he waited silently for someone to tell him that it was over, the body had been found. Yet he knew that more than just a life had ended. Through the haze of his thoughts, he heard Forsythe say, “Bet he got away.”

  “Why? What makes you say that?”

  Struck by Chalice’s tone, Forsythe searched his face while answering, “I just think so.”

  Soon Chalice was to know that Forsythe had been right. He wasn’t the only one that found this hard to believe. Trippitt ordered his men to sweep back through the high ground. Chalice’s disbelief increased as he noticed that no foot of earth remained unmarked. Areas of adjoining mortar craters sometimes stretched over twenty yards. Flattened globs of lead from Puff’s machine guns lay scattered on the ground. Not a single tree had been left untouched. Again the company reached the spot where the empty shells had been ejected from the Phantom Blooker’s weapon. Some of the men pointed to a stain on the ground that looked like blood, and Chalice thought, ‘I did that. It was my round.’

  After returning to camp for their packs, Hotel Company began searching the surrounding tree lines. An hour of daylight remained when Trippitt decided to head for a new patch of high ground to make camp. As they marched between two parallel tree lines, a burst of sniper fire came from the high ground on their left. Trippitt advanced the column on-line towards the sniper fire and ordered the blooker men to prep-fire the brush. There were continuous pops all along the formation as the blookers were fired. Then the machine guns opened up on the tree line. As they approached within a hundred yards of it, the firing of M-16’s became constant. The sniping continued, but it was drowned out by the noise of their own weapons. Also drowned out were the cries of their wounded. All eyes focused upon the tree line as the formation continued to advance. Only the corpsmen stayed behind to help the wounded. Long before they had reached the tree line, the sniper fire ceased; but their own firing continued until they were well inside it. A careful sweep revealed nothing but some abandoned Viet Cong spider holes.

  Five men had been wounded, two seriously. By the time they had been medivacked, only a few minutes of daylight remained. Trippitt radioed their position to the battalion CP, and ordered his men to set-in for the night.

  Tony 5 assigned Second Platoon’s positions, and checked them a few minutes later. When he came to Chalice and Forsythe’s hole, Chalice started to ask him a question, but decided against it. As Tony walked away, Chalice changed his mind and followed him. “Tony, wait a minute.” Tony looked at Chalice as if he wanted him to hurry up and speak. This made him even more hesitant, but he fianlly said, “They say you’re the only one that’s seen the Phantom Blooker.” Tony remained silent, his expression clearly indicating that he wasn’t in any mood to get involved in a conversation, especially about the Phantom Blooker. “It it true?”

  “Is what true?” Tony asked irritably.

  “That you’ve seen the Phantom Blooker.”

  “That’s what you heard, ain’t it?”

  “You think he’s a Marine?”

  “He’s an American,” Tony replied with obvious hatred.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I seen him.”

  Tony turned to leave, but Chalice stopped him. “What did he look like?”

  “Like a
n American.”

  “I mean did he . . . have blond hair . . . or something?”

  “You ain’t gonna give me that al —, al —”

  “Albino.”

  “Yeah, that albino bullshit. Well he wasn’t.”

  “What color hair did he have?”

  “Light brown, a little lighter than yours. Maybe about the same, but it was longer, and no pink eyes.”

  “What—”

  “I’ll talk to you some other time. I’ve gotta check with Kramer.”

  No one was surprised that night when blooker rounds started falling within the perimeter. The men had dug their foxholes deep enough, and morning found them all unharmed. For the next ten days, Hotel Company moved from tree line to tree line within the Thousand Islands. Sniper fire became a habitual occurrence, and each incident was usually a repeat of those that preceded it. Unless the firing was extremely heavy, Trippitt didn’t bother to call in helicopter gun ships to strafe the presumed hiding place. He’d merely march his men towards it on-line. Though they repeated this same procedure over a dozen times, only twice was it successful. One time a sniper was found dead as a result of the air support. Another time, one was killed because he waited for the formation to get within ten yards before opening fire. After killing two Marines, he in turn was shot — more than two hundred times.

  Not once since the company had been operating within the Thousand Islands had they run into any booby traps. The more experienced of the men realized that this was because the Viet Cong constantly combed the area for food and didn’t want to lose men to their own booby traps. These men also felt that eventually they would come across some command detonated booby traps. As much as they feared this, the one occurrence they feared more had so far failed to happen. Never had their camp been subjected to a night ground attack and its accompanying barrage of mortars. To carry out such an attack, the Viet Cong would have to gather in strength. So far there had been no indication they were doing so. While somewhat assuaging the men’s anxiety about a ground attack, this also frustrated their attempts to make contact. There was no question that they feared a fire fight, but in their thoughts at least, they found the idea of one preferable to the constant loss of men to sniper fire in the daytime and blooker barrages at night.

  The men of Chalice’s platoon had given him credit for silencing the Phantom Blooker on the night of the ambush. Formerly all of the platoon’s blooker men had been urged to get the Phantom Blooker, but now the men directed most of these remarks at Chalice. Though they did so jokingly, their fear was real and it was obvious they believed there was some truth in the superstition that he would have to be killed by his own weapon. Each time the Phantom Blooker attacked, Chalice felt a forced responsibility to silence him.

  One day nineteen replacements were choppered in with supplies. Second Platoon received three of these men. This still left the platoon well below full strength, even counting Forsythe who had received orders for his R and R. Kramer sent him in grudgingly, and with instructions to ask about a job in the rear for Childs. Roads was made a temporary fire team leader, and Alpha was given a huge, pudgy replacement named Wilcox. Though they retained the same number of men and were able to divide the watches as usual, Alpha’s morale declined with the departure of Forsythe. He’d always had the ability to point out something humorous in the worst of circumstances, and now this ability was lost to them.

  Trippitt and Martin became more and more irritated about Hotel Company’s failure to make substantial contact. They took their frustration out on the men by seeing that they kept their hair short and their faces clean shaven. In order to shave every few days, the men had to carry additional water. After numerous long marches, many of them decided that the extra weight was too exhausting a hindrance. Instead they began giving themselves “bush shaves.” Without lathering their faces, they would methodically shave themselves by placing their index fingers through the slots of double-edged razor blades, literally scraping the whiskers from their faces. Whenever Gunny Martin noticed a man with what he felt was overly long hair, that man would be ordered to the CP where Martin quickly lopped it off in the “skin job” style he himself preferred.

  Trippitt and Martin’s frustration resulted in more than harassment of their men. Though ambushes were ostensibly offensive actions, their main purpose was actually defensive in that they prevented the Viet Cong from approaching a perimeter at night with impunity. For this reason, they were seldom sent out more than a kilometer. Trippitt saw no indications of a ground attack, and he decided there was little risk in temporarily ignoring the possibility of one. He also believed that the only tangible measure of a company’s effectiveness, and therefore that of its commander, was the number of confirmed kills it registered. By this criterion, Hotel Company had been extremely lacking. He decided to extend the lengths of the ambushes. The change came about gradually as dictated by the fruitlessness of each succeeding ambush. It was not until the men found themselves continually traveling over two kilometers to their ambush sites that they realized such ambushes had become Trippitt’s policy. In conversations among themselves, they constantly complained about the disadvantage Trippitt was placing them under.

  One night at dusk, Chalice and Hamilton were arranging their equipment in back of their foxholes. It was a full moon, and Chalice remarked that he was glad Alpha didn’t have that night’s ambush.

  “Don’t get too happy about it,” Hamilton replied. “It’ll be just as bright tomorrow, and then it’ll be our turn.”

  Chalice asked in a depressed tone, “Why don’t we sandbag it?”

  “No chance.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t wanna be in the wrong place if Puff or mortars start working out. At least if we don’t sandbag, they know where we are.”

  “But if we keep marching all over the place at night, we’re gonna get ambushed ourselves.”

  “Maybe, but so far it hasn’t happened. If it does, then Trippitt’ll have to start making the ambushes shorter. I just hope it doesn’t happen to us.” Chalice put on some insect repellent, then handed the bottle to Hamilton. Too tired to do any more talking, he lay back and watched the clouds drift in front of the moon. A cool breeze softly ruffled the brush. There was something very reassuring about the quiet beauty of the night. Unlike the distant and oppressive daytime sky that glared down upon them as they marched, its darkness descended and enveloped them in a cool radiance. It seemed incongruous to Chalice that now, under these conditions, he had developed for the first time a real appreciation for something so unchanging and indifferent as nature. He continued to watch the moon, sensing a harmony in all that surrounded him. Even the sounds of mosquitoes failed to be a bother, and he accepted them as part of something beautiful.

  Chalice and Hamilton had been lying silently for a half hour when a distant burst of rifle fire startled them to sitting positions. Neither one of them spoke, both realizing that nearly all of the shots had come from AK-47’S. Whispers from the men around them confirmed this, and everyone knew what must have happened. “I hope not,” Hamilton murmured as he headed for Payne and the radio. Chalice followed behind him, angrily mumbling to himself about the “power of negative thinking.”

  All over the perimeter, men gathered around radios to listen while Fourth Platoon’s lieutenant futilely tried to make contact with his ambush party. Trippitt called in some illumination flares. Soon the sky glowed with their light. First Platoon was quickly gathered together, and within minutes they were on their way to the ambush site. Trippitt put the company on full alert, but this was unnecessary because no one was even thinking about sleeping.

  The men waited restlessly around radios and in their foxholes for what they knew would be bad news. Soon they heard Puff’s propeller-driven engines above them. Flares continued to drop over the ambush site. A medivac helicopter began circling invisibly overhead. One of the men gathered around Milton’s radio asked Kramer if it was all right to smoke. It was Tony 5 who t
ook the trouble to rebuke him. The men heard someone directing the medivac chopper in. They knew this meant at least one member of the ambush party was still alive, otherwise no one would risk a night landing. As the medivac chopper descended, it was met by bursts from AK-47’s. The men could see the Viet Cong tracer rounds streaking through the darkness. The chopper struggled to regain altitude as its accompanying gun ships strafed the area. Again it tried to descend, but sniper fire quickly drove it away. Three more times it tried to land only to be chased away by sniper fire. The gun ships were unable to knock out the Viet Cong positions, so Puff began to spray the area with machine gun rounds. On its sixth try, the medivac chopper was finally able to land. The men who sat watching and listening from within the perimeter felt relieved as they heard the engines of the helicopter fading in the distance. They soon found out that only two of the thirteen men in the ambush party had survived long enough to be medivacked, and later that these two had died aboard the chopper.

  Hotel Company set-in early the next afternoon. To the men in Alpha, this meant little. All day their thoughts had concerned the coming night’s ambush. Hamilton walked over to Kramer’s foxhole to receive its coordinates. His men waited restlessly for him to return, telling themselves that the ambush might be called off while knowing it wouldn’t, or comforting themselves with the thought that at least it would be a short one. Hamilton’s expression was enough to tell them that even this wasn’t the case. They watched in disbelief as he traced on his map a two kilometer path to the ambush site.

  Ordinarily the machine gun team chosen to accompany an ambush would join it just before dusk, but Skip and Flip reported to Hamilton a half hour early. Hamilton, Childs, and Skip carefully decided upon a route to the ambush site and a slightly different one for their return. They also exchanged comments about those points on their route that offered the most danger.

  At dusk Hamilton gathered the ambush party together and carefully arranged them in the order he wanted. He walked down the line jostling each man to make sure his equipment didn’t rattle. As he did this to Wilcox, the new replacement, Hamilton’s ears caught a jingling sound. “How come you don’t have your dog tags taped together?” he asked angrily.