Sand in the Wind

by Robert Roth

  The helicopters continued to arrive, leaving more and more Marines to surround the LZ. The men stood quietly in the rain, exhibiting no feelings of restlessness, faces blank and remarkably similar. If Chaplain Hindman had been there, he would have seen in these faces an unmistakable faith in God’s will. General Westmoreland would have described them as evidence of the American soldier’s unflinching willingness to fight for his country’s honor. A politician would later have been able to stand before microphones and assure his constituents that he himself had witnessed the grim determination of their sons to protect the homes and families that were constantly on their minds. If the men themselves had been asked what they were thinking, few would have been able to answer, would have been capable of expressing the confusion of their various thoughts, their sense of wonder at this awesome process that continued to sweep them along with it like so many twigs caught in a stretch of rapids — the sense of inevitability about all that had happened and would happen.

  Colonel Nash ordered his men to move out as soon as the last chopper landed. He watched the battalion snake along the winding road in two columns. They were to meet up with some Arvins, a Black Panther battalion. Nash had been told by people who should know that they were the equal of any NVA battalion in South Vietnam. While continuously struggling to lift his boots from the deep layer of mud that covered the road, he became anxious to meet these Arvins; to see for himself.

  Nash halted his men as soon as contact with the Arvins was made. He, Major Lucas, and a small party from Headquarters and Supply Company advanced between the two columns until they reached the edge of the city. A party of Arvins stood waiting for them. Nash had brought along Binh, one of the battalion’s Kit Carson Scouts, to act as an interpreter. This proved unnecessary. The Arvin captain in charge of the party addressed the Marines in fluent English. His bearing, and also that of his men, impressed Nash. He became even more impressed as he was led to the battalion commander. The Arvins they passed along the way seemed far more disciplined and serious than any he had ever seen.

  Two soldiers stood in front of the battalion commander’s headquarters. Rain poured off their ponchos as they guarded five blindfolded Viet Cong prisoners who sat unprotected in the mud. As Nash entered the headquarters, an Arvin colonel greeted him in a cordial but dignified manner. He also spoke fluent English, and with the help of a map immediately began to brief Nash on what was happening within the city.

  Soon another Arvin officer entered, followed by two enlisted men. The colonel explained to Nash that they were replacements. He then withdrew two rusty bayonets from a desk drawer and handed them to the officer. The colonel resumed the briefing as the two replacements were led out the door. Just as he finished, the replacements again entered — each of them holding in his outstretched hand a severed and still bleeding head. One of the heads had its eyes wide open and its mouth twisted as if caught in a scream. The face on the other head had a calm, stoic expression, this in perverse contrast to the sickened expression of the Arvin holding it by the hair. While the other replacement beamed proudly, the Arvin colonel looked coldly at the sickened replacement. Obviously embarrassed by him, he grabbed the bayonets away and ordered both men from his office.

  Nash was more outraged than sickened by what he had seen. When the Arvin colonel turned to him for approval, he was met by Nash’s seething glare. Only fazed for an instant, the Arvin colonel quickly returned this glare, saying neither as an apology nor an explanation, “It is better my men know what war is like before the shooting starts. They must be hard!”

  This statement further enraged Nash, at the same time reminding him of his impotency to do anything about what had happened. Words tried to force their way between his lips, but the realization of their worthlessness caused him to do nothing more than turn his back abruptly upon the Arvin colonel and leave.

  Outside, Nash saw the blood-stained trails in the mud where the two bodies had been dragged away. Now speaking for the first time, he expelled his rage on his own men, harshly ordering them to take the three remaining prisoners from the Arvins.

  For seven days both the monsoon rains and the advance continued unceasingly. Through the poorer outskirts of the city, progress had been slow and costly, the fighting from house to house. Now all that had changed. In Saigon it was decided that Hue would not be recaptured by the blood of the advancing troops, but rather by the destruction of the city itself. Artillery and bombers were called in indiscriminately. The cold monsoon rains fell upon the bodies of Viet Cong soldiers and civilians that lay abandoned in the streets and beneath the rubble. The thrust northward quickened, still paid for in blood, but now mostly that of civilians who could neither flee nor find safety. The Marines no longer advanced upon a city, but instead upon its ruins.

  It was a few minutes before dusk. Kramer stared cautiously out the window of what had once been a small store. Half of his platoon was across the street, as it had been all day. They could have advanced a little further; but now that his men on both sides of the street were protected from the rain, he ordered them to halt and set-in. The day, as those before it, had been long and exhausting.

  Kramer looked towards the north. The buildings just ahead were little more than rubble. He could barely make out those behind them, still untouched. Kramer knew that by the time he reached these buildings, they too would be rubble. Since entering the city, his men had advanced constantly along the same street — sometimes behind the cover of tanks; more often without them. One half of the platoon at a time would dash through the ruins, then set-in and cover the advance of the other half as they passed them. Often, and not unexpectedly, a burst of machine gun or rifle fire would send them sprawling for cover while dragging their dead and wounded with them. The firing would continue. If too intense, they called in artillery. If light enough, the firing would encourage them to charge and lose more men. Sometimes these charges would end with the Marines standing over the bodies of a few Viet Cong soldiers, but more often they would find nothing. In slow retreat, the Viet Cong knew when to abandon their positions. They’d set up again a few houses to the north. It was easy for the Marines to find out where. All they had to do was continue moving from building to building until another burst of rifle fire sent them sprawling to the ground.

  Kramer stared out the window, trying to guess where the Viet Cong would place their first ambush of the next day. When the view before him blackened, he lay down, exhausted and hoping sleep would soon release his mind from the thoughts that now troubled him. For it was during these first few minutes of darkness that he always thought about Tuyen, realizing again the impossibility of ever finding her, wanting to look at her picture as he had done the night before they had arrived at Hue, glad he was able to keep himself from doing this. His coming to Hue, which had once seemed a chance for gaining the only thing he could ever remember wanting, had turned into an absurd joke. He wondered how he had ever deluded himself into thinking that he would find her. Hue, a city that had once seemed mystical, had now lost all of its mystery. He was there, yet Hue no longer existed. It was hard for Kramer to make himself believe that the ruins surrounding him could ever have been more than just rubble. His lips pursed into a grim smile. Hue too had become a joke. But he remembered with pain Tuyen’s description of it, and finally the myth that it had arisen from the ground as a lotus flower. ‘A lotus,’ he thought, ‘a lotus magically transformed into rubble.’ With little sense of guilt, Kramer realized that he had helped transform it into rubble. The bitterness of his thoughts did not prevent him from appreciating the irony of what had happened. ‘Why should Hue be any different?’ he asked himself, realizing now that it was merely a city, and that no matter how beautiful it had once been, never was it anything more than the work of a destructive, brutal species that found it impossible to exist without destroying everything left behind by former generations, a species condemned to walk through the ruins of its ancestors. “The Ancient City,” he repeated to himself, half laughing. />
  “Professor, cover that window.” It was Roads’s voice. From across the street, Kramer had radioed him to set-in for a while. Second Platoon was too far ahead of the rest of the battalion. They would have to wait for them to catch up. Chalice heard Roads placing his men in different parts of the house. It was very large and had once been elegant. They had found a Vietnamese family inside — a father, mother, grandmother, and three young daughters. Extremely nervous, the family had obsequiously offered the Marines what little food they had. In return, a few of the Marines had toyed with them. Roads stopped this immediately, then placed the family in one of the inner rooms for its own protection.

  Supposedly watching for Viet Cong, Chalice instead stared at the body of a civilian only a few yards from the window. There was no odor, the cool monsoon rains still staving off decay. It was the body of a man, obviously having died while on his side. The corpse had somehow been turned on its back. Now both head and legs were off the ground in a grotesque attempt to roll itself into a ball. Chalice stared at the corpse as if it were an illusion. It seemed impossible that life, human life, could be reduced to something so absurd.

  Finally, to avoid the sight of this corpse, Chalice raised his eyes to the rubble across the street. This too was disturbing. He wanted to explain it to himself, not as the result of some action, but rather of some process. To him, a paradox was not an explanation. Yet this was as far as his logic would take him — to the paradox of the human fear of change and the insatiability of human desires — both traits rooted in the struggle for survival, separately working towards it, yet combining to force conflict and destruction. This made sense. It explained things. But to Chalice, a paradox was a question, not an answer.

  The sound of some furniture being scraped across the floor distracted him. The noise had come from the room where the Vietnamese family was being kept. At first nervous that they might be doing something, he realized from the muffled cries of one of the girls that it was they who were in danger. Chalice ran towards the room and burst through its door only to freeze, stunned beyond action. Four Marines, two of them from his own fire team, glanced back at him. While one of them kept the rest of the terrified family at gunpoint, two others held down the twelve-year-old girl, naked below the waist, for the remaining man as he tried to rape her.

  “Get off!” Chalice thought he yelled, not realizing the words never passed his lips.

  The men ignored Chalice as they continued trying to rape the girl. He lunged forward and smashed the stock of his blooker into the neck of the Marine on top of her. The man collapsed, but one of the others grabbed Chalice around the shoulders and threw him to the ground. Roads burst through the door and viciously kicked the man off Chalice. The Marine Chalice had hit lay dazed on the floor while the other three dashed out of the room. Roads made no attempt to help the hysterically crying girl as she crawled over to her parents. He was too ashamed to look at anyone but Chalice.

  “Professor, you all right?”

  Chalice nodded his head, stunned far more by what he had seen than by what had happened to him.

  Roads yelled for the man on the floor to get up. But he was still too groggy to move. Roads began kicking him until he finally managed to crawl out of the room. Chalice walked in a daze back to his window. One of the girl’s attackers was casually sitting against the wall smoking a cigarette.

  More in disbelief than anger, Chalice looked down at him and said, “You . . . worthless . . . sonofabitch.”

  “Take it easy, Sandman. She’s just a Gook.” In an instant, Chalice kicked him in the face. The Marine dived for Chalice’s legs and pulled him to the ground. Again Roads appeared, quickly kicking the Marine senseless.

  Roads walked away too enraged even to curse, while Chalice pulled himself up by the windowsill. As soon as the Marine gained his senses, he looked up at Chalice with hatred. Again Chalice saw the little girl and remembered the word “Sandman.” He spit down at the Marine’s face. The Marine struggled to get to his feet. Chalice pointed his blooker at him, saying calmly, “Go ahead. Give me an excuse.” The Marine turned away, and Chalice again stared out the window, seeing nothing but his own thoughts, thinking about what had and could have happened, about what must be happening somewhere at that moment, about dreams and illusions and the costs of defending them.

  Roads told Chalice to get his fire team ready to move out. Chalice did this immediately, glad to be leaving the house, knowing that soon he would be worrying about bullets instead of what he had just seen. Ramirez gathered his half of the platoon together. They stood watching from within the house as Kramer’s half began their dash down the opposite side of the street. When Ramirez saw them finally take cover, he ordered his men to move out.

  It was over fifty yards to the next standing building. As Chalice ran towards it, he, as well as the other men, felt helplessly vulnerable and longed to dive behind every piece of rubble along the way. Running breathlessly, the weight of his pack pushing him into the ground, Chalice waited for that inevitable burst of rifle fire that would send the men in the column sprawling. This time it never came.

  Chalice sat with his back against the wall of the building, still trying to catch his breath. The men on Kramer’s side of the street were now doing the running. Chalice watched the last of them rush by. Soon it would again be his group’s turn to run, to do the same thing they had been doing for over a week. The repetition did not bother them. It was good. Their fear was of the breaks in this repetition when a burst of rifle fire would catch them in the open, a burst like what they now heard as they rested.

  Ramirez looked around the corner of the building and saw Kramer’s men hopelessly strung out and pinned down by the continuing machine gun fire. Hearing Ramirez’s description, Chalice knew exactly what would have to be done. Ramirez ordered Roads to circle his squad behind the Viet Cong machine gun.

  Chalice’s fire team went first, Rabbit at the point. Keeping low, the men moved quickly through the rubble, all the while hearing bursts from the Viet Cong machine gun. In a few minutes they were behind the building. Chalice looked back at Roads and was motioned towards the nearest wall. He took it upon himself to go first. The distance was a mere twenty yards, but as Chalice rushed towards the wall it seemed miles away and an inescapable burst of rifle fire a certainty. His legs refused to move fast enough. ‘My pack!’ he cursed to himself, suddenly realizing he’d forgotten to take it off. ‘What am I thinking. Run! RUN!’

  Finally reaching the wall, he collapsed against it, barely able to signal the rest of his fire team to join him. Chalice watched the faces of the men rushing towards him, reminded of what his own fear had been like. When his men reached the wall, they grouped dangerously close. He motioned for one of them to guard the corner and the other two to spread out. Roads’s fire team had remained behind to cover them.

  Chalice knew that whatever they were to do would have to be done fast. He and his men were at a disadvantage, and every second they remained where they were made their deaths more likely. Of the two windows on that side of the building, the nearest was closed and intact. The firing from inside continued in short bursts, causing Chalice and his men to flinch with each round. He motioned for the man in front of him to crawl under the open window and lob a grenade into the building. This man was the newest member of the squad and obviously nervous. Forgetting the nearest window was closed, he placed himself beneath it and pulled the pin on his grenade. Chalice scrambled frantically towards him, afraid of yelling and warning the Viet Cong inside, knowing that the grenade would probably bounce off the window, killing the Marine beneath it and himself. The man saw Chalice coming and became more nervous. Without knowing why, he handed the live grenade to Chalice who took it with both hands and an extreme sense of relief.

  Chalice felt like waiting a few seconds just to calm himself. But a quick glance at Roads reminded him he had better hurry. He crawled cautiously towards the open window, the live grenade held tightly in his hand. He flinched each ti
me the machine gun fired, but it was a chicom thrown from the window that he feared most. There was nowhere to run. Finally reaching the window, Chalice lay beneath it listening for sounds. Hearing none, he cautiously rose to his knees. His pack seemed trying to keep him off balance, but there was no time to remove it.

  He raised the grenade, ready to release it, when he was stunned by a baby’s cry from inside. So unexpected a sound left him both startled and confused. He almost rose to his feet before realizing the stupidity in doing so. Thoughts of what could have happened sickened him; but again the machine gun fired, reminding Chalice of the men pinned down by it and the urgency of what he was doing. Fearing for his own life, he raised his eye to the corner of the window, saw nothing but a bare wall. The sound of the machine gun was making him increasingly nervous. He had to do something . . . fast. Chalice squeezed his hand white around the grenade — it would be so easy. The arm holding the grenade dropped to his side.

  Silently, he laid the barrel of his blooker upon the sill, then slowly moved his head inside the window. A group of civilians huddled in one corner stared terrified at him. Thinking about what could have happened, Chalice turned towards the other corner — but far too slowly. An exploding rifle muzzle kept him from ever seeing it. Fired from two feet away, the bullet entered just behind Chalice’s ear, sending a large chunk of his forehead in the direction of the civilians. His body staggered back spastically and fell face down outside the window.

  Roads ordered his men to open fire. Rabbit crawled under the window, a grenade in each hand. Roads halted the firing long enough for Rabbit to heave them inside. After throwing in two more grenades, Rabbit dived through the window. Roads fired a law through the closed window, then sprang through after it firing his rifle on automatic. Two Viet Cong lay dead beneath their machine gun. Without stopping, he rushed into the other room and found Rabbit standing over the body of another Viet Cong soldier. A child’s cry caused them both to turn to the corner where some civilians lay in a pile, motionless and bleeding. The adults on top were dead, riddled with shrapnel. Beneath them lay a half-dozen children, gasping for breath but none seriously wounded. Roads called for a corpsman, and was then told what he already knew: Chalice was dead.