Matterhorn: a novel of the Vietnam War

by Karl Marlantes

  The trees grew larger and the forest darker as they gained altitude. At one point a large flat outcropping of rock opened the jungle enough to afford them a view of their line of march. Directly in front of them was a dark, narrow valley filled with clouds, which hung close to dark peaks of barren rock. The peaks guarded a narrow, twisting river. Each Marine who passed that open viewpoint made some nervous gesture: tightening his equipment, pausing to spray repellent on a leech, whistling aloud. The rain, which up to now had been falling in a misty drizzle from high clouds, suddenly intensified. It pounded the earth, bringing a rush of cold air.

  By the time they reached the three-cornered hill, Mellas had an intense headache because of his depleted blood sugar. His body had been drained by onslaughts of adrenaline, hunger, and the constant sucking cold of wet clothing. Feeling like a sick animal, he dragged himself along by will alone.

  The hill rose impossibly high in the gloom.

  Jacobs looked upward. “Who the f-fuck p-picked this?” Water from the stream at the base of the hill was dripping from his trousers.

  Mellas closed his eyes. “I did, asshole.”

  The point man sighed, then started crawling up the slope, pushing his rifle in front of him, grabbing roots and rocks.

  Partway up Mellas heard a commotion behind him. He turned to see Hippy looking helplessly up the hill as he slid backward, his heavy machine gun held in front of his face. He started knocking into people behind him, who in turn starting to slide and knock into others. The whole slow-motion scene came to a halt against a tree and everyone untangled himself, cursing Hippy. They started upward again.

  It took Mellas’s platoon an hour to reach the top while the rest of the company waited in the rushing river, freezing, exposed to attack, as the light faded completely. Mellas, as the first officer in, was responsible for setting in the defense for the company and guiding the Marines into positions as they arrived. He thrashed his way through the dark jungle with a machete, outlining the perimeter. It was all he could do to keep from falling to the forest floor, never to move again. Tangled growth slapped his face, tore at his exposed skin, hid the terrain from his eyes. He kept trying to remember all the rules about placing his machine guns. His E-tool, the small folding entrenching shovel attached to his pack, caught on a branch, and the sudden imbalance with the immense weight of his pack almost pulled him over backward. He struck out at the limb, breaking it, hurting his hand and opening the scab over a jungle-rot sore on his arm. In a frenzy, he took out his K-bar and hacked the bush to pieces. Afterward his face felt hot and flushed but his back was damp and cold. His hands were swollen, and his fingers did not want to move. He pulled down his trousers and shit watery feces that spattered on his bare legs and boots. He retched at the smell, unable to throw up because his stomach was empty.

  He headed back down the hill to guide his weary platoon in. It took the rest of the company an hour to get to the top because First Platoon’s trail had turned into a mudslide. When Mellas finally was able to return to his own position, he found Hamilton with the dry heaves from exhaustion and lack of food, retching painfully over the beginnings of a shallow hole.

  Mellas watched him, realizing that he’d have to dig the entire hole himself. “Here, give me that,” Mellas said bitterly, taking the small entrenching tool. “Why don’t you go see if you can rig our ponchos up for some sort of hooch?” he said more gently.

  Hamilton tried to smile but began retching again. “I’ll be OK in a while, sir,” he gasped. “Don’t worry, I’ll help with the hole.”

  “Forget it,” Mellas said. He started digging. When Hamilton turned away, Mellas began silently crying, hacking at the damp earth in impotent fury.

  Fitch had said there would be a full moon that night, and indeed the monsoon clouds had lightened just enough to permit an eerie glow above the trees when Mellas did his first hole-check. He found Hippy sitting silently on the edge of his hole. His bare feet dangled into the darkness below him and his ragged bleached-out boots sat next to the hole. “You’d better cover those boots, Hippy,” Mellas whispered. “I homed in on them like an airport beacon.”

  “Thanks, sir,” Hippy replied. He took his boots and put them in the hole. “Just trying to let them air a little. Thought maybe it’d keep the gooks away if they was downwind.”

  Mellas laughed and sat down beside Hippy. “Anything going on?” he whispered.

  “Here? You shitting me, Lieutenant?”

  Mellas smiled. He kicked his boot out to adjust his position and hit Hippy’s foot. Hippy winced. “Hey. You got foot trouble, Hippy?”

  “Naw. Nothing serious, sir.”

  “Let me see them.”

  “It ain’t nothing, sir. Just some blisters.”

  “Uh-huh,” Mellas replied. “Let’s see one, Hippy.”

  Hippy drew his left foot up to the edge of the hole. Even in the ghostly light, Mellas could see that it was grotesquely swollen and discolored. It repelled him. He took a deep breath. The other foot was no different. “The squid seen these?”

  “No sir.”

  Mellas exploded. “Why the fuck not?”

  Hippy hung his head.

  “Hippy, you’re a fucking cripple. Shit.”

  “I can make it, Lieutenant,” he answered.

  “Shit.” Mellas stood up. “Sure you can, if you extend six months.” Mellas took a breath and tried to cool down. Where in the fuck was he going to find another gun-squad leader as good as Hippy? “There must be some way we can get a bird to get your ass out of here.”

  “Sorry, sir,” Hippy said.

  “Sorry don’t get it,” Mellas barked, immediately wishing he hadn’t. “Who do you want to take over the gun squad?”

  Hippy touched the butt plate of the machine gun. “I humped that motherfucker a long ways, sir. I want to hump it in. It’s got good karma.”

  “Hippy, they’ll goddamned amputate. You ever hear of gangrene?”

  Hippy looked down at his feet, then giggled. “They’re pretty fucking bad, aren’t they, Lieutenant?”

  “Yeah. Pretty fucking bad.” Mellas waited a moment. “Who, Hippy?”

  “Mole. And let Young hump my gun.” Hippy reached down and toyed with the silver peace medallion that hung around his neck. “This is my last op, sir. My twelve and twenty’s in nine days and I’m out of the bush. Ten days after that, I sky out for home. I’m so short what you’re hearing now is a tape recording.”

  “We’ll get you out. They’ve got to bring us some fucking food sometime and pick Williams up.”

  In the blackness in front of Fitch’s hooch the conversation was also about helicopters and food. Fitch was on the hook with the battalion watch officer.

  “What’s the word on our resupply?” Fitch said tightly. “We’re already on our spare power sources and we’re fucking hungry. Over.”

  “We’re trying, but the Whiskey Oscar at MAG-Thirty-Nine says they got all the birds tied up in some big to-do in the flatlands and all the heavies are in bed, so we can’t alter the priorities. Can you wait a couple of days? Over.”

  Hawke, who was sitting across from Fitch, winced at the security breach about the upcoming operation.

  “Wait a couple of days? Goddamn it, we haven’t eaten for a couple of days already and we’ve been on half rations the entire time we’ve been out here because some dumb son of a bitch sitting on his fat ass back at Victor Charlie Bravo forgot to give Delta time to get organized. Now I want a fucking chopper out here with some food on it or by God there’ll be hell to pay when I get in. Now. I mean it, Stevens.”

  “Don’t use my name over the net, Bravo Six,” Stevens replied. “You know the gooners monitor our nets. I don’t want them using my name, writing weird stuff home to my wife. Over.”

  “Sorry, character Sierra,” Fitch replied, realizing that if he argued with Stevens their chances for resupply would be worse. “Look, help us out. We’re starving to death. At least tell us what the fuck we’re supposed to be doing out here. Over.”

  “I don’t know what to do about the birds, Bravo Six. Honest. As far as what you’r
e doing out there I thought that would be obvious. If you found that much ammunition, there must be more around there someplace. Hell, division public relations put out a news release about Alpha’s fight for it and everything. Over.”

  “Fight for it? They were fucking ambushed.” Fitch unkeyed the handset and looked at Hawke and Cassidy. “News story?” he said. His stomach felt weak.

  “Well, that isn’t the way I heard it.” Stevens started to say something else but was cut off.

  “Shut the fuck up and let me think, goddamn it,” Fitch shouted back into the receiver, interrupting Stevens’s transmission and probably not being totally received. Stevens apparently received enough of it to get the message, though.

  “We got to have food, Jim,” Hawke said. He had been doodling a pentangle star in the mud. “Even Lewis and Clark could hunt buffalo on the way.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cassidy said, “and I caught a couple of kids limping. I think we got some immersion foot cases that we ought to medevac. Otherwise we’ll cripple some good Marines.”

  “OK,” Fitch said. He put the receiver back to his ear and keyed it. “Big John, this is Bravo Six. Make the bird request a priority, and if I don’t get it tomorrow, then you tell them the next day it’ll be an emergency. I got some bad cases of immersion foot we’ve got to take care of ASAP. Over.”

  “Oh. The Six isn’t going to like that. You know what he thinks about immersion foot. Over.”

  “Let me worry about Big John Six. You worry about fragging us a fucking bird. Pri-or-it-y,” he enunciated. “We’ll have a zone cleared by noon. Over.”

  “Noon? How are you going to make checkpoint Alpha tomorrow?”

  “Frag the fucking bird,” Fitch said between clenched teeth. “Bravo Six out.”

  There was a pause, then the radio hissed again. “Don’t get sore, Bravo Six. I was just trying to tell you the score, that’s all. Over.”

  Fitch stared into the darkness, holding the handset away from his mouth. After a long wait, the radio hissed again.

  “OK, Bravo Six. I’ll see what I can do. No need to get sore. Big John out.”

  The next morning they drew straws to see who would clear away enough jungle to make a landing zone. Mellas lost. Still shivering with the wet and cold, he walked dejectedly back to tell the platoon. Kendall and Goodwin went back to prepare security patrols.

  The only possible place for an LZ was a small level spot just off the crest of the hill. It was, however, covered with a formidable mass of matted bamboo and elephant grass. Mellas felt physically ill. His small K-bar and dull E-tool seemed useless in the face of this clotted, dense plant life. He looked at his hands, feeling the sores of jungle rot. He looked at Jackson, knowing he could tell Jackson to start clearing while he went back to sit with Bass and monitor the single radio they now shared. He’d ordered the other radio turned off to save power. He knew, however, that he couldn’t leave these kids and ever earn their respect. Still, he didn’t know what to do in the face of this overwhelming green wall. He sensed Jackson beside him, getting mad. Mellas simply stared at the impossible task. His mind wouldn’t focus. Clear the jungle—with no tools and no food. He closed his eyes.

  Then he heard Jackson scream.

  “Fucking no-good shit!” Jackson went snarling past Mellas. Mellas looked dumbly at him, thinking Jackson had cracked. Jackson threw himself like a football player making a cross-body block into the wall of bamboo and grass. The mass yielded slightly. Jackson ran back to the group, let out a whoop, and again hurled himself at the tangled mass. It bent. He backed off and jumped into it feet first, cursing it. He began jumping up and down on it, shouting an exultant chant. The bamboo broke. The grass sagged and fell. Broyer, shielding his glasses with his arms, gave a whoop and ran headlong at the dent made by Jackson.

  Mellas took only a second to realize that he’d just had his first lesson in real leadership. He then charged forward, headfirst, as if going off tackle. The mass of vegetation let his head in but stopped his shoulders. He was followed by Tilghman, the M-79 man, and then Parker and Cortell. Mellas ran back, turned around, snarled, and did it again. Jacobs’s and Connolly’s squads, infected with the excitement of the game, went crashing into the grass too. Vancouver actually picked Connolly up and threw him like a log into the mess. Uniforms turned black with the wet rot. Hands and arms ran with blood from the rasping razor grass. But the landing zone grew.

  By eleven that morning the zone was cleared. The kids lay flat on their backs, exhausted, staring at the gray swirling clouds. An hour later the clouds touched the earth. Both the landing zone and the waiting Marines looked ghostly and unreal. By late afternoon they were all shivering with the cold, dejected, quiet, still waiting for the bird. The food was all gone. Many had eaten only three-quarters of a can in the last forty-eight hours. Fog was all around them. Even Jackson could not crush the fog.

  Fitch sent Kendall and Goodwin out on squad-size patrols to provide security for the landing zone, just in case. Kendall got lost and had to fire a pop-up flare for Daniels and Fitch to get a bearing on him. Everyone grumbled that the flare would tell the NVA where the Marines were, and among themselves the kids started calling Kendall Pop-Up. Kendall’s platoon sergeant, Samms, sat down with Bass and bitched for nearly an hour about Kendall and the policy of having every officer get experience by commanding a rifle platoon. Goodwin radioed in that he’d found something, but it was a surprise. Fitch offered Hawke twenty dollars for his can of apricots. Hawke refused.

  In midafternoon, Cortell and Jackson walked up to see Hawke about the next R & R quotas. When they reached the center of the perimeter they found Lieutenant Goodwin, still loaded with hand grenades and ammunition, fondling two baby tigers. Senior Squid and Relsnik were watching Sergeant Cassidy poke playfully at the blind kittens, a smile on his face.

  Cortell, who’d shared a fighting hole with Williams since they’d arrived in-country eight months earlier, saw the two tigers differently. He broke away from Jackson and walked over to the group.

  “I don’t think they ought to be here,” he said. His heart was starting to pound, but he was vowing to do something for Williams—anything to ease the guilty feeling that he had let Williams down.

  “Well, fuck me,” Cassidy said, standing up. “You don’t think they ought to be here, do you? Do you remember me asking for your opinion?”

  Cortell said nothing, wishing Jackson would speak up.

  “You just walk up to your fucking superiors and tell them what you think all the time?” Cassidy asked.

  “No sir,” Cortell said. The old fear of the Deep South returned, weakening his knees.

  “Then I suggest you mind your own business. I thought you’d fucking like jungle animals.”

  Cortell’s nostrils flared and his face went pallid. His hands and legs burned. He felt Jackson’s hand on his elbow, pulling him gently back, away from Cassidy and away from an inner precipice. Cortell was breathing hard, staring at Cassidy, who was staring right back at him. “I’ll kill those motherfuckers,” Cortell said.

  “Over my dead body,” Cassidy said.

  “You want it that way?”

  “You threatening to kill me, Cortell?” Cassidy asked.

  “Come on, Cortell,” Jackson said. Cortell heard him as if through a long tunnel. Jackson turned to Cassidy and added quietly, “He ain’t threatening to kill you, Gunny. It’s about Williams, his fucking friend.”

  Cortell slapped angrily at Jackson’s hand, pulling himself from its grip.

  “Come on, Cortell,” Jackson hissed. “You gonna get your ass locked up.” Jackson pulled him around, Cortell jerking back and Jackson jerking him forward. Cortell somehow managed to break free of his rage by stepping outside himself. He became aware of himself being angry. Then he realized that he and Jackson were pulling at each other. His mind went spinning through images of Jesus and the money changers, Peter cutting the servant’s ear, Jesus hanging on the cross, God crying for his lost child. He remembered who he was and where he was and allowed Jackson to grip his elbow and walk him down the hill, lea
ving Cassidy standing in front of the silent group.

  Then he remembered Four Corners, Mississippi, and Gilead, four miles down the dirt road, where the white people lived. He remembered driving down the tree-lined streets, trying to look inconspicuous in his grandfather’s old 1947 Ford, carefully wiped clean of dust. He remembered his grandmother having made sure his shirt was white and ironed. Then he remembered his older cousin, Luella, walking back home on the dusty road from Gilead, hot and exhausted in her housemaid’s uniform, to nurse her baby who’d been left with Luella’s mother the whole fourteen hours of her absence, aching to ease her breasts and her heart. Then he remembered hours and hours of holding his urine and the white high school boys who stared at him with hard eyes when he came to the cotton storage shed without “proper business,” only wanting to pass a message to his uncle who worked in the yard out back. In his memory now they all looked like Cassidy.