Matterhorn: a novel of the Vietnam War

by Karl Marlantes

  Young scrambled up beside Jacobs, set the bipod at the end of his machine-gun barrel on a small hump, and began a steady fire against the NVA machine gun. This enabled the two remaining kids from the fire team to keep crawling up the hill, grenades in their hands.

  “Where’s Jermain?” Mellas shouted at Jacobs. “We need a fucking M-79.” Jacobs turned and looked down at Mellas, who was just below him. He pointed. Mellas raced away, using the steepness of the hill for cover. Bullets passed over his head. He found Jermain crawling cautiously upward through the thick bushes, his stubby M-79 grenade launcher pushed out in front of him.

  “We need grenades,” Mellas shouted. “Machine-gun bunker. Jacobs is going after it.” Mellas turned around, not even looking to see if Jermain would follow and not thinking for a moment that he wouldn’t. Jermain ran after him.

  The earth was spattering on the front of the small hump and on both sides of Young. His teeth were bared and his face was contorted with fear as he and the NVA machine gunner locked on each other, bullets flying between them. But Young continued firing in short disciplined bursts so as not to overheat his barrel, leaving the others free to move. Jermain shouted at Robertson and two new kids in his fire team above him to get down. Then he stood up, exposing himself to the fire, and began to pump grenades at the opening of the bunker. The NVA machine gun stopped firing.

  Then Robertson and the two other kids crawled to their knees and scrambled up to the side of the bunker to finish it off. Mellas was already running away, having done all he could. He didn’t see one of the kids crumple to the ground, shot in the back from a hidden hole to the right of the bunker. Robertson rolled forward into the cover of the bushes, throwing both his grenades into the open hole and killing the two North Vietnamese who were firing from it. Without grenades, however, he was now ineffective against the bunker with the machine gun. He lay on his back and cradled his rifle on his chest. The machine gun opened up again. Young responded. This left Jacobs to figure out what to do next.

  Mellas ran behind Jancowitz’s squad. They were bunching up, making it easier for the NVA gunners, and the terrain was forcing them, unwitting, toward the easier but far more deadly approach of the top of the ridgeline. Mellas saw Bass and screamed at him, “Get those stupid fuckers off that ridgeline.” Bass nodded, gasping for air, and ran forward, Skosh dogging his heels with the radio.

  Mellas moved straight up the hill. Pollini was there, frantically trying to clear his weapon. Pollini kept looking above him, not at his weapon, jamming the action over and over again.

  It took no time for Mellas to figure out the trap. The bushes directly in front of Pollini had been cut away from the ground level up to about two feet, and then the branches had been left in their normal state. It was a clear field of fire for a machine gun that would chop down the advancing man’s legs, causing him to fall into the bullets. “Give me that fucking rifle, Shortround,” Mellas shouted. His voice was barely audible above the noise. Pollini handed Mellas the rifle as if it might explode any second. He looked at Mellas wildly, then looked downhill to what seemed like safety. Then he grinned at Mellas. “It’s jammed, sir.”

  Mellas quickly saw that Pollini hadn’t seated his magazine completely and the upper edge was blocking the passage of the bolt. Mellas shook his head and snapped the magazine into place. He fired a short burst. The hot shell casings poured out, hitting Pollini on the side of the face. That snapped Pollini back to the situation at hand. He grinned and reached for his rifle, once again looking uphill through the tunnel of cleared brush.

  “You OK, Shortround?” Mellas asked.

  Pollini smiled, gulped, and nodded. “Yeah. Fucking stuck, huh, sir?”

  “Yeah, well, it’s unstuck now. You watch it. There’s a fucking machine gun right above you.” Mellas moved away, looking for Jancowitz.

  Pollini scrambled to his feet and darted up the hill. He ran straight up the carefully cleared path, disappearing from Mellas’s view before Mellas could tackle him.

  The machine gun opened up, and Mellas lunged behind a small lip as the bullets chopped up mud and branches. The gun stopped. In the brief silence he heard Pollini shout, “I’m hit. I’m hit.”

  Mellas hugged the earth when the gun started again, hoping Pollini would crawl back. He didn’t.

  Bass came around the side of the hill. “Who’s hit?” he asked.

  “Shortround,” Mellas said, crawling backward toward Bass, who was leaning on his side against the steep slope. Skosh was crouched at his feet trying to listen to the radio, one hand over his exposed ear.

  Bass looked up the hill. “There’s a fucking machine gun up there, sir.”

  “I know. Shortround’s alive. I heard him yell.”

  “Me too,” Bass said. “But it’s suicide to get him from here. We’ll work around it. It’s dug in but it’s not in a bunker like the other one. Maybe a Mike twenty-six.”

  Doc Fredrickson came scrambling into the relative safety beneath the hill’s crest where the three of them crouched. He leaned back against the hill, chest heaving, and stared down the long ridgeline where several bodies lay exposed. He wasn’t listening to the conversation.

  Mellas turned to Bass and grinned. “What do you think, Sergeant Bass? Is it worth at least a Navy Commendation medal if I go get him?” Mellas intended this as a joke but realized he was partially serious.

  Bass looked at him. He was not in a joking mood. “You’ll get killed up there, Lieutenant. Don’t do it.”

  Mellas was suddenly determined to get a medal; moreover, it was his fault that Pollini wasn’t on KP duty back at VCB. He turned to Fredrickson. “Wait here until I get him down.” Fredrickson was still catching his breath and didn’t respond.

  Bass said, “OK, sir, I’ll try and give you some cover. If you get killed I’ll put you in for a posthumous Bronze Star.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  Up until this moment, Mellas had felt as though he were in a movie. Now, faced with the consequences of his decision, he sensed that the film was about to break in two: sudden, searing white light, and then nothing.

  He watched Skosh and Bass crawl slowly into place to his left. He nodded at them and they raised their rifles over the lip of the hill and opened up. Mellas whirled to his feet and went charging over the small crest, throwing his body forward on the ground, firing blindly uphill, hoping to keep the machine gunner’s head down as he crawled forward.

  Pollini was sprawled on his back, feet pointing uphill toward the machine gun. Mellas hit the ground below Pollini’s head. He reached up and tried to pull Pollini downhill by dragging on his utility shirt at the shoulders. The machine gun opened up as soon as Mellas stopped firing. Mellas tugged but couldn’t get sufficient leverage to move Pollini’s weight. He cursed. He tugged again. He couldn’t move him. Bullets snapped past his ears. He fired a last desperate burst from his M-16 directly over Pollini’s body and scrambled up beside him. He turned himself around and threw himself on top of Pollini, hugging him face-to-face. Wrapping his arms around him he jacked the two of them sideways on the steep hillside and then quickly rolled downhill, pulling Pollini on top of him as he rolled. Mellas felt bullets impacting all around him. With every roll he hoped it was Pollini and not him who would catch the bullet.

  Suddenly the earth gave way and he fell over the embankment. Fredrickson was waiting there. He pulled Pollini free. Pollini’s breathing had stopped. There was blood coming from his mouth. Bass and Skosh came running around the corner of the embankment and the three of them watched in silence. The objective of taking the hill and the terrific noise and confusion raging about them were forgotten as they watched Fredrickson try to save Pollini’s life.

  Fredrickson was blowing air into Pollini’s mouth, spitting out blood and vomit between breaths. He did this for at least a minute, then looked up at the other three, defeat on his face. He moved aside some matted, bloody hair on the top of Pollini’s head and exposed a small round hole. Mellas remembered that, at the top of the hill, Pollini’s helmet had been behind him on the ground.
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  “There’s nothing I can do for him, sir,” Fredrickson said, grief and helplessness showing on his face. “He’s got a bullet inside his head someplace. I don’t see no exit hole.”

  Mellas nodded and looked at Bass and Skosh.

  “Fucking Shortround,” Skosh said quietly and turned away, his jaw working, looking uphill.

  The machine gun opened up, its heavy rounds slamming through the air. They heard grenades going off. Then silence. Then the machine gun opened up again.

  Mellas forgot about Pollini and ran off toward the sounds. He came upon Amarillo, who was crawling forward, and joined him.

  Sweat ran down Amarillo’s face. “Janc, sir,” he said. “He is going after that gun. He has Jackson’s team with him.”

  Mellas could see nothing of Jackson or Jancowitz. He looked behind him. A new kid was hunched over in a little ball, a bullet through his shoulder and neck. Mellas didn’t even know his name.

  Amarillo saw Mellas looking at the dead Marine. “He is too boot from ITR. He goes running up against the machine gun.”

  Mellas didn’t answer. Both of them overcame their desire to stay hugging the earth and scrambled forward.

  Jackson was moving his team in small rushes, closing in on the gun. No Marines were firing. “Where’s Janc?” Mellas shouted.

  Jackson pointed ahead. “He took off around the side, sir. We don’t know where the fuck he’s at.” Mellas now understood why no one was shooting.

  They heard roaring bursts of fire and yelling to their left, but Mellas barely registered this. It was Goodwin’s platoon, just released by Fitch.

  In the midst of the roaring they caught glimpses of Jancowitz’s head above the bushes. He was running directly along the contour of the hill, taking the NVA machine gun from the side. He fired a burst from his M-16. A man next to the machine gunner turned his AK-47 on Jancowitz, but Janc kept running forward.

  Jackson saw the gunner turn the machine gun toward Jancowitz. He scrambled to his feet and charged up the hill screaming, “Janc, you stupid motherfucker. You crazy stupid motherfucker.”

  Jancowitz released the spoon of his grenade as the gunner got the machine gun turned around and opened up on him. Janc seemed to throw the grenade and go down simultaneously, bullets bursting out of the back side of his flak jacket. Then his grenade went off—like a sudden hand clap in an empty room.

  Cortell went running after Jackson, firing quick bursts at the gun pit. Then, as if jerked by an unseen hand, Cortell’s neck snapped backward and his helmet went spinning into the air behind him. He sank to his knees, staring stupidly at his rifle, which he was holding horizontally in front of him. Then he collapsed forward, ending up with his bare head on the ground like a Muslim at prayer.

  Jackson kept running forward, trying to reach Jancowitz. Mellas reached Cortell and rolled him over on his side. Cortell’s knees were still folded up against his stomach in a fetal position. Blood was running off his forehead and his hair was matted with it. He was gritting his teeth in pain. “Janc got him, sir,” Cortell wheezed. “Janc got him. Oh, Janc. Oh, Lord Jesus.” Mellas grabbed Cortell’s gauze bandage package from his belt, ripped open the paper, and slapped it on what looked like a furrow starting at his forehead and going back over the top of his ear. He put Cortell’s hand on the bandage, pressing it down hard. “Don’t fucking move it,” he said.

  He turned back uphill. He passed Jancowitz’s body. Blood was still oozing from beneath the back of his flak jacket. A dark black patch was slowly spreading into both trouser legs. Three facts registered simultaneously: the machine gun was silent, Jancowitz was dead, and the opening had to be exploited. Mellas turned to his left and saw Goodwin already moving toward him with an entire squad. Goodwin, his natural fighting instincts functioning faster than Mellas was thinking, was already rushing into the gap where the machine-gun fire used to be. Within seconds he and five other Marines were behind the line of holes and bunkers. China, scrambling up the steep slope with the heavy machine gun against his chest, slammed into the earth at the edge of the former NVA machine gun’s position. He began laying fire over the NVA fighting holes to Goodwin’s right. Mellas immediately saw what China was doing. He kept running. He shouted at Goodwin, who didn’t seem to hear him. He ran. He made hand signals at the Marines behind him, redirecting them behind China, taking advantage of the fact that the enemy could no longer stand up long enough to take aim and fire because of the stream of China’s bullets. He caught Goodwin’s eye, pointed at him, and then pointed left. He pointed at his own chest and then pointed right. Chaos slipped momentarily into order.

  With Second Platoon now pouring through the gap and coming at the NVA from behind them, it seemed as if a heavy weight had been removed. “They’re on the top! I see Scar on the top!” The cry passed all around the hillside. Fracasso and the Marines of First Platoon surged forward. Mellas was exhilarated. All his fear had left him. He ran straight up to the hill’s crest, Marines appearing all along the line in small groups and surging through the line of holes. Those NVA soldiers who hadn’t been trapped in position were moving in rapid but disciplined flight down a finger to the northwest. What just seconds before had been mad scrambling now turned into methodical and cautious destruction. Grenades were rolled into holes and tossed into the openings of the crude log bunkers. As each NVA position fell, the one next to it became vulnerable. Any NVA soldier trying to break for the jungle was immediately killed by fire from several directions.

  Mellas met Goodwin at a short trench leading to the dark opening of a bunker. Both had their grenades out. They looked each other in the eye briefly, then Goodwin nodded and they both swung in front of the opening, threw their grenades, and dived to the side as the blast came ripping out of the entrance. They crawled in together, firing short bursts on automatic. Mellas was flat on the deck and Goodwin was just behind him in a crouch so that they could fire their rifles at the same time.

  There was no one inside.

  Mellas started to laugh and rolled over on his back, looking up at the roof of the gloomy bunker.

  “You two guys having fun, ay?” Vancouver was peering through the entrance at them, smiling. His face was streaked with sweat; his machine gun was steaming. His sword was sheathed. “Nagoolian went thataway.” He pointed toward Matterhorn.

  Mellas crawled out and sat on top of the bunker, his legs quivering so that he was unable to stand. The battle was over. There were pitifully few dead enemy soldiers to show for it.

  Goodwin moved off to set in his platoon. Ridlow, wounded in the leg, lay on the hillside, pallid with shock, and waited to be helped up to the LZ. Mellas, still shaking, trotted down the hill to guide in the Marines of Third Platoon, who were racing forward to set up for a possible counterattack.

  Mellas passed Pollini. His eyes were frozen open. He remembered Pollini’s voice as he cried out, “I’m hit.” How could he cry out if he’d been shot in the head? A guilty sickening thought wrenched Mellas’s stomach. Pollini’s head had been pointing downhill. Could he have shot Pollini when he was firing wildly upward, trying to keep the machine gunners’ heads down?

  Mellas stared at Pollini’s blank eyes. He sat down beside him, wanting to ask, wanting to explain what he’d done: that he really had wanted to save him, not just add a medal to his list of accomplishments. He had pulled Pollini off KP because he wanted to do right by him. He hadn’t meant for him to end up dead. But he could say none of it. Pollini was dead.

  Mellas tried to put down the thought that he could have killed Pollini. It must have been the gook machine gun. He wanted to leave the doubt behind, buried with the bullet in Pollini’s brain, but he knew he never could. If he made it out alive he’d carry this doubt with him forever.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Victory in combat is like sex with a prostitute. For a moment you forget everything in the sudden physical rush, but then you have to pay your money to the woman showing you the door. You see the dirt on the walls and your sorry image in the mirror.

  Thick fog made twilight of mid
morning. It hid the Marines on Helicopter Hill from the sniper fire now coming from the bunkers that Bravo Company had built on Matterhorn. But the fog also kept the helicopters from evacuating the wounded. The Marines dragged their dead friends to a shallow pit near the top of the hill. Mellas and Fitch sat in the dark interior of the bunker Goodwin and Mellas had taken. The fog hung silver-gray in the entrance hole.

  Fitch started crying in small silent sobs, the tears running down his dirty cheeks and dripping on the map that lay between him and Mellas. Relsnik was transmitting medevac numbers, identifying the dead and wounded. “Zulu Five Niner Niner One. Over.”

  A bored voice came back over the radio. “I copy Zulu Five Niner Niner One. Over.”

  “That’s affirm. Bravo Niner One Four Niner. Over.”

  “Hey, is that a Coors too? Over.”

  “That’s a rog. These are all Coors. Did you copy that last? Over.”

  “Roger, I copy Bravo Niner One Four Niner. Give me the next one. Over.”

  And Relsnik did, reading them off one by one. The numbers would eventually lead a somber man, sickened by the job he had to do, to some woman’s door, to let her know that her husband or son would be coming home wrapped in rubber. The body would arrive in the early morning hours so that the people at the airport wouldn’t be disturbed.