Matterhorn

by Karl Marlantes

  Hamilton raised an imaginary glass to the air. “Here’s to the fucking Air Force.”

  Mellas, his eyes still tearing, walked over to where the company CP group was sitting. Fitch was holding on to the hook, clearly waiting for a reply from battalion. “I’ve got Bainford, the battalion forward air controller, on it,” he said when Mellas got within speaking distance.

  About a minute later the handset squawked and Mellas could hear a tinny voice saying, “It’s a defoliant. We put an order in for it for tomorrow, but it looks like we got a fuckup someplace. Sorry about that. It won’t hurt you. It’s just to kill plants. It’s called Agent Orange. It’s so the trees won’t give any shelter to the enemy. The Air Force has used it a lot, and it won’t bother humans.”

  “Well, it bothers me,” Mellas said loudly. Fitch ignored him.

  “Roger that. Bravo Six out.”

  Fitch turned to Mellas. “You heard him—it’s for killing plants. Zoomies. God damn them.” Fitch kept muttering curses as he wiped his eyes.

  Hawke walked up and handed Fitch his pear-can cup, steaming with coffee.

  The sound of the birds coming in from the south finally broke the nervous lethargy. Mellas rushed into his gear, rechecking ammunition and weapons, then realized that Goodwin would be going in first and sat down again.

  The first bird came in fast. Its roar filled the air and its blades lashed the puddles of water in the muddy clay. Goodwin rushed across the open ground with his heli team. He slapped their backs, counting them, as he moved them into the opening jaws of the chopper’s rear. The tailgate closed and he was gone. Almost immediately a second bird flew in, and then a third. Mellas saw Sergeant Ridlow, his big .44 strapped to his hip, run across the LZ. Then Mellas too was running across the LZ, Hamilton scrambling beside him, his radio buried under all his other gear. Mellas counted his team into the bird. He gave a thumbs-up to the crew chief, and they were swallowed and sliding off into space, the chopper dropping down from the hilltop to pick up airspeed. Mellas had his compass out, continually checking directions so that when they hit the ground he’d be oriented immediately.

  Off to their right the looming black ridgeline that had been their constant companion on the hill, and had required a full day’s effort to reach, slid by in seconds. Below it were steep jungle-covered slopes carved by large streams. The jungle stopped when it hit the valley floor and elephant grass took over. The map was a confused series of contour lines. In several places the contour lines didn’t even join—the mapmakers had given up.

  The deck tilted and the pitch of the blades changed. The roar of the engine increased. Mellas’s throat was throbbing again. The grass rushed up toward them, changing from its illusory smoothness to its ten-foot-tall reality. The chopper hit with a crash, throwing everyone back on his rear end. The doors opened and they scrambled out, hitting the mashed grass beneath their feet at a full run. Mellas immediately headed to the left and began placing everyone in his assigned place in the zone.

  Nothing happened. Smiles broke out over rifle barrels pointing outward into the grass. A few minutes later Mellas saw Fitch and Hawke running across the LZ toward the Charlie Company CP group. Mellas walked over to join them. As he did, he saw that the kids of Charlie Company were nearly exhausted and their clothing, dark and wet, was clinging to their bodies. Their jungle rot was even worse than what Mellas had seen at Matterhorn.

  Mellas saw a radioman and walked toward someone who was lying on the ground but looked like a platoon commander. He looked up at Mellas wearily. His face was wide and he had a short thick mustache. There was no way of identifying rank except by intuition, but this man seemed to be in charge. “Hello. I’m Lieutenant Mellas. First Platoon Bravo Company. You guys look tired.”

  The man scratched his ear and grimaced. He reached out a beefy hand. “I’m Jack Murphy. Charlie One. We died two days ago and I’m having post-death hallucinations about sitting on an LZ waiting to get out of this fucking place. This is Somerville.” He indicated the radioman. “He’s not really here either.” Then Murphy’s face twitched and his head gave a brief jerk. He seemed unaware of it, as did his radio operator.

  “They fucking humped us to death,” said Somerville.

  “What’s the terrain like?”

  “Awful,” Murphy said. Again there was the quick sideways jerk of the head and the facial twitch. “Fucking mountains. Cliffs. Covered in fucking clouds.”

  Mellas pretended not to see the tic. “Hard resupply, I suppose.”

  “No. It was easy.”

  “Oh?”

  “There wasn’t any.”

  “Oh.” Mellas decided Jack Murphy didn’t feel like talking. But Mellas wanted information. “I heard you got hit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened?”

  Murphy grunted and raised himself to a sitting position. He brought his pack up with him as if it were simply part of his body. Then he lurched to his feet. He was about two inches taller than Mellas. He pointed into the elephant grass, indicating something unseen. “Out over that way the country gets real steep, lots of fucking streams and shit. You got ropes?”

  “Yeah. We carry one per squad.”

  “Good,” Murphy said. “Well, about four days from here, maybe less if you follow where we went and risk getting ambushed, there’s a steep fucking hill. The gooks have dug steps out of it, so they’ve obviously had plenty of time to prepare bunkers. The point man and one other started up and all shit broke loose. The gooks got both of them and two others.”

  “You get any?”

  “Who the fuck knows?” Murphy told Mellas the story. They had been strung out along a river that ran just below a hill. The terrain wasn’t suitable for goats. Under the cover of their M-79 grenade launchers, they pulled the bodies back and didn’t go any farther. They had to build a landing zone quickly in order to get the wounded medevaced in time. They were socked in by the monsoon and there was no good place in that impossible terrain anyway, so they humped downhill as fast as they could to get out of the cloud cover. One more died on the way down.

  Murphy suddenly sat down again, worn out. “Save your fucking food.” He twitched two times.

  “Thanks,” Mellas said. Murphy only grunted in reply.

  Mellas moved on. He joined Fitch and Hawke and someone he guessed was Charlie Six, Charlie Company’s commanding officer. The man wore a battered pair of glasses with tape wrapped around them. His utilities were black with water and rotten elephant grass. They clung to his body. He kept glancing nervously at the sky.

  “Mellas,” Fitch greeted him, unfolding his map, “just who we want to see.”

  “Your enthusiasm is hardly contagious,” Mellas answered. Fitch didn’t smile.

  Hawke broke in, imitating W. C. Fields, “My boy, you do learn fast.”

  Fitch laughed nervously.

  The conversation with Murphy had left Mellas on edge, and the W. C. Fields imitation, a form of humor he had always considered low-brow, grated on his nerves.

  “Enough, Jayhawk,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mellas immediately regretted having said anything.

  Fitch, licking his lips nervously, was oblivious of the exchange. He pointed to the map that he had laid out on the ground, and they all knelt over it. “This is about where the ammo cache is,” he said. “Captain Coates here figures it’s about three days if we follow their trail and risk ambush. Four or five if we take the safer way up along the ridgeline here.” He bit his lip, suddenly silent. Then he looked up at Mellas. “I want First Platoon on point. We’re going to make our own trail so I need someone who’s good with a map. Right now we’ve got to clear out of the LZ fast. The gooks are probably already setting up their mortars. Follow Charlie Company’s trail until I say otherwise.” He licked his lips. “Tell your point man that Alpha’s coming down the fucking trail with a body so don’t get trigger-happy.” Fitch’s voice trailed off, and he gazed uncertainly into the damp rustling elephant grass. Mellas could feel Fitch’s uneasiness. It was his first major operation commanding the entire company.


  Captain Coates was sound asleep, slumped on his pack next to his radio operator, who was also asleep.

  Mellas felt a stirring of hope. Here were two company commanders, one unsure of himself, the other giving in to exhaustion, yet both had received commands. Then why not himself? He saw himself telling people back home he had commanded a company in action, 212 men. No, 212 Marines. He looked over at Hawke, feeling Hawke’s presence as an impediment, knowing the company would go to Hawke and not himself unless a captain showed up when Fitch rotated, in which case it still wouldn’t go to him. He simply needed more time.

  Hawke, mistaking Mellas’s look for a silent question, nodded toward the sleeping commander of Charlie Company and began to fill in Fitch’s instructions. “Charlie Six could only describe the cache area. He couldn’t actually locate it on the map, because the map’s inaccurate. So where the battalion says it is ain’t necessarily so. Coates says the map is a good six hundred meters off in some places. Tonight we’re going to try to make an old gook base camp they found, up here.” Hawke circled his finger around, indicating a broad area. “The jungle’s so thick he wasn’t sure exactly where he was, but it sounds like a good defensive position. Your first sign will be brush cuttings. Either that or you’ll hit Charlie’s trail from the uphill side. You start seeing signs, stop and give Jim a call and he’ll come up and take a look. I’ll be humping way in the rear with Staff Sergeant Samms.” Mellas knew that Samms, Third Platoon’s platoon sergeant, was regarded as competent. But Samms was saddled with Lieutenant Kendall’s poor map-reading skills until they could get Kendall over his mandatory ninety days in the bush and get him back to his motor transportation unit.

  “What about the Kit Carsons?” Mellas asked, referring to the scouts assigned to the company for the operation, former NVA soldiers who had deserted and taken better pay with the Americans.

  “They’re on fucking strike,” Hawke said. “They’ll just hump along with the CP group.”

  “You want me to pull out now?” Mellas asked.

  Fitch came back to the present and told Mellas to take his platoon about 200 meters up Charlie’s and Alpha’s trail and then wait for the rest of the company to wind out of the landing zone. Mellas was surprised when Fitch told him that it took about half an hour for a company to snake single file out of a zone.

  “Where you walking?” Hawke asked Mellas.

  “Number five.” The point man would lead, followed by the dog, Pat, and Corporal Arran; another rifleman and the squad leader were at positions three and four; and then came Mellas, followed by Hamilton and the radio.

  “Good. I don’t want the company going off on a fucking bear hunt because some squad leader can’t read his compass. You’d better know where the fuck you are all the time.”

  “Yes, sir.” Mellas said, smiling and trying to understand why Hawke was suddenly so testy.

  “Just keep on your fucking toes.” Hawke wasn’t smiling. “And keep your fucking compass hidden when you check it. Man with a compass is a dead giveaway for a leader.”

  “Sure, Hawke.”

  Mellas rejoined the platoon. Everyone stood up, anxious to get out of the zone, feeling exposed to enemy mortars attracted by the helicopters. Bass and all three squad leaders pointed out with some passion that First Platoon had had point at the end of the last operation. Mellas stopped the argument by saying Fitch had ordered First Platoon on point because of the critical need to navigate to the NVA base camp. They all knew that with the possible exception of Daniels, Mellas was the best one with a map and compass and accepted their fate.

  There was no argument among the squads that it was Conman’s squad’s turn to have point for the platoon. Vancouver was eating a package of Kool-Aid powder, waiting for the go-ahead. Everyone had given up trying to argue Vancouver out of taking point for the squad.

  Mellas radioed Fitch. “Bravo Six, this is Bravo One. We’re ready to roll. Just follow in trace of my Bugs Bunny Grape. Over.”

  “One, Bravo,” Pallack answered. “Skipper says to make hat. Over.”

  “Roger. One out.” Mellas looked at Vancouver and pointed into the elephant grass. Vancouver, who had purple smeared all around his mouth, took a last pull at the torn package and handed the remainder to Mellas. He chambered a round into his sawed-off machine gun and walked into the tall grass, following Charlie Company’s path. Mellas looked at the package, purple powder smeared on the torn edges, wet from Vancouver’s saliva. He shrugged, downed a mouthful, and made a face at Hamilton. “God, how do you stand this shit?” His eyes squinted at the tartness, and then he felt saliva gushing into his mouth. He shook his head and moved out, Hamilton following.

  Almost immediately the hubbub of the landing zone was cut off from view and hearing. The tall grass whispered around them. Soon they passed Charlie Company’s two-man outpost. One bedraggled kid called out, “I hope they don’t hump you like they humped us.”

  “Me too,” Mellas called back to him. “Here, I hate this flavor.” He tossed the Bugs Bunny Grape to him and the kid smiled, holding it up in the air. Then he was lost to view.

  There was no sun, just gray drizzle and the wet sighing elephant grass towering above them, its lower portions already rotting, making more soil to grow more elephant grass. As they twisted and turned along the trail of smashed grass, Mellas continually checked his compass. He kept it close to his hip.

  Bass, with the tail-end squad, radioed that he was just now passing Charlie’s outpost. Mellas was both surprised and disconcerted by how slowly they must be going, and the platoon was less than a third of the company. He went on farther, trying to estimate how far he’d have to go in order to put enough trail behind him to accommodate the entire company. Eventually he told Connolly to stop. Word passed up to Vancouver, who was on point, and Mellas motioned everyone down, alternating directions inboard-outboard to watch both sides of the trail. He waited for Fitch’s word that the company had gotten its tail out of the zone and he could move forward again. He felt isolated, seeing only one person on the trail ahead of him and no one behind him because of the elephant grass, taking it on faith that the company was indeed still there. The drizzling rain and the wet elephant grass soaked his clothes through.

  The radio hissed faintly. “Move it. Over.”

  “Roger. Moving,” Hamilton answered. “Out.” Hamilton motioned to Connolly, and everyone climbed to his feet without any word from Mellas. A good radioman and squad leader functioned without the need of a lieutenant, and Hamilton and Connolly had been together for months. Mellas was occupied with a leech he’d picked up. He kept kicking at his left leg with his right foot, hoping to kill it or knock it off without having to stop and squeeze insect repellent on it.

  The company jerked forward, the radio alternately telling it to stop and go. It moved like an inchworm, slowly building up a contraction somewhere in the middle, then slowly stretching out until one kid lost sight of another. Word would then pass forward or back to the nearest radio. “Break in the column.” Then the radioman would call forward to the point platoon: “Hold it. We lost you.” Everyone would stop. People would fume.

  Then the whole rear of the column would pile up on the kids who were stopped. Word would pass up and down until it reached a radio. “We’re back in contact.” Then the front of the inchworm would move blindly off. Slowly each part would feel the tug of the one in front of it and each Marine would start walking again, boots barely lifted from the mud of the trail, steps short and slow. Meanwhile the back would still be piling up and stopping. By the time the back of the column would get unpiled and moving, there would be another break in the front.

  “Bravo One, Bravo.” The radio’s curt message ended in a burst of static as Pallack’s transmitter key was let up. “Alpha figures dey’re four hundred to five hundred meters from d’ zone, so you ought to be close. Over.”

  “Roger. Bravo One out.”

  Hamilton looked at Mellas. In the silence of the elephant grass Mellas had heard the entire conversation, even though Hamilton was the one using the handset. Mellas nodded
and moved up behind Connolly, who was at number four. “Alpha’s close,” he whispered. Connolly passed the word up to Corporal Arran, who was walking with a much-coveted twelve-gauge shotgun at the ready next to Pat. Vancouver, who was in front of Pat and Arran, was completely out of sight in the narrow twisting confines of the muddy trail.

  Everyone grew tenser. There was only a split second to decide whether the slight movement on the trail in front was friendly or unfriendly. Deciding wrong could mean death, or the death of a fellow Marine in the approaching unit.

  The company pressed on in the tunnel of grass, the sky visible only directly above them, the light poor. Vancouver scarcely dared breathe. Pat moved his red-brown ears nervously, sensing the Marines’ tenseness. Suddenly Pat’s silvery-white hair stood up, his tail went rigid, his nose pointed, and his red ears were angled forward. Mellas motioned everyone down. Silently, the column sank into the grass. Vancouver lay down next to the trail, his gun pointed to where the trail turned a corner. Everyone waited to see whether a Marine or an NVA soldier would come around the corner. Soon the fire team on point heard the sound of someone slipping in the mud. Then a few more footsteps. Then there was an eerie silence. No movement. No sound.

  Connolly, eyebrows raised, turned to look at Mellas. Mellas nodded yes. Connolly whispered, “Hey, Alpha. This is Bravo here.”

  A voice whispered back, “Whoa, man. Am I glad to hear you.” The voice rose to a soft speaking tone. “We’re there. I just heard Bravo Company.” Alpha’s point man emerged cautiously around the corner of the trail, crouched low to the ground, eyes darting. Vancouver raised his hand, and the kid relaxed. He pushed his rifle’s selector switch off full automatic. He was drawn, and the jungle rot on his face was very bad. He didn’t smile as he shuffled past the quiet Marines from Bravo Company. Soon another kid emerged around the bend, then another. Eventually a radio operator came along. With him was a tall, thin, young-looking lieutenant, his camouflage utilities clinging to his body. He was trembling with early-stage hypothermia. He stopped in front of Mellas and let his platoon go by.