Better Times Than These (34 page)

From a little wrinkle in the ground far behind and to the left of the North Vietnamese came the sound of firing from Brill’s platoon. Two grenades sailed up from the spot where Dreyfuss’s men had flattened out and floated down on the spot where the enemy machine gun seemed to be. There were two quick explosions, and several more figures scampered off toward the bottom of the third knoll. One of Trunk’s squads was on its feet and in seconds had reached the spot where the firing had come from. They disappeared quickly into the bunkers, and Kahn radioed Brill to hold his fire. It was a quarter to two in the afternoon. For the moment, it was over. Now they could move on.

24

F
rom the top of the third knoll, the valley spread out before them like an immense Oriental fan in thin, pastel shades. They had climbed this slope after the ravine fight, molested only by an unrelenting sun—which was nearly as threatening as the enemy, since water was again running short. All of the artillery and mortar preparation had raised an enormous cloud of dust over The Fake and its approaches, and through it, the sun had become a dull red blob in the western sky. The greens of the jungle below and the blues of the mountains on the other side and the silver of the Drang River meandering down the valley had blended into hazy, fragile colors that changed and swirled as the sun sank lower and the dust settled down.

Bravo Company pinched in its flanks, pulled together and took account of itself. The butcher’s bill for the day was nine men killed, seventeen wounded and two out of commission for other reasons.

A current of bitterness ran through the men as they dug in for the night. For one thing, they were completely exhausted, hungry and thirsty. For another, they felt the ravine battle should have been avoided, because of Patch’s promise that the artillery had wiped out resistance there. But even that aside, many of them were beginning to experience a deep sense of futility about what they were doing. So much of the killing today seemed meaningless; it was take one hill, move on to the next—two days later the enemy was back again on the first. It was killing for killing’s sake. From the perspective of the third knoll they could see the line of hills stretching into the distance, and it seemed to be endless. Everyone had his own tortured memories of the past weeks, but only the immediate was real. Like the fragments of a satanic dream, the village of the Running Man, the Boo Hoo Forest—even the ravine fight—were remembered clearly but with little connection to time or place. They were drawing their strength out of ruthlessness, and each man had by now developed a sense of this, if he had not had it before.

Above them remained two more knolls of The Fake—each to be taken, then abandoned. And at what cost? Everyone knew that if it went like today, no one would be left to claim the peak, even if they could reach it. As the sun went behind a far-off mountain and the sky faded into a ghostly twilight, the voices of Bravo Company were filled with bitterness and blasphemy—the sour oaths of men who knew they were going to be offered as sacrifices again in the morning. But tomorrow, at least, was another day.

Kahn sat in the dirt, his rifle in his lap. He too felt the bitterness. Perhaps he most of all. He looked at the top of The Fake. Nothing moved or stirred, but he knew they were there. Waiting. He had come here to pay a debt—a debt his father had said he owed. Owed because everyone owed a couple of years to the service of the country; it was the way they thought—his father and Mr. Bernard and the rest. He wondered if they really understood what was happening.

His own reasons had been different. The debt he saw had less to do with the country than it did with his being a Jew. He knew full well the value of paying this debt. He had never really considered himself an outsider until he had gone out for the football team in high school. He hadn’t been very good—second string at best—but they had accepted him for it, and he had begun to realize just how
out
he had been before. After the first year, he really didn’t want to try it again, but he did because he dreaded terribly going back to the way it had been before.

He wondered if the people at the country club behind his house would accept him when he returned with a uniform full of ribbons. He was certain to get a Bronze Star—they handed those out like malaria pills. He already was entitled to a Purple Heart; and there would be others—each medal mute testimony to a partial payment on the debt.

Before he came here, he had felt a certain satisfaction in these thoughts. The war was fresh and new then; the nation bright, hopeful and patriotic, welcoming its heroes—and, in fact, creating them. He knew there were rumblings of discontent: actors, academics, writers, students—even a few politicians—screaming about immorality and marching in the streets. What did it mean? On the spot, he concluded he didn’t give a fuck what it meant—only his part in it. And that included, at this point, getting out in one piece. Why the hell couldn’t they just pack up now and go home? McCrary, the Graves Registration lieutenant, had once proposed it to him and Holden while they were eating ice cream in his morgue.

“We could just announce we’ve won and clear out,” he’d said. “Who in hell would know the difference?”

The more he thought about the debt, the less he felt he owed one at all. His close friend was dead as he could now have been too, or might still be very soon. Here was a terrible place, with steel and lead flying through the air, which in itself was neither anti-Semitic nor racist nor political. Jew or no, he stood about as good a chance of catching some as anyone else, and maybe better. He could have gotten out of it maybe. Gotten married, or left the country, or taken his chances with the draft board—but no. He had joined freely, if reluctantly, the way he had the football team, to show them he wasn’t some draft-dodging, pawnshop-running Jew who was going to stand for Five Gold Rings on top of his house and his old man having to drive fifteen miles to play golf and himself being put off for dates by girls who attended Baptist and Episcopal churches on Sunday. He wished they knew that out here none of that mattered. This wasn’t some yarmulke on top of his head; it was a helmet designed to keep his skull in one piece.

The more Kahn thought about it, sitting alone in the dirt, the madder he got, and if at that moment by some awkward coincidence he had overheard anyone telling a Jewish joke, or perceived
any
kind of insult whatsoever, he would probably have brained him with his gun butt.

Shortly before 10
A.M.
they began the assault of the fourth knoll. All night artillery had blasted it raw, and again it appeared that nothing could have withstood that kind of barrage. This time they were right. Cursing, sweating and numb, Bravo Company struggled to the top without a shot’s being fired. Charlie Company already occupied an opposite saddle of the same knoll, and they could see them through the gap in the middle. Some Charlie Company men waved across the gap, and Bravo Company waved back. Momentarily there was relief, but it was short-lived. Patch radioed them to set up the mortars there and move on to the fifth and final knoll.

“They are on the run—let’s keep pressing it,” Patch said. “We may be out of here in a day or so.”

The sun was bright in the sky as they climbed higher and higher up the steep slope of the fifth knoll. Behind it loomed the peaks of another chain of mountains, much taller and more forbidding than this one. Along several trails that led to the crest, they would occasionally find a relic of earlier fighting—a helmet, a C-ration tin, a fatigue shirt. They had not been aware that the Airborne battalion had made it up this far.

DiGeorgio was the first to see the head.

It was stuck on a thick tree stump about five feet off the ground. A helmet rested back so that the entire face showed. Its eyes were half open, staring grotesquely across the valley. Clenched in its teeth was a blackened cigar butt.

Tacked beneath the head was a piece of brown rice paper finger-painted in dried blood.

U.S. SOLJERS DIE HERE
, it said.

“Jesus Christ!” DiGeorgio said, flinching away.

“Them bastards,” Crump said vehemently. “Dirty bastards.”

There was nothing to do but press on. Half the company had to walk past the head, but no one made any attempt to remove or cover it. Propaganda leaflets were scattered along the trail. One showed a stack of military coffins reproduced from an issue of
Life
magazine,
GOING MY WAY
? was its caption. Some of the men picked these up and read them. Most threw them down. A few stuffed them into their pockets.

They had the crest in sight when the machine gun opened up ahead, killing the point man and badly wounding the next man in line. The point man was one of the two black cooks who had been sent out as replacements the day before. He was shot in the throat and flung backward into several other men and was probably dead before he hit the ground.

The fire seemed to come from everywhere—in front and on both sides. Men leaped in panic to what safety they could find, but there wasn’t a lot to hide behind up here. Those in the lead element lay flat for a moment, then did the first sane thing that came to mind and scrambled downhill for the protection of a little abutment about thirty yards below. Almost everyone else had taken refuge behind this, and a few brave souls poked out their rifles and fired back, but they were met with such a fusillade they quickly gave it up and shrank down with the rest.

Grenades came tumbling down at the abutment, some exploding over it, some bouncing down and bursting in midair, shrapnel ringing everywhere. Hot pieces of residue floated down like snowflakes.

Predictably, mortars began to land. At first they fell behind them, but the North Vietnamese steadily walked them up the slope toward the abutment. The shells whistled through the air with a high-pitched, inhuman sound, like terrible fingers searching for flesh. Obviously they couldn’t stay here, and Kahn organized a withdrawal in the most orderly way he could.

At the bottom, behind a series of rocky hummocks, Bravo Company lay gasping and stunned. Never had they come up against such withering fire. As they tried to regain their breath and wits, the radio hissed and the handset was shoved at Kahn.

“What are you doing? You are supposed to be going up the hill—not down it,” Patch said testily.

“Sir, half the North Vietnamese Army is up there. They hit us on all sides. We were getting slaughtered,” Kahn said.

“All right, all right, so they’re dug in. That’s what you get combat pay for, Lieutenant. What you have to do is to flank them, boy, flank them!” Patch said enthusiastically.

“I can’t tell where their flank is, sir—they seem to be spread all across the top of the hill. I’ll have to send up some kind of patrol,” Kahn said weakly.

“There’s no time for that now,” Patch came back sternly. “You have contact—keep it. I don’t want them to slip away again. Finish this up so we can get the hell out of here!”

Kahn looked at Trunk, who was lying beside him wiping blood off of his face from a deep gash he had received when he’d tumbled into a splintered tree. Kahn pointed grimly to the top of the crest and raised his eyebrows.

Trunk shook his head deliberately. “We can’t do it, Lieutenant. I don’t see how . . . I think—”

“Damn it, Trunk, I don’t either, but that’s what the man says . . . What the hell am I supposed to do?”

They peered over the rocks and tried to come up with a sensible plan for an assault. Of course, there was none.

Minutes later, Patch’s irritated voice came over the speaker. “I don’t see you moving down there. Let’s get with it,” he said.

The receiver still in his hand, Kahn looked around behind him curiously. He glanced at Trunk, then swung his binoculars up to the top of the fourth knoll, where another rifle company was milling around, evidently waiting in reserve. Off to the side of this was a small bunch of men. A figure he recognized as Patch stood out among them, a tiny dot in the distance. The figure was waving its arms violently in what was an apparent signal to move out. How in hell did he get there? Kahn wondered. He’s supposed to be back at the staging area.

Kahn got on the Company net and called Brill. “I want you to move right about three hundred meters and then start climbing up,” he said. “About halfway, just before that abutment, start to pinch in. Third Platoon will be inside you and a little bit below. I’m taking First Platoon to the left and do the same thing—got it?”

“Right,” Brill said. His voice was very faint. Perhaps it was the radio batteries . . .

Kahn tried to raise Inge on the radio. Unsuccessful, he sent a runner back to tell him to come forward and take over Third Platoon for the attack. Off to the right, he could see part of First Platoon, huddled behind some rocks and boulders, and he was about to make his way over to them when Brill came back on the radio.

“I got trouble here,” he said. “They won’t do it.”

“Well
get
them to do it,” Kahn said furiously.

“I think you better come over here and talk to them,” Brill said. Kahn could hardly hear him.