Free Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes Page A

nose grinned at Jancowitz. Spaghetti sauce was
     smeared on his face. He wiped it off with large hands stained dark brown with ingrained dirt.
    “Hi, Janc,” Shortround said brightly, grinning.
    Jancowitz turned to Mellas. “Sir, this is Pollini, only we call him Shortround. And it ain’t because he’s small and fat.”
     A short round was an artillery shell that fell short by mistake, often killing its own men.
    Pollini quickly stuffed several Trop bars into his pockets, grabbed his rifle, and joined the group just as Daniels came down
     the hill from the CP, carrying his radio on his back. Jancowitz introduced him to Mellas, then took the handset from Hamilton’s
     radio and called the CP. “Bravo, this is Bravo One Three. We’re moving.”
    The squad wound its way into the jungle in one long snake—Jancowitz three from the front; Mellas behind him, watching Jancowitz’s
     every move; Daniels behind Mellas. No one spoke. Mellas was thinking that Jancowitz had been in the bush nearly nineteen months.
     He probably knew more about staying alive than anyone else in the company.
    Once the kids were under the trees, the leeches started dropping on them. They tried to knock each leech off before it dug
     in and drew blood but were usually too late because they were focusing more attention on the jungle, straining to hear, see,
     or smell the clue that would give them, and not the North Vietnamese, the first shot.
    The leeches made full use of their victims. Mellas watched some fall onto the kids’ necks and slide under their shirts like
     raindrops. Otherleeches would wriggle on the damp humus of the jungle floor, attach to a boot, then go up a trouser leg, turning from small
     wormlike objects to bloated blood-filled bags. Occasionally someone would spray insect repellent on a leech and it would fall
     squirming to the ground, leaving blood trickling down the kid’s arm, leg, or neck. During the patrol, Mellas began to take
     great pleasure in killing the little bastards and watching his own blood spurt out of their bodies.
    The fourteen-man snake moved in spasms. The point man would suddenly crouch, eyes and ears straining, and those behind him
     would bunch up, crouch, and wait to move again. They would get tired, let down their guard. Then, frightened by a strange
     sound, they would become alert once again. Their eyes flickered rapidly back and forth as they tried to look in all directions
     at once. They carried Kool-Aid packages, Tang—anything to kill the chemical taste of the water in their plastic canteens.
     Soon the smears of purple and orange Kool-Aid on their lips combined with the fear in their eyes to make them look like children
     returning from a birthday party at which the hostess had shown horror films.
    They stopped for lunch, setting up a small defensive perimeter. Jancowitz, Mellas, and Hamilton lay flat on the ground next
     to the radio, eating C-rations. They littered the jungle with the empty cans. Flies and mosquitoes materialized from the heavy
     air. Mellas doused himself again with repellent. It stung fiercely as it got into his cuts and bites. He found two leeches
     on his right leg. He burned them alive with paper matches while he ate canned peaches.
    Already tired from lack of sleep, Mellas now struggled with physical fatigue from fighting his way through nearly impenetrable
     brush, slipping up muddy slopes to gain a ridgeline, searching for tracks, searching for clues. He was wet from both sweat
     and rain. Effort. Weight. Flies. Cuts. Vegetation.
    He no longer cared where they were or why. He was glad he was new and Jancowitz was still more or less in charge, though he
     was ashamed of feeling that way. Three hundred eighty-nine days and a wake-up to go.
    At one point they hit a wall of bamboo they couldn’t avoid. It lay between them and a checkpoint, a ridgeline where the NVA
     machinegun might be. They had to hack through it. All security was lost as the kid on point took out a