Sand in the Wind Read Online Free PDF

be.”
    “Hey man, what kinda thing is that to say?”
    “The truth, that’s what.    .   .   . Chalice here is a regular professor, a college graduate.”
    Payne looked at Chalice with a sly grin on his face. “A college degree ain’t worth much if it can’t keep you out of Nam, Professor. I’ll — ” Harmon broke in, “You guys seen Tony 5 around?”
    “I saw him walking towards the LZ a few minutes ago,” Hamilton answered.
    “Why don’t you take Chalice down there and see if you can find him.”
    “Okay. C’mon, let’s go.” They went out the front door and started back down the road. “The LZ’s all the way on the other end of the hill. Where you from?”
    “Silver Springs, Maryland. Where you from?”
    “St. Louis. I went to the University of Nebraska for a year and a half. Where’d you get your degree?”
    “Duke.” — ‘Looks like a jock.’ — “Play any sports?”
    “Yeah, I played football for two years, but I stopped growing so they red shirted me and I quit.”
    “You look big enough.”
    “Nah. I’m five eleven now, but I grew two inches right after I joined the Crotch, really pissed me off. I was stupid to go there in the first place. You gotta be an elephant before they even look at you.    .   .   . You know Harmon was right about Payne. He’s not a bad guy, but he’s a real shit-bird. Don’t pay much attention to what he tells you.    .   .   . Did they fuck with you much in An Hoa?”
    “No, not at all.”
    “They seemed friendly because you’re new in-country. When you go back there from the bush, they really give you the business. I’d rather be on Hill 65 than in An Hoa any day.”
    “I thought you guys were always trying to get back to the rear.”
    “An Hoa ain’t much of a rear. It gets hit by ground troops just as often as 65, and they get hit by rockets a lot more. See there’s three kinds of bush. Hill 65 is the regular bush. The lowlands around here are the bad bush. And the Arizona is the big bad bush.”
    “That’s all anybody talks about, the Arizona. Is it really that bad?”
    “It’s worse. No matter how bad you think it’s going to be, it’s always worse. Remember all those guys you’ve met that kept on telling you they couldn’t wait to get to Nam and see some action. Well you never hear anybody say he wants to go back to the Arizona. It’s just like fighting your way out of Red China.”
    Chalice and Hamilton passed the place where the six-by had unloaded the replacements. Walking along the same and only road, they approached a large tower with a tank on top of it. “What’s that?”
    “It’s supposed to be a water tower, but since there’s no well up here it’s never had anything in it but air. Childs says some half-assed colonel must have decided he wanted a water tower because some other half-assed colonel he went to Annapolis with had one on his hill. He says he won’t be surprised if one of these days they line up our whole company from the tower to the river and have us pass canteens up to fill it. It only holds about a hundred thousand gallons, so it wouldn’t take more than a week.”
    “Who’s Childs?”
    “Just the skatingest motherfucker in the Marine Corps. He spends more time in the rear than the office poags. You’ll meet him later. Come to think of it, maybe you won’t. I haven’t seen him in two months myself.” The road started a gradual upward grade; and now there were ammunition and supply bunkers lining both sides of it. When Chalice and Hamilton reached the top of the grade, they could see the helicopter landing zone below them. Set in a place where the top of the hill widened into a bubble, the LZ was just a square of corrugated steel plates, thirty yards across, with a bunker beside it. When they reached the bunker, Hamilton leaned over its wall and asked someone lying on the floor if he’d seen Tony 5. A Marine wearing a yellow T-shirt identifying him as a member of the ground crew sat