The Door to Bitterness

by Martin Limon

  I carried my hot mug of coffee back to my seat. Then I started going through my list of AWOL GIs.

  Three out of the three dozen were in field artillery units. One at Camp Stanley in Uijongbu, another at Camp Howze near Pupyong-ni, and another at Camp Pelham near Munsan. I jotted down names. Of the three, two were typically Anglo-Saxon, and the third guy was named Jamal. I figured him to be black and crossed him off my list. That left two: Kevin S. Wintersmith at Camp Howze and Rodney Boltworks at Camp Pelham.

  Which one to roust first? No way to decide. Geography was the tie breaker. Camp Howze was closer to Seoul, and if Wintersmith didn’t pan out, Ernie and I could drive farther north on the Military Supply Route toward the Demilitarized Zone to Camp Pelham and check out Private First Class Rodney Boltworks.

  I stuffed my notebook into my pocket, finished my coffee, and told Ernie it was time to go. He rose from his chair, unconcerned, but Miss Kim frowned, sorry to see him leave.

  Staff Sergeant Riley remained hunched over his paperwork, and even as we stomped out of the office, he continued trying to pretend that we hadn’t even been there.

  The morning was wonderfully cool and overcast and in the open-topped jeep, as we sped north on the two-lane highway, a line of crystal blue hovered above brown rice paddies. Layered atop the line was a ceiling of churning gray clouds.

  Camp Howze sat about a half mile off the MSR, on a hilltop overlooking a bar-spangled village. The Second Division MPs up here were more suspicious than their 8th Army counterparts back in Seoul and at the main gate they studied our identification and our vehicle dispatch carefully. Before waving us through, they radioed ahead to the Command Post to let them know we were coming.

  As we pulled up to the sand-bagged bunker, a field-grade officer wearing a fur-lined cap stepped out to greet us. When we told him what we wanted, he marched us right into the Operations Center. In minutes, Private Kevin S. Wintersmith stood at attention in front of us. He had a short red crew cut, moist green eyes, and his fatigues, face, and hands were soiled and reeked of rancid lard from the grease traps he’d been cleaning. The major told us the story. Of his own volition, Wintersmith had returned to his unit two days ago and he’d been pulling KP—kitchen police duty—ever since.

  Just to be thorough, I pulled out the sketch of the Caucasian GI and looked at it. So did Ernie. So did the major.

  Not even close.

  Wintersmith had never heard of the Olympos Casino in Inchon nor of Brothel Number 17 at the Yellow House. Nor of a teenage girl named Mi-ja whose arm had been lined with cigarette burns.

  We thanked the major, returned to our jeep, and continued north toward the DMZ.

  At the main gate of Camp Pelham, one MP and two uniformed Korean security guards studied our emergency vehicle dispatch. Behind them, a wooden bridge spanned a rock-strewn gully. Above the guard shack, a neatly painted arch said: Welcome to the Home of the 2/17th Field Artillery. Then in smaller letters: Shoot, Move, and Communicate! The MP tried to scratch his head, but his fingers were blocked by the rim of his black helmet liner.

  “They’re in the field,” he told us, “the entire battalion.

  Left this morning on a move-out alert.”

  “How long ago?” Ernie asked.

  “About zero six hundred.”

  They had a four hour start on us.

  “Where were they headed?” I asked.

  The MP shrugged. “Don’t know. Classified.”

  I thought about it. No military unit leaves their headquarters compound completely deserted. Somebody would know where the Second of the 17th could be found.

  “Where’s your Operations Officer?” I asked.

  This time the MP pointed. “The battalion head shed. Over there, on your right.”

  Ernie slammed the jeep in gear, and we rolled across the rickety wooden bridge, beneath the stenciled arch, onto the blacktopped roads of Camp Pelham, home of the Second of the 17th Field Artillery. The MP was right. The place did look deserted: rows of Quonset huts, striped camouflage green, their big double doors padlocked shut. Occasionally, a lone firelight shone through the morning mist.

  The battalion headquarters was larger than the other buildings. Three Quonset huts arranged in a T-formation, hooked together by covered walkways, the entire complex splashed with paint of the Army’s favorite shade: olive drab.

  We parked in the gravel parking lot. Only one door was open, on the side of the stem of the T. Inside, the long corridor was quiet. We stood still, listening. Finally, toward the cross of the T, we heard a toilet flush. We walked up the hallway toward the sound.

  At the back of a large office filled with desks and tables and filing cabinets, a uniformed soldier was just walking out of the latrine. He glanced at us, still adjusting his fly.

  “Can I help you?”

  His eyes widened. Maybe it was the coats and ties. Maybe it was the fact that we were Americans and not wearing green fatigues like every other American up here near the DMZ.

  Ernie and I approached him and showed him our identification. His name tag said Oliver, and the rank insignia on his collar indicated that he was a major. A stout man, he wore square-lensed glasses and an otherwise bushy hairline that was beginning to recede. We told him who we were looking for.

  “Boltworks? He’s the one who’s been AWOL, isn’t he?”

  I nodded.

  He walked over to a screen hanging on the far wall and pulled it back, revealing a green board with rows of names written in multi-colored chalk.

  “Boltworks,” Major Oliver mumbled to himself. He stopped at the right side of the board and pointed. “There he is. Charley Battery. Still being carried as AWOL.”

  “Did you know him?” Ernie asked.

  Oliver shook his head. “No. There’re a lot of troops in the battalion. I stay pretty busy here.” He held out his arms to indicate the operations office surrounding us. Desks, chairs, and filing cabinets were surrounded by walls covered with charts, maps, and bulletin boards. In the corner, a squat olive-drab field radio blinked ominously with one red eye.

  Ernie pulled out the sketch of the fugitive we’d been calling “the Caucasian GI.” Oliver studied it, then shook his head.

  “No. I don’t know this person.”

  “But it could be Boltworks,” Ernie said. “You don’t know either way.”

  Major Oliver nodded.

  Ernie pulled out the other two sketches and received the same reaction.

  “Anybody else here,” I said, “who might be able to identify Boltworks?”

  “Not here,” he said. “Division-wide move-out this morning. They’re all in the field.”

  Ernie walked over to the chalkboard. “How long had Boltworks been assigned here?”

  Oliver studied the list. “Almost ten months,” he said. “Strange to go AWOL when you’ve only got a couple of months left on your tour.”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to return Stateside,” Ernie said.

  Oliver looked at him blankly. Such a thought, apparently, had never entered his mind. I didn’t want Ernie to go off on some odd tangent—comparing GI life in Korea to civilian life in the States—so I interrupted quickly.

  “Boltworks will be known at the unit,” I said. “Charley Battery, right?”

  Oliver nodded.

  “Then we need to talk to some folks in his unit. Where can we find them?”

  Oliver shook his head again. “Long way from here.”

  “Show us.”

  He walked to the other side of the Ops Center, to another curtain. Before pulling back the curtain, he stared at Ernie and me.

  “What’s your clearance?” he asked.

  “Top Secret,” I said. “Crypto.”

  Cleared on a need-to-know basis for access to top secret information, including information generated through cryptography, highly classified codes. Actually, neither Ernie nor I were cleared that high. We had Secret clearances, that was it. But what Oliver didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
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br />   He slid back the curtain.

  Arrayed before us was a massive, wall-sized map of the area known to the world as the Korean DMZ, the Demilitarized Zone. On the left flowed the blue Han River Estuary, leading into the Yellow Sea a few miles north of the Port of Inchon. On the right was the Korean coastline bordering the Sea of Japan—in between, the DMZ—its thick body wriggled through the Korean Peninsula like a burrowing python.

  On the left side was a black dot for the city of Munsan, and close to that, less than three kilometers away, a bright red star that said “Camp Pelham.”

  Major Oliver pointed to the star. “We’re here,” he said. He traced his finger toward the East, along a road that divided a ridge of hills. After about twenty-five miles, his finger turned north, traveling another twenty miles until it reached a blue line that wound south of the DMZ. “They crossed the Imjin here,” he said, “at Liberty Bridge, about zero seven thirty this morning.” His finger continued north, toward an area adjacent to the DMZ, with no black dots representing cities or towns. “They’re up here now. Exactly where, I can’t say. The Second Division G-2 is simulating an all-out North Korean attack, so Charley Battery and the rest of the battalion are doing what they do best. They’re north of the Imjin River, moving, shooting, and communicating.”

  “Can you pin-point their location for us?” Ernie asked.

  “When I receive another radio call. But right now they’re on the move. So far this morning, they’ve set up and fired live rounds three times. Each time, they break down all weapons and equipment, load them up on their trucks, and move out to the next firing position.”

  Sounded like a lot of work. Oliver grabbed a wooden pointer and used it to indicate an area higher up on the map, adjacent to the southern edge of the DMZ.

  “It’s clear where they’re headed,” he said. “Closer to North Korea. By tonight, they’ll probably be operating in the largest military firing area in country.” He slapped the pointer against the map. “Right here.”

  “So we can find them there?”

  “It’s a large area, but yes.”

  “Then that’s where we’ll go.”

  Ernie started to leave, but I stopped him and made Major Oliver give us the coordinates of the firing area he had just referred to. When I jotted them down, I said, “Do you have a map we could borrow?”

  “You won’t need one.”

  “Why not?”

  “When you cross Liberty Bridge there will be checkpoints, plenty of them, all on the lookout for North Korean intruders. They’ll guide you to the firing Operations Center. Don’t bother with the coordinates. Just tell them you’re looking for Charley Battery of the Second of the Seventeenth. And tell them they’re at Nightmare Range.”

  “Nightmare Range?”

  Oliver grinned. “Garden spot of the Orient.”

  Liberty Bridge was a low cement bridge with no railing to speak of, the roadway just a few feet above the churning waters of the Imjin River. MPs armed with M-16 rifles lined the bridge, on the look out for anything sinister floating downriver from the headwaters in North Korea. As we crossed, waves of cold water from the rapidly flowing Imjin splashed our tires. On the far side of the bridge, we followed the road upward, winding past granite cliffs and through tunnels hewn out of solid rock. Finally we emerged onto a long plateau. For a moment it almost seemed as if we’d left Korea. No rice paddies, no straw-thatched huts in the distance, no farmers leading ox-drawn carts to market. Only wilderness. The uncultivated wilderness of the militarily controlled areas south of the DMZ.

  Occasionally, a big deuce-and-a-half or a box-like chow truck passed us, heading south toward Liberty Bridge, returning to civilization for re-supply.

  Signs written in English and hangul guided us toward the Range Operations Center. Again, a sheet-metal Quonset hut, this one painted in darker shades of camouflage green. Inside were ROK Army officers. One of them, a Lieutenant Park, spoke English. When we asked him where we could find Charley Battery, 2/17th FA, he frowned.

  “Moving,” he said. “Far north. Where they stop, nobody know right now.”

  The war games were still on-going. They could last for many hours, until the generals back in their bunkers had enough data to keep themselves busy analyzing it for the next couple of weeks.

  “Where are they now?” Ernie asked.

  Lieutenant Park led us into a room filled with a topographical map spread out on a flat table. South of a red line, tiny tanks and artillery pieces were arrayed in a line facing north. Even more tanks and artillery pieces were arrayed north of the line, facing south. Lieutenant Park grabbed a wooden pointer and slapped the brass tip into the center of a broad valley surrounded by jagged hills.

  “Charley Battery,” he said.

  Ernie and I studied the map. The valley was about fifteen kilometers from our current position. At the southern edge of the valley sat a village known as Uichon.

  When I asked Lieutenant Park the name of the valley, he answered in Korean. I didn’t understand, so he repeated the name in English.

  “Nightmare Range,” he said.

  We thanked him and left.

  Uichon was a dump.

  One paved road, right down the center of town, wide enough for two big military re-supply trucks to rumble through without slowing down. Toddlers wearing wool sweaters, but no pants, stumbled through the muck on the side of the road, chasing chickens and an occasional small pig. Adults with wooden A-frames strapped to their backs hoisted hay, firewood, and gunny sacks full of cabbage toward the village’s open-air market. On the outskirts of town, a few farmhouses were visible but not many. Some roofs were tile, like the whitewashed police station, but most of the hovels settled for the traditional straw-thatched roofs that had been used in Asia since the beginning of recorded time.

  About a hundred yards on the far side of the village we came to a road that Lieutenant Park had told us we’d find. An arrow-shaped sign pointing north said USFK firing range No. 13, north 2km. The road was made of hard-packed mud and gravel and sat a few inches above the swampy grasslands surrounding it. Ernie shoved the jeep into low gear and made the turn.

  “Hold onto your hat,” he said.

  He was enjoying this a lot more than I was.

  Was all this effort really worth our time? What would the members of Charley Battery have to tell us? If the sketch we showed them wasn’t Boltworks, all would be for naught. If it was him, we still wouldn’t learn much. Since he’d been AWOL for over a month, it was unlikely that anybody in the unit would have any idea about where to find him. Still, we had to ask. That’s what police work is all about.

  Major Oliver back at Camp Pelham told us that Nightmare Range had been the site of a series of ferocious battles between the 8th United States Army and what was called, in those days, the CHICOMs, the Chinese Communist People’s Army. Known to GIs as “Joe Chink.” In the foreboding terrain we were traveling through now, I could imagine what it must’ve been like. Explosions everywhere, bayonet charges, hand-to-hand combat, men screaming, rolling through the cold mud and hot blood. And the mountains around us made things worse. They looked primeval: jagged, muddy, ringed with low-lying clouds that blocked the afternoon sun.

  I shivered and hugged myself, wishing we were back in the cozy alleyways of Itaewon.

  It took us ten minutes to drive the two kilometers the little sign had been talking about. When we arrived, we found a flat swampy area, but no field artillery unit.

  “Charley Battery’s moved out,” Ernie said.

  Fresh tire tracks were everywhere. I climbed out of the jeep and studied them.

  “They’re heading north, up this road,” I said.

  “Good work, Tonto.”

  You didn’t exactly have to be an Apache tracker to see

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  where they’d gone. The mud and gravel had been plowed up everywhere.

  We continued after them. All that afternoon we followed Charley Battery of the Second of the 17th but eac
h time we drew close, they had already loaded up and moved out. Finally, the sun went down. Ernie and I were just about to give up, when we had to swerve off the side of the road for a huge diesel refueling truck that was barreling down the muddy path. We pulled over and Ernie flashed his lights, and the trucker rolled to a stop.

  I climbed out and talked to him.

  “Charley Battery?” he said. “Yeah, up the road about three klicks.”

  The driver was a young Spec 4 from Dubuque, Iowa. He bragged that he knew the firing ranges up here like the back of his hand.

  “You’re in luck,” he told me. “Charley Battery’s been given clearance to stand down for the night. That’s why I was able to refuel them. They’ve already put up the wire.”

  He meant set up a defensive perimeter and unraveled coiled concertina wire around the battery’s position. When I asked him for directions, he started to explain, but the winding and turning grew too complicated. I pulled out my notebook and asked him to draw me a map. He did, using two sheets of paper. When he handed it back to me, I used the light inside his cab to read it and I asked questions to make sure I understood. Finally, we said our goodbyes, and he rumbled off down the road, red taillights fading.

  “You know where they’re at now?” Ernie asked.

  “Yeah. Got the map right here.”

  Ernie started the jeep back up and, with his headlights on high beam, rolled north on the narrow lane. In the dim red glow of the dashboard, I studied the map again. At the end of the winding road, the fuel truck driver had drawn a large X.

  Next to it, in childish script, he had written the words: Nightmare Range.

  When we finally found Charley Battery, we didn’t just drive right up to the concertina wire surrounding the perimeter. Instead, we decided to reconnoiter. Ernie switched off the high beams and approached with only his parking lights on. While we were still a hundred meters away, he parked beside a hill. We climbed to the top and gazed down on the encampment of Charley Battery, Second of the 17th Field Artillery.