The Line

by Martin Limon

  “What did the graveyard shift say?” Ernie asked. “Did they see anything?”

  “Nothing,” Brunmeyer replied. “The two guys who spotted the body backed away immediately. In fact, they pulled their weapons and covered each other’s retreat.”

  “They figured the North Koreans had done this?”

  “Who else?”

  We stared at Corporal Noh. He had been unarmed. No web belt around his waist, which meant no holstered pistol attached to that. Instead of an MP helmet, a standard-issue winter cap lay nearby in the snow. I looked around. Dark figures shuffled beneath the eaves of the conference buildings. Watching us.

  “Why would they do this?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” Brunmeyer shrugged. “The North Koreans hate our guts, but they always hate our guts. There’s nothing different about tonight.”

  Ernie and I used our flashlights to carefully check the area near the body. Nothing but hard ice, which crunched yet left indistinct footprints. There were plenty of footprints here, but that could’ve been said for the entire grounds of the JSA. Except in the wee hours, it was heavily patrolled.

  “Here,” Ernie said. I stood up and joined him. Beneath one of the windows of the main conference room, spattering the snow, spread a fan-like array of dark spots. I studied them closely.

  “Could be blood,” I said.

  Ernie nodded, then moved his flashlight. “And here.” Two lines, barely visible under the dim beam, wobbled their way toward the body. “Heels?” Ernie asked. “Being dragged?”

  “Could be,” I replied.

  Between the two lines was a thin trickle of what appeared to be blood. But in this poor lighting, I couldn’t be sure. I walked back to the body. We checked Corporal Noh’s hands for defensive wounds. Nothing. No visible flesh or blood beneath his fingernails.

  “He was caught by surprise,” Ernie said.

  I nodded.

  “Killed here, close to the wall, on the southern side,” Ernie continued. “And then dragged a few feet to the northern side of the MDL and left there.”

  “Those bastards,” Brunmeyer said. He repeated it, lower this time and with more menace. “Those bastards.” He glared at the North Koreans. “One of them hit him from behind and dragged him north. Probably planning to take him into their territory to hide the body, but then dropped him when they heard our men on their way to relieve the graveyard shift.”

  I thought through Colonel Brunmeyer’s theory. It fit with the evidence, though we didn’t have much to go on. Brunmeyer stood a few feet away from us, face twisted in hatred. He spit onto the ice before his feet. “They were trying to humiliate us,” he said, “and embarrass my command.”

  Ernie and I looked over at him for a moment. He had every right to be angry. We were angry, too. But he acted as if the North Koreans were after him personally. As if it were Brunmeyer they hated, not the entire Western world. Gradually he calmed down, noticing us staring at him. We turned back to our work.

  The US Army had no military police forensic team in Korea. The 8th Army honchos claimed there wasn’t enough crime to justify the expense. And there was a twisted element of truth in that. The less effective we were in our investigations and the fewer prosecutions there were, the better 8th Army’s crime statistics appeared. If we wanted a forensic examination, we had to package up any evidence we had and ship it to the designated medical center in Camp Zama, Japan. Consequently, Ernie and I generally took matters into our own hands. One of the unwritten rules in the Army is that if you want to do something, don’t ask permission, because you’ll never get it. On the other hand, if you just go ahead and do what you want, more often than not you’ll get away with it.

  A dim predawn light gradually began to suffuse the area. Ernie knelt and grabbed Corporal Noh’s shoulders. I grabbed his hip, and on the count of three, we rolled him over.

  Brunmeyer’s eyes widened in horror. A line along the center of Noh’s skull had been crushed in. Dented, as if he’d been shoved against the whirling blades of a giant buzz saw. Gray brain matter puffed out, shoving aside crushed bone and clumps of oozed blood. Brunmeyer stepped toward one of the conference rooms, leaned against it, and after dry-heaving a couple of times, barfed his guts out.

  An ominous pounding shook the ground. I stopped my examination of the wound and looked up. A party of North Korean guards goose-stepped toward us; swinging their arms rhythmically, boots stomping into the snow. Brunmeyer pushed himself upright, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and pulled his .45. Holding it pointed toward the ground, he yelled weakly, “Chongji!” Halt!

  They kept coming.

  Brunmeyer pulled back the charging handle of his .45. He raised the pistol and aimed it unsteadily at the man leading the North Korean detachment.

  “Chongji!” he ordered again, like he meant it this time.

  Taking one last hard stomp into the snow, the soldiers came to a halt. The man in front pointed and gestured with his forearm, shouting something in Korean. Maybe I was in shock or he was just speaking too fast, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Brunmeyer seemed to have no such problem.

  “This is our patrol area, Kwon,” he said, motioning in a large circle with his hand. “Ours!” He jabbed his thumb into the center of his chest. “You arra?” You understand?

  It was an impolite way to use the verb. The ideal pronunciation would’ve been arraseiyo. But this seemed like the wrong time for a Korean grammar lesson.

  The man Lieutenant Colonel Brunmeyer had addressed as Kwon appeared infuriated. He barked another order in Korean that I didn’t understand, and his men spread out in a semicircle. All were outfitted with pistols, but so far they were keeping them holstered.

  Ernie and I were the only two unarmed players in this drama. Before leaving Seoul, we could’ve checked out a couple of .45s from the MP Arms Room, but not only had we not had the time, we didn’t think they’d do much good. Not with a 700,000-man North Korean army on one side of the Military Demarcation Line and a 450,000-man South Korean army on the other. Not to mention untold numbers of artillery pieces and tanks.

  It soon became clear that the man Brunmeyer had previously briefed us on, Junior Lieutenant Kwon, planned on taking possession of Corporal Noh’s body. Two of the guards pulled out wooden poles that I hadn’t noticed before, lay them near the body, and unrolled a canvas stretcher. They rapidly assembled it and began to move toward Noh until Lieutenant Colonel Brunmeyer fired a shot into the air. The bullet cleared the head of Junior Lieutenant Kwon by about three feet.

  Immediately, all North Korean soldiers present reached for their pistols.

  Footsteps rumbled toward us. At the southern end of the conference room, the infantry reinforcements Brunmeyer had put in place earlier rounded the corner. They spread out, knelt, and took up firing positions. Within seconds, there were a dozen M16 rifles pointed at the North Korean detachment.

  Junior Lieutenant Kwon was beside himself with rage. In broken English, he said, “This man is Korean. Not like you dirty Americans. He come to us. He come to real Korean army.”

  Hand steady, Brunmeyer held his .45 pointed directly at Kwon’s red face.

  “No touchy,” he said. “You arra? No touchy.”

  Apoplectic now, Kwon pointed at Corporal Noh’s corpse. “He in North Korea. This side.”

  He had a point. There was probably a rule buried somewhere in the armistice agreement permitting each government to treat the wounded—or collect the dead—on its respective side of the MDL. If we lost the body now, we would never see it again. Or if the North Koreans did return it, that could take years.

  Brunmeyer turned to me and ordered, “Pull it back here!”

  I hesitated, staring at the North Koreans’ guns.

  “Now!” Brunmeyer hissed.

  Perhaps it was my military training or the urgency to his com
mand, but without thinking it through further, I knelt and took Noh’s left leg, then began to pull. Some of the material beneath his body must’ve already frozen, because the corpse didn’t move right away. I put more of my weight in the direction opposite the dead man. Ernie reached down to grab his other ankle, and soon what was left of Corporal Noh Jong-bei slid toward us until it lay in a crumpled heap on the southern side of the Military Demarcation Line.

  Satisfied, Lieutenant Colonel Brunmeyer turned back to the North Koreans.

  Junior Lieutenant Kwon snapped open his holster and pulled out his pistol. As the men behind him followed suit, Colonel Brunmeyer shouted a command and a volley of M16 automatic fire exploded into the night. I dove to the ground; so did Ernie. When we dared to look up, we realized that the North Korean soldiers were kneeling, their pistols pointed at us, but they hadn’t returned fire. No one was hurt. The volley from the Americans had been aimed over their heads.

  As if he were made of steel and had no need to fear bullets, Brunmeyer turned his back on the potential firing squad and shouted orders to his men. Two of the JSA guards approached with a stretcher, and Brunmeyer ordered them to pick up Noh’s body. They did, despite Junior Lieutenant Kwon screaming invective at them while they worked. Still, with a row of M16 rifles pointed at him, Kwon didn’t tell his men to fire. I watched their eyes. One or two sets glanced furtively at our own line of M16 barrels. The North Korean contingent was outgunned, and they knew it. And it was unlikely all of them were as willing to commit suicide, or to start another Korean War, as their commander was.

  Finally, Noh’s body was hoisted onto the stretcher, and stumbling their way across pounded snow, the two bearers carried him back through our lines.

  “So much for our crime scene,” Ernie whispered.

  Brunmeyer motioned for us to stand behind him. We did. Then, maintaining good order and discipline, the entire contingent of infantry soldiers rose to their feet, keeping their rifles pointed at Kwon and the other North Koreans. Along with Colonel Brunmeyer and the four JSA guards, we performed an orderly retreat.

  Kwon continued to barrage us with curse words, most in Korean. Walking forward, waving his fist in the air, he and his comrades trampled on what was left of the blood-spatter evidence. I understood what he was saying. Some of it colorful, as in “born of a female canine.” His hectoring voice faded as we made our way back to the staging area.

  -3-

  Once we were out of the line of fire, Ernie asked me, “You okay?”

  I took a deep breath. “Yeah, I think so. You?”

  “I’ll be fine. As soon as I change my shorts.”

  I turned to Brunmeyer. “What the hell was that all about?”

  He shrugged. “Routine.”

  “What do you mean ‘routine’?”

  “I mean the North Koreans just wanted to make sure we knew they were watching. Junior Lieutenant Kwon knows what happened—what they did. Before you arrived, they probably took plenty of photographs of Noh’s body for propaganda purposes. They’ll claim an innocent Korean soldier was murdered by bloodthirsty American imperialists. Try to make us look bad.”

  “So that bit about them not wanting us to take the body,” I asked, “that was all for show?”

  He squinted. “Nothing’s ever easy up here at the JSA.”

  “I’m beginning to see that.”

  “Why would they do that?” Ernie asked. “Now? When things have been quiet for a while?”

  Colonel Brunmeyer shrugged. “Could be part of some broader strategy. Trying to cause tension on the Peninsula. Maybe bring foreign attention to the US-South Korean military exercises that are coming up in a couple months.”

  “They’d kill just for that?” Ernie asked.

  “They’ve killed for less,” Brunmeyer replied.

  The 8th Army Coroner’s van arrived and two medics climbed out. Ernie ran over and helped to hoist Corporal Noh into the back of the van. Then he returned to us, rubbing his gloveless hands together for warmth.

  “So, Colonel,” Ernie said, “we have a few questions for you.”

  “Why?” Brunmeyer asked. “You know who did it.”

  “Just routine,” Ernie replied. “For our report.”

  We asked him the usual: who Corporal Noh’s friends and enemies were, whether he’d had any professional or personal problems that had been weighing on him. Brunmeyer was helpful, elaborating where he could, but the picture his answers painted was one of a good soldier doing his duty, not one involved with anything that could’ve led to his death.

  “It was them,” Brunmeyer said, turning north. “Those goddamn Commies.”

  “You think we’ll retaliate?” Ernie asked.

  “That’s a decision made above my pay grade. But if we don’t, I can tell you who will.”

  “Who?”

  “The ROK Army. They’re probably preparing a few high-explosive artillery rounds as we speak.”

  Instead of pronouncing South Korea’s official name letter-by-letter, R-O-K for Republic of Korea, he pronounced the acronym “rock.” Standard here in Korea—the “rock” army, the “rock” government, a “rock” soldier. The only time GIs spelled out the acronym verbally was for poetic effect. As in the GI lament, “Just another day in the R-O-K.”

  A loud scream pierced the air. It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t a person, but an air raid siren.

  “Alert,” Colonel Brunmeyer told us. The call for every soldier to immediately report to his unit and prepare for combat. GIs ran in every direction. Brunmeyer nodded toward us. “If you’ll excuse me.” He strode off quickly to take command of his battalion.

  Ernie and I trotted briskly back to the jeep. As we did so, an F-4 Phantom jet fighter swooped low over our heads.

  Ernie ducked. “That one of ours?” he asked.

  I watched wings wobble and a trail of exhaust linger in a somber gray sky. “If it wasn’t,” I said, “we’d be toast already.”

  “You mean Crispy Critters,” Ernie replied.

  Because of the area-wide alert, masses of military traffic jammed the MSR—the Main Supply Route—which stretched between the DMZ and Seoul. It was almost noon by the time we made our way back to the southern edge of the capital city; to Yongsan Compound, the home of 8th Army headquarters. At the back gate, a bored MP checked our dispatch. Suddenly, his eyes widened.

  “CID, right?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Ernie replied.

  “Message for you.” He stepped back into the guard shack, grabbed a clipboard, and returned to us, thumbing through sheets of paper. “Here it is,” he said, pointing to an entry. “You’re to report to Colonel Peele at the Military Armistice Commission headquarters immediately. You are to talk to no one until you see him.” He lowered the clipboard and held it at his side, appearing pleased with himself.

  After what we’d been through this morning, wrestling with more brass at the MAC headquarters was the last thing we felt like doing. Ernie grinned at the MP. “Why don’t you do me a favor, buddy, and forget you ever saw us?”

  “No can do,” the MP said, shaking his head resolutely. “I’m supposed to call it in as soon as you’re identified.”

  Ernie was about to say something more but the MP turned his back on us, stepped inside the guard shack, picked up the phone, and started dialing. Ernie let out a whoosh of air. “That’s the problem with this man’s army. Everybody’s a brown-noser.”

  He shoved the jeep in gear and we rolled forward.

  “Where to?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I guess we’re going to have to comply.”

  “Can’t we get some chow first?”

  I checked my watch. “Noon hour,” I said.

  “Snack bar?” Ernie asked.

  I nodded.

  At the 8th Army Snack Bar, Sergeant First Class Harvey—better known as
Strange—surveyed the room from his usual table against the wall.

  Strange was a pervert. He loved nothing more than hearing detailed stories of others’ sexual exploits. Instead of ignoring a guy like that, as most people did, Ernie and I catered to him, treated him like a pal. As the NCO-in-charge of the 8th Army Classified Documents Distribution Center—and a notorious gossip—he managed to poke his nose into everything of importance that was going on at the head shed. The information he provided was invaluable. But there was always a price.

  After sliding our trays down the chow line, Ernie and I joined Strange at his table. Me with a bowl of chili and saltines on the side, Ernie with tuna salad on toast.

  “I thought you guys would be dead by now,” Strange said. He wore opaque sunglasses, his thinning hair slicked straight back. A plastic cigarette holder—with no cigarette—dangled from lips that looked like greased rubber bands.

  “Why’s that?” Ernie asked.

  “Because you were trying to start a war this morning up at the JSA.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says everybody. The MAC commander is furious.”

  The head of the Military Armistice Commission, the United Nations Command representative who negotiated with the North Koreans.

  “We recovered a body,” Ernie said, chomping into his sandwich and taking a bite so big that it made his cheek bulge. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Don’t chew with your mouth open.”

  “Who are you? Mother Superior?”

  “I’m a senior NCO and you’re grossing me out.”

  “I’m grossing you out?”

  I figured Ernie’s next sentence was “You’re the pervert,” or something just as complimentary, so I interrupted.

  “The JSA commander felt he needed to bring an infantry squad for the North Koreans to let us take possession of the body,” I said. “I don’t see that he had a choice.”

  “Of course he had a choice,” Strange replied. “He should’ve received permission before taking that kind of action. It’s a clear violation of the armistice agreement. There aren’t supposed to be any combat units in the Joint Security Area, and the North Koreans are already raising hell.”