by Martin Limon
“Where did you meet her?” I asked.
“At Hannam House. She’s quite taken by traditional Korean music and dance.”
Hannam House was a cultural center sponsored by the Korean Ministry of Education. Foreign dignitaries, even American soldiers, were invited to periodic performances in order to better introduce them to the world to Korean culture. Of course, most GIs avoided the place like a bad case of the clap.
We told him that we needed to make a couple of black market busts and we needed to make them fast. The quid pro quo, of course, was that generally speaking, when 8th Army wasn’t putting too much pressure on us, we’d leave his operation alone. Mostly we did anyway. Black marketing, compared to rape and assault and theft and extortion and even the occasional murder, was not high on our personal priority list. Haggler Lee hated violent crime as much, if not more, than we did. And his contacts throughout Itaewon were extensive. He knew every mama-san, every business girl, every bar owner, every chop house proprietor and every Korean National cop in the entire red-light district. As such, he was a great source of information and, more often than not, we cooperated with him.
Of course, 8th Army and especially the Provost Marshal knew nothing about this cozy relationship and if we had anything to say about it, they never would.
Haggler Lee told us about the two women who owed him money.
“They can pay,” he said, “but they keep doing business with me, keep saying they will pay next time. I know their plan. When they and their husbands pack up to return to the States, they will leave me with a fat bill. Many have tried this before. Many fail.”
“If we bust them,” I said, “they’ll lose their ration control privileges and no one will make any money. Not them. Not you.”
“Yes,” Haggler Lee replied. “But if more women believe they don’t have to pay me, then more won’t pay me. I must punish these two women to set an example.”
The women in question were black marketing and that was against 8th Army regulations. It was our duty to bust them for it. If it happened to coincide with Haggler Lee’s business model, so be it. He gave us their names and addresses.
On the way out, Haggler Lee escorted us to the door. The plan was that his pick-up man, Grandfather Han, would peddle his bicycle over to the homes of the two women who were our marks, pretending to make his weekly pickup. He’d find some excuse for arriving earlier than scheduled. Normally what he did was enter the home, box up the PX goods, and strap the cardboard load to the heavy-duty rack on his bicycle. This time, as he made the transaction, Ernie and I would follow him in and make the arrest.
The entire operation went off without a hitch and by early evening Ernie and I had two more black market busts.
“Where do you two get oft,” Riley said, “nosing around Camp Stanley after the Provost Marshal told you to lay off?”
We were back in the CID office. The cannon for close-of-business had been fired and the flags of the United States, the Republic of Korea, and the United Nations Command ceremoniously lowered. We returned to the office thinking we’d be congratulated on our black market arrests. Instead we were being reamed out because of a phone call the DivArty Adjutant made to the 8th Army Provost Marshal. Apparently, someone in the 2nd Infantry Division chain of command found out that we’d been interviewing soldiers in their area of operations and had pitched a bitch.
“Colonel Brace had to apologize to the man,” Riley said, his face red. “Do you understand what that means?”
“Yeah,” Ernie replied. “It means he doesn’t have the balls to back us up.”
Miss Kim, the admin secretary, plucked some tissue out of a box, held it to her slender nose, and rose from her desk. She didn’t like it when voices were raised or when American vulgarisms were used. She once told me that when she started work here she hadn’t understood any of our four-letter words. As she learned them, looking them up one by one in a Korean-English dictionary, they often made her cry; especially when GIs accused one another of doing horrible things to their mothers. As she clicked in her high heels across the office and turned out into the hallway, all of our eyes were riveted to her gorgeous posterior.
Riley started in on us again. “The Provost Marshal says you are not to return to the Division area until he has a chance to talk to you, personally.”
“Where is he now?” I asked.
“On the Eighth Army golf course.”
“Oh, Christ,” Ernie said.
“He left a half hour ago,” Riley said. “His foursome includes the Chief of Staff.”
“Sure,” Ernie said. “Just because three GI gang rapists are on the loose is no reason to delay your tee time.”
“Can it, Bascom,” Riley told him. “The Provost Marshal gets a lot of mileage out of these golf dates.”
“Like what?”
“Like briefing the Chief of Staff on your excellent increase in black market arrests.”
“Two days’ worth,” Ernie said.
“You’ll get more.”
“Not today,” I interjected.
Riley glanced at his watch. “The commissary doesn’t close for another hour. You still have time.”
I stood up. “Black marketing isn’t the only crime we have to investigate.”
Riley said, “You’re not dumb enough to go back to Camp Stanley, are you?”
“No,” I said. “You can count on that.”
Ernie and I started out the door.
“Where are you going?” Riley shouted after us.
Neither of us answered.
The Western Corridor is sometimes called the bowling alley.
It is a natural invasion corridor running up and down the spine of the Korean Peninsula, mountains on either side divided by a long lush valley. Armies have trod down it since ancient times: Chinese infantry, Mongol hordes, Manchurian cavalry and, heading the other way, Japanese samurai warriors. Most recently Communist North Korean armored battalions backed up by two hundred thousand of Mao Tse-tung’s “volunteers” streamed down the Western Corridor until the ROK Army and American GIs managed to stop them and push them back at least as far as the Demilitarized Zone, some thirty miles north of Seoul. All in all, the Western Corridor has a colorful history, a history soaked in blood.
There are checkpoints along the Main Supply Route. American GIs and ROK Army soldiers, all holding rifles propped against their hips, all waving with gloved hands for the motorist to slow and then stop, peering into the jeep, checking ID cards, examining vehicle dispatches, then waving us on into the deepening fog-shrouded night. After passing the third Western Corridor checkpoint, there was nothing but countryside surrounding us. In the lowering gloom, I spotted it, a little white sign with an arrow pointing to the right.
“There,” I said. “Sonyu-ri.”
Ernie turned right. A half-mile in, we passed a VD clinic. I knew we were close. Three quarters of a mile further, floodlights shone atop the chain link fence surrounding the small American compound known as RC-4, Recreation Center Four. Beyond that, a neon strip lined the narrow two-lane road: the Sexy Lady Club, the Black Cat Club, the Kimchi Rose Club, the Playgirl Club, the Sonyu River Teahouse. The bars and nightclubs were interspersed with legitimate businesses: Mr. Cho’s Tailor Shop, Aimee’s Brassware Emporium, Fatty Pang’s Chop House. Business girls in short skirts and tight halter tops peered through beaded curtains. Rock and roll blared from tin speakers. Gaggles of GIs wearing blue jeans and sneakers and nylon jackets prowled from bar to bar, sniffing the air like small packs of jackals.
“My kind of village,” Ernie said.
After a quarter mile of non-stop debauchery, a well-lit wooden arch rose into the sky standing like a rainbow above a chain-link fence and a wooden guard shack. The arch was painted white with black lettering that said WELCOME TO CAMP PELHAM, HOME OF THE 2ND OF THE 17TH FIELD ARTILLERY, SECOND TO NONE.
We pulled up to the MP at the guard shack and showed him our dispatch. After checking our identification, he pulled the
gate back, creaking on iron rollers, and we coasted into the dimly lit field of Quonset huts known as Camp Pelham.
We’d been here on an earlier case so Ernie knew exactly where to find the Battalion Ops Center. It was a big tin Quonset hut painted olive-drab like all the rest of the buildings on the compound. A fire light shone over the main entrance. Ernie parked on gravel and we climbed out of the jeep. The Staff Duty Officer was Lieutenant Orting. As we explained why we were here, he at first seemed concerned and then proved to be cooperative. Two of the Chiefs of Firing Battery were easily located. One was in his quarters, the other having a few beers with his buddies in the NCO Club. The interviews went smoothly and both seemed to have alibis that would preclude them from having been in Seoul on Saturday night. Once again, we didn’t have time to check out the details of their alibis but, for the moment, we’d take them at face value.
The final Chief of Smoke was from Charlie Battery. His name was Singletary and according to everyone we talked to, he lived off compound with his yobo. They had a couple of kids, we were told.
“A homesteader,” Lieutenant Orting told us. “He’s been here over five years.”
“Five years?” Ernie said. “I thought that was the max.”
Army regulation doesn’t allow any soldier to stay in Korea for more than one year at a time and if you want to stay longer a request for extension must be submitted and approved annually. Five years is the max.
“Singletary is an outstanding soldier,” Lieutenant Orting said. “His sixth year was approved by the Division Commander himself.”
And probably by 8th Army, I thought, but I didn’t say so. These Division soldiers think that God Himself has set up shop in the Division head shed and there’s no higher authority than Headquarters 2nd ID.
He didn’t have the address of Singletary’s hooch. Instead, Lieutenant Orting called the CQ runner, a young Spec 4, and told him to alert Singletary. Before we could object, the young man hatted up and trotted out the door. Lieutenant Orting grabbed a paper and pencil, drew us a map, and handed it to us.
“Singletary lives right off compound,” Orting explained. “He’s always the first in on an alert.”
Ernie studied the map. “It’s right outside the main gate.”
“Hang a left,” Orting said, “a few yards down past the Crazy Mama Club and then follow the path toward Shit River.”
Actually, it was called Sonyu River, but I didn’t correct him.
I stuffed the map into my pocket and we shook Lieutenant Orting’s hand. Ernie and I left the jeep on compound and walked back toward the main gate. Outside, as we walked along the strip, the rock and roll and the shouts of laughter and the cooing of the business girls assaulted our ears. A hint of marijuana smoke wafted on the air.
Ernie gazed admiringly at the long, glittering row of neon. “Everything a GI’s greedy little heart could desire.”
Before we left 8th Army we’d changed into our running-the-ville outfits: blue jeans, sneakers, nylon jackets with fire-breathing dragons on the back. Still, we didn’t blend in with this crowd. Everyone up here knew everyone else. The fact that we were strangers escaped no one’s attention. From deep inside the open doors of the barrooms I felt eyes assessing us, both GI and Korean.
Ernie studied the map. “It’s back here,” he said, pointing.
Behind the bright neon that lined the strip, the night was pitch black. No street lamps, not even any single bulbs that I could see. Only tightly packed tile roofs jumbled on top of one another, gently descending toward the river below.
We found a muddy path. It was only wide enough for us to walk single file. We entered the darkness. Walls made of rotted wood lined the alley. Through cracks, candlelight glimmered, and now I could make out an occasional single light bulb glimmering through oil-papered doors. The pathway veered to the right and then sharply back to the left.
That’s when we saw them, a herd of apes lurking in a jungle. There was no mistaking their height and bulk. GIs. A small squad. Whether they were black or white or Hispanic or Asian was impossible to tell. Like a dying comet, a flaming ember arced toward the mud, sizzled briefly, and died. The stench of burnt marijuana permeated the air.
One of the shadows growled. “Rear echelon mother fuckers.”
Another voice said, “Come to mess with us.” In the distance, yellow bulbs glimmered atop the concertina wire-topped fence that surrounded Camp Pelham.
Then one of them stepped forward and shouted, “Don’t mess with my people!”
In the darkness, I bumped into Ernie. If I’d thought fast enough, I could’ve grabbed him and told him not to say anything. But I wasn’t fast enough.
Instead, Ernie stepped forward and said, “Fuck your people.”
And then something flew at us from out of the dark.
Ernie dodged and launched himself at the pack of men, as if he were born to assault vermin. One by one, the GIs stepped back, shadowed faces registering surprise, resentment. I hurried after Ernie down the alley, scowling, my shoulders hunched, my fists clenched but luckily none of the men reacted. They were too startled by Ernie’s bold action. We scurried toward where the alley opened on the pedestrian walkway and then turned to parallel the narrow channel of the Sonyu River. It wasn’t much of a river, nothing more than a creek really, running about knee-deep through clay. We were clear of danger, or so it seemed.
Ernie marched down the path, whispering over his shoulder to me, “pussies.” Just as he said that something clattered out of the darkness—a chunk of plaster, or a brick. It tumbled through the air and landed ineffectually in the stream, splashing against pebbles.
They hurtled down the alley, the entire pack of them, emerging out of darkness into moonlight. Some of them held what looked like clubs in their hands. Ernie swiveled and crouched, scrabbling in the creek bed until found what he wanted—a rock the size of his head, which he tossed at them. I scrambled toward a chunk of driftwood.
“Use your forty-five,” Ernie said, pulling out his brass knuckles, slipping them on splayed fingers. The GIs kept running toward us, screaming like banshees.
“Not yet,” I said.
One of them plowed into me. I absorbed the shock, sidestepped, swung my driftwood bat and clunked him on the head. He went down. Another came at me and I swung again, missing. And then he was inside my defenses, clawing at my face. I warded him off and popped him with a left jab and then a sharp right. As he staggered, another GI flung himself on me. We grunted and wrestled and struggled, ankle-deep into the muddy creek, until finally a voice bellowed out of the darkness.
“At ease!”
Reflexively, I froze, holding my fist cocked in mid-air, my left hand still clutching the ripped shreds of somebody’s shirt. Everyone else froze also. In the middle of a fight, in the middle of a blood ritual familiar to every young man, we froze. Why? It was our training. Each one of us had spent hours responding to shouted orders—on the parade field, during physical training, as part of combat simulations—and when a command was bellowed at us with enough conviction, enough un-self-questioning authority suffusing the voice, all of us—me, Ernie, and the nameless GIs hassling us—immediately responded to the order.
A pair of combat boots tromped rhythmically through the mud.
“Who’s that?” the same voice shouted. “Is that you, Quigley?” When there was no answer the voice said, “Is that you, Conworth? What the hell you doing back here? Smoking that shit again? Let me see your face.”
A flashlight shone. The pale, beard-stubbled face of the GI called Conworth stood illuminated in the light. Hairy nostrils. Blood-shot eyes.
“What’d I tell you about that shit?” the man holding the flashlight asked. “Didn’t I tell you about getting burned in the next piss test?” Thick black fingers gently slapped the white face. “Didn’t I?”
“You told me, Sarge.”
“And still you come out here smoking that reefer.” The light lowered and then rose back to the face. “You t
aking any other kinda shit?”
“Nothing, Sarge.”
The light switched to the next GI, this one with a longish face the color of swirled milk chocolate.
“And you, Quigley? You out here thinking you’re going to kick some rear echelon ass? What I tell you about fighting? Come on, what I tell you?”
“You said to take it to the gym, Sarge.”
“That’s right. They got gloves down there. You practice hard enough maybe you get out of the artillery into one of those Special Service units. Didn’t I tell you that?”
“You told me, Sarge.”
“All right.” The light lowered to the mud. “Now apologize to these two gentlemen.” No one said anything. “They come all the way up here from Seoul just to do something good and you treat them like this. Come on, now. Apologize.”
A few surly voices mumbled something that sounded vaguely like the word “Sorry.”
“Anybody hurt? Anybody need to go to the aid station?” When no one responded, the man with the flashlight said, “All right now. Nobody has an overnight pass. I know that. Get your butts out of here and back to the barracks. And put down that reefer. You hear me?”
Again, a few more mumbles. Something like, “We hear you.”
Their heads down, hands shoved deep into their pockets, the GIs filed past us. Five of them, I counted. There were a few cuts and bruises and at least one of them would wake up tomorrow with a serious knot on his head, but apparently there were no serious injuries.
When they were out of sight, the man with the flashlight said, “How about you two? Either one of you hurt?”
“Not a chance,” Ernie said. “Lucky for them you stopped us when you did.”
In the reflected light, a large black face smiled wryly. “Yeah, they lucky. Come on then, follow me.”
He turned and, fanning the beam of the flashlight in front of him, tromped off down the pathway. Ernie and I followed. The narrow walkway rounded a bend and the floodlights from Camp Pelham suddenly illuminated our way. The man in front switched off his flashlight and kept walking, head down.