“Gas!” he shouted.
All around us we could hear artillerymen popping open canvas holders and scrambling to pull out rubber protective masks, yanking them over their heads, adjusting the straps, blowing out forcefully to clear the air inside, and then lowering the protective rubber hood over their shoulders.
And then we saw it, dark and black and menacing. Smoke. Tons of it, roiling out of that metal tubing we’d seen a few seconds ago. CS-better known to the civilian world as tear gas.
“Come on.”
Ernie and I ran to the upstream side of the barge, toward the thickening fog, groping blindly. At least most of the tear gas was being swept south by the prevailing winds, which whistled loudly out of North Korea, following the southerly flow of the current.
“If that shit gets in our eyes,” Ernie said, “we’ll be helpless.”
“Blind, maybe,” I said, “but not helpless.” I pulled out my.45.
We’d both experienced CS gas before. It’s part of every soldier’s basic training; to step into a gas filled tent, take off your protective mask, recite your service number backward, and be shoved outside coughing and spitting by your Drill Sergeant.
We stood in the fog behind the lead truck on the barge. Ernie whispered in my ear, “They’re on the far side of the truck, next to that thing spitting out the gas. As soon as we hit land, they’ll skedaddle.”
“So we wait here,” I said. “When we land and this freaking gas clears, Singletery tells us who they are and we make the arrest.”
Ernie was about to say something when we heard a scream, then cursing, men grunting and the sound of bodies flailing against metal.
“Singletery,” I said.
We rushed around the front bumper of the truck. As soon as we stepped past the truck, the gas hit us. I kept my eyes closed, popping them open briefly and trying not to breathe. Amidst the fog and the pumping CS gas, I could see only shadows. Ernie surged forward, swinging at phantoms with his brass knuckles. I tried to aim my.45. A hunch-shouldered figure that I took to be Singletery was struggling with two of the combat engineers, the men I suspected had raped Sunny. Ernie had found the third and was holding him in a headlock and punching his face with the brass knuckles. Singletery staggered backward. It looked to me as if someone had ripped off his protective mask. I saw the hood go flying off the edge of the barge.
My eyes burned with pain. Tears flooded out of them, so fast I couldn’t see. I knew the worst thing you could do when under assault by CS gas is to wipe your eyes because that just makes them burn worse. But if I couldn’t see, I couldn’t fire. Using my sleeve I bent and wiped moisture from by eyes. Then, with an act of will, I opened them as wide as I could and through the fog and the gas I took aim with the.45 and fired at the two men assaulting Sergeant Singletery.
I didn’t mean to hit them, I only wanted to scare them, but it was too late. They’d finally managed to shove the huge man off his center of gravity. As I fired, he reeled, waving his arms in the air, and tilted backward. He fell away, tumbling off the end of the barge. The sickening sound of a splash hit my ears.
I fired again, this time aiming to kill. I hit something and the two men went down.
“Don’t move,” I shouted. “I’ll blow your heads off!”
The man wrestling with Ernie lay flat on the deck. Ernie backed away, staggering toward the two-and-a-half ton truck. When he was next to me, he knelt on the wooden deck. Down the barge I heard men shouting, their voices muffled by their protective masks. “Man overboard!”
There was no rescue craft that I knew of, and no Coast Guard to notify. What I did know was that the waters of the Imjin were freezing and the current not only flowed quickly but was also known for its treacherous undertows.
Ernie crawled toward the machine spewing out the gas and pawed at the controls. Somehow, he managed to get it turned off. A couple of minutes later we bumped against the quay on the opposite bank and the air started to clear, the gas and the fog flowing swiftly downriver. Although my eyes were watering way too much for me to read it, I managed to recite from memory a prisoner’s rights from the Uniform Code of Military Justice to the three men lying motionless on the deck.
A search was launched for Singletery. They spent two days looking for him. His body was never recovered. At 8th Army JAG, murder was added to the long list of charges against the three combat engineers.
Two months later Ernie drove his jeep and I rode shotgun, literally. I held an M-16 rifle across my chest while in the back seat sat a representative from 8th Army Finance. He carried a leather briefcase with a combination lock on it.
Mei-lan Burkewalder had long since lost her ration control privileges and her command sponsorship. This meant that she no longer received the cost-of-living housing allowance, which was apparent as Ernie drove us down bumpy lanes, splashing through mud, honking his horn at the crowds of taffy vendors and trash dealers and old ladies holding huge bundles of laundry atop their heads. Finally, we found the address: painted on a grease stained board: 21 bon-ji, 37 ho, in the Mapo district of Seoul. Ernie parked the jeep against a moss covered brick wall and we climbed out and tromped through the mud toward the splintered wooden gate. I pounded and we waited.
Mei-lan Burkewalder opened the gate herself. Her face was wan and gray, with no hint of makeup. The bracelets that used to dangle from her forearms were also gone. She didn’t bother to invite us into her hooch. She just let us into the courtyard and sat on the narrow wooden porch that ran in front of the sliding oil-papered doors. The guy from 8th Army Finance sat next to her. He unlocked the briefcase, pulled out a sheaf of paperwork, read it to her and asked if she understood. She nodded.
“Would you say that out loud please,” he said, “in front of these witnesses.”
He nodded toward Ernie and me.
“I understand,” she said.
Then he handed her a pen and she signed the paperwork. He kept the top white copy and the yellow copy, which was for her husband’s pay and earnings folder, and handed her the bottom pink copy.
Captain Irwin Burkewalder had been killed in action while on combat operations in a support role with the 2nd Ranger Group near Pleiku. Word had come down about a week ago. Mrs. Mei-lan Burkewalder had been notified and now, as spousal beneficiary, she was receiving her ten thousand dollar payout from Serviceman’s Group Life Insurance. The finance guy pulled the money out of the briefcase and counted the twenty dollar notes out in front of her. They made an impressive pile. Then he handed her some paper bands and let her bundle them up. She fumbled the job. He helped her finish.
When he was done, he shoved his signed paperwork into the briefcase and clicked it shut. He stood and nodded to her.
As he walked back to the gate, Mei-lan Burkewalder looked at Ernie and then at me. Her eyes were dry. Too dry. The eyes you see when there are no tears left.
We backed out of the hooch and returned to Ernie’s jeep.
THE GRAY ASIAN SKY
Puffed bruises spotted the young faces, and their black hair stuck out in disarray. The girls were still angry. The boys just frightened.
In the States a police station full of student demonstrators would have been a madhouse of noise and activity. Here there was an eerie silence. Two of the Korean policemen chatted quietly while another dialed the telephone.
Order. That’s what you can count on in a police state. Law if you’re lucky.
Ernie and I waded through the crowd to the desk sergeant. He stared up at us, mouth slightly open. I spoke to him in Korean.
“We’re here to see the body.”
“Of the American?” he said.
“Who else?” Ernie whispered in English.
I nodded.
“Just a moment,” the policeman said. He got up and strutted into the back room.