The glaring eyes of the students sitting around us were like forty pairs of laser beams burning into my body. America. That’s what they saw in Ernie and me. The country that had allowed thinly veiled dictatorships to rule on this peninsula since we liberated them from the Japanese at the end of World War II. Ernie and I were almost as disliked in our own military bureaucracy; a couple of flakes, they called us. Here we represented the power and influence of the mightiest country the world has ever seen.
You can’t win.
The policeman reappeared and waved for us to follow. Forty sets of eyes swiveled as we walked out the back door.
A couple of policemen and a white-clad ambulance driver stopped their mumbling as we walked into the room. Batons, riot control shields, padded vests, and gas masks hung from pegs lining the walls. Lumpy linen draped a stretcher on the floor.
The desk sergeant stepped forward and ripped back the sheet.
His chest has been crushed, and his face was so purple and distorted that even if he were my brother I wouldn’t have been able to recognize him. I kept my face straight. The desk sergeant watched us, a greedy gleam in his eye.
“Did he have any identification?” I said.
The desk sergeant pulled the sheet back over the corpse, then walked over to a metal cabinet and retrieved a plastic sack filled with keys, some US coins, and a wallet. We went back to the front desk where he had us sign a receipt for the personal effects.
The GI’s name was Ralph Whitcomb. He had a weapons card that showed he was assigned to Headquarters Company, 8th United States Army. The photo on his green military ID was more revealing than the anguished distortion we had just seen. I showed it to Ernie.
“Seen him around,” he said.
His wallet contained four thousand won, twenty-three dollars in wrinkled Military Payment Certificates, and seventy-five cents in change. The desk sergeant accounted for everything on the receipt. I signed it, fitting my long horizontal signature into the little vertical box on the form. He gave me a copy.
“Did any of these students know him, or see what happened?”
“No. Not that they’ve told us yet.”
I handed him my card, inked by the 8th US Army printing plant in Bupyong.
“If they tell you anything, will you call us?”
He clenched his fist. “They will tell us something.”
We walked out of the Sodaemun Police Station, glad to be away from the little room so filled with hatred.
Ernie and I had been the only two agents at the 8th Army CID Detachment headquarters when the report came in.
“I want you guys to get over to Chungang University,” the first sergeant said. “Fast. There’s been an American hurt, maybe killed, in one of their demonstrations.”
Ernie was still rubbing his sore arm. The reason we had stopped in the administration office, instead of staying out in the field and pretending to search for some black market arrests, was that it was autumn and time for our annual mandatory flu shots. The army has a thing about flu shots. Every year. And they check to make sure each unit attains one hundred percent compliance. We were bringing our freshly stamped shot records back to Reilly, the NCO in charge of the CID Detachment’s administrative section. A new vaccine has to be developed every year to ward off whatever brand of flu might have mutated into existence in the last twelve months, and the army’s a great place to test it. If it kills a few GIs, you make a few adjustments and try again.
Mine felt as if it were going to kill me. I get sick every year after the flu shot. I’m not sure if it’s from the vaccine or from the forced penetration.
“Get his name and service number,” the first sergeant said. “And if he’s hurt, make sure they hold him until one of our ambulances arrives. I’ll wait until you call because I don’t want to send a US Army ambulance into that part of town with all those students milling around.”
“What about us?”
“You’re expendable. Get going.”
We studied the big map of Seoul on the wall of the admin office until Ernie was sure of the directions. Then we hopped in his jeep and made it over to the Sodaemun, Great West Gate, Police Station.
The one thing we had going for us on this foray into enemy territory was that our jeep was unmarked. There are a lot of jeeps operating in this country, all part of the generous US government military aid. And as Criminal Investigation Division agents we were required to wear coats and ties rather than our uniforms.
Of course, with our short hair the bad guys still spotted us for what we were. Might as well hang a neon sign around our necks.
The narrow lane in front of the big stone archway that led into Chungang University still glistened with the water from the fire hoses. The sky was overcast and spotted with dark patches of rolling gray. I breathed deeply of the damp air and inhaled the scent of flowers mingled with the diesel fumes of the just departed military vehicles.
Ernie found a spot in a back alley for the jeep and padlocked the steering wheel to the chain welded to the floor.
“What do you expect to find here?” Ernie asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe a witness.”
“And maybe a lot of angry shopkeepers. The Korean National Police aren’t going to like it; it’s their jurisdiction.”
“Yeah, but it’s our GI.”
Ernie parked the jeep, and we walked down the roadway. The street was lined with shops, the type you’d expect in front of a college: a florist, a few stationery stores, bookstores with titles in English, French, and German, a couple of dress boutiques, and a whole bunch of teahouses. Not the type of teahouses that serve crumpets in mid-afternoon but the type that serve espresso and apple wine and sponsor poetry readings and political rallies.
A few remaining blossoms on a large treelike shrub still splashed the lane with purple. Mukung-hua, the Korean national flower, prized more for its sturdiness and beauty than for its rarity. Ahead, beyond the archway, a vast lawn unfolded around stately old trees. The campus of Chungang University.
It was an exciting neighborhood, and suddenly I was overwhelmed with the desire to have parents who could afford to send me to school. Hell, it would be nice to have parents even if they couldn’t afford to send me to school.
I shook it off.
There were a few riot police in padded vests and huge caged helmets still hanging around. Mopping up.
Actually, it was incorrect to call them riot police. They are a branch of the armed services, and most of the so-called riot “police” are actually conscripts. The children of rice farmers who are drafted and sent to a few weeks of basic training, then deployed to college campuses to knock the heads of their peers who happen to come from wealthier families and can afford to attend university. Class warfare, controlled by the state.
When they saw two Americans approaching, an officer in a fatigue uniform was summoned. Ernie and I both flashed our identification.
“Where was the American killed?”
The officer gestured with his hands toward one of the tea shops. “This way.”
The shop was located at a curve where the narrow road crooked like an elbow toward the university gate. A portly Korean woman, her hair done in a little round permanent and her body wrapped in a long white apron, rustled out of the shop. Her face was wrinkled in worry. I spoke to her in Korean.
“Did you see what happened, Aunt?”
“You mean the American?”
“Yes.”
“I saw him. After he was hurt. It was horrible. One of their big war vehicles rolled right over him. Both sets of tires, they say, the front and the back. Blood was everywhere.” She pointed toward the gutter. “They’ve washed it with their fire hoses, but it was everywhere.”
Tears sprang into her eyes, and she shook her head. A gray-haired man, probably her husband, hustled out of the shop and pulled her back in. Other merchants came out into the street when they saw the two Americans with the Korean officer. They gathered around us, and I didn’t have to ask any more questions, just strained to understand what they were saying.