I pointed to the rock next to my head. He switched the flashlight on. A dusting of freshly ground rock clung to a three-inch gouge.
“Christ,” Ernie said. “That would’ve taken your head off.”
Footsteps tumbled away through the rocks. “Come on.”
We ran.
We had finally reached the edge of the boulder field, the sloshing feet only a few yards ahead of us, when I heard a thump. Someone whimpered. I stood still, listening, and then I took two steps forward. The whimpering again.
Whoever was out there had stopped, and they were so terrified at our approach that they were incapable of keeping quiet. Ernie closed in. I pointed to where I thought the sound was coming from and motioned for him to shine the flashlight on it. He did.
Brush rattled. Then someone was running again. I broke into a full-out sprint, crashing through the brush, shouting “Halt!” in English, forgetting for the moment how to say the word in Korean. Whoever was in front of me went down in a heap. I was holding the M-16, aiming at the sopping pile of rags in front of me, shouting for him to put his hands up, not caring whether he could understand me or not, ready to blow his freaking head off.
It was Ernie, strangely enough, who motioned with his open palm for me to lower the rifle. And then I saw what was in front of me. Bare legs poking out of a huge Army field jacket. The sturdy calves and creamy thighs were hairless, the rear end covered only by a wrinkled miniskirt.
The person huddled inside the jacket whimpered again and then a small hand appeared through the loose green material. It held a short-handled sickle. Ernie snatched it away, handed it to me, and then grabbed the small hand and hoisted the person upright. Long black hair hung down loosely, covering her face. Sweat matted strands were back-handed from cheeks, and then we saw her face. Full-cheeked, smooth, wide frightened eyes. She was about nineteen, I figured.
I examined the sickle. The razor sharp tip was dented in front, boulder dust still clinging to it.
I looked back at the girl. She was staring at her hands, clutching and pulling on her fingers. Her feet were crossed, her shoulders hunched. She was completely ashamed of herself. She ought to be. She’d just come about three-quarters of an inch from chopping my fool head off.
By the time the truck arrived, the sun had reached halfway toward its highest point of the day. The rain had stopped, but the mud was still so thick that there was no way an ambulance could make it up the hill. They had to send a two-and-a-half ton truck and the only one available was loaded in the back with wooden crates of high explosive artillery rounds. A couple of medics and a few MPs had marched up earlier, and they helped us roll the two dead GIs into body bags and hoist them up onto the ammunition crates in the back of the deuce-and-a-half. The rest of us clambered in back and in as low a gear as possible the driver started back down the hill. We slid about halfway down the road, but the guy at the wheel was expert enough to turn into the skids and we managed to reach level ground without rolling over.
The KNPs had already taken the girl.
Before they arrived, I’d had plenty of time to interview her. Her name was Shin Myong-ok. At least that’s what she told me. Even though Korean citizens are required to keep their national identification cards with them at all times, she didn’t have hers. She’d left it down in the valley with her mama-san, who’d brought her and five other girls out to the field to make some money from the small legion of 8th Army GIs who’d suddenly plopped down in their midst.
Ernie offered her water from his canteen, which she accepted gratefully along with a stick of ginseng gum. We sat beneath the awning on iron stools I’d brought outside of the signal van. Even in the huge field jacket, she shivered in the cold.
I asked her why she’d tried to kill me.
She bent at the waist and buried her face in her knees for what seemed like five minutes. Finally, she sat up, eyes moist and started to explain that the kind gentleman had told her American soldiers were coming to take revenge. Her only chance, according to him, was to protect herself with the iron sickle. He’d left it with her for just that purpose.
I slowed her down and made her start from the beginning. She did.
Just before sundown, the mama-san had bought them all bowls of noodles in the local village, and after dark they’d carried their blankets and a thermos of warm tea out into the brush on the far side of the perimeter of the 8th Army encampment. They sent two girls at a time to linger near the concertina wire and call for GIs to join them in the brush. When a GI worked up the courage to wriggle through the wire, he would disappear with the chosen girl and another girl would take her place. So it would go through the night; the mama-san collecting the money, the girls lying on the blankets, pulling up their skirts, and spreading their legs for the smelly Americans.
Except this night it was different. Early in the evening, before they’d laid out their blankets or sipped on their first cup of green tea, a “kind gentleman” arrived.
“Why do you say he was kind?” I asked.
“Because he smiled at me,” she said. “And because he gave me this.”
She reached into the pocket of her miniskirt and pulled out a coin. I asked her if I could examine it, and she said yes. It was bronze. I twisted it in my fingers and shone the flashlight on it. It was an old coin, from the Chosun Dynasty, according to the inscription. On it was a picture of Queen Min, one of the last members of the royal family to resist the plans of the Japanese Emperor to colonize her country.
“She was a brave woman,” I said, handing the coin back to her.
“Yes. And the kind gentleman told me to be brave.”
“Did he give you anything else?”
“Yes,” Miss Shin replied. “He gave me that.”
She pointed to the iron sickle, which Ernie had wrapped in plastic and placed on a metal stool.
— 11-
The murdered GIs were identified as Specialist Four Anthony Ertagglia of Queens, New York, and Private First Class Roosevelt Hargis of Mobile, Alabama. Back in the Command tent there was zero sympathy for the fact that Ernie and I had been up all night. As soon as we arrived, we were badgered for as many answers as we could give in our depleted state. Eventually, Ernie took over the jawboning and I was given some time to type out my report. I slipped away and sat at a wooden field table with a Remington typewriter, rolled a sheet of paper into the carriage, and got all the facts down while everything was fresh in my mind-or as fresh as could be expected under the circumstances.
Miss Shin Myong-ok had told us the man she called the “kind gentleman” had appeared out of the weeds on the far side of the encampment.
“Did anyone else see him approach you?” I asked.
She didn’t think so.
He’d been very polite to the mama-san and even bowed to her. She’d made a place for him on the largest blanket, and they’d sat and Miss Shin had been the one to serve him tea from the large thermos.
“Did you ever share your tea with GIs?” I asked.
“Never,” she replied, shocked at the idea.
The mama-san thought at first that he was the type of Korean man who liked to partake of the charms of GI business girls. Mostly, the girls who hung out with American GIs were shunned for fraternizing so shamelessly with foreigners, but there were always a few perverts around who craved forbidden fruit. As it turned out, that wasn’t what he had in mind. What he wanted, he said, was help in approaching a couple of Americans who worked in the signal truck atop the hill. He had a business proposition he wanted to make to them. He was vague about what the proposition was, but he implied that it had to do with the valuable equipment in the truck, equipment not available in Korea. He wanted to purchase it from the Americans for cash and, although he didn’t say so, it was obvious to Miss Shin and the mama-san that he’d sell the equipment on the black market at a huge mark up. Everyone would profit. The GIs could claim the equipment had been stolen and the American military would replace it. However, due to military security, he couldn’t get near the American GIs to make this very sensible business proposition. That’s where Miss Shin came in.