Why had Jill packed her full MP regalia? Most GIs, when they go AWOL, don’t take their uniforms. After all, the whole point of bugging out is to flee all things military.
We interviewed the “house girl.” Actually, she was a middle-aged Korean woman allowed on post to clean and do laundry for the female soldiers billeted on Camp Casey. She told us that Jill had also packed a tote bag full of clothes, a hair brush, and other things a woman needs. But not much. Only one pair of soft-soled shoes was missing and a couple of blouses and a pair of blue jeans and a skirt. The rest of Jill’s civilian clothes and uniforms were lined up and pressed, hanging neatly inside her open wall locker.
What we did not find, no matter how hard we looked, was the birthday card Jill’s father had sent her when she was five years old.
In ten more days, when Corporal Jill Matthewson had been gone a total of thirty days, she would cease being merely AWOL, absent without leave; she would be dropped from the 2nd Division roles as a deserter. She wouldn’t be facing local punishment anymore; she’d be facing a court-martial. Time in a federal penitentiary would not only be likely but almost a sure thing.
Could Jill have jumped on an airplane and returned to the States?
Not possible. South Korea is a tightly controlled society. Jill’s name and service number-along with the names and service numbers of every AWOL American GI in country-was on a list at the single international airport in Korea: Kimpo, outside of Seoul. The Korean authorities check such lists carefully. Nobody enters or leaves the Republic without the Koreans being damn sure that the person is who they say they are-and that they’re not on any watch list. Another way out of the country is by sea from Pusan, but that embarkation point is watched just as closely as the airport at Kimpo. After that, the only way out of South Korea is across the Demilitarized Zone. Trying to cross the DMZ would be suicide. You’d either be blown up by a landmine or shot by a North Korean soldier.
Jill Matthewson was still in Korea, of that we could be sure. Maybe dead, maybe alive. But still here.
2
Footsteps echoed off distant walls.
The 2nd Infantry Division Central Issue Facility was an open warehouse as big as an aircraft hangar. Far overhead, above gnarled wooden rafters, rays of sunlight fought their way through soot-smeared skylights. The entire facility reeked of damp canvas and decayed mothballs. A cement-floored walkway was lined by square plywood bins, each bin filled to overflowing with steel pots, web gear, helmet liners, wool field trousers, fur-lined parkas, ear-flapped winter headgear, rubber boots, inflatable cold-weather footgear, ammo pouches, and everything the well-dressed combat soldier needs to operate in the country once known as Frozen Chosun.
Ernie and I had decided to interview Jill Matthewson’s roommate, a supply clerk who worked here at the CIF. From what people told us about her, she’d be worth talking to. The opposite, they said, of Jill Matthewson.
The facility was quiet. No troops were lined up to receive their initial issue of combat gear. Off to our left, stuffed into wooden shelving twenty or thirty feet high, was more army-issue equipment. This time, an enormous pile of metal canteen cups. In a back office, we heard voices. Ernie and I strode toward a buzzing fluorescent bulb.
Sitting at a desk, shoulder-length blonde hair hanging limply, sat a woman in wrinkled fatigues. Although she was young, her face seemed to sag. Her eyes were blank and her mouth open. I almost expected to see spittle roll across her pink lips.
“Korvachek?” Ernie asked.
Slowly, she looked up. The embroidered name tag on her fatigue shirt confirmed that Ernie was right. The insignia pinned to her collar was PFC.
A. Korvachek. Private First Class. Corporal Jill Matthewson’s roommate.
Korvachek gazed at Ernie, but the expression on her face didn’t change.
Ernie reached down, cupping her narrow chin in the palm of his hand, and tilted her head back. Blue eyes continued to stare up at him. Lifeless.
Ernie let her chin go and stepped away. He turned to three men standing at the far end of a counter. They’d stopped working now and were looking at us. The ranking man wore the insignia of a buck sergeant.
“You let her come to work like this?” Ernie asked.
The buck sergeant shrugged. “It’s her life.”
I read his name tag: HOLLINGS.
“She should be in a program,” Ernie said.
“Been in one. Fell off the wagon a week ago.”
Ernie looked back at Specialist Korvachek. The MP report said her first name was Anne. Ernie walked over to the water cooler in the corner of the office, grabbed a paper cup from the dispenser, and filled it with water. Then he walked across the office to Korvachek’s desk and tossed the cold water directly into her face.
She sat up sputtering.
I expected her to start cursing but she was too surprised. Ernie stepped around the desk, grabbed her by the arm and hoisted her to her feet, walking her toward the open door.
I followed, closing the door as we left the office, warning off the three men inside with my eyes. Soon, the three of us were in the center of the warehouse. Piles of folded canvas and green wool blankets towered above us like pungent cliffs of cloth.
“Matthewson,” Ernie said, grabbing Korvachek by her narrow shoulders. “Talk.”
The young woman’s head swiveled and her eyes rolled. “You’re cops.”
“Good guess, Miss Marple. What happened to Jill Matthewson?”
“I don’t know. She’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“There.” She pointed vaguely toward the main gate and beyond to the city of Tongduchon.
“She went to the ville?” Ernie said.
“Yeah.”
“How do you know that?”
“She always went to the ville. She worked there and when she was off duty she went there, too.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Korvachek seemed surprised by the question. She waved her hand again. “To get away from this shit.”
“To get away from the army?
“Yeah. And all the jerks who are trying to pinch your butt and call you names.”
“Some of the other MPs were giving her a hard time?”
“Of course. I told that other guy that. The one with the big nose. What’s his name?”
“Bufford?” Ernie asked.
“Yeah, that’s right. Mr. Bufford.”
“So this GI who was giving Jill a hard time, what was his name?”
“Not a GI,” Korvacheck said. “Any GI. They’re always making comments about your body, or what they want to do with you, or rubbing their crotch and leering. You know, things like that. That’s why Jill wanted to get away.”
None of this had been in Bufford’s report. Not surprising. Not only would he not want to embarrass the Division but in the United States Army such behavior is so routine that it’s not worth mentioning.
A door opened and slammed, the same door Ernie and I had used to enter the Central Issue Facility. I motioned to Ernie and we ushered Anne Korvachek deeper into the bowels of the CIF warehouse. Once in a position where we hoped nobody could hear us, we stopped. Above us now, instead of mothballed army blankets, a jagged mountain of entrenching tools-short-handled shovels- loomed. Ernie resumed his questioning.
“When Jill went to the ville,” he asked, “where did she go?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Korvachek answered. “We weren’t that close. She didn’t tell me.”
She pouted as she crossed her arms. Ernie let go of her and stepped back, giving her a chance to breathe. After a moment of silence, I said, “It’s important, Anne. I know you didn’t want to tell those other investigators. But we’re not from Division, we’re from Eighth Army.”
She snorted. “Same difference.”
“No. There is a difference. We don’t want to embarrass Jill or harm her in any way. Her privacy is her privacy and if she doesn’t want to be in the army anymore…” I waved my hand in a broad circle. “If she doesn’t want to put up with all this, that’s her decision. We’ll honor it. We’ll tell her what to do and who to talk to and how to go about requesting a discharge. It may not be easy and she might be punished for going AWOL, but we’ll tell her straight. And the only reason we’re up here and the only reason we’re looking for her is because she hasn’t contacted her mother. Her mother wrote to her congressman about Jill’s disappearance and started this investigation rolling. At least Eighth Army’s part in it.”