Hold Back the Night

Chapter Five

WHEN RALEIGH COUZENS led the Second Platoon down to the line of foxholes chopped into the neck of the Ko-Bong peninsula, he disposed two rifle squads on the alert, and inspected the mortar emplacements. He discovered that the night’s normal humidity, freezing on contact with the steel, had rimmed the tubes with ice, and he ordered this chipped away and the barrels kept clear. The foxholes were deep, and neatly shelved, so that a man could smoke, and lay out his gear, in comfort inside, and even light a little fire, when the circumstances permitted. On this night the circumstances, of course, did not permit.

He gave his sergeant the duty for two hours, and then curled up in his own hole and was immediately asleep. Couzens never suspected it, but his men were often puzzled by his able professional conduct in the field. When they were staged at Pendleton, they called him, behind his back, sometimes, “Our Playboy,” and sometimes, “Little Whitey.” Since he dressed meticulously and always had a girl on his arm, when off duty, and since it was usually a different girl each time, they speculated on his amours and his ancestry.

Some things about him they knew—that he had left college to join the Marines in the last war, and had been a second lieutenant in the fighting at Peleliu. He had graduated from the University of Virginia after the war, and then for some unfathomable reason had re-joined the Marines when obviously there was no need for it, for the poop was that at Quantico he had driven a Cadillac convertible. They also knew that he re-fought the Civil War loudly and endlessly with the Skipper, always taking the losing side. Once, so the word was, a Confederate flag had been discovered in his foot locker, and Mackenzie had been infuriated, but the flag had stayed aboard, so perhaps Couzens, in spite of his expensive uniforms and girls and cars, was a brave man.

When the sergeant awoke him at 0230 hours, Couzens took up his rifle, made certain the action was unfrozen, and then prowled his position, his senses tuned to the night. The moon was only two days past its fullness, and unobscured, so that anything moving in the white wastes around him should be easy to pick up. Couzens hoped this was true, for on just such a night the enemy could swiftly move an army that in daylight hid in the boondocks from the prying eyes of reconnaissance planes. He wished he had borrowed Sam’s good glasses.

Directly ahead of his defense line the road twisted through half-ruined Ko-Bong, lifeless as a village in a crater of the moon. But was it dead? Or were ghosts playing in Ko-Bong? He could swear he saw ghosts floating in the village street, slipping from house to house. It was as if all the dead men of Ko-Bong were stealing back into their homes. “Now this is strictly imagination,” he told himself aloud. But he saw them again, and this time he saw a shadow, and ghosts cast no shadows. He knew he had spotted something tangible, but logically it would be a white-clad Korean emptying his pot. Still, he would have to investigate. He nudged three men from their holes with the butt of his rifle, and in single file they started down the road to Ko-Bong, soundless except for the hiss of their boots through the powdered snow, Couzens in the lead.

It was like a stalk, Couzens thought, a careful, silent stalk for a chicken hawk you fancied hidden behind the Spanish moss in a tall cypress by the river. In Mandarin. Whenever he held his rifle in his hands, like this, he thought of his boyhood days when his father was alive and taught him the secrets of the hummocks and the swamp and the river. There seemed no possible point of meeting between Mandarin and Ko-Bong, except by the whim of war, and yet there was. There was the very name, Mandarin. It was said that one of his ancestors, a British sea captain who traded with the East, had brought the first Chinese orange seedlings to Florida, and these oranges, larger than the original Spanish oranges, were called Mandarin oranges. And this ancestor, this Captain Couzens, had planted the seedlings where the St. Johns curved around his property like a sinuous and protective arm, and thereafter the place was called Mandarin. China had given it the name.

And he remembered nights in Mandarin utterly quiet and still, like this night. The peace of Mandarin was so profound that the fall of pine needles on the warm and welcoming soil made a clatter, and Ko-Bong seemed just as peaceful. But Ko-Bong was dead and full of ghosts. His rifle was perfectly balanced, ready.

They were close to the first house of the village now, and Couzens raised his arm, and the patrol halted. Couzens listened. He subordinated every other sense to listening, as he had learned in the woods. He listened until he heard scratching sounds in the thatch roofs over the gray mud and dark clay walls, and he listened until he was sure those sounds were made by rats. And when he was certain he heard nothing else, he beckoned his men ahead.

There in the center of the village he thought he heard something else, a sinister snick, like pebbles touching, and he froze, his heart hammering. It was at that moment that the bugle sounded, far back, and was followed by the first burst of shots, tiny but sharp in the night. He and his men wheeled, and stared back towards their own lines, and Dog Company’s encampment beyond. They heard the second bugle call, and more shots, and then the green flare, that identified the Chinese, curved into the night. Couzens estimated it as perhaps three miles off, in the vicinity of the hydroelectric station they guarded. Like Mackenzie, he immediately guessed what had happened. The Chinese had crossed the ice, and attacked Dog Company from the rear. “Come on!” he cried. “Let’s get out of here! Let’s get back!”

It was this impulsiveness that exposed him, although when he considered it later he decided he could not have fought the patrol out of Ko-Bong in any case. He had taken not more than a step when the vicious screech and spurting flame of a machine-pistol came from a doorway to his right. Korn, his tommy-gunner, collapsed into the muck directly in front of him. Couzens threw himself on his face and tried to swing his rifle on the doorway. He never got in a shot, but it was this action that saved him, for the concussion of grenade explosions blew across him, tearing away the hood of his parka. Then something heavy smashed into his spine, and he knew he was dead, or soon would be, but the fierce wish to live of one near death forced him to roll himself into a ball and cover his head with his arms.

He felt a foot on his back, and heard a laugh, and he was yanked to his feet.

He was in the center of a group of Chinese soldiers, their faces glistening in the moonlight, shoving and shouldering for a better look at him, one of them incongruously smiling. They wore white cloaks over their heavy quilted uniforms. This ordinary dress of the Korean civilian made a perfect camouflage in the snow and the moonlight. Couzens looked to see whether any of his men had escaped. They were all down, but one was still twitching. Presently a figure leaned over this one and fired a burst into his head and he was still.

Couzens waited to be killed. For a moment they stood like this, an island in a stream of troops that had flooded from nowhere, converged into the street of Ko-Bong, and finally debouched in frontal attack on the First and Second Platoons. Couzens heard the powerful whop-whop-whop of an American heavy fifty going into action, and it sounded like the unexpected voice of a friend when you are in deep trouble; but it was too late, and too far away.

The grinning one, the one with the machine-pistol, moved his hand to motion the others aside, and raised his weapon, but another, in the background, said a word, and knifed through the ring and grabbed Couzens by the back of his head and looked at his helmet, with its single white stripe. Then he said something more, and from the way he spoke Couzens knew he was an officer, although he wore no insignia. Two men came forward and the officer gave them instructions, and they nodded seriously.

The officer asked a question. One of the men replied at length, and Couzens knew that he was repeating what the officer had told him, so there could be no mistake.

Then the officer, and the grinning one, and the others went on, and the two prodded Couzens in the other direction. Couzens knew he was a prisoner on the way to the rear. He was giddy with relief.

They marched in silence out of the village and then began to climb an ox-cart trail that led upwards into the hills. After a time, when no other troops were in sight, one of the two grabbed Couzens by the arm and halted him, and Couzens despaired, and again prepared for death. In every army soldiers sometimes find it personally inconvenient to bring back prisoners, and it is simple to explain, if anyone remembers and asks about it afterwards, that the prisoner tried to escape and it was necessary to shoot him. It is a very simple explanation and cannot be refuted.

But the Chinese soldier made the universal gesture, with two fingers to the mouth, for a cigarette. Couzens reached under his parka and into the pocket of his battle jacket and brought out a pack of Camels, trying to mask his fear, and his relief. There was also a lighter in the pocket, and another package of cigarettes in the other pocket, but he would keep these if he could.

He offered the cigarettes, first to one and then to the other, hoping that in the darkness they would not notice the trembling of his fingers. Then he took one himself. One of the Chinese brought out a box of wax matches. He lit Couzens’ cigarette first, and then his own. He blew out a match and lit another match, and held it for his companion. Couzens wondered why the superstition of three-on-a-match should be observed by soldiers the world over. He spoke for the first time. “Speak English?”

Both of them shook their heads, no. One spattered in Chinese, pointing and gesturing. Couzens shook his head. He did not understand. They moved on.

Couzens began to notice what went on around him, and he discovered that the night crawled with life and movement, as they all had suspected. The enemy dared not use the roads by day, for fear of American planes, but the night was his. Bands of gray-clad soldiers, their backs lightly laden with small, square packs, and some with rice bags strung around their necks, passed them. Some of these groups sang—a weird, off-key chant. Couzens knew neither the words nor the tune, but to him it was innately menacing as the sight of a snake to a child. Some marched doggedly and in silence. Couzens noted that their weapons were motley, and he wondered how they solved the ammunition problem. Some carried Japanese Nambus, and others American carbines and Garands and Springfields, and some German burp guns, and some British Bren guns descended from Singapore, and there were rifles and machine-pistols he could not identify. But all the uniforms appeared well-made, comfortable, and warm, even if bulky, and the men were all freshly shod.

The artillery moved behind horses, and he was surprised at the bore of the howitzers, somewhat larger than the American 155. Ox carts passed, loaded with mortars and fodder and ammunition and sacks of rice. Once they were forced to the side of the road by a procession of self-propelled guns of small calibre. Occasionally an ancient truck or bus, obviously appropriated in Korea, rumbled past, leaving the odor of bad diesel oil in its wake. No vehicles showed a light, but through the doorways of some of the houses Couzens could see lamps or charcoal fires. Everything moved in a single direction—towards the reservoir. It was a strange army. It was something out of the Napoleonic wars. It was not of this century.

Couzens wondered when they were going to eat, and where. He stopped his guards, and gave them another cigarette, and then rubbed his stomach. They spoke to him in Chinese and pointed up the road. One of them held up three fingers. Couzens didn’t know whether it was miles, or kilometers, but he knew they expected to eat. They walked until they came to a line of houses strung along the road, and in these houses fires burned, and from them came the smell of cooking. His guards selected a house, talked together for a moment, and then one went inside. When he came out again he beckoned to his companion, and Couzens.

The house was a windowless double-room affair, smoke eddying under the eaves, and rich with stenches new and ancient. Squatting on their heels around the fire at one end were five soldiers, while on a crate sat a smaller, older, wiry man, resting stringy hands on his knees. Painted in faded red on one side of the crate was a label, “Singer Sewing Machines.” Whoever had lived in the house was not there now, but on the wall was a 1945 Japanese calendar with a bright picture of a young lady in an orange-colored kimono.

The older man was a non-com, perhaps an officer, Couzens guessed. This man said nothing, but looked at Couzens with cold hatred shining out of jet eyes sunk in his wizened face. The five around the fire stared at Couzens curiously, and one of them said, “’Ello, Yankee sonabitch,” and smiled in greeting.

“Speak English?” Couzens said.

“’Ello, Yankee sonabitch,” the soldier repeated, still smiling, and Couzens realized that was all the English he knew.

Hanging over the fire was an iron pot. One of the soldiers stirred it at intervals, and then lifted the ladle to his lips, sniffed and tasted. It wasn’t rice only, Couzens saw. It was some sort of stew. Then he saw three opened C-ration cans on the earthen floor, and he knew what it was, and he could guess how it came to be there. These were veterans of the surprise offensive of the month before, when Chinese troops were first committed to the war—the offensive that had been bloodily thrown back by the GI’s, and the Marines.

His two guards squatted like the others on the floor, but Couzens remained standing, although his legs were so weary they trembled. It was a silly part of his heritage. He could not sit down until his host asked him to sit. Nobody asked.

The soldier stirring the stew finally nodded, and another brought a stack of wooden bowls from the other side of the room. The first bowl he gave to the officer, who filled it with care, seeking the meat from the C-rations. When he seated himself again the others filled their bowls and ate, lifting the bowls to their faces, and ladling the stew into their mouths with flying fingers.

There were only six bowls, so Couzens and his guards could not eat until the others were finished. The bottom of Couzens’ bowl looked unappetizing as an ash tray in the morning, when he finally got it, but the stew was hot, and pretty good.

One of the guards touched his arm, and they had started for the door when the older man rose and gave a command. The two guards stiffened, erect. The older man walked over to Couzens and opened his pants. Then he deliberately urinated on the edge of Couzens’ parka, and on his boots. The five soldiers slapped their thighs and howled in laughter, and the older man turned away and took his seat and gestured them out with his thumb.

Couzens did not remember much of the rest of the march. His humiliation sickened him until he staggered, and the tides of anger that rose and fell inside him finally gave him cramps, and he had to sit for a while at the roadside, pressing the heels of his hands against his rigid stomach muscles. His guards twice tried to explain to him, a puzzled pity in their faces, but of course it was in Chinese, and anyway it was useless.

At first light they came to a village, and from his memory of the maps Couzens guessed it could be a place called Pukkok, and he saw at once that it was a headquarters. There was a radio van artfully camouflaged, and much wiring, and the guns of a heavy flak battery pointing arrogant fingers at the morning sky, and light flak, which looked like Bofors, in twin mounts on new half-tracked vehicles, and American and Russian jeeps carefully hidden. He was startled when he saw that three houses were not houses at all, but Russian T-34 tanks with thatch roofs cleverly attached.

Around a larger central building, heavily constructed of field stone and concrete, that might once have been a rural factory or warehouse, were sentries armed with American tommy-guns. Couzens reflected that we had given standard equipment to Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao must have got all of it, or almost all. His guards straightened their uniforms, and themselves, and marched him to the door of this building.

There was some questioning of his guards at the building’s gate, and then a tall young man appeared, wearing the same quilted gray as all the others but with the authority of a staff officer apparent on his shoulders, and gave orders. Couzens’ two guards shuffled away to where a fire burned and a pot of rice boiled, in the manner of soldiers relieved of a tedious duty, and the officer turned to Couzens and said, “You are a lieutenant of the Marines. You will come with me, lieutenant.” He spoke in what Couzens had learned to call missionary-school English. It was stilted, and had queer inflections, but now it sounded good. Still, there was the disquieting feeling of being expected. This was not routine treatment for prisoners in anybody’s war. There should be preliminary screening, and questioning, and days in a stockade before a prisoner was taken to a place like this, at least a Corps headquarters, and perhaps the headquarters of an Army.

The tall Chinese led him down a flight of steps. The headquarters, prudently, was in the cellar. They walked down a corridor, and Couzens glimpsed a map room and a communications center through open doorways. It was surprising that they could be so backward in the field, and so advanced at headquarters. It must be the Russians, he thought, but he saw no Russians.

The Chinese staff lieutenant led him into a small room. What furniture there was seemed comfortable. If this building had been a factory, the furniture probably came from the office of the Japanese or European manager. There was a polished desk and a matching executive chair, and a smaller chair with somewhat lowered seat facing it. Behind the large chair were three lithographs of equal size, Stalin, Lenin, and Mao Tze-tung, all idealized, with compassionate expressions on their faces, as if they were about to give a blessing. Covering most of one wall was an operations map, with the Chinese and North Korean formations marked in red, and the United Nations outfits in blue, just like the maps on the other side of the line. There was a steel safe, and atop the safe a tray with bottles and glasses and a decanter. “You will please sit down here,” said the young officer, indicating a chair.

“Thanks,” Couzens said. He relaxed in its comfort, the nerves of his legs jumping pleasantly. The Chinese officer left. Couzens thought it curious that they would leave a prisoner unguarded, but there was probably a guy with a burp gun just outside the door, and besides there was no place to go, even if he could jump out of the window, and there wasn’t any window. The room’s light irritated him. A large bare bulb, behind the chair opposite, was reflected directly into his eyes. He realized that whoever occupied that chair could observe every muscle twitch in his face, while the interrogator’s own face would be shadowed, and they would have him at a disadvantage. Couzens shifted his chair quietly towards the end of the desk, changed its angle, and the glare wasn’t so bad.

The door opened and a man came in. He was a stocky man, in his middle forties, his ivory face unlined. His thinning hair was freshly clipped close to his head. Heavy, steel-rimmed glasses enlarged his eyes, and endowed his round face with an expression of naïveté. He wore a dark blue woolen uniform of excellent cut, the tunic buttoned high on the throat. Couzens had never seen a Chinese uniform, or any uniform, like that before. He wore one decoration, a small red star of shining porcelain. As he closed the door behind him Couzens rose, which was correct military courtesy, but he didn’t know whether to salute or not. The round man stepped towards him and held out his hand, and it was then Couzens decided to salute. He certainly couldn’t shake hands.

The man returned the salute, casually, and said, “Do take off that heavy coat, lieutenant. You’ll find it uncomfortable in here.” He pronounced it “left’nant,” in the British manner.

Couzens took off his coat, and found a hook for it. It was a relief.

“Now,” the round man said. “Have you eaten?”

“I ate on the way,” Couzens said, the memory of his degradation acid in his mouth.

“Doesn’t appear that you enjoyed it much,” said the round man, perceptive. “Well, our field rations are quite spartan, compared with yours, as you know. We aren’t so rich.” He smiled, but as if nothing were funny, and then he looked at Couzens’ chair, and carefully placed it back where it had been, in the full glare of the light. “Please be seated, lieutenant.”

Couzens sat down and waited, and the round man took the chair behind the desk, adjusted his bottom until he was perfectly comfortable, folded his soft, clean hands over his middle, and said, “I’m Colonel Chu. I’m political officer for the Fourth Field Army.”

“I’m Raleigh Couzens, lieutenant, United States Marine Corps. Number O-7980655.”

Colonel Chu tilted his head, and smiled, and this time he really seemed amused. “Name, rank, serial number. Oh, I say, you Americans should be able to do better than that!”

Couzens didn’t say anything.

“You don’t have to worry, lieutenant. I’m not going to ask you about the disposition of your forces, or how to make an atom bomb, or anything military whatsoever. I just simply wanted to have a chat with a Marine. Remarkable force. Remarkable tradition.”

“That’s very nice of you,” said Raleigh Couzens, glad that he knew practically nothing about the strategic situation. He was certain that this was a polite prelude to torture, and he wasn’t at all certain how he would behave under torture. It was fortunate that he had nothing to tell.

Colonel Chu swiveled his chair. “If you look at that map, you will see there is nothing about your army that we do not know.”

Couzens inspected the map, and shivered inside. Couzens didn’t know much about the positions and deployment of the United Nations units and headquarters, but everything he knew for sure was accurate on the map. They had the CP’s of the three Marine regiments pin-pointed, and there was a neat blue circle around Ko-Bong, with red arrows thrusting into it from two directions. The Division’s line of communications and supply from Wonsan was accurately plotted. The vulnerable territory between Ten Corps and Eighth Army, held by shaky South Koreans, was indicated, and this territory was split by a broad red arrow. Also on the map were secret things, like headquarters of the Joint Tactical Air Staff way back at Taegu. And there were things of which he had not even heard scuttlebutt, like the commitment of the Turkish Brigade, the Twenty-seventh Anglo-Australian Brigade, and the British Twenty-ninth Brigade to plug the breakthrough. Raleigh Couzens kept silent.

“You see, old chap,” said Colonel Chu, “there’s hardly anything you could tell me.”

Couzens remembered a story of how German interrogators pumped captured American fliers during the last war. They’d convince a man they knew everything. They’d tell him the name of his group commander, and his squadron commander, and the date his outfit left the States, and how many aircraft it had lost since. And when the American was satisfied the Germans knew everything anyway, then he’d talk freely, and perhaps supply one small bit of information that the Germans had despaired of ever getting. So Couzens didn’t say anything.

“We have a saying,” Colonel Chu continued patiently, “a proverb written by our leader, Mao Tze-tung. You have heard of him, lieutenant?”

“Of course.”

“Our leader wrote a poem which has become famous. ‘Know enemy, know yourself. A hundred battles, a hundred victories.’ Good, what?”

“Pretty smart,” Couzens admitted.

This answer seemed to please Colonel Chu. He opened the top drawer of the desk and brought out a package of Luckies. “Smoke, lieutenant?”

“Thanks very much.”

The colonel lit one for himself. “We are well supplied. You Americans are really a remarkable people. You produce enough not only for yourself and your allies, but for your enemies too. Ha-ha. Not that we are enemies, actually. Not the people of China and the people of the United States. We have the same objective, actually, to remove from our backs the weight of the capitalists and the imperialists who would destroy us. Now, it is obvious that we have much in common, you and I. We enjoy good food, good drink, a Lucky Strike, and all these things we can have in abundance if we have peace. And you can go home to your wife. By the way, where is your home, lieutenant?”

“Mandarin, Florida.”

“Florida.” Couzens could see that Colonel Chu was mentally assembling a map of the United States. “Florida. One of the southern states, right?”

“The most southern.” Couzens meant geographically.

“My word!” The colonel sat upright and stared at Couzens, fascinated, like a naturalist who has turned up a rare grub. “Tell me, lieutenant, have you ever lynched a Negro?”

Couzens was astonished. “Lynched a Nigra! Man, are you nuts?”

“Oh, come now. You must at least have witnessed a lynching.”

“I’ve never even heard of a lynching in Florida,” Couzens said truthfully. “What d’you think Florida’s like? Ever been to Miami?”

“Well, perhaps you don’t personally know of such things,” Colonel Chu said. “No doubt news of such incidents is suppressed by your capitalistic papers. But the world knows of them. Asia knows. In a way, lieutenant—and now I speak as a professional in political warfare—you southerners have been our allies. Frankly, your treatment of the Negro has been our most consistent weapon. The lynching of a Negro, or any report of persecution, in—we won’t say Florida—we’ll say Georgia or Alabama—may be of no consequence to you, but to all with skin like mine it is the most important news of the day. It is flash news in Saigon and Singapore and Mukden and, yes, I should think even Tokyo. The Japanese have not forgotten your Exclusion Act.”

Couzens was silent. He was thinking. He was learning something.

“There are lynchings in the southern states, are there not?”

Couzens didn’t think much of his chances of getting out of this building alive, in any event, so he might as well speak his mind. If the commissar wanted a debate, he’d get one. “Yes, there have been lynchings,” he admitted. “But they don’t happen often any more, and they don’t go unpunished. Decent people deplore them—just as you must deplore the murder of your countrymen who don’t agree with you politically, Colonel Chu.”

Colonel Chu’s eyes were round and surprised behind his thick lenses. “Oh, my dear chap! Those are not murders! We simply execute enemies of the people.”

“Oh, I see,” said Couzens.

“Why, of course. It is an entirely different matter.”

“Natch.”

“What’s that?”

“Natch, for naturally.”

“I’ve always had trouble understanding your Americanisms. I’ve met quite a few Americans, you know, in Shanghai and Singapore. Haughty lot. Arrogant.”

“So I’ve heard,” said Couzens. “A buck goes a long way in those places, and they have more servants, and liquor, and women than they ever knew existed back home, and it inflates ’em. They become Big Time Operators. But you’ve never been in America, have you? Or England, either?”

Colonel Chu wriggled uncomfortably. It was not usual, or fitting, that a prisoner question the interrogator. Nevertheless he decided to answer, because the Marine was talking freely, and might yet confess something of real value. In the colonel’s safe were coded cables from Peking for any prisoner interviews that would show deterioration of morale among the Americans, and particularly in the American elite units, such as the Marines. The interviews would be valuable, not only for Peking’s propaganda, but for Radio Moscow. There was a large party in America which wished to abandon Korea, the cables explained, and this movement would be accelerated if it could be shown that American troops were demoralized, and out of sympathy with the war.

“Well, no, not actually,” Colonel Chu replied to the question. “But I received part of my education at a British school in Hong Kong.”

“You speak English perfectly,” said Couzens.

The colonel inclined his head. “Thanks so very much. You are very flattering. And, in addition, I have read American books, and I have seen many American cinemas, which are most enlightening.”

“What books?” asked Couzens.

“Oh, I have read The Grapes of Wrath. Conditions are pretty dismal among your farmers and farm workers, aren’t they? And I’ve read God’s Little Acre, and some of the works of Jack London and Upton Sinclair.”

“And movies?”

“I’ve seen a great number of them. Some in Yenan, and some in Peking. In Peking on several occasions I was privileged to attend the cinema with our leader.”

“Yes, but what movies did you see?”

The colonel squirmed, impatient. “Oh, a good cross section, I should say. The gangsters and the cafes and the gambling casinos and the music hall shows and comedians and life in your West with the pistol fights.”

“You didn’t, by any chance, see Battleground, or The Sands of Iwo Jima, or The Best Years of Our Lives?”

“Are they new?”

“Not so new.”

“I haven’t heard of them. Your blockade, I fancy.”

“Well, Colonel Chu, you really ought to see them. Yes you ought. That is, if you want to really know your enemy.”

Colonel Chu considered that he had wasted enough time. Either this arrogant young man would answer the questions in the desired way, or he would not, and he would be sent to rot in the stockade. It would be best to lubricate his tongue. “Have a spot with me?” the colonel asked, rising. “Scotch or bourbon?”

“Scotch,” said Couzens.

“How is it,” the colonel inquired as he poured the drinks, “that bourbon is supposed to be the American drink, but whenever you Americans have your choice, you usually take Scotch?”

Couzens started to tell the colonel that he had been living in the same shipboard cabin, or foxhole, or tent, with Mackenzie’s bottle of Scotch for months, and that Scotch had become an obsession with him. But he decided not even to say the word, Mackenzie, or Dog Company, because that might be information for the enemy. Instead he said, “Scotch is more expensive.”

“Do you Americans evaluate everything by money?” said the colonel.

“Since when have the Chinese been adverse to money?” Couzens said, grinning. “I always thought your wars were won with silver bullets.”

“Chiang’s way,” said Colonel Chu. “Not ours. This war of the People’s Liberation Armies will be won by lead, and blood.”

“How about uranium?” asked Couzens innocently.

“Perhaps uranium too,” said the colonel, his face dark under its smooth ivory texture.

Couzens noticed that his drink was stronger than a drink of Scotch should be, and he figured that Colonel Chu was trying to get him tight, and worm from him some fact. If the commissar wanted to try to get him tight on Scotch, that was all right with Couzens. This was the first drink of Scotch he’d had since they left the States. And the colonel was unaware of a flaw in Couzens’ constitution. Couzens couldn’t hold much whiskey. It made him sleepy, and he was sure he would pass out long before he said anything of value to the enemy.

Colonel Chu brought out a pad, and a long pen with wide point. “Now,” he said, “there are a few questions. None of them military, you understand, lieutenant. Just things I’d like to know personally. I’m always interested in you young Americans. It’s always strange to me that a country so obviously degenerate can produce, on occasion such fine, frank young men.”

“Proceed,” said Raleigh Couzens, taking another pull at his drink.

“Firstly, I wish to put a broad question. What do you think of this war?”

“It stinks.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It stinks. It’s unbelievable that America should be fighting China. You’re our traditional friends in the East. You ought to know better.”

Colonel Chu made a note in his pad. It was brief. “But we’re not fighting America. America is fighting us.”

Couzens shook his head. “No. America is fighting Russia. The Russians don’t have the guts to fight us, man to man, bomb for bomb, so they send you against us. Ever think of that, colonel?”

“Ridiculous. The aims of the Chinese People’s Republic and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics are the same, and identical. We fight for the liberation of all oppressed peoples, including those in the United States.”

“We don’t feel oppressed.”

“You are oppressed, although perhaps you don’t know it. You have been hypnotized, drugged by material things. You’re fighting for washing machines and television wireless and Coca-Cola and Standard Oil and Buicks.”

“Some guys may figure it that way,” said Raleigh Couzens. “Not me. Know what I’m fighting for? I’m fighting for the principles of Thomas Jefferson. He wrote something called the Bill of Rights. You can see the original draft in the place where I went to school, in Charlottesville. He lived there. That was his college. Drop in and take a look at them, sometime.”

Colonel Chu regarded Raleigh Couzens, to see if he was serious, and then made another note in his pad. “Now,” he said, “do you think the other nations in the so-called United Nations are giving you sufficient help?”

“Hell, no.”

“Well, why do you Americans maintain them as allies?”

Raleigh Couzens shoved his glass across the desk. “Mind filling it up again, colonel?” he asked. “Then I’ll answer your question.”

The colonel rose, and made another drink on top of the safe, and brought it to Couzens, and then took his own chair, but he was not comfortable, nor did he rest his hands across his stomach. He was eager for the answer.

“I can’t talk very well,” said Raleigh Couzens, “with that light blinding me. Mind moving it, colonel?”

“Why, not at all,” said Colonel Chu, and shoved the reflector aside. “Now, you were about to say something, old chap?”

“I sure was. I was going to say I didn’t think we were getting enough help here in Korea. Except, of course, I understand that the British have got to keep considerable forces in Hong Kong, and the French have got to keep most of their army in Indo-China because unless there were big forces there they might be attacked like the South Koreans. Still, they could give us more help. That’s the way I figure it, until you figure Europe. You see, colonel, Europe’s the crucial place.”

“That so?”

“That’s so, buster, and don’t ever forget it.” Couzens now realized he was feeling his liquor. He didn’t care.

“I shan’t,” said the colonel, and then wondered what he was saying. He had to bring this interview back to normal. “Now,” he said, with authority, “as regards your own country. I’d like your opinion about certain political personalities.”

Couzens took another swallow. “Shoot.”

“What do you think of Henry A. Wallace?”

“Corn.”

“Eh?”

“Corn. I think he should stick to raising corn. He was probably an all-right guy, but he got taken.”

Colonel Chu started to write something, and then didn’t. “Well, what do you think of President Truman?”

“I don’t think he knows which end is up,” said Couzens.

“What’s that you said?” Colonel Chu demanded, his cropped head projected across the table.

“Why, I said I wasn’t sure Truman knew which end was up,” said Raleigh Couzens, but not with the same emphasis. Something in the back of his mind told him he shouldn’t be saying things like that. It was like a family. You could damn your family to hell and gone so long as there was no one else around except other family. But you didn’t do it in front of strangers, and Colonel Chu was definitely a stranger.

The colonel wrote busily, his head bobbing up now and then to take a good look at Couzens, as if he were describing him. Couzens felt uncomfortable. He wanted to explain about Truman. He wanted to explain that he was only thinking of Truman’s crack about the Marines a few months before, when the President had said the Marines had a propaganda organization like Stalin’s. He wanted to tell the colonel not to take his crack about Truman so seriously. But he kept silent, because he feared anything he said would only make it worse.

Colonel Chu finished writing, and said, “Lieutenant, you’ve been quite helpful, quite helpful indeed, and most co-operative. How would you like to go back to your own lines?”

Couzens was speechless. He couldn’t believe that he was hearing right.

“I said, would you care to go back to your own lines?”

“Why, sir, I’d like to.” Couzens, like everyone else, had heard the poop of how sometimes the Chinese returned prisoners, well-treated, after indoctrination, but he hadn’t believed it.

“Very well, I’ll have you back tonight. You see, lieutenant, we are not fang-toothed barbarians, are we now?” The colonel smiled, to show his carefully kept teeth, with the gold inlays. “I want you to go back to your companions, and tell them what you have seen here, and tell them how you were treated. We do not want war with you boys, lieutenant. This war was not of our making. It was your capitalists, and Wall Street, that instigated the South Korean attack upon the people of North Korea, and the imperialists seized upon the fighting here to attempt a general war. But we do not want war. After your forces have gone back to Japan, or surrendered, we will not attack you. We are, most of us, simple farmers. We wish to return to the land.”

“Me too,” Couzens agreed, hoping this wasn’t a joke, or a trick.

“Ah, yes. Now no doubt you need rest, and when night comes I will have you escorted back to the American lines.” Above them the ack-ack began to throb, steadily, and then the cellar shook with the shock of bombs setting their teeth deep into the earth, the concussions bringing little spurts of dust from between the stones of the outer wall. Colonel Chu waited until the clamor subsided. “It is not safe to travel by day,” he explained.

All that day Couzens slept on a straw pallet in another room of the building, and when night came the young Chinese officer who had escorted him into the colonel’s office gave him food, and then they got into a Russian jeep, and started back the road by which he had come. On the previous night all the traffic had been towards the front, but on this night there was considerable traffic headed away from the reservoir. There were horse-drawn ambulances, and walking wounded, and empty ammunition carts. Whatever had happened to Dog Company, it had put up a fight, Couzens could see. He spoke as little as possible to his companion. If they really meant to return him, he didn’t want to say anything that would jeopardize his chances.

At last they came to the ridge of a hill from where Couzens could see the village of Ko-Bong, and the Russian jeep stopped. The tall young Chinese said, in his missionary-school English, “I will let you out here. From here you will go to your own people.”

“Who owns the town?” Couzens asked.

“I do not know. We don’t. Perhaps there are Americans in the town.”

Couzens got out of the jeep and unkinked his joints and muscles. “Okay,” he said. “Goodbye, lieutenant, and thanks.”

“Goodbye, Yankee,” the other lieutenant said. “Goodbye, and good luck.” He whispered it, and he held out his hand, and Couzens clasped his hand. Couzens started walking towards the village, alone, and before he had gone a hundred yards a weight seemed to remove itself from his shoulders. He was free again, a free man. Whatever happened to him now could not be as bad as what had happened before, because there is nothing so bad as captivity. From here in, he could make a fight of it. He would not be taken again, ever. Nobody would ever piss on his legs again.

In the moonlight almost like the moonlight of the night before, he approached the line of houses. He walked steadily down the street until he came to where he had been ambushed. Then he stopped to think, and felt in the pocket of his battle jacket, and found his pack of cigarettes, miraculously unopened, and the lighter, and stepped in the lee of a wall for a smoke. While he smoked, he listened, and he learned from his ears that Ko-Bong was not deserted by all its sorrowing people, and neither was it occupied by troops.

Ahead of him was the American line. It would be a perimeter now. Obviously it was unbroken. The Second Platoon had not been penetrated. Couzens felt proud of that. They would be jittery, there in the line. They would shoot anything that moved. If they saw him at the foot of the street they’d know damn well he wasn’t a ghost. They’d let him have it. Additionally, if he knew Mackenzie, Sam would be sending out a patrol. Sam never let the enemy rest, and Sam was never lax in his tactical intelligence. If the patrol found him, they’d shoot first and discover that he was an American lieutenant later.

So Raleigh Couzens decided, as a fact of survival, that he must spend the night in Ko-Bong, and approach Dog Company in the light of day. He ground out his cigarette and crept silently into the nearest doorway. Braced to spring, he illuminated the single room with his lighter.

A woman sleeping on a mattress of rags and straw, with a child curled under her arm, opened her eyes in quick terror. Before she could scream he lifted his finger to his lips in the signal for silence, and made a smile. The woman shut her mouth. She was a young woman. She was the same woman, he believed, that Beany Smith had tried to rape. He didn’t move, for fear of frightening her into panic, and for a few seconds they examined each other. It seemed, then, that she understood she would not be hurt, for she motioned with her free arm towards the other side of the hut. There was a pallet there, empty. Once, no doubt, she had had a husband.

Couzens unbuttoned his parka, snapped off his lighter, and lay down. He couldn’t get comfortable. There was a rock, or something, under him. He squirmed, and finally groped under the straw. His hand touched metal. He had found a gun. It was an M-1. He knew it from its contours, in the dark, as a man knows his wife. He brought it out from under him and flicked his lighter. The woman’s eyes rolled in apprehension, but he was really smiling now and she relaxed. The gun was loaded. He was armed again. He was whole again. The fuel in his lighter would soon be gone, and he looked around the hut, and saw what he was seeking, a primitive brass lamp, and lit it and put his lighter back in his pocket.

Under the lamplight he saw that the gun was like his gun. It was filthy, yes. It had been dumped into the street’s frozen mire, and fought over, and ground underfoot, and filthied. But wherever there was not filth, it shone like silver at a candlelit dinner party. Some Korean had found it after the fire fight of the previous night, and hidden it here. He found a rag hung on a nail, and a beer bottle half-filled with peanut oil, and went to work. The woman watched him in wonder, but at last her eyes closed, and she slept.

Whenever he touched the gun he thought of his home, for a gun was part of his home. A gun was what he remembered best of his father. It was before the dawn in Ko-Bong, so it would be yesterday’s evening in Mandarin, and his mother would be watering the azaleas and hibiscus around the pool, and trimming the Australian pines that formed its backdrop. Now that he was gone, she had the duty. She would have stale bread for the bream in the pool, and balls of meat for his pet bass. Of course she couldn’t catch frogs, and shiners, and live shrimp for the bass, as he had, but she would feed them efficiently.

Everyone agreed that his mother was a wonderful and brilliant woman, and a great beauty for her age. She played bridge like a man, with slashing bids of slam and double, and she was shrewd in real estate, and the price of fruit. She could speak fluently of the situation in Iran, and the new tax laws, and she called senators by their first names, but of her husband, who had killed himself with fine brandy, she never spoke at all. He was the blank in her life.

Raleigh Couzens wasn’t sure whether he loved his mother, or hated her. He knew that only in the Marines had he escaped her, as he suspected his father could escape her only with alcohol.

And he blamed her, somehow, although his logic was amorphous and muddy, because he had lost his girl, his woman, Sue. His mother was always subtly sniping at Sue. It was that, he believed, that had caused their breach, really, although Sue hadn’t said it that way. Sue had said, frankly and precisely, “Darling, when I want a toss in the hay I want it to be the real thing. And with us it isn’t. You get all tense.”

“No I don’t.”

“Yes, you do, Raleigh. You feel guilty about something.”

And he’d protested, and called her dirty names, and Sue had been sweet to him, and told him to ask any good doctor. So he had. He’d asked several. They’d assured him it wasn’t uncommon. For men in his social stratum, particularly in the South, where boys are carefully taught that there is a great difference between “nice girls” and “bad girls,” it was more usual than unusual. He shouldn’t worry. He’d outgrow it. But he hadn’t, yet. He’d just joined up again, long before Korea. It had upset his mother, and she’d wept, and tried to bribe him with a trip to Europe. But once you volunteered, and were accepted, that was it.

And he continued to caress the rifle, and think of his home, and Sue, until the gray of the false dawn. It was better than thinking of the nightmare of his capture, and Colonel Chu.

When he knew there was sufficient light for him to be recognized—providing he got close enough to the outposts of Dog Company—he slipped out of the hut, and walked down the street of Ko-Bong. He passed the last house, and continued steadily until he knew he could be no more than two hundred yards from the line of foxholes, and knew that the machine guns, and the BAR’s, and the Garands would be trained on him. Now that he was almost back, he felt miserable. He didn’t give much of a damn whether they shot him or not, and he played with the idea of going straight in until someone said, “Fire!” But that wouldn’t be fair to one of his friends. He shouted, “Hey there!”

One word cracked back, “Halt!”

“This is Couzens! Lieutenant Couzens!”

There was silence for a second, and then he recognized Sam Mackenzie’s voice. “Come on in, Raleigh, you damn fool!”