The Ville Rat

– 3-

The MPs emerged from the darkness beneath the bridge.

There were three of them. Black helmets glistened, reflecting rays from the Camp Pelham floodlights.

“No ROK Army,” Ernie whispered.

In Seoul, 8th Army always has a Korean MP and an American MP patrol together, usually accompanied by a representative of the Korean National Police. The idea is that whatever miscreant they might come across-be he Korean military, American military, or civilian-one of the cops would have jurisdiction over him. Apparently, here at Division, they didn’t worry about such niceties.

As the MPs moved down the far edge of the Sonyu River, Ernie and I stepped back into darkness. About fifteen yards from the bridge, the lead MP stepped into what I first thought was running water, but when his lower leg didn’t disappear, I realized that he was following a line of stepping stones. Deftly, the three men lunged and hopped from one stone to another until they were on our side of the waterway. As they approached, they shone their flashlights into the narrow alleys, but having anticipated this, Ernie and I had each stepped into recessed stone doorways on opposite sides of the pathway. Beams of light slithered up the muddy walkway and disappeared as quickly as they’d appeared. Ernie and I emerged from our hiding places and looked out on the banks of the river just in time to see the last MP turn up a lane at the far end of the row of jumbled buildings.

“They’re heading for the main drag,” Ernie told me. “Come on.”

We followed quickly.

I expected them to pause once they reached the bright lights of Sonyu-ri and from there start their patrol of the bars and nightclubs. Instead, they surprised us and continued across the two-lane road. After winding past a few storage sheds, the patrol found a meandering pathway that led through a clump of chestnut trees at the far end of the village. We had less cover here, so Ernie and I proceeded cautiously, letting the MPs gain a lead until they were out of sight. After a steep incline, the pathway emerged onto a plateau. I turned around. Behind us, in the valley below, the neon of Sonyu-ri sparkled. Ahead, scattered across neatly tended lawns, were dozens of egg-shaped hills, each about six feet high.

“Burial mounds,” Ernie said.

We wound through them. Many were adorned with stone carvings of ancient patriarchs, some with bronze tablets embedded into mortar. I would’ve liked to stop and read them, but we didn’t have time. At the far end of the plateau, we heard the rushing, gurgling noise of a huge volume of water. Ernie held out his hand. I stopped. Below us rolled the dark, murky waters of the Imjin River. North of here was the Demilitarized Zone and beyond that, Communist North Korea.

“Where are they?” I asked.

Ernie pointed.

In the distance, the beam of a lone flashlight flickered. One by one, moonlight revealed three helmets.

“That pathway,” Ernie said. “It leads back toward the village, to the rear of the buildings lining the main drag.”

“First they surround Sonyu-ri,” I said, “then they invade it.”

Ernie shrugged. “They’ve probably caught GIs smoking pot up here before. An easy bust.”

With our Olympian view, we decided not to follow the MPs any longer but to sit back and observe their progress. As we’d expected, it was time to start the exciting part of their evening’s activities: patrolling the nightclubs. They started at the RC-4 end of the strip; first a nightclub, then a bar, and after that a teahouse. We knew how it worked. One MP waited out back, cutting off any means of escape, while the other two entered through the front door, checking for drug use or unruly behavior and walking into both the men’s and women’s byonso, the bathrooms, to make sure there was no untoward activity going on in there. Once they were through, they moved on to the next joint.

“Let’s go to the main gate,” Ernie said. “We’ll wait for them there.”

I agreed. We scurried downhill, careful to avoid the MP patrol as we made our way toward the front gate of Camp Pelham. We didn’t want to confront Specialist Austin again, not yet, so we lingered about a hundred yards from the main gate itself, near the rolling carts that had appeared with the night. They were filled with souvenirs and hot snacks and bottles of soju for the off-duty GIs parading out of the pedestrian exit after a hard day’s work in the 2nd Infantry Division.

One old woman wore a wool scarf and three or four heavy sweaters as she stirred a vat of simmering oil heated by a charcoal briquette. “You eat,” she told me as I approached. “Number hana French fry.” Number one.

“How much for onion rings?” Ernie asked.

“Same same French fry,” the old woman said. “Fifty won.”

“Too much,” Ernie replied.

“Big bag,” the woman countered, holding a folded paper container about the size of a splayed hand. There was printing on the paper. numbers and letters in English. Probably printouts salvaged from the compound itself and then recycled for a more practical use. There’d been times when top-secret documents had been retrieved, folded neatly, grease-stained, and used to serve four ounces of deep-fried cuttlefish.

Ernie nodded his okay. The old woman reached beneath her cart and pulled out a generous handful of sliced onion. She plopped them into an earthenware bowl thick with batter, then lifted them again and dropped them dripping into the boiling oil. Steam and burning grease sizzled into the air. A few seconds later, using metal chopsticks, the old woman fished the onion rings out of the hot oil and deposited them into the paper holder. Ernie munched on an onion ring to see if it met his approval. When it did, he handed her the money. He offered me an onion ring. I accepted it and asked the old woman if the young girl in the red chima-jeogori had bought any of her food last night.

“She no have time,” the old woman replied.

Ernie’s eyes flashed but he said nothing; just kept chomping on the onion rings.

“You talked to her then?” I said.

“No talk. She talk MP. Crying.”

“What’d she say?”

“I don’t know. My English not so good.”

“Did she come from the ville?”

“I don’t know. I busy, sell French fry. I look up, she talk MP. How you say . . .”

“Hankuk mallo heiju-seiyo,” I said. Say it in Korean.

Her eyes widened. “Hey, you speaky Korean pretty good.”

“She talked to the MP,” I prompted in English.

“Sallam sollyo,” she say.

“She asked for help?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The old woman shook her head. “I don’t know. She scared something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

“How long did she talk to the MP.”

“Maybe one minute. Pretty soon she karra chogi.”

“She left. Which way?”

“That way.” The old woman pointed along the main drag of Sonyu-ri.

“Did you see where she went?”

“I no see. Do you want French fry now?”

I contemplated buying some just to keep her talking, but Ernie elbowed me in the ribs.

“Company.”

The MP patrol was about halfway down the strip, but apparently they’d spotted us. They stopped entering the bars and nightclubs and marched three abreast, heading straight for us. One of them held a walkie-talkie to his ear.

“Should we un-ass the area?” Ernie asked.

“Naw. We have to talk to them anyway. I want to ask some questions.”

By now, the old woman had seen the MPs coming and begun to roll her cart toward safer ground. They were still about ten yards away when, from the main gate, a roar arose from the engine of a vehicle whining at full torque. We turned. Specialist Austin raised the vehicle barrier just in time to avoid it being smashed by an MP jeep barreling out of the compound. The vehicle must’ve been doing thirty miles an hour and was aimed right at us. There was nowhere to run, so Ernie and I stood our ground. At that last second, the driver slammed on the brakes and the vehicle swerved sideways in a cloud of dirt and exhaust, stopping just three feet in front of us. Before the engine stopped whining, a tall MP leapt out of the jeep and charged directly at us.

Discipline in the army is a malleable thing. Sometimes, for example in basic training, it’s as inflexible as a Prussian riding crop. Other times, as in a headquarters garrison unit, it can be a set of unwritten rules and gentlemanly agreements, sort of like a country club full of trust-fund babies trying not to annoy one another.

But in the US 2nd Infantry Division, discipline can be brutal. Regardless of the hour, one is expected to appear within minutes of an alert siren being sounded, and if you’re not present, you can face court-martial. You’re expected to be standing tall before dawn for the physical training formation, and if you’re late you can face non-judicial punishment. Enlisted men are restricted to their compounds like prisoners unless an off-duty pass is granted, and that pass can be rescinded for the most minor of infractions-or on a whim. As the NCOs love to say, “A pass is a privilege, not a right.” The 2nd Infantry Division officer corps and senior enlisted non-coms can force a young enlisted man to do just about anything-scrub a floor, clean a grease trap, pull guard duty all night-and justify it as either needed to accomplish the mission or, when that rationale grows thin, as additional training that is beneficial for personal development. After a few months, or even just weeks in the heady atmosphere of the 2nd Infantry Division, even a lowly first lieutenant can begin to believe he’s a young god gifted with mighty powers.

And it was just such a young god, with an MP helmet on his head, a single silver bar on his lapel and a name tag that said Phillips, who exploded out of the still-sputtering jeep and strode toward us, face aflame, pointing his forefinger at Ernie and then me like an avenging demon, shouting at the top of his lungs.

“You don’t mess with my people!” With that one shout, his voice was already hoarse. Doggedly, he kept at us. “You don’t mess with my people! Do you understand me, Troop?”

He was nose to nose with Ernie. Too close. Ernie grimaced but let the silence stretch for a moment. Then he said, “You think you’re hot shit, eh, Phillips?”

Phillips leaned in closer. “You will address me as Lieutenant Phillips or sir. Is that understood?”

Phillips must’ve had bad breath. Ernie leaned his head back slightly but then, without warning, snapped his skull forward and butted the helmet of Lieutenant Phillips, hard. Lieutenant Phillips’s head bounced back like a bowling ball and, startled, he took a step backward, instinctively reaching for his .45. The MP patrol closed in, at least one of them unsnapping the leather cover of his holster. Specialist Austin, the MP at the gate, had stepped outside of the guard shack, along with the Korean guard named Kim, and both men were staring at us. All of the food and souvenir vending carts had disappeared. Along the strip, made-up faces craned out of bead-covered doorways. Some of the bar girls were walking forward now, arms crossed, but oblivious to the cold night, craving an exciting show.

Lieutenant Phillips reached for his forehead. “You hit me,” he said, incredulous.

“No,” Ernie replied. “I headbutted you. There’s a difference. If I’d hit you, you’d be flat on your ass by now.”

One of the MPs reached for my elbow. I shrugged him off. Another MP started to reach for his handcuffs, but Lieutenant Phillips held out his open palm and waved them off. By now, word had spread throughout the nightclub district of Sonyu-ri; bar girls and teahouse dollies and half-drunk GIs were streaming our way like a small parade.

Phillips reached toward the center of his chest, undid one of the buttons on his fatigue blouse and reached inside his shirt. Grinning, he pulled out a sheet of paper.

“Message for you boys,” he said. “Straight from the head shed.” Without taking his eyes off of Ernie, he handed it to me. It was a strip ripped from a larger roll of teletype paper. A “twixt,” the army calls it. A telegraphic transmission.

“I can’t read this,” I said.

Obligingly, one of the MPs pulled out his flashlight and held it steady for me. I read the message and sighed.

“What is it?” Ernie asked.

Before I could answer, Lieutenant Phillips said, “You CID pukes are hereby ordered back to Seoul, immediately if not sooner. You’re off the case. Your services are no longer required. So get the hell out of the Division area.” He turned toward the MPs. “You three men, escort these two to their vehicle. No bullshit this time. Make sure they leave Sonyu-ri.”

Lieutenant Phillips adjusted his helmet and turned to walk toward his jeep. On the way, he waved his forefinger at Ernie. “Your assault on a superior officer will be noted in my report. And I’ve got witnesses.”

He hopped in his jeep, started it up, and backed away in a swirl of burnt gas.

“Bite me!” Ernie shouted after him.

One of the MPs snickered. Another stared at him sternly and the offending MP straightened his face.

“Where’s your jeep?” one of the MPs asked.

“This is your village,” Ernie said. “Don’t you know?”

I grabbed Ernie by the elbow and we walked up the MSR away from the village of Sonyu-ri. The MPs watched us. About a hundred yards east of the Camp Pelham gate, on the opposite side of the road, was a small nonappropriated fund compound known locally as maekju chang-go. The beer warehouse. It was a transshipment point for the food and beverages used by the Division officer and enlisted club system. The guards were Korean contract hires. Not MPs. I’d tipped them with some PX-purchased cigarettes and they said they’d keep an eye on our jeep, which they did. It was waiting for us just inside their compound near the small guard shack.

“What’s the message say?” Ernie asked.

“Nothing much. We’re ordered back to Seoul immediately.”

“It doesn’t say if we’re off the case or not?”

“Not specifically.”

Ernie started the jeep and we rolled out of the NAF compound, waved to the gate guard who was smoking happily in his shack, and turned west on the two-lane road. We passed the Camp Pelham gate on our left. Austin and gate guard Kim seemed to be hunched down in their shack. The MP patrol had disappeared and the bar girls were back at their stations, standing beneath neon, waving and cooing to potential customers. The village of Sonyu-ri, and the universe, rolled on.

We had almost reached RC-4 when a dark shape darted into the road. Ernie slammed on his brakes.

“What the . . .”

A man stood in front of us, holding both hands out. He was young, Caucasian, about five-foot-eight and extremely thin. He was wearing a collared shirt, brightly colored like something designed to replicate a psychedelic dream. His hair was reddish and curly and worn in a bouffant that was beyond what was allowed by military regulation. He had a scraggly mustache that drooped around the corners of his mouth, and he seemed not to have shaven for a couple of days. When he saw that we’d come to a full stop, he approached Ernie’s side of the jeep. Ernie shoved the canvas door open.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?”

“I had to stop you,” the man said, breathless. His voice was hurried. Green eyes darted from side to side. “He shouldn’t have done it,” he said.

“Who?” I asked.

It was as if he hadn’t heard me.

“She just wanted her freedom, that’s all.”

“Who are you talking about?” I shouted.

“The red dress,” he said, nervously gathering the front of his shirt in his hand and glancing toward the village. “It wasn’t even hers. He gave it to her. She was forced to wear it.”

Ernie switched off the engine and started to get out of the jeep, but the small man was quick. He backed away and darted in front of our headlights. By then I was opening my door, but we were parked next to a line of kimchi cabs, some of them with Munsan license plates, and many of the drivers were standing outside of their cabs, smoking, and watching the little display in front of them.

The man slid deftly between two of the cabs.

“You can talk to us,” I shouted. “We’ll listen!”

“You were there,” he shouted back. “You were almost there!”

And then he disappeared into one of the narrow alleyways.

Ernie and I glanced at one another, coming to an unspoken agreement, and as Ernie padlocked the jeep, I leapt out of the passenger side and gave chase. But there wasn’t much lighting in the alleyway, and by the time Ernie had grabbed his flashlight from the jeep and caught up with me, I’d come to a complete stop because I couldn’t see a foot in front of me. He switched on the “flash,” as Koreans call it, but the narrow pathway in front of us was empty. We followed it five yards back, where it split into three more passageways. We followed one, but it wound through the backs of tightly packed hooches. All we heard was the shouts of mothers berating their kids and pots being clanged and radios blaring the songs of Patti Kim. We returned to where we’d started and checked another passageway but found nothing.

“He knew where he was going,” Ernie said, “even in the dark.”

“Right. He stopped us at that spot so he could say what he wanted to say and then get away.”

We walked back to the jeep. The cab drivers stared at us curiously. In Korean, I asked loudly if anyone had seen that skinny American guy before. Uniformly, they all shrugged. One of the drivers chomped a wad of gum, grinning at us. I asked him specifically if he’d ever seen that American. “Mullah nan,” he replied. Don’t know, me. The other drivers smiled more broadly, enjoying our discomfort, and enjoying the disrespectful way the driver was speaking to us.

Ernie and I climbed back into the jeep.

We drove off slowly, checking the side of the road, half expecting the skinny guy with the red Afro to appear again at the side of the road. About a mile on we reached the MSR. A sign pointing right said jiayu tari, freedom bridge, 2 km. It led across the Imjin River and on into the Demilitarized Zone. The sign pointing left said seoul, 27 km. Ernie turned left.

As we rolled down the MSR, Ernie said, “Who was that guy anyway? A civilian?”

“I don’t know.”

“And what was he trying to tell us?”

I tried to remember his exact words. “He said it wasn’t right that ‘he’ had killed her. That she had been forced to wear the red dress she was wearing when we found her.”

Ernie nodded. “And that she wanted her freedom. But he said something else.”

“He said we’d been close.”

“Yeah. I wonder if this means we missed something today.”

I gazed out the window. Dark rice paddies rolled by. About fifteen klicks farther south, we rolled to a stop at the last 2nd Division security checkpoint. The American MP checked our dispatch.

When he handed it back, he said, “Been waiting for you guys.”

“Why?” Ernie asked.

“I guess somebody’s anxious to make sure you depart the area.” Apparently, the word had been put out via field radio.

“Well, we did,” Ernie snapped.

He gunned the engine as we headed for the distant lights of Seoul. It felt good being away from Division, as if a burden had been lifted from our shoulders. As if we were free.

Seoul was empty, the streets filled with nothing but howling ghosts riding the backs of swirling winds. It was past midnight, during the nationwide midnight-to-four curfew. Nothing moved during these hours. No vehicular traffic, no pedestrians. And if you were by some circumstance on the street, you were not only subject to arrest and prosecution but, more importantly, if you didn’t halt when a soldier or curfew policeman told you to halt, you were subject to being shot on sight. The supposed reason for such draconian measures was to stop any infiltration into the country by North Korean Communist agents. That’s what the ROK government told the world. But I believed the real reason was because the military government of President Pak Chung-hee wanted to demonstrate its iron-fisted control over the general populace-and to make it clear, on a nightly basis, that no dissent would be tolerated.

We passed through Seoul and reached Yongsan Compound on the southern edge of the city. The Korean gate guard checked our dispatch. It was an 8th Army Criminal Investigation Division emergency dispatch and, as such, we were amongst the elect who were authorized to be out during curfew hours. He waved us through.

The barracks were dark and quiet, but as I walked down the long hallway I heard someone talking in a deep baritone voice. When I opened my door I realized what it was. My roommate, Ricky Harrison, had left his stereo system on full blast. It was an inspirational speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. I closed the door behind me, walked through the small room, and switched off the stereo set. Harrison didn’t move. He was sound asleep.

What a lullaby.

I took off my clothes and climbed into my rack. The sheets were crisp and clean because my houseboy, Mr. Yim, was paid to keep them that way; along with doing my laundry and shining my shoes and performing additional errands like taking my clothes in for alteration or having unit patches sewn on, all of which I paid him extra for. As I leaned back and relaxed, I thought that life for a GI in 8th Army wasn’t bad, unless you were on night patrol along the DMZ. Before I could contemplate that difference, exhaustion overtook me.

“Where the hell you guys been?”

Staff Sergeant Riley hunched over his desk, a sharpened pencil behind his ear, the padded shoulders of his green dress uniform sticking out from his rail-thin body like the wings of Icarus. In the back of the office, a stainless-steel coffee urn pumped steady blasts of fragrant steam.

Ernie plopped down in the chair in front of Riley’s desk and grabbed the morning edition of the Pacific Stars and Stripes. As he snapped it open, he said, “We got your twixt, we came back.”

Riley pulled the pencil from behind his ear. “I sent it at fifteen hundred hours. You shoulda been back here by close of business.”

“Are you nuts?” Ernie asked. “We would’ve never made it through the Seoul traffic.”

“Besides,” I added, heading for the coffee urn, “we didn’t receive it until that night.”

“Why the hell not?”

Ernie slammed the paper down. “Because we were out in the ville doing our jobs and not sitting on our asses inside the MP station, like some other investigators around here do.”

Riley jabbed his pencil toward Ernie’s nose. “Some other investigators around here know how to follow the provost marshal’s orders.”

“And they know how to brownnose.”

Riley shoved his pencil back behind his ear and stared down at the stack of paperwork in front of him. “There’s that,” he said.

As I walked toward the coffee urn, Riley shouted at me, “It’s not done yet.”

“Close enough for field soldiers,” I said and drew myself a mug.

Riley grunted. “Some field soldiers.”

I sipped on the coffee. He was right; lukewarm and insipid. Still, I didn’t want to let him know he’d been right, so I drank it down.

Miss Kim, the statuesque admin secretary, busied herself checking a list and pulling files out of grey metal cabinets. When she had what she wanted, she returned to her desk and sat down in front of her hangul typewriter. I set my coffee down and approached her.

“Anyonghaseiyo?” I said.

She smiled, nodded and said, “Nei. Anyonghaseiyo.”

She wore her hair short and businesslike, just below her ears. Her heart-shaped face was pale and unblemished, and her figure was well-respected enough that MPs occasionally made excuses to come into the CID office just to ogle her. It was difficult for her because she was shy and the attention embarrassed her. On her way to work, she usually scurried from the main gate to the office and seldom ventured outside during the duty day; too many foreign eyeballs caressing her. She and Ernie had been an item for a few months, but when she found out his affections weren’t directed toward her exclusively, she dropped him flat. The fact that they still worked together didn’t seem to bother Ernie. When I brought it up, he didn’t understand what I was getting at. But Miss Kim was tormented by the almost daily proximity; I could tell by the way she glanced at him furtively, her face turning red as she did so, and the fact that she always found something to do as far away from him as possible. Still, she couldn’t quit her job. In the early seventies, the Korean economy was still flat on its back from the devastation of the Korean War, and employment opportunities for a young woman were few and far between.

I tried to be friendly to her. Not pushy. I even occasionally left her a small gift, like hand lotion from the PX or a jar of instant coffee, which I knew her mother liked. I’d never asked her out, and I believed she appreciated that too.

Riley treated Miss Kim with indifference. She was just a working colleague to him. Prim and proper wasn’t his style. He liked ’em raunchy and drunk. Where he found his girlfriends I wasn’t quite sure since he worked long hours, but find them he did. I’d get my first hint of a new Riley girlfriend by seeing her scurrying from the men’s latrine to Riley’s room at about two in the morning. He would hide her there, in the barracks, along with a bottle of Old Overwart. That’s all he needed to attain nirvana. At least temporary nirvana, until morning came and the hangover kicked in.

But he was a workhorse, Staff Sergeant Riley was. He kept the office running, even if he was a constant thorn in Ernie’s-and my-side. He completely identified with the provost marshal and with the United States Army. To him, their pronouncements were the revealed word of God, and 8th Army regulations were holy scripture. Ernie and I, he was certain, were apostates and thereby destined for military hell. To us, 8th Army was self-serving and run by careerists who only wanted to safeguard their own paths to promotion. Of course, we usually didn’t say that to Riley. There was no point. We wouldn’t change his mind, and besides, sometimes we needed him.

Like right now.

“Who’s Lieutenant Phillips?” Riley asked.

Ernie turned the page of the newspaper. “Some asshole from Division,” he said.

“Well,” Riley said, “it looks like this asshole from Division has made a formal complaint. Says you assaulted him in front of witnesses.”

“If I’d ‘assaulted’ him,” Ernie said, “he wouldn’t have been able to make a complaint.”

“He says you headbutted him in front of the main gate of Camp Pelham.”

“He headbutted me,” Ernie said.

Riley glanced at me. “Which was it?”

I strode away from Miss Kim’s desk back toward the coffee urn that had stopped brewing. “Like Ernie says,” I replied, “Lieutenant Phillips headbutted him.”

Riley wrote some notes that I knew would be relayed to Colonel Brace, the 8th Army provost marshal. “You’re gonna have to sign a statement,” he said, “both of you.”

“Write it up,” Ernie said, still studying his paper.

“Second Division pukes,” Riley said, muttering beneath his breath. Then he said, “Zero nine hundred. Mandatory formation in the JAG conference room. Be there.”

“Bite me,” Ernie said.

“Mandatory,” Riley said, glaring at him. His favorite word.