One for the Road

by Will Roberts

  It was well past midnight and the beer was still flowing when Mr Lim decided it was time for him to leave.

  “Come on, Mr Lim, ‘One for the road?’” Adam asked.

  Mr Lim immediately turned to Adam with a surprised look on his face.

  “The only other person I’ve heard use this saying is my grandfather,” he said, and promptly sat down again and accepted another bottle of beer.

  Adam thought no more of it and after a few more beers everybody decided to leave to get some sleep. Tomorrow, or today, as it now was, was Sunday, fortunately, which meant there was no work until Monday and a lie in was possible.

  On Monday, the work continued; some outstanding mechanical, electrical and automation issues were resolved, other problems discovered during the first melting were rectified and the furnace was made ready to make another melting, or ‘heat’, the following day.

  At the end of the day, Adam was packing his laptop computer into his bag and preparing to leave for the hotel when Mr Lim entered the office and approached him.

  Adam’s work during the day had mainly been in the office, writing reports concerning the first heat and instructions for the next heat, and he had not seen Mr Lim at all during the day.

  “My family would like to invite you to dinner, Mr Adam, if of course, you are available,” Mr Lim asked.

  Adam was a bit surprised but immediately accepted.

  “That would be very nice, but when?” Adam asked.

  “Would tonight be convenient, if of course, you have nothing arranged?” Mr Lim replied.

  “Tonight! Okay, as it happens I am free tonight, Mr Lim,” Adam answered.

  “Excellent,” Mr Lim said, “I will come to your hotel at seven o’clock.”

  “Seven would be fine. I’ll see you then.”

  “Okay, Mr Adam. Bye,” Mr Lim said.

  “Oh, Mr Lim,” Adam called as Mr Lim walked towards the office door.

  Mr Lim turned.

  “Please, it’s just Adam!” he said, smiling.

  “Okay, Adam – I’m Jin,” Mr Lim replied, also smiling.

  Adam arrived at the hotel, took a shower and changed into fresh clothes. It was now six thirty, time enough to get a gift to take to the Lim family before Jin arrived.

  He had passed a cake shop many times and decided he would take a cake and a bottle of wine. He bought an extremely sweet looking cake, with strawberries and pineapples on the top, an expensive bottle of Spanish Rioja wine and a couple of bottles of Soju, which the Koreans loved, from a nearby convenience store.

  He arrived back at the hotel just as Jin was arriving.

  “Let me help you with one of those bags, Adam!” Jin said, “But you didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”

  “Nonsense, Jin. It would have been impolite not to take something,” Adam replied.

  They chatted as they walked the short distance to Jin’s family home, which turned out to quite a spacious apartment.

  He was introduced to Jin’s parents and Jin’s grandfather and grandmother. Jin had a brother who lived and worked in Seoul. Jin was also married, had a four-year-old son and, though they lived in a neighbouring apartment, Jin’s wife and son were present for the ‘party’.

  He was introduced to everybody who was there, but it was Jin’s grandfather who was particularly interested in Adam. Adam noticed that the old man was staring intently at him. It made him feel a little uncomfortable.

  He rose from his seat to greet Adam but needed the aid of a stick to support himself.

  “Please, sir,” Adam said, “you don’t need to get up. Sit back down.”

  “It would be ill-mannered not to stand,” he said, in perfect English, as he rose from the comfortable sofa and offered Adam his hand. Adam took the offered hand and the old man’s grip was firm and strong, belying the age of the old Korean, which Adam estimated to be the late sixties. Adam found out later that he was in fact seventy-four.

  Dinner was served consisting of various dishes of roast chicken and pork and of course rice and noodles and the obligatory Kimchi, which Adam didn’t l like. Adam drank beer mixed with soju, which the Koreans were fond of, with old Mr Lim, who sat next to him at the dining table.

  The dinner was taken with polite conversation across the table. Old Mr Lim asked Adam about the commissioning at the steel mill and inquired how the first heat had gone. Jin had obviously talked to him about it.

  Adam also noticed that Jin’s wife, who appeared to be about around ten years younger than her husband, also spoke very good English, and Adam complimented them both on this.

  “We had a very good teacher,” Mr Lim said. “Please come with me. I’d like to show you something,” he added as he rose from the table.

  Intrigued, Adam followed him.

  With the aid of his stick, he took Adam into one of the bedrooms. One wall was almost completely covered with photographs. Some were of the family and Adam could recognise all those present this evening in many of the photographs. But in one area were several photographs that were much older than the others, taken during a time of war.

  “It was him! He was my teacher. The finest man I have ever met.” He was pointing at a photograph hanging on the wall. There were three people standing against an army jeep. The one in the middle was a westerner, in his mid-twenties. On his left was a Korean, of a similar age it appeared, and on the right was a Korean girl of about eleven or twelve years of age, Adam thought.

  Adam looked closely at the westerner. He felt goose-bumps down his back. The man looked vaguely familiar.

  “What was his name?” Adam asked.

  “His name was Jackie Gee,” Mr Lim answered. “The young girl is Mina, who is now my wife and the Korean man is me, as you might have guessed. Jackie Gee saved both our lives.”

  The name Jackie Gee meant nothing to Adam, but he was fascinated by the story.

  “Please Mr Lim, tell me more!” Adam begged.

  “Tonight it is late, Adam, and tomorrow you must make the second heat from your new furnace. Return tomorrow evening and I will tell you the story of Jackie Gee and how he saved my life.”

  The following day the second heat was tapped successfully with very few issues.

  Adam was enjoying his whole Korean experience. His work colleagues were friendly and extremely sociable and he had met and been befriended by a South Korean family.

  He had returned to his hotel and, after a rushed shower and change of clothes, left his hotel and made his way to the Lim’s apartment, this time with a pack of beer, keen to hear the story of how a British soldier had saved the life of this South Korean war veteran.

  Mr Lim and his wife, Mina, had prepared some food and beer and soju was also available.

  As they began to eat, Mr Lim began to tell the story of Jackie Gee and The Gloucestershire Regiment’s famous defence of hill 235 during the Korean War.

  Pusan, Korea

  November 1950

  The first thing that hit Jackie Gee was the smell. Even from several miles out at sea, the smell was disgusting.

  “What the fuck is that smell, Jackie?” Johnny Gillard asked.

  “I think it’s shit, Johnny,” Jackie replied. “They use human shit to fertilise the fields here. They don’t have manufactured fertiliser.”

  “Jesus, thanks for telling me, Jackie. I’m going to stick to bullied beef and ration packs. Nothing fresh for me, mate, you’ll see.”

  “Me too,” agreed Terry Dolan, the second member of Johnny Gillard’s Bren gun team.

  Terry was only nineteen years old and was doing his national service. He was short and wiry and always had his head in a book or magazine, or was writing notes in a dog-eared notebook he carried in his pack.

  Jackie laughed at his friend. He certainly had a point. They had joined the Royal Gloucestershire Regiment on the same day in July; both had volunteered, been together through basic training and now had been sent to Korea together. Johnny was twenty-one years old and was big and strong. He had
represented his county at rugby and was an extremely tough young man, something Jackie had discovered during their basic training.

  The long voyage had been an adventure for many of the Glosters, as they were commonly known, with stops en-route to Pusan at Port Said, Singapore, Hong Kong and others. For those who had never set foot outside England, it was a real eye-opener.

  There had been an organised boxing tournament during the voyage, in which Jackie excelled, and martial arts competitions, along with tug-of-war and drills. On the whole, the voyage passed quickly and in the evenings the soldiers were given beer.

  In the boxing tournament’s middleweight final, Jackie fought a tough veteran soldier from Bristol. Jackie was a southpaw and his opponent could not handle his unorthodox stance. In the close-ups, his strong opponent had the advantage, but Jackie had a height and reach advantage over the squat Bristolian and managed, for the most part, to keep his opponent at a distance. His continuous jabs into the face of an extremely game opponent gave him a unanimous point’s victory.

  Two weeks into the voyage, the word was that the war would be over, possibly even before they arrived, having heard the news of the Americans landing at Incheon and their rapid advance north towards the Yalu River. However, the mood changed a few days before the Glosters arrived at Pusan when it was announced that the Chinese had joined the war.

  Jackie was a popular member of the squad. He was unlike the regular soldiers of The Gloucestershire Regiment, who were primarily from farming stock, as was Johnny Gillard whose father kept cows and sheep on the family farm in the Forest of Dean. Jackie, being a cockney, was a completely different character compared to the laid-back, easy-going nature of the men of Gloucester. He did, however, find them to be exceptionally loyal and dependable.

  Now they stood on the deck of the ship, The Empire Windrush, which had set off from Southampton four weeks before. As the old German liner approached the port of Pusan in the south of Korea they pulled their scarves tight around their necks, with an icy wind blowing from the north; it was going to be cold this winter.

  The city of Pusan could be seen, with its backdrop of mountains, appearing ominous to some of the veteran soldiers, and the squalid shantytown communities in the foreground.

  The quay was crowded with soldiers, from all over the world, who had just disembarked from their own ships and were waiting for transportation north to where the ‘action’ was.

  Jackie noticed ships from Belgium, Greece and the Philippines, as well as the many US ships that had supplied by far the greatest number of troops to this United Nations expedition. Jackie, Johnny, and Terry marched off the ship, with the rest of The Glosters, Jackie and Terry with their rifles over their shoulders, out-dated Lee Enfield .303s, and Johnny with his Bren gun – now with live ammunition, webbing, and packs.

  They were smiling, as there was an unreal, festival atmosphere, nothing like what Jackie and Johnny were expecting. There was an American army band playing a popular jazz number and Korean girls holding banners displaying signs such as ‘Welcome to the UN Liberators’ and ‘Capitalism will be Victorious’.

  Each soldier was handed a bright green apple by a young Korean girl as they disembarked The Empire Windrush. Apples were something that Korea was famous for.

  What Johnny also noticed, as the Glosters made their way to the immigration compound, was the many brothels that they passed displaying quickly erected signs, such as ‘House of Sex – UN Soldiers welcome’. These hovels, basically all they were, were of great interest to the young, rugby playing farmer’s boy who had hardly ventured further than the city of Gloucester.

  Terry was not interested and hardly noticed them, it seemed to Jackie.

  It was clear that Korea was a hugely under-developed nation; very nearly primitive, it seemed to Jackie. The Korean men wore tall black hats and were dressed in white, peasant clothing and some wore army cast offs. No one was wearing western style clothes.

  There was no sanitation, the roads were little more than dirt tracks and the locals used only horse and carts and then there was that all-pervasive, god-awful smell.

  There was a procedure that had to be followed during disembarkation. Every soldier required inoculation, against what? Jackie had no idea, nor was he told, but it required jabs in both arms, and this was followed by will writing. When this was completed, the Glosters made their way to an assembly point, where they waited for transportation to the north.

  There was, however, a rail line and that was the route that the ‘Glosters’, took to the thirty-eighth parallel and the Imjin River, the line that separated North and South Korea; however, the UN forces, led by the Americans, were now further into what had designated North Korea following the Second World War.

  The cold weather was not expected by those who had organised the ‘suitable clothing’; it was very cold. Jackie was the company’s ‘cad’ – if somebody wanted something, invariably Jackie could find it for them and at this particular time, everybody wanted a warm coat.

  The Americans had their parka jackets and the American quartermasters seemed to have an ample supply of them. What they did not have, in any quantity, was booze while the British did, in the form of rum rations.

  Much of the early days Jackie spent trading bottles of rum for warm Parka jackets and socks. Everybody wanted extra socks as well.

  During the train journey north, there were many stops at different stations and during these stops the train carriages were mobbed by hundreds of starving children, begging for food.

  It was quite upsetting to see so many children in such a wretched state. Many of them had been orphaned or their parents were stranded on the wrong side of the thirty-eighth parallel, the division between north and south.

  All the soldiers in Jackie’s carriage gave up their rations of chocolate and biscuits to the children at the first stop. They didn’t expect the same number of children at every stop the old train made.

  As the train travelled north, there seemed to be more and more refugees travelling south, and the road alongside the rail track was a mass of humanity desperately trying to flee the fighting.

  Travelling in the same direction on the poor dirt roads were the American transport vehicles and tank divisions and, when the train was stationary, Jackie would often rush across to the yanks with armfuls of rum and exchange them for food rations, which he would give to the starving children.

  The train proceeded north through a country that had been completely devastated by war. The North Koreans had advanced almost as far as Pusan, but with the US landings at Incheon, in October, the NKPA, the North Korean People’s Army, had disappeared into the countryside.

  What Jackie noticed during this journey north was the discernible lack of trees: the Koreans traditionally used wood to heat their homes, using an under-floor heating system, and then later during the Japanese occupation the land suffered systematic deforestation.

  They passed towns and villages that had been completely destroyed, as well as many burnt out army vehicles and tanks.

  They continued north and arrived at the country’s capital city, Seoul, but this was a city of ruins. Few of the buildings were habitable and still fewer people to be seen; most had evacuated the city and were in the south of the country.

  The bridges over the Han River, running through Seoul, had also been destroyed by one or other of the two sides and some were now being repaired by the US army engineers. The Glosters made the crossing on foot over a pontoon bridge. Things were just as bad in the northern part of the city, where burnt out buildings were the norm. There were few buildings that did not bear the scars of war.

  As the Glosters continued their march out of the sacred city of Seoul, the terrain seemed to change for the worse – the mountains were steeper and were inhabited by the NKPA, they soon discovered. Although beaten by the American invasion a month before, the NKPA were far from defeated but had simply taken to the hills. Jackie Gee was soon to find out that this war would be all about takin
g and retaking these hills.

  The Glosters had advanced a considerable distance from Seoul and had stopped overnight in a small village. It had not been possible to celebrate Christmas; on 25th December, the Glosters had been on standby, but now they were combining the celebrations of both Christmas and New Year.

  They had managed to save their rum rations and had been given beer, but had been told to take it easy with the alcohol and not to get drunk, as a Chinese offensive was expected.

  Jackie was sitting on the bonnet of a burnt out Chinese jeep watching the men drinking rum and beer and giving the Korean orphan children that the platoon had ‘adopted’ a Christmas party. He had enjoyed a tasty Christmas dinner that the cooks had made: turkey and potatoes followed by Christmas pudding and custard for dessert. Jackie himself was sipping a cup of rum and, of course, smoking a cigarette.

  Mi Na, the young orphan girl that Jackie had chosen to look after his laundry, though Mi Na would later insist that it was she who had adopted Jackie, had left the other children, who all seemed a bit confused by what was going on. Even before the war, they had never celebrated Christmas; now they were standing around with mouths wide open as Taffy Howells, wearing a red coat, though where he had managed to find a red coat Jackie had no idea, was handing out presents, mostly of chocolate and cake from the compo rations, to the orphan children, who had already eaten their Christmas dinner courtesy of the cooks.

  “Chocolate, Jackie?” Mi Na offered Jackie a piece of the chocolate she had just received from Father Christmas, Taffy Howells.

  “No, thank you, Mi Na. That’s your Christmas present,” Jackie replied.

  Mi Na smiled. She had only a vague idea of what Jackie had said, even though Jackie was giving her English lessons.

  Mi Na was twelve years old, from a small village in northern Korea. When the Chinese came to her village, Mi Na, her parents, and her eight-year-old brother, immediately fled. Both her parents were shot in the back as they ran from the village. Mi Na just kept running in a southerly direction; she had no idea what became of her little brother. Leaving him, and not knowing what became of him, was something she would regret for the rest of her life.