AHMM, September 2012

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “This is my home,” Vern said.

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot. You're shacked up. I mean married or something. Right?”

  Vern frowned. A lot of army lifers retire in Korea—or Germany or Japan or wherever they happen to be stationed at the end of their military careers. Thirty years of military service takes a toll on the personal life. Parents are usually dead, siblings married off or out on their own, scattered far from the old hometown you remember as a kid. The place where you enlisted so many years ago is not only no longer home, in most cases it is not even recognizable.

  “Married,” Vern said.

  “Yeah,” the man said. “Sorry.”

  His name was Wallace Orting, he held the rank of major, and he was the battalion operations officer. The phone rang, he answered it, made a few terse comments, and then hung up again. Major Orting looked up at Vern.

  “We're sort of busy here, First Sergeant Kruckman. Is there something I can do for you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Vern replied. “One of your men. I found him down by the river.”

  “Shit River?”

  That's what the G.I.'s called the little stream that ran through Sonyu-ri.

  “Sonyu-gang," Vern corrected. “He was dead.”

  Major Orting shuffled through paperwork in front of him, as if searching for something. “Okay,” he said finally. “I have no reports of any men missing. He can't be in our unit. What was his name?”

  “I don't know.”

  “You don't know? Why not.”

  “I reported it to the KNPs. By the time we got back there, the body was gone.”

  Major Orting stared at Vern, openmouthed.

  “Gone?”

  “Yes,” Vern replied. “Gone. I thought you might check your personnel rosters and see if you had a G.I. who didn't show up for the alert.”

  Major Orting shook his head negatively. “A hundred percent. Everyone reported in on time and within less than thirty minutes. The report's already gone up to DivArty.”

  Vern knew what that meant. Major Orting would be reluctant to change the report because then his butt would be on the line. Moving out without one of your soldiers was a serious breach. Soldiers are on duty twenty-four seven; well-trained units respond to alerts immediately and at full strength. Leaving a G.I. behind, and especially leaving a G.I. behind dead, would mean that heads would roll.

  “Maybe he's in another unit,” Major Orting said. “Probably the engineers. Or the antiaircraft artillery.”

  “Maybe,” Vern said. “But their compounds are a few klicks down the road.”

  “Whatever,” Major Orting said. “But he's not one of ours.”

  “Okay, sir,” Vern said stifling the urge to salute. Instead, he nodded and turned and walked out of the Ops Center. In the hallway, he studied the battalion bulletin board. According to the roster, a man named Jenkins, staff sergeant, had pulled staff duty NCO last night. Vern didn't know the man, still he pitied him. After the alert was called and Jenkins had been relieved by the regular headquarters personnel reporting to duty, he'd be required to report to his own unit and go out on the alert with them. No half day of rest as normally authorized after pulling the all-night staff duty detail. Bad luck for him.

  It had happened to Vern a few times. Maybe, Vern thought, he didn't miss the army so much after all.

  * * * *

  Lieutenant Noh turned over his duty log to the day-shift officer. In it, no mention was made of the report by Vern Kruckman of the body of a foreigner being spotted on the banks of the Sonyu-gang. No sense bringing up embarrassing information from a confused foreigner. Still, the report bothered Lieutenant Noh. Vern Kruckman seemed intelligent and alert, unlike so many Americans. And when the body hadn't been where he said it was, he seemed genuinely surprised. As Lieutenant Noh walked home, past the shops just now opening their doors and shutters, he reached in his pocket and pulled out the shining metal ring. It was painted green, and where it shined was where the paint had chipped off. Attached to it was a thumb-sized shred of ripped canvas.

  At the open-air Sonyu market, Lieutenant Noh stepped into a narrow pathway. Canvas lean-tos blotted out the dim morning sunlight, but a string of yellow bulbs hanging from wooden rafters glowed every ten yards or so. Cabbages and mackerel and white radishes glimmered amidst blue ice. The odor of ginger and sliced scallions permeated the air. Gray-haired women wearing woolen shawls nodded to Lieutenant Noh as he passed. He knew most of them by sight and nodded back.

  Most of them were legitimate business people. But what Lieutenant Noh was looking for wasn't legitimate. He slipped down a crack in the fruit stands and ducked through a wooden doorway that led into a dilapidated shed walled with greasy wooden slats. A single bulb illuminated ancient wooden shelving. A gap-toothed old man, holding dirty, white-gloved hands in front of him, appeared out of the gloom. He bowed to Lieutenant Noh.

  “Professor Kang,” Noh said. “Greetings. How's business?”

  “Poor,” the old man replied. “Very poor. The country has grown too rich. No one needs my wares anymore.”

  Kang, it was said, had been a highly educated professor during the Japanese occupation before the end of World War II. After the war, he'd been identified as an enemy collaborator and narrowly escaped execution by the North Korean communists. Now, after starting life as a member of the educated yangban elite, he was left with nothing but this grungy little shop.

  The shelves were lined with crushed boxes of American-made C rations and woolen winter jackets and gloves, thickly padded-over pants, and large rubber boots. Everything G.I. issue. The resale of American military equipment was illegal, but the local KNPs turned a blind eye to the operation. As long as the pilfering from the U.S. base didn't cause the Americans to complain, and no actual armaments were bought or sold, Professor Kang's black-market operation was seen as harmless.

  Lieutenant Noh pulled the ring out of his pocket.

  “What does this belong to?”

  Professor Kang studied the piece of metal, sticking his little finger halfway through the hole.

  “Tent half,” he said in English.

  “What?” Noh asked. He wasn't familiar with the term.

  Kang handed back the ring and ushered Lieutenant Noh toward a back shelf. He pulled out a roll of dark green canvas and unfurled it. It was rectangular with two pointed triangles at the end.

  “A tent half,” Professor Kang explained. “One American soldier carries one, another carries one just like it. At night, they unfurl them, string them together on poles, and stake the ends into the ground. Then they have shelter. A place to sleep.”

  “Ingenious,” Lieutenant Noh said, examining the sturdy material. During the war, as a conscript in the South Korean army, Noh and his fellow soldiers had taken shelter wherever they could and more often than not slept in the mud and the rain.

  “Our soldiers have tents now,” Professor Kang told him, “made of canvas that's almost as strong as this American material.”

  Noh tossed the canvas back onto its shelf. “Who buys these things?” he asked.

  Kang shrugged. “Housewives who want to keep the rain off their kimchi jars. Farmers who want to provide shelter for their animals. There are many uses.”

  “Has anyone bought one of these from you lately?”

  “Unfortunately, no.”

  “And you're the only one who sells them in Sonyu-ri?”

  “The only one who sells them in this part of Paju County.”

  Lieutenant Noh pocketed the ring, thanked Professor Kang, and left.

  * * * *

  The body was found early the next morning.

  A South Korean patrol boat spotted it in the Han River Estuary, floating facedown amongst a clump of reeds. The flow of the currents made it clear that the body had floated out of the mouth of the Imjin River and into the estuary. Since the river flows fast it was surmised that the body hadn't been floating long and the physical condition of the body confirmed that. About twenty-four h
ours in the river was the estimate.

  Vern Kruckman sat in a wooden chair in the back office of the Sonyu-ri KNP station gazing at a black-and-white photograph of the corpse.

  “Is this the man you saw by the banks of the Sonyu-gang?” Lieutenant Noh asked.

  “That's him,” Vern replied. Even with the bloating and the chunks of flesh missing, Vern recognized the pointed nose and the splotchy white skin. Even the clothing was the same. “No question.”

  Noh sat down heavily. “His name is Rolandson. We've already reported it to the American authorities. They say he was stationed here, at Camp Pelham.”

  “The second of the seventeenth?” Vern asked.

  Noh nodded. Then he answered the unspoken question. “He was on leave. That's why they didn't notice him missing right away.”

  When you're on leave you don't have to report in on alerts. Of course, the man was dead, Vern thought, and couldn't have reported in anyway.

  “Do you know his rank?” Vern asked. “Which battery he was assigned to?”

  Noh shook his head negatively. “The Americans only gave us his last name.”

  “How are they classifying the death?”

  “As an accident.”

  “An accident?” Vern clenched his fists. “It couldn't be. The man I saw couldn't have walked to the Imjin River. It's two klicks north of here.”

  Noh studied Vern for a few moments. “Do you want me to report your sighting?”

  Vern hadn't considered that. He sat backed, trying to organize his thoughts.

  Noh interrupted him. He pulled out the metal ring. “I found this near the body,” he said. “It is part of what you Americans call a tent half.”

  Vern understood now. “While I was gone,” he said, “someone laid the tent half on the ground and rolled the body onto it. Then they dragged it away.”

  “Or carried it, if there was more than one of them.”

  “Maybe there's still some signs.”

  “Maybe.”

  The two men departed the station and hurried toward the Sonyu River. Disappointment struck quickly. There was too much pedestrian traffic along the pathway, too many feet kicking dirt, for there to be any signs left. From the path along the river, alleyways shot straight uphill toward the MSR, about ten or fifteen yards away. All of the passageways were too narrow for vehicles.

  “Someone could've dragged the body here, to the first alley,” Vern said. “And then pulled it uphill to the MSR.”

  “If he was alone,” Lieutenant Noh said, “he'd have to be very strong.”

  “Or very determined,” Vern replied. “No one would have seen him. It was too early. And all the G.I.'s had already left for the compound.”

  “But what then?” Noh asked. “It's two kilometers to the Imjin River.”

  The two men climbed up the few yards and stood where the mouth of the alleyway emerged onto the MSR.

  “Maybe a taxi?” Vern said.

  “None were operating that early,” Noh replied. “I've already checked.”

  Vern knew that there were only maybe a half dozen cab drivers who called the village of Sonyu-ri home, and the drivers from the city of Munsan wouldn't bother to come all the way out here that early in the morning.

  Noh was staring at Vern.

  “You want me to check the compound?” Vern asked.

  “The Americans are calling it an accident.”

  “They always call it an accident,” Vern replied.

  “If you check,” Noh replied, “check quietly.”

  “You mean discreetly.”

  “Yes,” Noh agreed. “Discreetly.”

  As Lieutenant Noh walked away, Vern turned and stared downhill at the slowly flowing Sonyu-gang. A hawk swooped low, caught a small fish in its talons, and flapped its wings toward the gray sky. It was then, watching the raptor fade from gray to blue, that Vern realized that he didn't need to check the compound. He already knew who had murdered the G.I. called Rolandson.

  In a frenzy of excitement, Vern hurried home. All he had to do now was confirm it.

  The woman wailed and gnashed her teeth, her eyes shut tight, tears streaming down flushed cheeks. Pei Un-hui patted the bereaved woman on the back as did the wife of the local pastor and the landlady who owned the complex of hooches. All four of them sat cross-legged on cushions on the warm ondol floor.

  Her name was Kim Ryu-sook and she'd lived in Sonyu-ri almost three years. She was a poor country girl from the hinterlands of Cholla Province, and during the past years she'd shacked up with various G.I. boyfriends. Finally, she'd found one who was willing to marry her: Specialist Four Edward H. Rolandson.

  The paperwork was in, already vetted by the battalion chaplain and the Korean Ministry of the Interior; only the second division commander was left to sign off on final approval. A formality, since almost two hundred marriages were approved in the Division area every year.

  “We were going to leave Sonyu-ri,” the woman said. “I was going stateside. I was going to be able to send money to my mother.”

  No matter how Un-hui and the other women commiserated with her and tried to assure her that she was young and attractive and she'd find a husband some day, the woman was inconsolable. Un-hui wished she wasn't here to view this pitiful scene, but Vern had been adamant. “You have to find out everything you can about her. And most importantly, about the G.I. she lived with.”

  “What about your old boyfriend?” the landlady said. “What was his name? Jenkins. He was a good man.”

  “He hates me now,” Kim Ryu-sook wailed. “When he came back to Korea, I told him I couldn't live with him this time. My paperwork was in and I was going to marry Rolandson. He cursed me. Called me a whore.”

  Both the pastor's wife and the landlady patted her on the shoulder.

  “He was just angry,” the landlady said. “He'll get over it.”

  “Besides,” Kim Ryu-sook sputtered, breaking into tears once again. “He's already married.”

  Even the pastor's wife couldn't come up with a solution for that.

  * * * *

  Vern Kruckman was nothing if not a man of action. For thirty years he'd faced down not only the enemies of his country but also fellow soldiers who refused to toe the line. A soldier's life is tough. There are a myriad of regulations that a soldier is required to follow, and it wasn't always easy keeping track of them all. More than once men had cursed Vern Kruckman for enforcing those regulations. They'd gone so far as to throw punches at him, and once one of them had even shot his rifle at him. Luckily, he'd missed. But Vern never backed down. He was a soldier first, and in the army, discipline is king. As a first sergeant—and as a damn good first sergeant—Vern never failed to enforce military discipline. But the worst breach of discipline of all is the murder of a fellow soldier. Vern knew he had to do something about it.

  “Jenkins!” Vern bellowed.

  After two days in the field, Charley Battery of the 2nd of the 17th Field Artillery had just pulled into Camp Pelham. The alert was over now and the 2nd Infantry Division had been victorious once again in the war game against North Korea. Staff Sergeant Jenkins was a gun crew chief and he and his men had uncoupled the 105 mm howitzer from the back of the deuce-and-a-half and were rolling it into its sandbagged gun emplacement when Vern found them.

  Jenkins stopped what he was doing and stared at Vern. A shadow of understanding crossed his eyes. Hurriedly, he ordered his men forward, and after they dropped the gun into position he told them to grab their gear and return to the barracks. Most of them were more than happy to do just that. After two days in the field the first thing every soldier wanted to do was take a shower. The hot water from the big tank atop the barracks would only last a few minutes and then the drains would clog up with filth and all that would be left for the straggler would be a cold shower while standing in an ankle-high pond of scum.

  The men scurried off, only a couple of them glancing back, wondering what business Staff Sergeant Jenkins had with the retire
d First Sergeant Vern Kruckman.

  When they were alone, Vern said, “You killed him.”

  Jenkins was a tall man, thin, with hip bones that pushed out his webbed belt. But there was a wiry strength to him and a cockiness that Vern had often seen in soldiers; a cockiness that said, I can get away with anything.

  “When the alert went off,” Vern continued, “you saw your chance.”

  Jenkins grinned and leaned up against the sandbags.

  Vern stepped closer. “You were the staff duty NCO that night. It was your job to go outside and fire off the 50 mm howitzer in front of the flagpole. You went outside, all right, but instead of firing the cannon you jumped in the staff duty officer's jeep and drove out the gate to the MSR. Then you made your way through the alleys to the pathway along the Sonyu River, just a few yards outside of the hooch of your old girlfriend, Kim Ryu-sook.”

  Jenkins finally spoke. “You have it all worked out, eh, Kruckman?”

  “Yes. I do. When Rolandson came outside, hurrying up the path toward the compound, you smashed his skull in.”

  “With what?” Jenkins asked, making a fist and raising it.

  “No,” Vern replied. “Not with those scrawny little knuckles but with something a lot bigger. Probably your entrenching tool.” Jenkins flinched. Vern went on. “They can find even minute particles of blood on entrenching tools these days, Jenkins. Even if you cleaned it off.”

  Jenkins struggled to make his face impassive but it wasn't working. Vern could see that he had him rattled. He continued.

  “Then someone approached. Me. You hid back in one of the alleys until I passed. When I left, you pulled out your tent half, rolled Rolandson onto it, and dragged him uphill to the MSR. Somehow, you shoved him into the back of your jeep and then drove him to the Imjin. That's when you dumped him in the river and returned to Camp Pelham.”

  “You can't prove that any of this is true,” Jenkins growled.

  “No. Not yet. But I'll bet the M.P. investigators can. They'll turn your life inside out, Jenkins, and the truth will come out.”

  Jenkins strolled slowly to the back of the deuce-and-a-half. He reached inside, rummaging around in a duffel bag. For a gut-wrenching moment, Vern thought he'd emerge with an M-16 rifle and start firing. Instead, Jenkins pulled out an entrenching tool. He brandished it in front of Vern. Vern backed away from the heavy folded shovel.