After peering over the cliff of sudden death dozens of times and at long last emerging from the jungle swamps, a fighter about to embark for Korea would be unlikely to have saved from his combat pay more than three hundred dollars, a paltry sum of money stuck in a savings account somewhere back home. Korean crawlers often said their lives were worth forty dollars—their monthly salary. Sure, they got the economic, military and financial support America gave to its allies, and the privileges normally reserved to businessmen in Seoul. And army privates would sail back home along with their plywood crates holding a couple of Japanese appliances or electronics items they had conjured up on the sly.
Once he had showered, Yong Kyu rummaged through the refrigerator and ate what he found. He set his dirty laundry basket out in the hall and came back in and looked in the closet where he found a set of clean clothes neatly folded with a bill on top. The phone rang again. Yong Kyu slowly lifted up the receiver.
“Ahn Yong Kyu, is that you?” It was the voice of the staff sergeant.
“It’s me. What’s up?”
“Military life is tough, eh? Any idea what time it is? Hurry up and get your ass over here. We’ve got a problem.”
“Why are you getting all worked up on a Sunday? Call the PX boys.”
“No, the captain’s away at headquarters. He’ll be back tomorrow evening. I’m over at the CID office. We’ve got a problem.”
“What kind of problem? You’ve made a mess again.”
“Hell, I’m crying tears of blood. Come on, you bastard, some of our boys had their goods confiscated for no reason, and I can’t speak the damn language.”
“All right, I’m on my way.”
When Yong Kyu arrived at the office, the staff sergeant was sitting there simmering in his own sweat. Miss Hoa was not in. On the captain’s desk was nothing but an ashtray heaped with butts from the cigarettes he had been chain-smoking.
“I don’t get it. Today when the chief went off to headquarters he told me to man the office, you know. So I came in here, leaving the grunt sprawled in dreamland after a night on the town. And then, just a little while ago, some American boys come in here babbling away about God knows what. I guess they came to get me, but then they left and brought back two of our guys, kids who’d been on combat duty and are fixing to head home soon. One of the two had a television and the other a tape recorder they’d bought, but the PX guard caught them, I think. Black something or other, the boys said they were told. So I asked that guy Lukas who speaks Korean, and he said the goods were all going to be confiscated. Look, honestly, you know what kind of money that is, right?”
“Yeah, I know. I’ll handle it. Who’s in charge of the American boys?”
“The marine sergeant. You know, the fat one with the bulging eyes.”
Leaving the main building, Yong Kyu passed the radio room and walked over to the investigation office in a barracks next to a flower garden. As he entered, an American sergeant with a short crew cut dressed in a crisp uniform was leafing through some documents at his desk. Yong Kyu saluted, and the sergeant gestured with his chin towards a chair.
“Have a seat.”
“I heard there was some problem with two of our men, so I came to see you.”
“Ah, that case, you mean? We’ve put them in a cell since there was nobody to take custody. I’ve just received the report, would you care to look it over?”
Yong Kyu picked up the report. The ink was not even dry. One man was a marine corporal, the other a private. Both were assigned to a bottom-level combat infantry squad, and after a tough month in the field they were on special leave for a little R & R. They had access to a PX at brigade headquarters, but they were not allowed to use the American PXs and downtown Da Nang was off-limits. They had gone to the marine PX near the rec center and made black market purchases.
The report was simple enough: Two Korean marines in possession of a TV and a stereo tape recorder were stopped by a PX security guard. They were unable to produce ration cards, so the goods were confiscated and the two soldiers detained. The price of the TV was eighty dollars and the tape deck was one hundred twenty. Those were duty-free prices, naturally. The TV was a National and the tape recorder an Akai.
“According to this report, there was no evidence that they bought the stuff on the black market,” Yong Kyu said.
“They had no ration cards. Unless they stole them, there was no other way for such items to come into their possession under the circumstances.”
“As I understand it, in a black market deal, both the seller and the buyer are guilty of an infraction. In fact, the seller is the worse offender. No black market is possible without a seller, is it?”
“They confessed buying on the black market. Lukas got their signatures here.”
“But there’s no signature of the seller. No signed statement of an eyewitness, either. The sentry merely stopped them at a checkpoint. So, this is not a black market case, it’s one that falls within our disciplinary jurisdiction. We’ll handle it as a matter of entering an off-limits area or as an unauthorized use of leave. The money they paid for the goods must be returned in the amounts shown in the report.”
The sergeant shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. They made signed confessions and the chief has approved our action already. Now all you need to do is take over custody of the two recruits.”
“That’s not right. It’s just arrogance. Even if they were stopped within your compound, it is our matter to deal with. And our soldiers were using our money when they bought the goods.”
“It’s the practice of the American forces to consider all events occurring in our compounds as falling under the jurisdiction of the American forces.”
“All right, but you can still return the money.”
“It doesn’t work that way. Since it’s been approved, the goods will go back where they were before sale.”
“And what happens to their money, then? The money that’s gone into the PX, does it go to your government or to the marines?”
“Watch what you say, sergeant, keep in mind this is a military investigation office of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.”
“Fine. I’ll also make a separate investigation of the case and send up my own report.”
“Suit yourself. But sergeant, you can’t challenge the authority of the American forces. This case was handled by the book and it’s been closed. Don’t try to second guess us.”
“I’m not trying to challenge it, but to rectify it.”
Yong Kyu emerged from the investigation office and went back into the main building. Then he headed down the stairs to the basement where a uniformed MP was sitting at a desk. Thanks to the ventilation system, the basement was cool inside. He spoke to the MP and then went inside and further down, finding the two soldiers crouching behind bars in the corner of a cell. He opened the doghouse with the key given him by the MP.
“Come on out here.”
They awkwardly saluted, holding their pants up with the other hand.
“Personal effects in custody?”
“Yes, sir. Our watches, wallets, cigarettes . . .”
“I see. Follow me.”
He gave the American MP a signed paper to acknowledge transfer of custody and received the box containing their personal effects. The two soldiers rethreaded their shoelaces, put their belts back on and took back their helmets. Yong Kyu led them to the CID office. The staff sergeant, lounging in the captain’s chair with his legs up on the desk, quickly put his feet on the floor.
“Hey, did they agree to give the money back, or what?”
From his attitude, right away Yong Kyu sensed that the sergeant had made a deal of some kind with the soldiers.
“Give me a hundred.”
Yong Kyu held out his hand. The team leader rolled his eyes with surprise.
“Now, now, what a thing t
o say to a poor man like me. Ask Pointer to pitch in, man. You guys are like family, huh?”
“They refused to cough up the money. Shit, these boys are screwed, so we’re going to make up their loss with a hundred from you and a hundred from me.”
Stunned, the staff sergeant stared back at Yong Kyu with his mouth hanging open.
“You don’t think a lowly sergeant like me is loaded with cash, do you? I’m not even prepared for going home myself. Anyway, these bastards asked for it, they deserve it. You two idiots, when you get back home there’ll be plenty of that kind of junk at the base PXs, so what the hell were you doing slinking around an off-limits PX here?”
Documents in hand, Yong Kyu was getting ready to take statements from the soldiers when he paused to look over at the staff sergeant.
“You go on first.”
“Mmmm. What about these boys . . .”
“I’ll handle them all right.”
Pretending to not want to leave, the staff sergeant barked a rebuke at the soldiers as he got up.
“Listen, you two, when you get your money back, at least give him some beer money, understand?”
Ignoring this remark, Yong Kyu flattened him, saying, “Go straight there. Don’t stop to see the Hong Kong Group.”
“I’ve washed my hands of them.”
“The chief has his eye on them. We’ll fall on them hard. I’ll tell you about it later.”
Once he was gone, Yong Kyu looked closely at the two soldiers in turn. He knew very well the face of a fighter: expressionless, and not just because of the skin tightened and tanned dark by a scorching sun. Yet the eyes set in that dull and inarticulate face shine brightly in a mysterious way. While at the front line, the messy hair and the stubbly beard along with those wild eyes give an impression of animal-like vitality, but once wrenched away from combat into a city environment like this office, that face looks different, spent and dazed. The insecure, frightened movements and the impassive surface make them looked down upon.
Yong Kyu questioned them: posts, ranks, names, and details of the incident.
“Why did you go to the marine PX to buy a TV?” he asked the private. “Couldn’t you buy it in your own compound?”
“In our compound all they have is beer and toothbrushes and stuff like that, so we have to go to brigade headquarters to buy anything big. My family has been hounding me to bring home a TV, so I didn’t send my pay home for two months and saved up the money to buy one. I’m going home soon, you see.”
So, with the price of two months’ survival, this soldier had purchased a National television set.
“How did you buy it?”
“From the recreation center you can see the American PX through the barbed wire fence. So I sneaked in there and got hold of an American and begged him. In return he asked me for a set of jungle fatigues. So I brought him a uniform and he bought the TV for me. But then another bastard showed up and took it away. We’re no different from them . . . we’re all shipped in here and take the risk of having our heads blown off, right?”
“All right. And you, did you do it the same way?”
“Yes, sir. We went with our squad leader.”
“Where did you get the hundred and twenty dollars?”
“I saved twenty a month for six months, sir. I wanted to buy a camera but was so fascinated by the voice coming out of the recorder . . . well, I was going to record all the voices of the old people in our neighborhood when I get home.”
“You weren’t planning to resell it, were you?” Yong Kyu asked the private.
“Why, why would I sell it, sir? It’s hard enough to buy, who the hell would I sell it to?”
“Don’t you have a ration card?”
“What’s that?”
No wonder they were in such a mess, he thought. Some bastard had intercepted their ration cards and probably used them to buy up to the limits for goods to sell in the local black market.
“Everybody in the Allied Forces is entitled to a ration card,” said Yong Kyu. “You didn’t have yours, and that’s why they confiscated your things.”
“It’s the first time I ever heard of that, sir.”
Tears started welling up in the private’s eyes. That too, Yong Kyu knew very well. Anyone fresh off the battlefield is very vulnerable. Due to the excitement, actually like a state of intoxication, he finds it hard to adjust to the atmosphere of ordinary society. Yong Kyu remembered once, right after returning from a mission, he had cried his eyes out after glancing through movie ads in a newspaper that arrived by mail from home. It reminded him how people’s daily routines went right on as always, totally oblivious to the critical danger to his own life. If he had had a weapon in hand, he might have broken down and shot himself, or just sprayed the people in the street with bullets. This man in a similar state was going back home now, returning home a different man. Despite himself, despite the ineradicable scars in his brain, gradually he will revive or reform. But now, what about the two hundred dollars?
“If you had no ration cards, why didn’t you just go to the Americans and demand that they pack up everything in the PX and give it to you? Why the hell were you snooping around the barbed wire fence, you fools. Just wait, boys, I’ll get you your money back; I will, even if I have to sell my body. By the way, I hear you signed some kind of confession statements, is that right?”
“The Americans asked us to write our names in Korean, so we did.”
“You didn’t know what you were signing, did you?”
“No, sir. It was filled with squiggly letters in English.”
“I see. Goddamn bastards just did whatever they liked.”
Yong Kyu finished his report and saved the carbon copy for himself. Then he made a separate report to file with Krapensky and attached to it a request for refunds of the prices of the goods, eighty and one hundred twenty dollars respectively.
“You boys can go now.”
“It’s all right to go now?”
The private was bewildered, unable to believe how easily he escaped from the disaster.
“Why, you’d rather crawl back down into that cell? Listen, after an operation, you need a good rest so you can be ready to fight again, right?”
“Sure . . .”
“Right, so I’ll call the rec center for you boys. They’ll send a Jeep so you don’t have to walk back. I’ll recover the money and send it to you.”
Yong Kyu telephoned the recreation center and asked them to send a driver. Then he gave the handwritten report to the girl in the next room and asked her to type it up, since Miss Hoa was off that day. When the document was finished he took it back over to the investigation office. This time Lukas was there along with the sergeant in charge. Yong Kyu laid the report down on the desk. Lukas picked it up, but the sergeant spoke without even glancing at the document.
“No use bringing me any more paper now, the case is closed and done with. We’ve already taken proper measures, and what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m not finished with it yet,” said Yong Kyu, stifling an urge to punch him. “Sergeant Lukas, is this the way you get statements from suspects? Our soldiers couldn’t read your language, and that’s why they signed it.”
Lukas replied in clear Korean. “Don’t get excited. The guards at the PX checked them and reported to us. They broke regulations, no ration cards, and you know we can’t tell then what is black market and what isn’t.”
“Up to that point, proper measures were taken. But isn’t it only fair that when the goods are returned you give them their money back? Your job is to seize the goods and hand them over to us, that’s all. We punish them and we are entitled to recover the money from you. The money they paid and the punishment they get are two different things. I’d like you to send this report to the chief of the investigation office.”
The American ser
geant pointed at Yong Kyu with his finger and shouted, “Sergeant, stand up straight when you speak. I was in Korea for a long time too. I know you people very well. You make trouble whenever you come into our zones. Your soldiers try to make illegal profits by buying and reselling PX goods. We don’t give back money used for that. Maybe then in the future the Koreans will stop coming into our PXs for their black market dealing.”
“I heard you loud and clear. Just now you said we come into your areas and do nothing but stir up trouble. I’ll report your words to higher authority and make an official complaint. We are here because you asked us to come. Your government wanted us to join you to save the lives of young American men. We have nothing to do with this filthy war. True, we’ve sold ourselves for the paltry sum of money you threw at us, and now here we are. But don’t forget this, those two soldiers just barely survived combat operations set in motion by a command from your headquarters. They were on the front instead of you. The money you snatched and won’t give back is blood money!”
“Shut up, you son of a bitch!”
The American sergeant sprang to his feet and was pounding on the desk. He stuck his nose in Yong Kyu’s face and growled, “I’m warning you. Don’t interfere with us.”
“You must return the two hundred dollars. If you don’t, I’ll ask your president himself to pay it back.”
It was Lukas who separated the two men. He led Yong Kyu into another room. He filled a paper cup with some coffee from an aluminum coffee pot and handed it to Yong Kyu. He offered a cigarette. Yong Kyu plopped down in a chair.
“He has very strong feelings about your kind of people,” Lukas said.
“And I about his.”
“Let me give you some tips. He’s got some dirt . . . evidence.”
The Shadow of Arms Page 27
