by Jack Tunney
“Mitchell,” he said. “My friends call me Pinball.”
“Pinball it is then,” I said and offered a hand. “My friends call me Bones.”
It was the beginning of a great friendship.
***
“I’ve got Corporal Mason, Colonel,” Pinball announced my arrival.
“Send him in,” Colonel Kellan said.
The office was small and plain, not at all like I expected. The walls were plain plywood, adorned with only a couple of photographs and a corkboard with notes attached to it. Four wooden filing cabinets covered one wall and two large cabinets with doors covered another. A small bookshelf sat behind the colonel’s plain wood desk. Two simple metal chairs sat on the opposite side of the desk.
“Corporal James Mason, sir,” I said, dropping my gear and saluting as I had been taught.
“At ease, corporal.” He waved me in. “Have a seat.”
I took the offered chair. “Thank you, sir.”
“Do you know why I called you in here, son?” he asked, without looking up from the document he was signing.
“Not really, sir.”
The colonel looked up and smiled. I must have looked stunned because he sat down his pencil and leaned back in his chair. “They keep telling me that one day we’re going to do away with the need for all this paperwork,” he said. “Then, they send me a brand new stack and all of it needs to be filled out in triplicate. I guess that’s the Army for you.”
He laughed, so I laughed with him, although, I didn’t know why his comment was funny.
“Do you know why I’ve called you in here?”
“No, sir.”
“You said you were from the great state of Georgia, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What part?”
“Claytonville. Small town up in the North Georgia Mountains. You’ve probably never heard of it.”
“You’re right. I haven’t. Doesn’t matter though.” He lit up a cigarette and blew out a thick cloud of smoke. “I’ve had the good fortune to serve with men and women from all over the United States and there’s one thing I’ve learned. Do you know what that is?”
I shook my head.
“I’ve never met one of you good ol’ boys from Georgia that didn’t know how to drive. I always make it a point to find the Georgia boy and make him my driver.” He leaned forward, elbows on the desk, cigarette clenched in his teeth. “So, the only question I’ve got for you, corporal, is, can you drive?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Yes I can.”
***
And drive I did. Granted, the Army Jeeps weren’t quite as nice as the sweet ride Sammy and I had picked up on the road, but it was a far sight better than the broken down old pile of spare parts Old Man Winters had on his farm. The colonel traveled a lot, which suited me just fine. I would have much rather been out on the road than digging a ditch or pulling KP duty.
I loved driving, and at times Korea’s dirt roads and mountain passes reminded me of home, but only just a little bit. I missed the smell of pine trees and there weren’t any of those in sight.
Don’t get me wrong, there were dangers aplenty out on the roads. Enemy shelling was constantly rewriting the landscape. A road that was perfectly fine today could be obliterated and not passable tomorrow. As much as I enjoyed a nice ride through the country, I couldn’t forget how dangerous this country could be.
I had been in camp about two months when the colonel sent Pinball to wake me up early on morning. The temperature was already nearing triple digits and the sun wasn’t schedule to come up for another hour. I dressed quickly in the dark, careful not to wake my tent-mates as they still had one good hour of sleep ahead of them.
I met Colonel Kellan outside his office five minutes later.
“I’ve got to get over to Seoul for a meeting,” he told me. That explained the spit and polish uniform he was wearing as opposed to the utilities he wore around camp.
“Yes, sir,” I said, and as soon as he was situated, we took off down the rough dirt road leading to Seoul.
“Sorry to get you up so early, Corporal,” he said, once we were outside of camp.
“No worries, sir. I would have just had to get up in an hour anyway,” I joked. The colonel had a sense of humor. One of the perks of being his driver was getting to see him outside of camp, where he tended to loosen up a bit. If not for the command structure in camp, he would have been a fun guy to hang around, but officers and enlisted rarely did that sort of thing. When it was just the two of us in the jeep or a bus, however, the colonel treated me like one of the guys. I respected that.
The trip from camp to Seoul wasn’t a long one, but with all the twisting, turning roads, detours, checkpoints, and other obstacles, it took longer than it should. We were on a long windy stretch of road as the sun started to peek over the horizon. I don’t know what caught my eye, but before I even realized it, I took the jeep into a hard turn, taking us off the road and into the brush just as a mortar slammed onto the road where we had been seconds before.
The jeep slid on the loose earth and fishtailed, slamming against a tree. The colonel and I both leapt out of the open air vehicle and took cover beside it. He pulled his weapon and I did as well. I hate guns. I always have. Sure, we had a rifle back home, but it was for picking off snakes and the occasional squirrel or mouse, but a handgun was only good for one thing, killing a person. I was not eager to add such a thing to my list of accomplishments.
“How many did you see, corporal?”
“None, sir.”
“How is that possible?” The colonel was all business. “How did you know to get us off the road?”
“I don’t know, sir. Instinct, maybe.”
“Well, remind me to give your instincts a commendation when we get back to camp.”
Before we could move to better cover, the enemy we still could not see opened fire from under the cover of the woods. Both of us pressed ourselves as flat against the ground as we could. It was the first time in my life, I had ever wished to be smaller than I already was. With bullets smacking the ground all around me, I would have been happy to have been paper thin.
The colonel opened fire the first chance he got, squeezing off only a few shots before we heard a voice telling us to surrender. The soldier spoke broken English, but we got the gist. There were six of them, each armed, and all of their weapons were pointed directly at the colonel and me. We were surrounded. My heart thundered in my chest so loud I could feel it pulsing all the way in my ears. This wasn’t the first time I had squared off against this type of odds, but it was the first time I was sure they wanted to kill me.
That’s when it happened again.
As clear as if he were standing next to me in his front yard, old Roscoe lying on the porch nearby, I heard Old Man Winters giving me more of his sage advice. “It don’t matter how many of them there are, boy. All that matters is strategy. If you’re smarter than your enemy, you can beat him.”
That’s when I saw my opening – and I took it.
ROUND NINE
“It’s kill or be killed.”
On more than one occasion, Old Man Winters had said it. It never seemed more true than standing on the side of the road in Korea with six armed soldiers pointed rifles at me.
I was under no illusions about what was going to happen next. They were going to kill us. They might keep the colonel alive because his rank probably made him valuable. They could trade him for whatever it was they wanted. Not me though. I was a nobody, low man on the totem pole. They wouldn’t be able to get much for me, and we all knew it. Unless I found a way out of this mess, I was a dead man.
As soon as I saw an opening, I took it.
Father Tim had trained me how to box like a civilized man. As much as that training helped shape me into the man I had become, it was useless in that moment. However, all of Old Man Winters’ stories and lessons came back to me in an instant.
Without telegraphing the move, I grabbe
d the rifle of the soldier closest to me and jerked forward, pulling the holder off balance. He stumbled right into a fist to the face and was on the ground before anyone had a chance to react.
With the gun still in my hand by the barrel, I used it like a baseball bat and sent the next soldier into center field. He, too, dropped quickly. As I advanced on the third enemy soldier, I kicked the second’s dropped rifle toward Colonel Kellan, who scooped it up. I heard the gun discharge behind me while I grappled with my opponent. He was good, trained, and unlike with the previous two, I no longer had surprise on my side. I disarmed him quickly, but he blocked my punch and sent me flying backward with a spinning kick to my gut.
I recovered quickly. I had never seen moves like this guy had. I needed to put him down quickly. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the colonel in hand to hand combat with another enemy soldier while another lay on the ground nearby. That left one unaccounted for, but he didn’t stay that way for long. I felt the stock of his rifle connect with the back of my head and I saw stars. It took some doing, but I managed to stay on my feet. I knew if I hit the ground it was all over for me.
Two to one odds weren’t ideal, especially with the world spinning wildly around me. Somehow, I blocked my attacker’s next shot. I grabbed him by the arm and swung him around, off balance, into his partner. They fell against the jeep, stopping themselves from falling.
Before the men could regroup, I made my move. I slammed into them with full force, planting a knee in one man’s gut followed by an elbow to the face of the other. The latter of the two went down for the count. The other still had some fight left in him.
He hit me twice in the face and I tasted the warm metallic twang of blood. I planted my feet and delivered two blows in quick succession, just like I used to do back in the gym at St. Vincent’s. Then, I delivered the haymaker, taking him out of the fight.
I spun around to check on the colonel and saw him take out the man he had been grappling with. Only one soldier enemy remained and he pointed his gun at my commanding officer.
There was no time to shout a warning.
I launched myself at the man, taking him to the ground in a tackle. His gun went off and I heard the colonel scream. We rolled, pushed away from one another, then came up ready to fight. I chanced a quick glance toward the colonel. He was alive, holding his wounded shoulder as he went for one of the dropped weapons.
My enemy pulled a knife and swung it toward me. I backpedaled away from the blade’s sharp tip. He jabbed and I grabbed his arm and pulled him off balance the way I had his buddy earlier. A sharp twist of his wrist and the knife fell away and stuck into the dry ground.
As with his partner, I set my stance and jabbed twice before swinging my southpaw punch. He staggered, off balance, but didn’t fall. All it took was one more blow to put him down.
Once I was sure there were no more attacks coming, I ran to check on Colonel Kellan. “Are you okay, sir?”
“Fine,” he said through grit teeth as I helped him into the jeep’s passenger seat. “Hurts like hell, but I’ll live.”
Just as I slid in behind the wheel, a shot rang out. The bullet bounced off the jeep’s frame, just inches from where I sat.
“Go! Go! Go!” Colonel Kellan shouted.
I was way ahead of him, putting the jeep in gear and gunning the accelerator, tossing dirt and rocks into the air. Another shot rang out, but this time the sniper missed us completely. I had no plans to wait around to see if his third shot was any better. Using the cloud of dust as cover, we fishtailed back onto the hard packed dirt road back in the direction we had come.
“Hold tight. I’ll have us back at camp in no time,” I said once we were safely out of the sniper’s range.
“That was incredible what you did back there, corporal,” he said once we were heading safely back down the road. “Where did you learn to handle yourself?”
I smiled. “Oh, just a little something a friend taught me.”
FINAL ROUND
Uijeongbu, Korea
Summer, 1951
Get up!
Old Man Winters’ shout cut through the darkness like the bright, brilliant beam of a spotlight. I hurt all over, but managed to open my eyes. The sound of explosions, shouts, and gunfire filled the sky around me, but shaded as we were by the overturned boxing ring, I couldn’t see what was going on.
Get up, boy!
The ring had landed at an angle, thanks to one of the wooden corner posts not snapping on impact. Instead, it dug into the ground like a fence post. That was good news for Sergeant Nudell and me because it was the only reason we weren’t flat as pancakes.
“Are you okay?” I asked the sergeant.
He didn’t answer, so I reached over and felt for a pulse. He was alive, but out cold. As bombs continued to go off , I knew we couldn’t stay put much longer. Sooner or later one of those mortars was going to land squarely on top of us. The giant square made for a hard to miss target. We were lucky we hadn’t already taken another hit.
I inched forward and stopped. My legs were pinned, not tight, but tight enough that getting them out from under the wooden ring wasn’t going to be easy. I had no leverage and no way to roll over onto my back to push against the ring floor.
“Think, Mason, think!” I said through grit teeth. Suddenly, I was right back on Old Man Winter’s front porch watching lazy ol’ Roscoe sleeping away his day. The old man brought down the big bone he’d plucked from the dog’s dish and slammed it into the porch. I remembered the sound of bone splintering wood. I remembered I was a bag of bones and I could splinter the wood trapping me.
I was still able to bend my knees. I lifted myself onto all fours and put my back against the floor above me. All I had to do was lift it an inch, maybe two.
I had spent the a good amount of my life bouncing around inside boxing rings, but I never knew how heavy they were. I strained until I thought my heart was going to burst, or maybe my back might snap in half.
The entire time, all I could hear was Old Man Winters shouting at me, “Don’t give up! Never stop fighting!”
Just when I thought I didn’t have any more to give, the ring moved. It was only a fraction of an inch, but it moved.
I redoubled my efforts. The pain was incredible, but after a few tries it finally tilted enough for me to free my foot. I slid free and looked around at the chaos the shelling was causing.
Then I heard the whine of incoming aircraft.
I prayed it was our birds on approach, and God must have figured I still had credit on the side of being good because two United States fighter jets roared overhead, ready to engage the enemy. Rockets launched from beneath the jets and streaked off into the mountains where the mortar attack had originated.
But the arrival of the jets didn’t mean the attack was over.
Taking advantage of the momentary respite from shelling, I pulled Sergeant Nudell from beneath the ring. He mumbled something unintelligible as I dragged him toward the nearest foxhole. We were almost there when the unmistakable shrill whistle of an incoming mortar filled the air.
I pushed the unconscious Nudell into the foxhole then chanced looking for the mortar against the bright blue sky. “Oh, crap!” It was headed right toward us.
I dove into the foxhole just as the mortar exploded not more than ten feet away. I landed hard and used my body to cover Nudell’s head and neck as a downpour of dirt and rock fell atop us. We lay there, neither of us moving for a long time. Eventually, the all clear was given and I crawled out of the foxhole.
“Medic!” I shouted. Someone was going to have to help me with Nudell. I hurt all over wasn’t sure I could get him to the hospital on my own.
A doctor came running toward me. “You okay, buddy?” he asked, looking me over.
“Help Nudell,” I said. Everything was spinning around wildly. I pressed my hand to the back of my head where it hurt, and it came back bloody. It’s funny. I couldn’t remember being hit.
Then I felt mys
elf dropping like I’d taken a punch right on the button.
EPILOGUE
I woke up in the post-op ward.
I recognized it immediately since I’d mopped the floors in here more times than I’d cared to recall. However, even though I knew where I was the first words out of my mouth were, “Where am I?”
“Lie still,” a nurse told me as she pointed to the bottle of plasma hanging next to me, a feeding tube in my arm.
“What happened?”
“You’re a very lucky man is what happened,” Colonel Kellan said from the foot of the bed where he and one of the doctors were looking over my chart. “Doctor Parsons says you’ll live.”
“That’s good to hear,” I croaked. My throat felt raw.
“Glad to see your sense of humor’s returned,” Doctor Parsons said.
“Can I get out of here?” I asked.
“Sure,” the doc said. “Just take it easy for a couple days. Any dizziness or nausea, you come back here and see me, okay?”
“Will do, Doc,” I agreed as he removed the I.V. needle.
“You need a wheelchair?”
“I’m good,” I said and waved the doctor away. I had not enjoyed spending time under a doctor’s care since I was a kid. Although I knew it wasn’t the cause of Mama’s death, there was a part of me that equated bed rest to a death sentence.
The colonel escorted me out of post- op. “Sorry your boxing match was interrupted. I think you could have taken Sergeant Nudell in another round,” he said.
“You’re probably right,” I said. “How is Nudell?”
“He’s fine. Still out after his surgery. He was hurt pretty bad, but he’ll recover. The docs will probably send him stateside.”
“I’m glad he made it.”
“Thanks to you,” Kellan said.
I waved off the sentiment.
“Once we get the camp back in order, I’m going to have the boxing ring rebuilt,” the colonel said. “When that happens, you up for trying the boxing tournament again?”
