G.I. Bones

by Martin Limon

  A squadron of fleas swirled into action. Ernie cursed and swatted.

  “Christ, Sueño. You and your freaking fortune teller.”

  After the insects calmed down, I opened the box. It held a jumble of papers, some of them in brown folders, some not. I thumbed through the names typed on white labels at the top of each folder. Occasionally, I pulled a folder out and glanced at it.

  Doravich, Peter T., Corporal, had been the perpetrator of an assault in the barracks up at the old 1st Cavalry Division, when the 1st Cav had been stationed near the DMZ. Doravich had beaten up another G.I. using an entrenching tool and the victim had lost an eye. Hardenson, Arthur Q., Staff Sergeant, had been tried and convicted for pistol whipping and then robbing a Korean bus driver. The bus driver’s family had also filed a claim against the United States government for the then princely sum of $5,000. Marcellus, Oscar S., Private First Class, had been accused of raping a Korean business girl. The military court found that he’d merely been guilty of not paying her as agreed in their preexisting verbal contract. The court martial ordered him busted down two stripes to Private E-nothing and had him shipped back to the States.

  None of the men had been murdered. So, presumably, their bones wouldn’t be found in Itaewon.

  The Korean War ended when a cease-fire was signed between North and South Korea—and their respective allies, Communist China and the U.S.A.—in July of 1953. Auntie Mee claimed that Mori Di had been murdered “at the beginning” of the reconstruction period. That is, shortly after the end of the war. I left the box marked July, 1953 and moved on to August, 1953. Ernie switched on a flashlight because the glow from the overhead fluorescent bulbs didn’t reach down here very well.

  “You don’t believe any of this fortune teller shit, do you?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Let me search these files,” I said, “then we’ll talk.”

  August didn’t seem to have anything that matched Auntie Mee’s words. Neither did the box containing the SIRs for September, October, nor even November. Ernie was becoming antsy and the time was close on to ten o’clock, when we would have to make our appearance at the commissary. I decided to at least finish the box marked December, 1953 and then, like a sharp slap across the face, I spotted a thick manila folder.

  “What is it?” Ernie asked.

  I pointed.

  There, typed neatly across a yellowed label affixed to the folder, was a name and a rank: Moretti, Florencio R., Technical Sergeant, (Missi ng, Presumed Dead ).

  I pulled the folder out, rubbed the flat of my palm across its smooth surface, and felt a thin coat of dust trickle through my fingers. I thumbed quickly through the folder, every new fact confirming what I’d known from the moment I’d seen the name Moretti.

  Ernie waited, hardly breathing.

  Finally, I looked up at him and said, “We’ve found Mori Di.”

  We spent the rest of the morning sitting in Ernie’s jeep in the parking lot out front of the Yongsan Commissary. People went in and people came out: G.I.s, officers, American female dependents, Department of Defense civilians, but mostly Korean wives. I paged through the Serious Incident Report and made notes. Ernie chomped impatiently on ginseng gum.

  The Koreans would have called him Mori Di because that’s how they would’ve heard his last name. There are too many syllables in American names for them so they try to pare them down somewhat. The Koreans wouldn’t have called him by his first name, Florencio or Flo, for two reasons. First, G.I.s refer to one another by last names; the Koreans would’ve mimicked that. Second, Koreans have trouble pronouncing the English letter f. The sound doesn’t exist in their alphabet. The closest they can come is to couple a hard p with a u and then continue on with the word. For example, when you hear a Korean refer to France, if you listen closely, you will hear them say “Pu-ran-suh.” Said quickly enough it sounds almost like “France.”

  So “Mori Di” would’ve been what they called him.

  The next question was how had Auntie Mee known about him? I didn’t believe for a minute that the ghost of Technical Sergeant Florencio R. Moretti had visited her from the spirit realm. Also, why did she care about his bones or where they were buried? At this point, the answers to these questions didn’t really matter. I’d promised Doc Yong I’d try to find the remains of Mori Di and, for her sake, I would.

  By noon the commissary was bustling and one Korean woman in a tight-fitting dress caught Ernie’s attention. She was filling up the trunk of her PX taxi with every imaginable black-market item, from Tang to Spam. When she was finished, she hopped in the back seat of the taxi and gave the driver instructions. They pulled away from the long line of vehicles waiting in front of the Yongsan Commissary.

  “That’s our lady,” Ernie said.

  I looked up from the SIR. “You’re just choosing her because she’s the best looking you’ve seen so far.”

  “You’ve discovered my criterion. Are you a detective or something?”

  Ernie started the engine and was just shifting into first gear when, in the distance, we heard a siren. The sound grew louder. Within seconds a canvas-sided MP jeep with a flashing red light atop its roof swerved into the commissary parking lot, hesitated for a moment, and then headed straight toward us.

  “What the—” Ernie said.

  Tires screeched and the jeep pulled up in front of us, blocking our way. Two armed MPs jumped out. Each kept his right hand atop the grip of his .45.

  Ernie shouted at them. “You’re blocking my way, morons!”

  “Tough shit, Bascom,” one of the MPs said. He was a buck sergeant and his name tag said Pollard . I knew him. He was a good MP.

  Sergeant Pollard stood in front of Ernie and told him, “You’re off the black-market detail.”

  “So what took you so long?” Ernie replied.

  “Break-in,” Pollard said. “Field grade officer’s quarters. You and your partner have caught the call.” He pulled a small notebook out of his breast pocket, thumbed through it, and said, “Yongsan South Post, Unit 43-B, Artillery Drive. Assigned to the J-2, Colonel Oswald Q. Tidwell.”

  This is where two guys with less savoir faire would’ve whistled in awe. J-2 meant military intelligence. The J stood for “joint command”: the United Nations, U.S. Forces Korea, and the 8th United States Army. So Colonel Oswald Q. Tidwell was in charge of military intelligence on the Korean Peninsula and answered only to the commander, 8th United States Army. In army parlance this is the equivalent of sitting at the right hand of god.

  “Anybody hurt?” I asked.

  Pollard studied his notes. “Not that’s been reported so far. But Mrs. Tidwell is hysterical.”

  “Why?”

  “Her daughter is missing. Hasn’t reported in since fifteen hundred hours Tuesday.”

  “You mean Jessica?” Ernie asked.

  Pollard checked his notes again. “Right. That’s her name.”

  “Shit,” Ernie said.

  He jammed the jeep in gear and swerved past Pollard and around the other jeep. The two MPs looked after us, shaking their heads, glad that they weren’t going to have to delve into the messy family life of Colonel Oswald Q. Tidwell.

  Jessica Tidwell was notorious in the 8th Army. Only seventeen, she’d already become a legend. Last year, when she was a junior at Seoul American High School, the Department of Defense school on post for military dependents, she’d become involved with some fast-talking G.I. who worked at the 9th Support Group, the personnel unit on post. She attended a party at the barracks and, apparently, she’d first turned her amorous attentions on the guy who invited her and then on at least a half-dozen other young soldiers. Word leaked out. Ernie and I hadn’t investigated the incident and I was grateful for that. Nobody thanks you when you air the dirty laundry of the family of a field-grade officer. But after the official report wound its way up the chain of command, the half-dozen or so G.I.s involved were brought up on charges—statutory rape and disrespect to the dependent of a field grade office
r. Within days, they were not only convicted but two of them did some time in the stockade and all of them were summarily dismissed from the army.

  But punishing the guilty wasn’t enough for the honchos of 8th Army, not when one of their own was involved. They went one step further. The entire 9th Support Group—personnel, offices, barracks, equipment, vehicles, everything—was transferred to a small logistics compound about twenty miles outside of Seoul. In other words, banished for their sins.

  Since then, Mrs. Tidwell had been keeping a very tight reign on her willful teenage daughter. Ernie knew of her from reports and gossip but even he was smart enough to stay strictly away from Jessica Tidwell. Or at least I hoped he was.

  The Tidwells lived in a sprawling split-level home on Yongsan Compound South Post. A squad of MPs had already secured the perimeter and I recognized a sedan parked in the driveway as belonging to Colonel Cosgrove, the Chief Chaplain of the 8th Army. Inside, the chaplain sat on a leather upholstered couch, comforting Mrs. Tidwell. She held an embroidered handkerchief to her mouth and rose to her feet when we walked in.

  “Are you the investigators?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What took you so long?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that one so I didn’t.

  She held her body stiffly and wore a cotton dress that was shaped by petticoats and elastic undergarments.

  “I don’t care about the money,” she said, waving her arm. “They can have all that. I just want you to find Jessica.” Her face wrinkled into a mask of rage. “And I want you to find her now!”

  Neither Ernie nor I moved. The chaplain, a tall man with thick gray hair, moved toward her and grabbed her elbow. “Now Margaret,” he said, “these young men are professionals. Let them do their jobs. And don’t worry, they’ll find Jessica.”

  We proceeded into the den, the room that Mrs. Tidwell told us was used by her husband as his home office. She explained what was missing. As we examined the evidence, she said, “I know you’re afraid to ask but you must want to know why Oswald isn’t here.”

  Both Ernie and I gazed steadily as Mrs. Tidwell, not speaking. The chaplain grimaced.

  “My husband is a very busy man,” Mrs. Tidwell said. “His responsibilities are massive. If he could, he’d be here right now, looking for his daughter.

  “Don’t smirk like that,” she said to us. “I won’t have it! Not in my own home. There is such a thing as silent contempt, you know,” she screamed.

  The chaplain stepped toward her. She lashed out at him with a fist. He dodged it easily, waited a moment, and then touched her shoulder. She turned and crumpled into his arms, where she stayed for a few minutes, sobbing.

  None of the windows leading into Colonel Tidwell’s home office had been broken or jimmied in any way. He normally kept the door leading into the den padlocked from the outside. Mrs. Tidwell told us that when she checked the room shortly after her husband left for work that morning, she’d found it open. At the time she hadn’t thought much of it. But later, while airing out the house, she noticed that the door to the safe was open also. She called her husband and he told her to make sure that the thousand dollars in U.S. greenbacks he kept there for emergency use was still intact. It wasn’t. The envelope was gone. Colonel Tidwell called the MPs from his office.

  Technically, no American personnel in Korea are supposed to be in possession of U.S. currency. When a G.I. or his dependents arrives in country, all cash is converted into blue or red Military Payment Certificates. The idea is that it will make it more difficult for the North Korean Communists to get their hands on U.S. currency which they could then use as international exchange. Despite this restriction, greenbacks are still available, illegally, on the black-market and fetch a higher price in won, the Korean currency, than MPC.

  A full colonel who is the 8th Army J-2 was not going to be criticized for keeping a small pile of American cash on hand; an enlisted G.I. would be locked up for it.

  Clearly, the theft of the money had been an inside job. There was no sign of a break-in and whoever had entered the den had used a key. The safe had been opened by someone using the combination.

  The household help consisted of a Korean maid and a Korean “serviceman,” what G.I.s would call a houseboy. I spoke to both of them. They were nervous they might lose their jobs. Neither admitted seeing anyone entering the den but they’d left the previous evening and hadn’t returned until dawn. There were also two contract Korean security guards outside, supposedly to protect the J-2 and his family from possible attack by North Korean commandos. I didn’t bother to speak to them because neither had entered the house. But I took note of which guards had been on shift the previous night in case I needed to speak to them later.

  Mrs. Tidwell was less concerned about the theft of the greenbacks than she was about the whereabouts of her daughter, Jessica.

  “She didn’t come home last night,” Mrs. Tidwell told us.

  Mustering a neutral tone, Ernie asked, “Is that unusual?”

  Slowly, Mrs. Tidwell shook her head. “Not anymore.”

  “‘Not anymore?’” I asked.

  “Not since she met that Mexican.” She spat the word out. Then she looked up at me. “Oh, I’m sorry. You’re Hispanic, aren’t you.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Who is the Mexican you’re referring to?”

  “The driver,” she said. “Nothing but a damn driver, when she could be dating any of the young officers at the O Club.” Mrs. Tidwell’s words fairly sizzled. “I don’t know his name,” she continued. “Jessica and I never speak of him. About a month ago he was assigned to drive for the Officers’ Wives’ Club and I dragged her along to a meeting on Daughters’ Night, hoping that she’d hit it off with some of the other girls her age. Instead, she went outside to smoke and struck up a conversation with the driver.”

  “How do you know she’s been seeing him?” Ernie asked.

  “She tells me,” Mrs. Tidwell replied, “every chance she gets.”

  Our first stop was the Orderly Room of the 21st Transportation Company, also known as Twenty-one T Car, the 8th Army motor pool. It wasn’t difficult for Ernie and me to narrow down our search given the clues we had: Hispanic, assigned to drive for the Officers’ Wives’ Club. The first sergeant had the answer for us in less than two minutes: “Bernal, Francisco, rank of corporal.”

  “What’s he like?” I asked the first sergeant.

  “Don’t know,” the gray-haired man replied. “Too many young troops coming and going for me to keep track of them all.”

  “But that’s your job,” Ernie said.

  “Screw you, Bascom.”

  “Save that for your troops,” Ernie said.

  I told the first sergeant we’d find our own way to the barracks. He didn’t protest.

  Outside, as our footsteps crunched across a field of gravel, I asked Ernie, “Why are you messing with him?”

  Ernie shrugged. “Just in a good mood, I guess.”

  “But you’re making life more difficult for us.”

  “I like flashing my badge and seeing first sergeants and field-grade officers squirm.”

  “We haven’t even met Colonel Tidwell yet.”

  “We will.”

  He had that part right. And I wasn’t looking forward to it. According to what I’d been told, Colonel Tidwell was about as grim and hard-assed as it’s possible to be; which is very grim and hard-assed indeed when you’re an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army.

  The Twenty-one T Car barracks were Quonset huts, spray-painted green and hooked together by wooden passageways. We entered at the end of one Quonset hut and wound through a long maze of corridors, passing Korean houseboys in the latrine, standing in huge metal tubs, sloshing soap suds and laundry under their feet. Finally, we found Bernal’s quarters, room 463-C. I tried to open it with the master key the first sergeant had provided. The lock clicked but the door remained secure.

  “Barred
from inside,” Ernie said. He banged on the door with his fist. “Bernal! Open up!” No response. Ernie banged once more. When no one answered, he motioned for me to stand out of the way. I did. Ernie took a running start from the opposite side of the hallway and jammed his shoulder into the wooden door. It burst open and the two of us charged inside.

  A dim bulb beneath a red lampshade illuminated a body laying in the bunk. A long slender body, glistening like polished ivory.

  It definitely wasn’t Corporal Bernal.

  3

  According to the Serious Incident Report, the G.I.s who knew Moretti well called him Flo. Back in those days, more than twenty years ago, the Broadway showman Flo Ziegfeld was still remembered so it wouldn’t have seemed like such an odd name. The G.I.s who didn’t know him well, and the business girls in Itaewon, called him Moretti or the Korean version: Mori Di. The MP investigator who typed out the report referred to him consistently as Moretti.

  His height was given as five foot seven, his weight, 135 pounds, and there was a black-and-white photograph of him, the same one he would’ve had pasted onto his military ID card. His hair was dark, a little long by today’s military standards, greased and combed into a slight wave at front. His lips were tight in the photograph, his brown eyes focused straight ahead, as if he were braced—physically and mentally—for the rigors of military life. I imagined him with a woolen cowl over his head, like an ascetic monk from the Middle Ages. But he wasn’t a monk, he was an American G.I. who’d arrived in Korea while the war still raged and he was fortunate enough to be alive when the cease-fire was signed.

  During the Korean War, air force pilots complained because all they were doing in their combat sorties was hitting targets that had already been hit. Making “rubble bounce on rubble,” as they put it. Nothing was left in the city of Seoul. Moretti had been assigned to the 8th Army Civil Affairs Office and his job, according to the Serious Incident Report, was to rebuild the section of Seoul nearest the 8th Army headquarters, the area known as Itaewon.