The Iron Sickle

by Martin Limon

  “You’re supposed to be spread out,” Riley said. “Not standing around shooting the shit.”

  “We already chased away all the Commies,” Ernie said. “They’re sixty miles north of here up on the other side of the DMZ.”

  Eighth Army’s field headquarters was set up in this rural area about thirty-five kilometers south of the city limits of Seoul. Theoretically, on this side of the Han River, we’d be less vulnerable to an initial North Korean assault—if the Communist regime up north ever actually decided to invade. Once our brave forces repulsed them—and no one thought we wouldn’t—we were still close enough to Seoul to return to Yongsan Compound and continue normal operations.

  “What about infiltrators?” Riley asked.

  “What about ’em?”

  “North Korean commandoes can sneak across the DMZ and attack our positions at any time.”

  “Hey, Riley,” Ernie said, “this is not a real war, okay? We’re not in ’Nam anymore. All this is make-believe and as soon as the brass has had enough of playing tin soldier we’ll be allowed to pack up and go home.”

  And maybe I’d be able to continue my investigation, I thought, but I knew better than to say anything to Riley, especially about the secret claims file. For now, we had to keep our suspicions to ourselves. If I told Riley, he’d tell the Provost Marshal. Maybe the PM didn’t know about it—he probably didn’t—and maybe he wouldn’t take any action to thwart our plans if he did find out. Maybe. But I couldn’t take that chance. I had to see that file without 8th Army’s knowledge. I couldn’t take the chance they would see the death of Mr. Barretsford and even the murder of Corporal Collingsworth as the acceptable price of keeping their secrets.

  In the mess tent yesterday, Ernie’d found out from Strange that the file we were looking for was called the Bogus Claims Register, and it was held in the classified file cabinet of the Status of Forces Committee’s Secretariat. We knew where their offices were, not far from the 8th Army headquarters building itself, and Strange said the files were locked in secure cabinets in the Secretary’s office, which in turn was locked behind an iron-barred door. And of course, the entire complex was protected at all hours of night and day by armed guards. That was all Strange would tell Ernie.

  Staff Sergeant Riley was about to open his mouth and point out another defect in our military bearing when footsteps tromped through mud.

  An MP approached, wearing the same fatigues and steel pot we were, his M-16 slung over his left shoulder. He was a big man, and I thought I recognized his silhouette. As he came closer, moonlight shone in his face. Moe Dexter, freed now from his brief incarceration and cleared by the Provost Marshal of any charges stemming from the vandalizing of the pochang macha or threatening the use of a firearm against us. He’d been warned to watch his conduct, but all punishment was withheld, and he was returned to full duty.

  “Well,” Ernie said, bristling, “look who got a clean bill of health from his parole board.”

  “Better than having the creeping crud like you, Bascom.”

  “At least I don’t stick it to my asshole buddies,” Ernie replied.

  I thought the two men were about to come to blows, but Dexter stopped his advance, stared hard at Ernie for a moment, and turned and aimed his gaze at me. “You better get your butt in gear, Sweeno, and take this asshole with you.”

  “I only see one asshole around here, Dexter,” I said.

  “We’ll see about that once you’re finished with this little detail. The Provost Marshal is screaming for you two back in the Command tent.”

  “What happened?”

  Dexter pointed to a hill that loomed on the opposite side of the valley. “There’s a signal truck up there.”

  In the dim moonlight, I could just make out the shape of a boxy truck holding up an antenna.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “And apparently while you guys have been standing around with your thumbs up your butts, our signal troops have been having themselves a party, brought in a girl and everything.”

  Outside the perimeter fence, from dawn until well after dark, enterprising farm families had set up wooden stands selling fruit and bottled soda and ramyon packaged noodles and half-liter bottles of soju. GIs weren’t allowed to leave the concertina wire that surrounded the compound but somehow transactions were made. In addition to the innocent stuff, at night some pimps and mama-sans brought in girls. They were mostly hidden out in the weeds, waiting for GIs to sneak through the wire or, if they were authorized to drive out of 8th Army bivouac area on a supply run, to stop beside the road.

  Riley squinted at the moonlit hill. “Up there?” he asked.

  “Whaddid I stutter? The Provost Marshal wants Sweeno and Bass Comb to investigate, immediately if not sooner.”

  Ernie rolled his eyes but started to march toward the Command tent. I pointed at Riley and Dexter. “You two,” I said, “are now officially on guard duty.”

  “I can’t do that,” Riley sputtered.

  “Yes you can,” I replied. “The perimeter is yours.”

  Without waiting for further argument, I turned and trotted away.

  Rain had held off all evening, but as if to punish us for our sins, it started up just as we were ready to leave the perimeter of 8th Army Headquarters South. The dirt road to the signal truck was extremely steep and difficult to drive under the best of conditions, but now it was much too slippery. We had no choice but to hump it up the hill.

  “Did you bring a rain parka?” Ernie asked.

  “Naw, it’s still in my duffel bag. Didn’t think we’d need it.”

  “Me neither.”

  The rain soaked my fatigue jacket and pant legs. Water trickled off my steel pot and dribbled down the back of my neck. The mud, meanwhile, sloshed over the top of my boots. After a half hour of steady climbing, we were three-quarters of the way up the hill. We stopped for a breather.

  Below, the canvas tents that looked so buoyant in the afternoon breeze were now weighted down by the rain and looked like a field of soggy mushrooms. A few lamps flickered here and there but for the most part 8th Army headquarters was fast asleep.

  “How did they get the girl up here?” Ernie asked.

  “Probably picked her up in a jeep, drove up during the day when the road was still passable.”

  According to what we’d been told at the Command tent, the signal truck on Hill Number 143 was tasked with relaying communications from Seoul down to 8th Army Headquarters South. They had just made their routine hourly commo check when the radio man in the Command tent heard a woman’s voice in the background. Shortly afterward all communications were cut off. The communication boys down in the valley hadn’t been able to raise them since. What the Provost Marshal was worried about was that the two signal men assigned up there had brought the girl and maybe a few bottles of soju, and figuring everything would be quiet, they were now passed out drunk and not relaying military communications. The Chief of Staff was hopping mad and so Ernie and I had been dispatched to check out the situation.

  Other than the rain and the mud, it was nice to have a diversion from the boredom of guard duty. After a five-minute rest, Ernie and I resumed our climb up the hill.

  When we came to the last rise, the rain had slowed. I couldn’t see over the edge, so I signaled Ernie to stop. The only sound was the steady plop of rain into mud. No birds. No wildlife scurrying through the brush. I thought I heard some sort of humming background noise and figured that to be the generator. We crossed the rise. The signal truck was still not readily apparent. A few small lights blinked but they seemed to be coming from a bramble of trees.

  “Camouflage nets,” Ernie said, pointing at a peaked shadow. At that moment lightning flashed and we crouched low, holding onto our steel pots. The lightning had hit somewhere on the opposite side of the valley, but in that split second of light I could see the boxy truck and the cut brush leaning up against it. Huge nets hung overhead, held up by aluminum poles.

  Th
under rumbled across the valley and, as if the lightning had been some sort of key to the locked sky, the rain clouds opened, dumping an angry torrent on the muddy hills.

  I leaned toward Ernie. “The main lights inside the truck are off.”

  “They must be asleep,” he said, “or passed out.”

  “Come on.”

  It wasn’t easy reaching the truck because of the brush, and I had to duck under the camouflage netting, holding it aloft for Ernie so he could get through too. Meanwhile, of course, the rain seemed to be doing everything it could to thwart our progress. Drops hit the ground like pellets, splashing mud two or three feet high. Finally we reached the canvas overhang on the side of the truck.

  “Just like back home in the trailer park,” Ernie said.

  Things weren’t right; it was too quiet. Ernie and I both sensed it, which was why we were being cautious. We had expected to find the lights on, two guys drinking and laughing and maybe a Korean business girl squealing, and we’d barge in on them and slap them sober and call back to the Command tent. Later the two pukes would face either court-martial or at least Article 15 non-judicial punishment. But that wasn’t how things were looking.

  Fold-down metal steps led to a door at the back of the truck. I placed myself to the left and reached for the handle. Ernie stepped off to the right, unslung his M-16, checked the safety, and when he was ready, he signaled for me to go ahead. I twisted the door open so as not to make any noise. Inside the truck it was dark except for the low ambient glow of red and yellow lights coming from a communications control panel. Without walking up on the steps, I leaned forward and peeked into the truck. Too dark to see anything. The smell was metallic and burnt, like the smell from a soldering iron. I stepped up on the steps, and as I did so I slid my hand along the inside wall, searching for a light switch. I didn’t find one. Instead, I reached in my pocket and pulled out a flashlight. I didn’t switch it on right away because I didn’t want to make myself a target. I stood inside the doorway, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. I made out shapes. Two rows of electronic equipment, metal stools, supplies piled on the ground.

  It was Ernie who saw it first. He tugged on the bottom of my fatigue pants and pointed to the puddle on the floor just in front of the door. Water, I thought, and then I saw it was dripping off the edge of the doorframe too slowly. I inhaled. Blood.

  Without thinking, I hopped out of the truck. Ernie snatched the flashlight from me, switched it on, and aimed the beam into the depths of the truck. What I had thought were supplies were two soldiers in fatigues, on the floor, covered in blood, not moving.

  Beneath the truck, something splashed. It scrabbled through the mud, then I caught the sound of squelching footsteps on the far side of the truck.

  Ernie backed out and slammed the door shut. He darted to his left, I ran to the right. As I did so, I slipped my M-16 off my shoulder and, hands shaking, moved the bolt forward, chambering a round. At the edge of the truck, I crouched again, but only briefly. Whoever had run from under the truck had dashed into thick brush. Rain-laden branches quivered at his passing. I darted forward, Ernie crashing into the brush on my left, scanning ahead with the flashlight, but soon I motioned for him to turn it off because I could hear the footsteps moving across the plateau of Hill 143. We both stood still in the darkness and the rain. The rainfall was just a steady patter now, and footsteps sloshing through mud could be heard clearly, but they had stopped about twenty yards from me, as if whoever was ahead of us realized we were listening. Keeping the flashlight off, Ernie and I moved forward like two hounds stalking their prey.

  The footsteps moved away from us, stealthily, as if hoping we wouldn’t hear.

  Ahead beyond the brush was a field of boulders. There were at least two dozen of them scattered across a checkerboard pattern. Briefly I wondered about glaciers moving across the Korean peninsula eons ago, pushing up hills, leaving behind massive chunks of granite. We moved forward, crouching at each boulder to wait and listen. When I heard nothing, I’d burst around the huge rock, aiming my M-16 straight ahead.

  The first two times I saw nothing but empty air. What if this guy was escaping? If he was moving quietly enough, he might already be on the far side of this field and running downhill toward freedom. To hell with safety, I thought. I started moving forward faster, taking my chances, ready to swivel at the slightest sound and fire a round into the face of whoever this bogeyman was.

  Ernie and I had both spontaneously decided to chase the culprit, but what if one of the GIs back in the signal truck was still alive? What if one of them was breathing his last at this very moment? What if a well-placed tourniquet could have saved his life? I didn’t think so. There had been such a huge pool of blood on the floor and the bodies had seemed lifeless. But what if we’d been wrong?

  I shoved these doubts out of my mind and pressed on, stepping past the huge rocks quickly, swiveling from side of side. But it was this worry, this self-doubt, that led to my momentary lapse. Lightning struck. It came from behind me, many miles away, but it was enough to make me flinch and turn my head slightly and just as something darted through the rocks off to the left of my field of vision. I swung my rifle, opened my mouth, and shouted “Halt!” But as I did so, the thunderclap struck, rolling across the valley and drowning out any sound a mere human could have made. After the first flash of movement, the lightning had left me blind, but I darted forward anyway, ramming into the side of a rock, and then I saw it, dark and venomous, like a snake flying through the night, heading right at me. I crouched, feeling a whoosh of air from the reptile wing as it passed my face. Something metallic clanged into rock. I turned and fired my M-16 into the darkness. And then footsteps churned, panicked, through the mud.

  My eyesight came back as I pulled myself up.

  Ernie was tromping through the mud toward me. “What happened?”

  I pointed to the rock next to my head. He switched the flashlight on. A dusting of freshly ground rock clung to a three-inch gouge.

  “Christ,” Ernie said. “That would’ve taken your head off.”

  Footsteps tumbled away through the rocks. “Come on.”

  We ran.

  We had finally reached the edge of the boulder field, the sloshing feet only a few yards ahead of us, when I heard a thump. Someone whimpered. I stood still, listening, and then I took two steps forward. The whimpering again.

  Whoever was out there had stopped, and they were so terrified at our approach that they were incapable of keeping quiet. Ernie closed in. I pointed to where I thought the sound was coming from and motioned for him to shine the flashlight on it. He did.

  Brush rattled. Then someone was running again. I broke into a full-out sprint, crashing through the brush, shouting “Halt!” in English, forgetting for the moment how to say the word in Korean. Whoever was in front of me went down in a heap. I was holding the M-16, aiming at the sopping pile of rags in front of me, shouting for him to put his hands up, not caring whether he could understand me or not, ready to blow his freaking head off.

  It was Ernie, strangely enough, who motioned with his open palm for me to lower the rifle. And then I saw what was in front of me. Bare legs poking out of a huge Army field jacket. The sturdy calves and creamy thighs were hairless, the rear end covered only by a wrinkled miniskirt.

  The person huddled inside the jacket whimpered again and then a small hand appeared through the loose green material. It held a short-handled sickle. Ernie snatched it away, handed it to me, and then grabbed the small hand and hoisted the person upright. Long black hair hung down loosely, covering her face. Sweat matted strands were back-handed from cheeks, and then we saw her face. Full-cheeked, smooth, wide frightened eyes. She was about nineteen, I figured.

  I examined the sickle. The razor sharp tip was dented in front, boulder dust still clinging to it.

  I looked back at the girl. She was staring at her hands, clutching and pulling on her fingers. Her feet were crossed, her shoulders hunched. She
was completely ashamed of herself. She ought to be. She’d just come about three-quarters of an inch from chopping my fool head off.

  By the time the truck arrived, the sun had reached halfway toward its highest point of the day. The rain had stopped, but the mud was still so thick that there was no way an ambulance could make it up the hill. They had to send a two-and-a-half ton truck and the only one available was loaded in the back with wooden crates of high explosive artillery rounds. A couple of medics and a few MPs had marched up earlier, and they helped us roll the two dead GIs into body bags and hoist them up onto the ammunition crates in the back of the deuce-and-a-half. The rest of us clambered in back and in as low a gear as possible the driver started back down the hill. We slid about halfway down the road, but the guy at the wheel was expert enough to turn into the skids and we managed to reach level ground without rolling over.

  The KNPs had already taken the girl.

  Before they arrived, I’d had plenty of time to interview her. Her name was Shin Myong-ok. At least that’s what she told me. Even though Korean citizens are required to keep their national identification cards with them at all times, she didn’t have hers. She’d left it down in the valley with her mama-san, who’d brought her and five other girls out to the field to make some money from the small legion of 8th Army GIs who’d suddenly plopped down in their midst.

  Ernie offered her water from his canteen, which she accepted gratefully along with a stick of ginseng gum. We sat beneath the awning on iron stools I’d brought outside of the signal van. Even in the huge field jacket, she shivered in the cold.

  I asked her why she’d tried to kill me.

  She bent at the waist and buried her face in her knees for what seemed like five minutes. Finally, she sat up, eyes moist and started to explain that the kind gentleman had told her American soldiers were coming to take revenge. Her only chance, according to him, was to protect herself with the iron sickle. He’d left it with her for just that purpose.