“Some guys may figure it that way,” said Raleigh Couzens. “Not me. Know what I’m fighting for? I’m fighting for the principles of Thomas Jefferson. He wrote something called the Bill of Rights. You can see the original draft in the place where I went to school, in Charlottesville. He lived there. That was his college. Drop in and take a look at them, sometime.”
Colonel Chu regarded Raleigh Couzens, to see if he was serious, and then made another note in his pad. “Now,” he said, “do you think the other nations in the so-called United Nations are giving you sufficient help?”
“Hell, no.”
“Well, why do you Americans maintain them as allies?”
Raleigh Couzens shoved his glass across the desk. “Mind filling it up again, colonel?” he asked. “Then I’ll answer your question.”
The colonel rose, and made another drink on top of the safe, and brought it to Couzens, and then took his own chair, but he was not comfortable, nor did he rest his hands across his stomach. He was eager for the answer.
“I can’t talk very well,” said Raleigh Couzens, “with that light blinding me. Mind moving it, colonel?”
“Why, not at all,” said Colonel Chu, and shoved the reflector aside. “Now, you were about to say something, old chap?”
“I sure was. I was going to say I didn’t think we were getting enough help here in Korea. Except, of course, I understand that the British have got to keep considerable forces in Hong Kong, and the French have got to keep most of their army in Indo-China because unless there were big forces there they might be attacked like the South Koreans. Still, they could give us more help. That’s the way I figure it, until you figure Europe. You see, colonel, Europe’s the crucial place.”
“That so?”
“That’s so, buster, and don’t ever forget it.” Couzens now realized he was feeling his liquor. He didn’t care.
“I shan’t,” said the colonel, and then wondered what he was saying. He had to bring this interview back to normal. “Now,” he said, with authority, “as regards your own country. I’d like your opinion about certain political personalities.”
Couzens took another swallow. “Shoot.”
“What do you think of Henry A. Wallace?”
“Corn.”
“Eh?”
“Corn. I think he should stick to raising corn. He was probably an all-right guy, but he got taken.”
Colonel Chu started to write something, and then didn’t. “Well, what do you think of President Truman?”
“I don’t think he knows which end is up,” said Couzens.
“What’s that you said?” Colonel Chu demanded, his cropped head projected across the table.
“Why, I said I wasn’t sure Truman knew which end was up,” said Raleigh Couzens, but not with the same emphasis. Something in the back of his mind told him he shouldn’t be saying things like that. It was like a family. You could damn your family to hell and gone so long as there was no one else around except other family. But you didn’t do it in front of strangers, and Colonel Chu was definitely a stranger.
The colonel wrote busily, his head bobbing up now and then to take a good look at Couzens, as if he were describing him. Couzens felt uncomfortable. He wanted to explain about Truman. He wanted to explain that he was only thinking of Truman’s crack about the Marines a few months before, when the President had said the Marines had a propaganda organization like Stalin’s. He wanted to tell the colonel not to take his crack about Truman so seriously. But he kept silent, because he feared anything he said would only make it worse.
Colonel Chu finished writing, and said, “Lieutenant, you’ve been quite helpful, quite helpful indeed, and most co-operative. How would you like to go back to your own lines?”
Couzens was speechless. He couldn’t believe that he was hearing right.
“I said, would you care to go back to your own lines?”
“Why, sir, I’d like to.” Couzens, like everyone else, had heard the poop of how sometimes the Chinese returned prisoners, well-treated, after indoctrination, but he hadn’t believed it.
“Very well, I’ll have you back tonight. You see, lieutenant, we are not fang-toothed barbarians, are we now?” The colonel smiled, to show his carefully kept teeth, with the gold inlays. “I want you to go back to your companions, and tell them what you have seen here, and tell them how you were treated. We do not want war with you boys, lieutenant. This war was not of our making. It was your capitalists, and Wall Street, that instigated the South Korean attack upon the people of North Korea, and the imperialists seized upon the fighting here to attempt a general war. But we do not want war. After your forces have gone back to Japan, or surrendered, we will not attack you. We are, most of us, simple farmers. We wish to return to the land.”
“Me too,” Couzens agreed, hoping this wasn’t a joke, or a trick.
“Ah, yes. Now no doubt you need rest, and when night comes I will have you escorted back to the American lines.” Above them the ack-ack began to throb, steadily, and then the cellar shook with the shock of bombs setting their teeth deep into the earth, the concussions bringing little spurts of dust from between the stones of the outer wall. Colonel Chu waited until the clamor subsided. “It is not safe to travel by day,” he explained.
All that day Couzens slept on a straw pallet in another room of the building, and when night came the young Chinese officer who had escorted him into the colonel’s office gave him food, and then they got into a Russian jeep, and started back the road by which he had come. On the previous night all the traffic had been towards the front, but on this night there was considerable traffic headed away from the reservoir. There were horse-drawn ambulances, and walking wounded, and empty ammunition carts. Whatever had happened to Dog Company, it had put up a fight, Couzens could see. He spoke as little as possible to his companion. If they really meant to return him, he didn’t want to say anything that would jeopardize his chances.
At last they came to the ridge of a hill from where Couzens could see the village of Ko-Bong, and the Russian jeep stopped. The tall young Chinese said, in his missionary-school English, “I will let you out here. From here you will go to your own people.”
“Who owns the town?” Couzens asked.
“I do not know. We don’t. Perhaps there are Americans in the town.”
Couzens got out of the jeep and unkinked his joints and muscles. “Okay,” he said. “Goodbye, lieutenant, and thanks.”
“Goodbye, Yankee,” the other lieutenant said. “Goodbye, and good luck.” He whispered it, and he held out his hand, and Couzens clasped his hand. Couzens started walking towards the village, alone, and before he had gone a hundred yards a weight seemed to remove itself from his shoulders. He was free again, a free man. Whatever happened to him now could not be as bad as what had happened before, because there is nothing so bad as captivity. From here in, he could make a fight of it. He would not be taken again, ever. Nobody would ever piss on his legs again.
In the moonlight almost like the moonlight of the night before, he approached the line of houses. He walked steadily down the street until he came to where he had been ambushed. Then he stopped to think, and felt in the pocket of his battle jacket, and found his pack of cigarettes, miraculously unopened, and the lighter, and stepped in the lee of a wall for a smoke. While he smoked, he listened, and he learned from his ears that Ko-Bong was not deserted by all its sorrowing people, and neither was it occupied by troops.
Ahead of him was the American line. It would be a perimeter now. Obviously it was unbroken. The Second Platoon had not been penetrated. Couzens felt proud of that. They would be jittery, there in the line. They would shoot anything that moved. If they saw him at the foot of the street they’d know damn well he wasn’t a ghost. They’d let him have it. Additionally, if he knew Mackenzie, Sam would be sending out a patrol. Sam never let the enemy rest, and Sam was never lax in his tactical intelligence. If the patrol found him, they’d shoot first and discover that he was an American lieutenant later.