Later I wandered down the hill toward the supply point and, when I got close enough, jotted down the bumper number of the truck. It was hard to read. Everything’s done in dark letters-camouflage-so in case the North Koreans ever invade again, maybe they’ll just sort of overlook us.
Except for the cooks in the kitchen, the NCO Club was deserted this time of day. I found a phone at the bar and dialed the number of the RC4 Snack Bar. The Korean who answered told me she didn’t know anybody named Ernie Bascom.
“He’s the guy with the round glasses,” I said. “Chewing gum and playing the pinball machine.”
“Oh.” She set the phone down, and after a couple of minutes, Ernie came on the line.
“How’s it hanging, pal?”
“Loosely. I got a bumper number for you. Ready to write?”
“Shoot.”
“Seven-oh-two MB on the left side and then SP fourteen-twenty-three on the right.”
“A truck?”
“Yeah. I don’t think they’ll be going anywhere tonight. They’d be too conspicuous out after curfew. Probably leave first thing in the morning.”
“I’ll be there.” Ernie sipped on something. Coffee, I figured. “What’re you gonna do tonight?”
“Run the ville.”
“That little pissant village right outside the gate?”
“No. The one where the officers and senior NCOs hang out. Kumchon. About a mile and a half down the road. Tomorrow night, I’ll meet you at the club there at RC4 about six, so you can tell me about the truck tomorrow morning.”
After retreat formation I went to the chow hall and ate supper and then over to the orderly room and signed out on pass. The pass stipulated that I had to be back on compound before the beginning of the midnight-to-four A.M. curfew. I wouldn’t get my overnight pass until after I received my venereal disease orientation from the first sergeant. They’d already given us one at the Repo Depot, but no matter how many times GIs are warned about the dangers, they still end up poking around in places where they shouldn’t.
I flashed my pass and ID to the MP at the gate. There were a few paltry bars in a village across the MSR, that’s where most of the GIs went, and a lot of them were shacked up in the hooches that sprawled off into the surrounding rice paddies. The senior NCOs and officers frequented Kumchon-a real town, not just a GI village. I figured that the number of supplies being diverted indicated more than just a little low-level pilfering, so I flagged down a Kimchi Cab and told the driver to take me to Kumchon.
When we arrived, he asked me where I wanted to get out. I didn’t know, but after about two blocks, downtown Kumchon petered out and we were winding through frozen rice paddies again. I told him to stop, paid him, and wandered back toward the bright lights. The road through town was only two lanes, and the shops on either side were pushed right up against the narrow sidewalks. Kumchon had what all towns have: pharmacies, restaurants, a place for milling rice, a stationery store, and a few bars. I peeked through the windows of the bars but saw only ROK soldiers in uniform, toasting one another and laughing too loud. Finally, at the other end of town, I saw a bar with a little more neon than the others. The sign in Korean said KUM GOM-golden dream. The smaller English lettering beneath it said GOLDEN NIGHT CLUB.
There’s a difference between a golden dream and the golden nightclub, but it looked like the Koreans who worked there weren’t going to let the GIs in on it.
I walked in. It was a big club, bigger than the others, and there were already a few GIs in small clusters sitting at the tables. Korean waitresses-young, pretty girls all-served them, and a few sat at the tables, slapping the groping GI hands and laughing. The music was loud, but not so loud that you couldn’t talk, and it tended to be a little more sedate than what I figured I’d find in the clubs across the street from Camp Edwards.
Two grizzled old NCO types sat at one end of the bar, talking to a smiling barmaid. I sat at the other end of the bar, and when she stood up and walked toward me, I saw that she was a big woman. Broad shouldered. Ample dimensions everywhere. Gorgeous.
I ordered my beer in Korean and that made her smile and then she came back to see how well I could really speak the language. After a while, she told me that she was twenty-four, divorced with a daughter, and had originally come south with her family when she was an infant during the Korean War. Her hometown was Hamhung, far to the north in that area of the world that the Cold War mapmakers were still painting in red.
The guys at the other end of the bar grew antsy at the lack of attention and she had other orders to fill, but as soon as she had everybody smiling again she came back to me. I had a couple more liters of beer and we talked as if we were old friends. Her eyes lit up when I told her that I had just arrived in country, on my second tour in Korea. Opportunity for both of us. Her name was Miss Ma.
Someone kicked the door in. A group of shouting, hooting Americans trundled inside the Golden Nightclub. Officers. Even in civilian clothes they were practically wearing signs around their necks. First of all, they were acting like jerks. Also, they had whitewall haircuts and blue jeans and sport shirts that, although wrinkled, had been neatly pressed before they left the compound. They acted like they owned the place.
They pulled a couple of tables together and started ordering and grabbing at the waitresses, and one of them peeled away from the group and lumbered toward the bar. Miss Ma moved away from me quickly.
He didn’t order anything. Instead, he leaned over and whispered something in Miss Ma’s ear. At first she didn’t move, but then she spoke to him and he seemed to become angry and she spoke again and then she had him convinced of something and they were both nodding and finally he walked away. She got busy filling orders from the waitresses, and it was another ten minutes before she returned to me.
“You go back compound tonight?”
“Yes. I won’t have an overnight until tomorrow.”
She exhaled slightly-relieved-and then her shoulders rose and she smiled. “Maybe I will see you then?”
Playing hard to get is a ploy that has never entered my repertoire.
“You will,” I said.
After a couple more beers and a few dirty looks from the officer who had talked to Miss Ma, I stumbled out the door and made it back to Camp Edwards. Once I jumped in the rack, visions of her smiling face danced before me. Later that night I tried to struggle free from miles of unraveling copper wire, spinning off its spool, entrapping me in an ever-shrinking web of shimmering metal.
After watching the overloaded deuce-and-a-half pull out just before dawn, I spent the day trying to adjust to the routine of my new job as the assistant company clerk. The first sergeant was a little young, as first sergeants go, and seemed to be in over his head. The company clerk, Specialist 5 Flourey, didn’t seem overly efficient, either. Basically the whole place was a mess. I did what I could, straightening out some files, typing some supply requests for the first sergeant, but mainly I concentrated on finding out who was who. After work I showered and shaved, signed out on my new overnight pass, and took a cab north to the RC4 Enlisted Club.
I pulled Ernie away from the bar, and we sat at the most isolated table we could find, which is sort of difficult in a one-room Quonset hut.
“The guy who drove the truck,” I said, “was Sergeant First Class Rawlings, NCO-in-charge of the supply point.”
“That’s a lot of stripes for driving a truck.”
“Depends on where he was going.”
“And what he was carrying.”
Ernie stopped the waitress and ordered us a couple of Fal-staffs. “He went up north to the DMZ, Camp Kitty Hawk. A group of GIs unloaded the truck, and after he left I checked out the supplies.”
“Find anything?”
“Nothing but lumber and cement,” Ernie said. “I lead-footed it down the MSR and caught up with him.”