While Nixon was sending battle-weary troops home, new recruits like Winston arrived in Vietnam to perform an extensive military cleanup operation. Though America’s participation in the war was decelerating, Winston was given a tough job — perhaps the most dangerous job in the army after M60 Machine Gunner. His Military Occupational Specialty was as an Explosives Ordinance Disposal Technician, or EOD. His job was to locate and disable the thousands of landmines that both the enemy and allied forces had buried and left behind. Locating unexploded ordnance and Viet Cong booby traps was stressful, though Winston quickly garnered a good reputation for his calm and cool disposition.
Suddenly, he was propelled back to 1973 when he and his EOD partner, Huy Tran, roamed Southeast Asia demining and detonating an assortment of U.S. and Viet Cong mines and booby traps. They were a good team, if not opposites, Winston the tall and lanky black American with the Jamaican accent, and Tran, a five-foot-two inch Republic of Vietnam marine twice his age at the time, and a master of vovinam, Vietnam’s national martial arts. Tran spoke impeccable English — probably better than Winston. The phonetic way to pronounce Tran’s surname was H-wee, but Winston had taken to pronouncing Tran’s name who because of the way it was spelled on his uniform — Huy. And it annoyed Tran.
He reflected on Tran. EOD technicians worked in pairs, scouring large swaths of land as a unit, and on one day early in 1973, he, Tran, and a dozen other EOD technicians were clearing a minefield of U.S. M16 bounding anti-personnel mines. Grunts called them Bouncing Bettys because when stepped on, the mine launched into the air to about waist height and detonated, inflicting mass casualties for up to a thirty-foot radius. Winston had located an M16 mine and was in the process of demining it, carefully digging it out of the ground (landmines were usually detonated in situ, but because this particular minefield was so heavily laden with mines, the risk of percussive denotations was high, thus their orders were to demine fifty percent of located landmines — the remaining mines were to be detonated remotely.). Tran, per SOPs, was moving twenty-five feet away from Winston, using his minesweeping equipment to clear a path. Unfortunately, Tran’s metal detector did not pick up the plastic M14 mine underfoot, ten feet away from where Winston now worked. The M14 was a smaller anti-personnel mine, often placed near M16 mines, and intended to disable its victim. Regrettably, EOD superiors had no knowledge of the supplemental deployment of these M14 mines in this particular minefield. The mine detonated, fragmenting Tran’s metal detector and driving a large piece of shrapnel into Winston’s gut. The mine amputated both of Tran’s legs to the knee and sent him into shock. Winston, despite his own incapacitating wound, quickly attended to Tran’s life-threatening condition by quelling the torrent of blood flowing from his legs, using his own belt and M8A1 Scabbard knife as a tourniquet. Winston was awarded a Bronze Star medal for his selfless act in saving his friend and partner, and he was also granted an early honorable discharge. He went back to Johnsonville and May. Winston, sitting there under the overpass, thought that Woo-jin had the same gentle qualities as Tran. And that gave him great comfort, knowing intimately that not all of his enemies were barbarians.
Winston was tired, his eyes suddenly too heavy to keep open. Soon he was fast asleep, slumbering in a prone position, the shovel in his lap. An hour later, his eyes popped open and he sensed somebody nearby. He scooted the short distance to the ground, scanned his surroundings, but saw nothing at first. Focusing where he had just buried Med, Julie, and the PLA soldiers, he saw Jimmy, shaking his head in disgust. Winston closed his eyes, scooted back up to where he had fallen asleep, and readied the shovel. He had one thing going in his favor that he hoped Jimmy would recognize — a single bullet would send the nearby PLA troops dashing toward the bridge and both of their causes would be lost because there was no place to escape to — no place to hide.
Suddenly, Jimmy turned and strode toward the overpass. He saw Winston asleep, but didn’t wake him because he was hungry and wanted to eat. He was not impressed with the ruse Winston sent him on — there was no food, supplies, or May in the Harris’ shed. Jimmy was upon Winston and he slammed the rifle’s butt into the “sleeping” man’s ribcage. Winston wasn’t expecting that, and he reeled from the pain, the breath thrust out of his lungs. He coughed and spit, trying to get the air back into his chest, but he had taken enough of Jimmy battering him. He scooted out from under the overpass. Jimmy scolded him like a schoolchild.
“You had to go and fuckin’ bury them?” Jimmy seethed through gritted teeth, “even the gooks?” And complained, “and that shed? It was totally empty. I was almost caught, like, eleven times. Now, tell me where you’re hid…”
As Jimmy yacked, the earth shook from a large explosion somewhere off in the distance, perhaps as far south as McDonough, ten miles south of them. Whatever it was, it was big and caused a bright flash unlike any Winston had ever seen. Dumbfounded, Jimmy looked in the direction of the blast and Winston took a gamble and jammed the shovel’s blade toward Jimmy’s chest. Unfortunately for Jimmy, as he turned back to Winston, he bent down a few inches. The shovel’s blade pierced Jimmy’s neck, causing far more damage than Winston expected, nearly taking his head clean off. Jimmy was just as surprised as Winston as he fell backwards, the .22 rifle falling from his hands and to the ground. Jimmy didn’t die like they did in the movies. His body jerked violently and he coughed loudly, the blood spurting from the gash Winston had inflicted. Afraid that he was being too loud, Winston placed a booted foot over Jimmy’s mouth. And when it was over, he dragged Jimmy’s corpse to the trash pile and arranged the body amongst the garbage in an effort to maintain the appearance that nothing had changed.
Woo-jin made it back to the encampment. Nobody cared that he was away for some twenty minutes longer than it normally took to dump the trash. Other soldiers, even those of the Russian and Middle-Eastern armies, ignored him as if he were blight. He marched down the driveway, past a sleeping May and the generals drinking tea at Medusa’s stump, and to the lake’s edge where he promptly and discreetly washed away, as best he could, the maggots and bloodstains that discolored the canvas sack.
Woo-jin understood why the other soldiers didn’t like him. In fact, just about the only time he was appreciated was when the North Korean soldiers played a version of European football called songun, which in the Korean military was called the Gundaesliga, a bastardization of the famous German Bundaesliga. Woo-jin was good at songun, which was why he ended up with an “easier” job than other soldiers of his status. In boot camp, Woo-jin scored a goal in every game he played, which was unprecedented, and was why his North Korean General, Kim Kyok-Chun, upon hearing of Woo-jin’s unique sportsmanship by Major Chaek, kept him near. Someone as talented as Woo-jin could be useful against other generals and their highly-competitive tournaments.
The hours pressed on. It was another mundane day for everybody in Johnsonville, except, of course, for Jimmy Mabry. Stories came back from the front that the battle for Atlanta was a tough one, and that the Americans were putting up a brave fight, though they were losing. Just before dusk and after dinner, Woo-jin and his compatriot performed their same task of collecting the garbage. This time, they remembered to collect the garbage at the stump. Woo-jin was the canvas sack-holder tonight, and as his partner dumped the waste in the sack, Woo-jin once again gazed at the photos sealed in the stump. Suddenly, Woo-jin recognized Winston as the man he met in the woods. This was his house. Before he could further investigate the photos, his partner grunted that they were ready to go dump the trash.