So when their money runs out, most AWOL GIs return to their units.
A few stay out longer. Usually, they are well connected with the Korean underworld and manage to make a living buying from the PX and selling on the black market. There is a small trafficking operation for forged military ID cards and phony 8th Army Ration Control Plates. The KNPs don’t crack down as harshly on these operations since everyone makes money and it’s seen as being relatively harmless. Certainly no threat to national security.
It was those GIs I concentrated on. The ones who’d been away from their units for at least a week. After about a half hour of work, I’d jotted down a list in my notebook of two dozen names. Then I made a list of GIs who’d left more recently and hadn’t yet returned. This provided another fourteen names. Now my list was manageable.
Then I started studying the units.
I was looking for the Field Artillery.
Why? Because of what Mi-ja had told me. She was the business girl who’d spent part of the night with the Caucasian GI at House Number 17 at the Yellow House in Inchon. I’d questioned her for almost an hour, trying to coax her into describing everything about him that she could remember.
She’d been nervous, still traumatized by being burned repeatedly with the tip of a lit cigarette. The fingers of her hand quivered as she talked. She pointed to various places on her body as she described the Caucasian GI who’d tortured her.
No, there were no red marks or calloused skin on his shoulders. That eliminated an infantry grunt, who had to hump a forty-pound rucksack on a twenty-mile road march. Yes, his hands were rough and bruised, so he worked physically, maybe lifting things. She hadn’t noticed the soles of his feet, but she had noticed that he turned the radio up too loud-tuning in to AFKN, the Armed Forces Korea Network, to listen to the news broadcasts in English. She stuck two fingers in her ears, to indicate how loud the radio had been. His hands and face were tan, much darker than his arms or chest or the rest of his body. That indicated that he worked outdoors, but wore clothing-probably a long-sleeved military fatigue uniform-while doing it.
Putting everything together spelled Field Artillery. He wasn’t an infantryman; his hands were rough, and, most importantly, his hearing was shot. Standing next to the big guns, hearing the booms every day, being too lazy or insufficiently self-disciplined to keep his earplugs in at all times. All these things indicated that he was a gun bunny.
Still, all these things might be coincidence. He could be a supply clerk or a truck driver, or a concussed and deafened infantryman, for all I knew. But I had to narrow down the list somehow.
If we didn’t catch him quickly, he and his brown-haired buddy might strike again.
To clear my mind, I stood up and walked over to the silver coffee urn, and pulled myself a mug of java. While I sipped on the hot brew, Ernie and Miss Kim made eyes at one another. She managed to keep typing as she did so, but at a slower rate.
What did she see in him? She was a good woman from a good family. A family that probably had high hopes of marrying her off to some well-educated young Korean man. A man who would treat her in the Confucian tradition as a respected wife and, eventually, a respected mother. What did she see in some wild GI who chased everything in skirts?
Excitement, I suppose. One thing about Ernie Bascom is that he was never boring. Ernie was a connoisseur of the insane. He loved people who didn’t give a flying fart about what others thought, who were full of rage or passion or madness. They entertained him. And as soon as they stopped frothing at the mouth, he’d poke them-either verbally or physically-curious to see how they’d react. Like a demented kid torturing a beetle.
But Miss Kim couldn’t get enough of Ernie Bascom. They’d already gone out together about a half-dozen times that I knew of. And maybe more, because when we weren’t working Ernie had a way of disappearing and showing up the next day with a satisfied grin on his face. I tried not to give him the satisfaction of asking what he’d been up to. At least not too often. But occasionally my curiosity got the best of me. He told me once that he’d spent the night with Miss Kim, and then went on to describe her long-legged, statuesque body. Before he delved into too much detail, I changed the subject. Torment, I don’t need.
I carried my hot mug of coffee back to my seat. Then I started going through my list of AWOL GIs.
Three out of the three dozen were in field artillery units. One at Camp Stanley in Uijongbu, another at Camp Howze near Pupyong-ni, and another at Camp Pelham near Munsan. I jotted down names. Of the three, two were typically Anglo-Saxon, and the third guy was named Jamal. I figured him to be black and crossed him off my list. That left two: Kevin S. Wintersmith at Camp Howze and Rodney Boltworks at Camp Pelham.
Which one to roust first? No way to decide. Geography was the tie breaker. Camp Howze was closer to Seoul, and if Wintersmith didn’t pan out, Ernie and I could drive farther north on the Military Supply Route toward the Demilitarized Zone to Camp Pelham and check out Private First Class Rodney Boltworks.
I stuffed my notebook into my pocket, finished my coffee, and told Ernie it was time to go. He rose from his chair, unconcerned, but Miss Kim frowned, sorry to see him leave.
Staff Sergeant Riley remained hunched over his paperwork, and even as we stomped out of the office, he continued trying to pretend that we hadn’t even been there.
The morning was wonderfully cool and overcast and in the open-topped jeep, as we sped north on the two-lane highway, a line of crystal blue hovered above brown rice paddies. Layered atop the line was a ceiling of churning gray clouds.
Camp Howze sat about a half mile off the MSR, on a hilltop overlooking a bar-spangled village. The Second Division MPs up here were more suspicious than their 8th Army counterparts back in Seoul and at the main gate they studied our identification and our vehicle dispatch carefully. Before waving us through, they radioed ahead to the Command Post to let them know we were coming.
As we pulled up to the sand-bagged bunker, a field-grade officer wearing a fur-lined cap stepped out to greet us. When we told him what we wanted, he marched us right into the Operations Center. In minutes, Private Kevin S. Wintersmith stood at attention in front of us. He had a short red crew cut, moist green eyes, and his fatigues, face, and hands were soiled and reeked of rancid lard from the grease traps he’d been cleaning. The major told us the story. Of his own volition, Wintersmith had returned to his unit two days ago and he’d been pulling KP-kitchen police duty-ever since.
Just to be thorough, I pulled out the sketch of the Caucasian GI and looked at it. So did Ernie. So did the major.
Not even close.
Wintersmith had never heard of the Olympos Casino in Inchon nor of Brothel Number 17 at the Yellow House. Nor of a teenage girl named Mi-ja whose arm had been lined with cigarette burns.
We thanked the major, returned to our jeep, and continued north toward the DMZ.
At the main gate of Camp Pelham, one MP and two uniformed Korean security guards studied our emergency vehicle dispatch. Behind them, a wooden bridge spanned a rock-strewn gully. Above the guard shack, a neatly painted arch said: Welcome to the Home of the 2/17th Field Artillery. Then in smaller letters: Shoot, Move, and Communicate! The MP tried to scratch his head, but his fingers were blocked by the rim of his black helmet liner.