“After all this,” I said, “who could blame him?”
We knew we didn’t have much time. Cooler heads than Major Woolword would soon realize what we were after; namely, the Bogus Claims File. They’d be worried sick over what we’d do with the information and they probably would put out an all points bulletin for the MPs to take us into custody. What we’d done was illegal. We’d pilfered a personal file. Even though I hoped it would provide us with important leads, we hadn’t properly requested permission to search the files. Worse, we threatened to blow a hole a mile wide in the facade of integrity of the honchos of the 8th United States Army. Claims against the military are required to be adjudicated in an open and legally prescribed manner. To suppress claims was illegal under both US law and the Status of Forces Agreement. But in this case, the SOFA Committee itself had been the ones to illegally suppress certain claims they deemed too dangerous. Since the SOFA Committee is composed of both US and Republic of Korea officers, not only was the American side guilty of a cover up, but so were the ROKs.
Great. Now they’d both be pissed.
Ernie and I sat in a Bachelor Officer Quarters day room reading the file.
“Christ,” Ernie said. “We did all this?”
The file contained allegations of various types of mayhem that ranged from negligent to sadistic. For example, a three-year-old was run over and killed by a military convoy transporting top secret material up to Camp Page in the mountains near Chunchon. The convoy consisted of four huge trucks with canvas-covered cargo on flat-bed trailers. The fact that this claim was suppressed didn’t surprise me. It was widely rumored that nuclear-tipped tactical missiles were deployed near Chunchon. Of course, the 8th Army denied that rumor, so this case had been filed away. Whoever lost their three-year-old was just out of luck.
Other claims had to do with secret maneuvers, special forces units on clandestine missions on or near the Demilitarized Zone or down south near coastal areas. One of the things that makes Korea different from the States is there are civilians everywhere. In the States we have huge military reservations in the badlands of Texas, in Oklahoma, in the deserts of Nevada and Arizona and California, places where civilians aren’t found-unless they’re an old sourdough with a burro. The military can pop off armaments with impunity. Korea, on the other hand, is an ancient country and every bit of arable land has long since been occupied. And since the devastation of the Korean War people have been so poor they’ve been willing to venture into live-fire exercises to collect the spent brass from bullets and artillery shells in order to sell it to metal dealers. When kids are hurt this way, it usually results in a claim being filed, but not when the exercise is classified. Not when its object is to violate the cease fire agreement between North and South Korea and infiltrate areas north of the MDL, the military demarcation line. Then the claim is crushed.
The file was composed of typed onionskin, stamped FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. There were probably a dozen sheets. Not much when you considered more than twenty years of military operations. Especially when you compared them to the hundreds, maybe thousands, of claims that had been processed.
As I read each sheet I handed them to Ernie. He soon tired of the exercise. “They got anything to drink around here?”
Ernie wandered down the hallway toward the kitchen. The BOQ was completely deserted. All of the officers were probably in the field at 8th Army Headquarters South. Ernie returned in short order.
“Nothing in the refrigerator but this.” With a thumb and forefinger he held up a cup of yogurt, glaring at it with lip-curled disgust. “Not even one freaking bottle of beer. This is a female BOQ, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “Captain Prevault lives here.”
Ernie tossed the yogurt into the trash, making the metal can clang. “So you were hoping to see your girlfriend,” he said.
“No,” I replied. “I just thought her room would be a good place to leave the file. Here,” I said, handing him one of the onionskins, “look at this.”
Ernie grabbed the sheet and read it quickly. Then he whistled. “Damn. When did this happen?”
“The date’s up top there.”
He studied it. “During the Korean War.”
“Right. But the claim wasn’t filed until almost ten years after.”
“Why’d they wait so long?”
“Good question. Another good question is why did Eighth Army bury the claim?”
Ernie handed the sheet back to me. “You are so naive. Do you think they’re going to admit to this?”
“They didn’t do it. It was done during the war, by an isolated unit surrounded by the enemy. All bets were off.”
“In your opinion. Try selling that back in the States.”
Ernie was right. The public back in the United States would never understand such a thing. And at a higher level, the US government would never want to hand a propaganda coup to their Communist enemies behind the Bamboo Curtain. I pulled out my notepad and copied all the facts I needed off the Report of Claim. Then I ripped out a sheet of paper and wrote a note to Captain Prevault, asking her to keep the file in a safe place until we could discuss it. I placed all the onionskins, along with my note, back into the manila folder, then walked down the hallway to her room and slid it beneath her door.
Outside the BOQ, from the slightly elevated terrain of Yongsan Compound South Post, the bright lights of downtown Seoul glittered in the distance.
“What now?” Ernie asked.
The evening was still young, not even twenty-one-hundred hours.
“After what I just read,” Ernie continued, “a drink would do me good.”
“Then let’s do some more work at the same time.”
“Like where?”
“I’m armed now,” I said, patting the.45 under my jacket. “And I have back up. Namely you.”
“Who do you want to kill?”
“I don’t want to kill anybody. But maybe we should pay another visit to Madame Hoh, the beauteous gisaeng house owner in Mia-ri.”
“Sounds good,” Ernie said. “Booze and beautiful women. Just the kind of work I like.”
And just the kind of thing, I thought, to take our minds off the report we’d just read. It was stomach churning and unbelievable. Americans wouldn’t stoop to something so low, would they? Would anyone ever be so desperate? This crime was not a part of modern warfare, or at least I hadn’t thought it was.
When we hopped in the jeep Ernie drove faster than usual, zigzagging madly through the swerving Seoul traffic, following the signs past the Seoul Train Station, beyond the Great South Gate, around the statue of Admiral Yi Sun-shin and finally through the narrow roads that led toward the bright lights of Mia-ri. We were both quiet on the drive, trying not to think of what we could not stop thinking about: a crime as old as humanity itself.
Cannibalism.
— 12-
We parked the jeep near a pochang macha. I half expected to see Mrs. Lee, the owner from the Itaewon pochang macha, when I peeked through the hanging flaps. Instead, I saw a startled Korean man with a square face and a wispy beard, and I offered him a thousand won if he kept an eye on our jeep. He readily agreed and pocketed the money like Houdini palming a playing card.
Mia-ri seemed more lively than ever. Maybe it was the contrast to what we’d seen in the signal truck and what we’d read in the Bogus Claims File, but Ernie was about as animated as I’ve ever seen him, which was plenty animated. He kept stopping as we trudged up the narrow road, grabbing hold of the heavily made-up young women in the clinging silk gowns, wrapping his arm around their slender waists, cooing into their ears. They laughed and toyed with him, happy to see a young GI but at the same time wary; being warned off by their mama-sans in favor of large groups of businessmen in suits.