So far, the 8th Army had made heroic efforts to keep this information from his wife. They’d also tried to keep it from the ladies of the Officers’ Wives Club. This wasn’t only motivated by concern for Mrs. Barretsford’s feelings. The less the OWC knew about Itaewon and Yongju-gol, the 8th Army honchos believed, the better for everyone.
I was mulling these thoughts over and plotting the various ways I might be able to track down a cup of hot coffee when the Desk Sergeant called my name.
“Sueno!”
He sat behind the high reception counter of the MP Station, holding a phone receiver in his left hand and motioning frantically with his right hand for me to come running. I did.
“What is it?” I asked.
Instead of answering, he thrust the phone into my hand. I raised it to my ear and said, “Hello?”
The connection was bad, and the message was mostly garbled. It was a GI shouting into a pay phone in Itaewon. Something about someone being hurt and there was blood everywhere and he thought one of the guys might be an MP.
The man was panicked. I knew I had to get information from him and get it quickly.
“Where?” I shouted.
He told me in front of the OB beer tent, one block off the MSR near the Itaewon Market.
“What’s your name?” I shouted, but the line had already gone dead.
I slammed down the phone
“Ernie!” I shouted. “Let’s go.”
He was already up, tucking his fatigue shirt into his trousers and slipping on his field jacket. As we headed for the door, I called back to the Desk Sergeant, “An ambulance! At the southern end of the Itaewon Market. Now!”
We pushed through the big double doors and trotted through the drizzle, sloshing our way toward Ernie’s jeep.
— 4-
An hour and a half before the midnight curfew, the man with the iron sickle pushed through the rubberized curtain of a pochang macha, swiped rain off his shoulders, and sat heavily on a wooden stool, staring down at the grease-stained plank in front of him.
Pochang macha literally means “multiple product horse carriage.” In ancient times, before modern retailing and petroleum-driven distribution systems, independent businessmen traveled from village to village throughout the Korean Peninsula carrying their goods in a cart pulled by an ox or a horse. In modern times, especially in the city of Seoul, the horses have gone by the wayside. The carts are now on rubber wheels and can be pushed on paved streets from destination to destination. Most of the pochang macha owners cook hot food-like cuttlefish stew or boiled pig’s blood dumplings-and sell a lot of soju, a fiery rice liquor, and the cheaper mokkolli, a rice beer. They are also required to be licensed and inspected, but they have enough freedom to move from one area to another depending on where they can do the most business. When it rains or when it’s cold outside, which is often in Korea, huge rubberized flaps are folded down to envelop the cart, which, given the warmth of the charcoal stove in the center, creates a cozy environment away from the hustle and bustle of the city streets.
This particular pochang macha just happened to be located one block south of the MSR, the Main Supply Route, in front of an alleyway that led into the open-air Itaewon Market. According to Mrs. Lee On-su, the owner of the cart, there were already two customers seated at the splintered wooden serving counter when the man with the deformed lip entered. Both of the men were still in work clothes. Each had ordered a tumbler of soju, the Korean working man’s drink of choice, and a warm bowl of dubu-jigei ladled from a bubbling pot of scallions, fermented cabbage, and sliced bean curd. The kibun of Mrs. Lee’s pochang macha, the good feeling she had so carefully tried to cultivate, was about to be shattered.
Outside, the village patrol sloshed through mud and rain.
Corporal Ricky P. Collingsworth and Senior Private Kwon Hyon-up, a US Army MP and a ROK Army honbyong, had been assigned to patrol the bars, brothels, and nightclubs of Itaewon. “The ville,” as GIs call it, the red-light district set aside for foreigners, sits just off the MSR, about a half mile east of Yongsan Compound, the headquarters of the 8th United States Army. At night, Itaewon is packed with American soldiers and Korean “business girls” and the people who make their living waiting tables or tending bar or playing music, the support jobs in the manic world of sex, money, and good times.
Collingsworth and Kwon wore polished black helmets and Army-issue parkas to protect them from the rain. Still, the lower reaches of their fatigue trousers were damp and their combat boots were soaked through. According to the other MPs who worked the ville patrol, Collingsworth and Kwon were required to walk the same route every night, up to a half dozen times during their six-hour shift. In each barroom they entered, they made sure no brawls were about to erupt and then inspected the bathrooms, both male and female, and most importantly the back storage rooms and dark alleys behind the bars, to make sure no GIs were toking up or otherwise causing mischief. None of the Korean club owners objected; they appreciated the extra level of security. Besides, in a police state, objecting would’ve been futile.
“He ordered a bowl of dubu-jigei,” Mrs. Lee On-su told me, her chubby face perspiring even now on this cold evening. We stood beneath an overhang, out of the rain. “He hardly touched it, just let it sit while he sipped on his soju.”
“Did he drink much?” I asked.
“No. He just ordered the one glass. That’s it. Then he sat there, staring down at his soup, not saying anything, just listening to the two other customers.”
“What were they talking about?”
“Chukgu,” she said. Soccer.
“And all three men were still there when the MPs came?”
“Yes. The Korean soldier peeked in first, holding back the flap and poking his nose in. Then the American.”
“Did anyone pay any attention?”
“No. No one did. I’m used to them coming around every night when I’m in the Itaewon area, five or six times, so I just continued my work. My two customers kept talking about sports.”
“What did the man with the deformed lip do?”
She thought about that for a moment. “I remember I was wondering if he was going to eat his soup before it got cold or if he was going to return it to me and ask that I replace it with a hot bowl. I do that for my customers. No problem at all. I just hate it when they want their money back. More soup is not a problem, but the money is hard to replace.”
She was a husky woman, with calloused hands and a swarthy, sunburned face. Over her floor-length cotton dress she wore a thickly embroidered pullover wool sweater. She kept her thick arms crossed, as if she were suddenly freezing. The KNPs hadn’t interviewed her yet. They’d been too busy cordoning off the area and calling in the ambulance to take the ROK soldier away. Corporal Ricky P. Collingsworth still lay there, covered by a rain-soaked tarp. The medics in the ambulance from the 121 had decided not to move him. They were waiting for the 8th Army Coroner.
“So what did he do when the MP poked his head in?” I asked, keeping her on track, “The man with the deformed lip?”
“He lifted his soup bowl to his mouth. The broth was already cold. I wondered if he liked it that way, but he didn’t drink; he just held it there in front of his mouth, staring at the MP.”
“Did the MP say anything to you or any of the customers?”
“No. He just backed away. And when the flap closed, the man with the deformed lip set his bowl back down.” Mrs. Lee seemed slightly offended. She hugged her arms even tighter around her ample bosom. “He didn’t drink any soup.”