“Temporary transfer from my platoon.”
“Where to, field MPs? Prisoners’ camp?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Who brought you here?”
“Some man in black.”
“You’re damn lucky. They must be sending you to the investigation division. If not to Da Nang or Saigon, at least to Hoi An or Tam Ky.”
Yong Kyu looked vacantly at the live enemies inside the wire fence.
“Let me borrow a light,” said the guard, reaching for Yong Kyu’s cigarette to light his own. He seemed envious of Yong Kyu’s assignment.
“In the investigation division there’s two corporals, two master sergeants, and a first lieutenant, and each is temporarily assigned to a battalion. But those posts are all filled now. As for investigation, the detachment at Da Nang is the biggest.”
The guard kept wiping sweat and dust from his face with his sleeve. After lighting his cigarette, he glanced back over his shoulder at the POWs behind him, and muttered, “Shit, I’ve been at this four months already and it’s driving me nuts. Even field duty days in the platoon were better than this, you know.”
“So, you crawled, too.”
“Nothing but crawling for two months, then transferred to this shit-hole,” said the guard, adding in a whisper, “Think hard, I mean, you must know somebody in a high place in Korea. Or your family pulled some strings?”
“I don’t know. . no chance, then, that I’ll be sold back to the platoon, huh?”
“Not a chance. Goodbye to that rifle till the day you head home.”
The guard walked away from the wire fence. Once in a while you could see infantrymen moving toward the outskirts of the city in formation. As they marched, a fine dust lifted up around their calves.
The corporal in black came out of the building and shouted at Yong Kyu.
“Hey, you! Come in!”
Yong Kyu followed the corporal inside. Suddenly he was in total darkness. He heard a voice.
“Private Ahn Yong Kyu, your serial number?”
Yong Kyu shouted out his number loud and clear then continued, “Rank, private! Branch of service, army infantry! Home. .”
As his eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, Yong Kyu was able to make out a metal desk in front of him. A skinny man in a civilian T-shirt and dark sunglasses was sitting at it. He was holding a file containing the full record on Yong Kyu. After running item by item through all the questions about his education, family background, blood type, military service record and so on, the man said, “Good. One of the staff at the joint investigation headquarters in Da Nang is returning home. You’re transferred today to take over his duty, effective immediately.”
Everybody at the brigade headquarters seemed to be out on assignment. Only the skinny officer, the corporal, and a few privates were there. The corporal left the office with Yong Kyu.
“You know the second heliport?”
So he would not be giving Yong Kyu a ride this time. The corporal gave Yong Kyu a copy of his transfer orders and a newly issued investigation staff ID card. Everything was in English. The letters “CID” and the red diagonal slash on the card stood out.
“Show this and they’ll give you a boarding number.”
“I’m going right now?”
“You think we’re kidding here? The orders for your transfer to Da Nang came from investigation headquarters. The controllers in the intelligence unit will keep in contact with you until you get to your new unit.”
“Yes, sir.”
Without acknowledging Yong Kyu’s salute, the corporal grinned and looked away. “Listen, when I come up to Da Nang, you’ll show me around. I usually make it up there once a month.”
Yong Kyu walked toward the military operations road as directed. He trudged on through the dust raised by the transports that occasionally went by. None of them would stop for him even when he held out his thumb. That particular road was completely exposed to the deep jungle and a stopped truck made an easy target for rockets. As he did on patrol, Yong Kyu kept to the edge of the road and walked holding his rifle up.
A truck sped past him leaving another cloud of dust in its wake. About a hundred yards farther along, there came a sound of sss . . saaa . . aang and Yong Kyu instinctively hurled himself down and rolled up against the sandbags lining the road. He lay there flat on the ground. There was a crash, like an enormous glass plate shattering, and he felt sand shower down on his back.
He waited for the second explosion, but from the long delay he figured that the target had been hit. Yong Kyu raised his face and through the mixture of dust and sweat looked up the road. A pillar of flames was shooting high up into the air, streaming dark smoke, and the truck was flipped on its side in the middle of the road. A direct hit on the front of the cab. The driver who had looked out at Yong Kyu a minute earlier had to have been killed instantly. The enemy’s rocket projectiles and mortar rounds began raining all along the sandbag walls and more struck the roadbed. It was a full-on attack. Despite the sun shining over the vast dune that separated the jungle from the lines of defense, it was impossible to tell what was what. A Jeep sped by and an officer inside yelled to Yong Kyu, “Are you trying to get killed? Take cover, quick!”
Yong Kyu propped himself against the sandbag barricade and took a swig from his canteen. Aggressive attacks seldom lasted longer than twenty minutes. By then the shells, normally two to each guerrilla, would have run out. This attack seemed to be on the entire company. An airstrike must have been initiated before the fighting broke out on the ground; two of the old-style fighter-bombers could be seen looping and rolling overhead.
The second heliport was in a state of pandemonium. The asphalt landing strip had been hit four times by bombs. The wounded were writhing in pain beneath the rancid chemical smoke. There was no trace of anybody in the bunker next to the strip and the barracks were empty, too. To the west could be seen a line of infantrymen, their backs to the wall, firing.50 caliber machine guns set up on swivel stands. Further, beyond the open terrain, superbombs were going off over the thick jungle in a hellish din. It seemed to rip open the eardrums.
Ammunition and food were stacked up alongside the landing strip ready to be lifted to the rank-and-file rifle platoons. Yong Kyu jumped into a trench beneath the heliport control center. A chill seized him. Looking down, he saw muddy water coming up to his stomach. He threw his rifle out of the trench to keep it dry. The cold he felt was temporary; the water was tepid with the heat absorbed from the earth and sun. He looked around and caught sight of soldiers who had taken cover in muddy foxholes. They were naked except for their helmets and cut-off jungle pants.
Yong Kyu dipped his helmet into the water and poured it over his head. Sand ran down his face. Again he heard the piercing whistle of an incoming mortar shell slicing through the air. Seconds after the whistling came the blast. He covered his ears with his hands and buried his nose in the mud. Someone jumped into the trench and landed on his back. Yong Kyu did not shake him off. The earsplitting explosion filled the air with dry dirt clods and sand. The chemical stench lingered. Shells poured down on the landing strip and heliport bunkers.
“Sons of bitches, where the hell is the artillery? If they spend anymore time calculating coordinates, the enemy’ll be long gone.”
When the bombing stopped, the two men in the trench raised their heads.
“This is my hole, what the fuck are you doing here?”
“Isn’t there a helicopter today?”
Instead of apologizing for being in somebody else’s trench, Yong Kyu explained that he had come to catch a helicopter ride.
“Chopper? Where you headed?”