“They’re heading for the main drag,” Ernie told me. “Come on.”
We followed quickly.
I expected them to pause once they reached the bright lights of Sonyu-ri and from there start their patrol of the bars and nightclubs. Instead, they surprised us and continued across the two-lane road. After winding past a few storage sheds, the patrol found a meandering pathway that led through a clump of chestnut trees at the far end of the village. We had less cover here, so Ernie and I proceeded cautiously, letting the MPs gain a lead until they were out of sight. After a steep incline, the pathway emerged onto a plateau. I turned around. Behind us, in the valley below, the neon of Sonyu-ri sparkled. Ahead, scattered across neatly tended lawns, were dozens of egg-shaped hills, each about six feet high.
“Burial mounds,” Ernie said.
We wound through them. Many were adorned with stone carvings of ancient patriarchs, some with bronze tablets embedded into mortar. I would’ve liked to stop and read them, but we didn’t have time. At the far end of the plateau, we heard the rushing, gurgling noise of a huge volume of water. Ernie held out his hand. I stopped. Below us rolled the dark, murky waters of the Imjin River. North of here was the Demilitarized Zone and beyond that, Communist North Korea.
“Where are they?” I asked.
Ernie pointed.
In the distance, the beam of a lone flashlight flickered. One by one, moonlight revealed three helmets.
“That pathway,” Ernie said. “It leads back toward the village, to the rear of the buildings lining the main drag.”
“First they surround Sonyu-ri,” I said, “then they invade it.”
Ernie shrugged. “They’ve probably caught GIs smoking pot up here before. An easy bust.”
With our Olympian view, we decided not to follow the MPs any longer but to sit back and observe their progress. As we’d expected, it was time to start the exciting part of their evening’s activities: patrolling the nightclubs. They started at the RC-4 end of the strip; first a nightclub, then a bar, and after that a teahouse. We knew how it worked. One MP waited out back, cutting off any means of escape, while the other two entered through the front door, checking for drug use or unruly behavior and walking into both the men’s and women’s byonso, the bathrooms, to make sure there was no untoward activity going on in there. Once they were through, they moved on to the next joint.
“Let’s go to the main gate,” Ernie said. “We’ll wait for them there.”
I agreed. We scurried downhill, careful to avoid the MP patrol as we made our way toward the front gate of Camp Pelham. We didn’t want to confront Specialist Austin again, not yet, so we lingered about a hundred yards from the main gate itself, near the rolling carts that had appeared with the night. They were filled with souvenirs and hot snacks and bottles of soju for the off-duty GIs parading out of the pedestrian exit after a hard day’s work in the 2nd Infantry Division.
One old woman wore a wool scarf and three or four heavy sweaters as she stirred a vat of simmering oil heated by a charcoal briquette. “You eat,” she told me as I approached. “Number hana French fry.” Number one.
“How much for onion rings?” Ernie asked.
“Same same French fry,” the old woman said. “Fifty won.”
“Too much,” Ernie replied.
“Big bag,” the woman countered, holding a folded paper container about the size of a splayed hand. There was printing on the paper. numbers and letters in English. Probably printouts salvaged from the compound itself and then recycled for a more practical use. There’d been times when top-secret documents had been retrieved, folded neatly, grease-stained, and used to serve four ounces of deep-fried cuttlefish.
Ernie nodded his okay. The old woman reached beneath her cart and pulled out a generous handful of sliced onion. She plopped them into an earthenware bowl thick with batter, then lifted them again and dropped them dripping into the boiling oil. Steam and burning grease sizzled into the air. A few seconds later, using metal chopsticks, the old woman fished the onion rings out of the hot oil and deposited them into the paper holder. Ernie munched on an onion ring to see if it met his approval. When it did, he handed her the money. He offered me an onion ring. I accepted it and asked the old woman if the young girl in the red chima-jeogori had bought any of her food last night.
“She no have time,” the old woman replied.
Ernie’s eyes flashed but he said nothing; just kept chomping on the onion rings.
“You talked to her then?” I said.
“No talk. She talk MP. Crying.”
“What’d she say?”
“I don’t know. My English not so good.”
“Did she come from the ville?”
“I don’t know. I busy, sell French fry. I look up, she talk MP. How you say . . .”
“Hankuk mallo heiju-seiyo,” I said. Say it in Korean.
Her eyes widened. “Hey, you speaky Korean pretty good.”
“She talked to the MP,” I prompted in English.
“Sallam sollyo,” she say.
“She asked for help?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The old woman shook her head. “I don’t know. She scared something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long did she talk to the MP.”
“Maybe one minute. Pretty soon she karra chogi.”
“She left. Which way?”
“That way.” The old woman pointed along the main drag of Sonyu-ri.
“Did you see where she went?”
“I no see. Do you want French fry now?”
I contemplated buying some just to keep her talking, but Ernie elbowed me in the ribs.
“Company.”
The MP patrol was about halfway down the strip, but apparently they’d spotted us. They stopped entering the bars and nightclubs and marched three abreast, heading straight for us. One of them held a walkie-talkie to his ear.
“Should we un-ass the area?” Ernie asked.
“Naw. We have to talk to them anyway. I want to ask some questions.”
By now, the old woman had seen the MPs coming and begun to roll her cart toward safer ground. They were still about ten yards away when, from the main gate, a roar arose from the engine of a vehicle whining at full torque. We turned. Specialist Austin raised the vehicle barrier just in time to avoid it being smashed by an MP jeep barreling out of the compound. The vehicle must’ve been doing thirty miles an hour and was aimed right at us. There was nowhere to run, so Ernie and I stood our ground. At that last second, the driver slammed on the brakes and the vehicle swerved sideways in a cloud of dirt and exhaust, stopping just three feet in front of us. Before the engine stopped whining, a tall MP leapt out of the jeep and charged directly at us.
Discipline in the army is a malleable thing. Sometimes, for example in basic training, it’s as inflexible as a Prussian riding crop. Other times, as in a headquarters garrison unit, it can be a set of unwritten rules and gentlemanly agreements, sort of like a country club full of trust-fund babies trying not to annoy one another.
But in the US 2nd Infantry Division, discipline can be brutal. Regardless of the hour, one is expected to appear within minutes of an alert siren being sounded, and if you’re not present, you can face court-martial. You’re expected to be standing tall before dawn for the physical training formation, and if you’re late you can face non-judicial punishment. Enlisted men are restricted to their compounds like prisoners unless an off-duty pass is granted, and that pass can be rescinded for the most minor of infractions-or on a whim. As the NCOs love to say, “A pass is a privilege, not a right.” The 2nd Infantry Division officer corps and senior enlisted non-coms can force a young enlisted man to do just about anything-scrub a floor, clean a grease trap, pull guard duty all night-and justify it as either needed to accomplish the mission or, when that rationale grows thin, as additional training that is beneficial for personal development. After a few months, or even just weeks in the heady atmosphere of the 2nd Infantry Division, even a lowly first lieutenant can begin to believe he’s a young god gifted with mighty powers.