The Iron Sickle (20 page)

“What was the question again?” Strange asked.

“Eighth Army Claims,” I said. “They have a file of every claim for damages made by Korean civilians against the Eighth United States since the end of the Korean War. However, it has come to my attention that there is another file, a secret file of suppressed claims.
Claims that have been deemed too embarrassing to the Command or too damaging to see the light of day.”

Strange’s lips tightened. His cigarette waggled. “Who has this file?” he asked.

I slammed my open palm down on the table. “Christ, Harvey. That’s what I’m asking you.”

He glanced around the snack bar, making sure no one was listening. They weren’t. The place was bustling with almost a hundred GIs in uniform and a smattering of Department of Defense civilians on their lunch breaks. Conversation was pitched at a controlled roar.

Strange leaned toward me. His long brown hair was oiled and slicked back neatly over his bald spot. “SOFA,” he said.

“What?”

“The Status of Forces Committee,” he said a little louder, more insistent. He glanced to either side again before turning back to me. “They review those types of reports before deciding whether or not to turn them over to the Eighth Army Claims Office.”

I’d known the SOFA Committee, which was made up of ROK Army and US Army personnel, arbitrated the appeal process for rejected claims, but I hadn’t realized they also secretly vetted the claims before they were even allowed to go to the Claims Office. “How do you know this?”

He leaned back. “How do I know anything that goes on at Eighth Army? I pay attention.”

“You snoop,” Ernie said.

Strange’s cigarette drooped. He looked offended. “That’s a dirty word.”

“Your favorite kind.”

“So this Status of Forces committee,” I said, “they’re the ones who make the decision to suppress certain claims.”

“Who else?” Strange replied. “The Commander doesn’t get
involved. He wants deniability in case the shit hits the rotating wind machine.”

“Has it ever?”

“No way.” Strange scoffed. “Mr. Cool who runs the country would never allow it.”

Ernie said, “Where do they keep these files?”

Strange looked around the snack bar, almost swiveling his head in a complete circle, to see if anyone was watching or listening. Luckily for us I don’t believe anyone was, because it would have been obvious Strange was about to tell us a secret. Strange liked everyone to know he knew more than they did.

Well, usually. “I don’t know,” he whispered.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Ernie asked. “You run the classified documents distribution center. You’re always bragging you know everything that’s going on in Eighth Army.”

“I do,” he said.

“But you don’t know this?”

“I know what I don’t know,” he said, tapping the side of his head.

“Can you find out where the documents are?” I asked.

“It depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“Have you had any strange lately?”

Ernie groaned. We knew what that meant. Strange wanted to be told an elaborately obscene story of illicit sex in graphic detail and in return he’d spill his guts concerning the secret 8th Army claims file. A pervert in charge of classified documents. Somehow, it made sense.

This was my cue. I rose from my chair and hobbled over to the snack bar serving line. Taking my time, I grabbed a sturdy porcelain mug and pulled myself a cup of steaming hot java from the stainless steel coffee urn. At the register, I paid the middle-aged Korean lady
twenty-five cents. She didn’t hand me my receipt. I was about to open my mouth and ask for it when she said, “No more free refill.”

“When did this start?” I asked.

“Today.”

The price of everything was going up. I glanced at the table. Apparently so was the price of Strange’s cooperation. He was leaning forward to hear the elaborate story Ernie was making up. From time to time Strange frowned and asked a question. Ernie sighed and kept talking. I stood off to the side and waited. I didn’t really want to hear all this. Finally, when my coffee was about half gone, Strange rose and slunk out of the Snack Bar. I rejoined Ernie at the table.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Nothing a hot shower won’t fix.”

I had just finished my coffee when a siren went off, a huge wailing sound, then stopped. Everyone in the Snack Bar had frozen. And then a cannon fired and the wailing started again, louder this time.

“Alert!” someone shouted. More voices joined the chorus. Virtually everyone in the snack bar, especially those in uniform, was on their feet, grabbing their hats, wrapping toast and doughnuts in napkins and shoving them in their pockets, gulping down final glugs of orange juice or milk or coffee, slipping on their field jackets, and heading for the door, some at a trot, most at a flat-out run.

The wailing of the siren had taken on a pattern, three long bursts and one short.

“Move out,” someone said.

A regular muster alert was one thing. Every soldier assigned to the 8th Army headquarters was required to report immediately to his post of duty. Once there, the time he arrived was logged in, and once the entire unit was accounted for, the unit strength was phoned in to the higher headquarters. A move-out alert was worse.
We were to assume our unit was already on a war footing, and we were to first put on our combat gear and check out our weapons at the unit arms room before reporting to either our posts of duty or our assigned defensive positions. Once there we’d be given the order as to whether or not to move out—load up our trucks or jeeps and whatever vehicles our unit was assigned, leave Yongsan Compound, and head to the boonies.

“At least there’s no incoming,” Ernie said. That is, no rounds being lobbed by Communist long-range artillery from the northern side of the DMZ.

“Not yet,” I said.

Pandemonium had broken out and then subsided, and by now the snack bar was virtually empty. Slowly, Ernie stood up, slipped on his jacket, and said, “After you, maestro.” I nodded in thanks. He walked and I hobbled up the hill toward the 8th Army Criminal Investigation Detachment. Riley was waiting for us.

“Where the
hell
you guys been?”

We were on night guard duty again, patrolling the shadowy perimeter of the 8th United States Army Headquarters South (Provisional). At least that’s what the hand-painted sign above the main entrance said. What we were really patrolling was three or four acres of jumbled canvas tents in a punchbowl of mud. If we had elephants and tigers, we’d be a circus. We already had the clowns.

One of them emerged from the darkness, stepped beneath the glow of a yellow bulb dangling from a wire, and approached us as we made our rounds.

“Look lively there,” he growled. “Don’t stand around like a bunch of Marines.”

It was Staff Sergeant Riley. He had his M-16 rifle slung over his shoulder. He was wearing baggy fatigues, combat boots and a field
jacket two sizes too large for his narrow shoulders. His camouflagenetted steel pot sat on his head tilted at an angle.

“Who appointed you king of the guard post?” Ernie asked.

“Somebody’s gotta make sure you pukes maintain the integrity of the perimeter.”

“Maintain the integrity of this,” Ernie replied, showing Riley his favorite finger.

We were tired. It was 8th Army’s second day in the field, and we’d been out walking guard duty all last night and tonight since evening chow. It was almost midnight.

“You’re supposed to be spread out,” Riley said. “Not standing around shooting the shit.”

“We already chased away all the Commies,” Ernie said. “They’re sixty miles north of here up on the other side of the DMZ.”

Eighth Army’s field headquarters was set up in this rural area about thirty-five kilometers south of the city limits of Seoul. Theoretically, on this side of the Han River, we’d be less vulnerable to an initial North Korean assault—if the Communist regime up north ever actually decided to invade. Once our brave forces repulsed them—and no one thought we wouldn’t—we were still close enough to Seoul to return to Yongsan Compound and continue normal operations.

“What about infiltrators?” Riley asked.

“What about ’em?”

“North Korean commandoes can sneak across the DMZ and attack our positions at any time.”

“Hey, Riley,” Ernie said, “this is not a real war, okay? We’re not in ’Nam anymore. All this is make-believe and as soon as the brass has had enough of playing tin soldier we’ll be allowed to pack up and go home.”

And maybe I’d be able to continue my investigation, I thought,
but I knew better than to say anything to Riley, especially about the secret claims file. For now, we had to keep our suspicions to ourselves. If I told Riley, he’d tell the Provost Marshal. Maybe the PM didn’t know about it—he probably didn’t—and maybe he wouldn’t take any action to thwart our plans if he did find out. Maybe. But I couldn’t take that chance. I had to see that file without 8th Army’s knowledge. I couldn’t take the chance they would see the death of Mr. Barretsford and even the murder of Corporal Collingsworth as the acceptable price of keeping their secrets.

In the mess tent yesterday, Ernie’d found out from Strange that the file we were looking for was called the Bogus Claims Register, and it was held in the classified file cabinet of the Status of Forces Committee’s Secretariat. We knew where their offices were, not far from the 8th Army headquarters building itself, and Strange said the files were locked in secure cabinets in the Secretary’s office, which in turn was locked behind an iron-barred door. And of course, the entire complex was protected at all hours of night and day by armed guards. That was all Strange would tell Ernie.

Staff Sergeant Riley was about to open his mouth and point out another defect in our military bearing when footsteps tromped through mud.

An MP approached, wearing the same fatigues and steel pot we were, his M-16 slung over his left shoulder. He was a big man, and I thought I recognized his silhouette. As he came closer, moonlight shone in his face. Moe Dexter, freed now from his brief incarceration and cleared by the Provost Marshal of any charges stemming from the vandalizing of the
pochang macha
or threatening the use of a firearm against us. He’d been warned to watch his conduct, but all punishment was withheld, and he was returned to full duty.

“Well,” Ernie said, bristling, “look who got a clean bill of health from his parole board.”

“Better than having the creeping crud like you, Bascom.”

“At least I don’t stick it to my asshole buddies,” Ernie replied.

I thought the two men were about to come to blows, but Dexter stopped his advance, stared hard at Ernie for a moment, and turned and aimed his gaze at me. “You better get your butt in gear, Sweeno, and take this asshole with you.”

“I only see one asshole around here, Dexter,” I said.

“We’ll see about that once you’re finished with this little detail. The Provost Marshal is screaming for you two back in the Command tent.”

“What happened?”

Dexter pointed to a hill that loomed on the opposite side of the valley. “There’s a signal truck up there.”

In the dim moonlight, I could just make out the shape of a boxy truck holding up an antenna.

“Yeah?” I said.

“And apparently while you guys have been standing around with your thumbs up your butts, our signal troops have been having themselves a party, brought in a girl and everything.”

Outside the perimeter fence, from dawn until well after dark, enterprising farm families had set up wooden stands selling fruit and bottled soda and
ramyon
packaged noodles and half-liter bottles of
soju
. GIs weren’t allowed to leave the concertina wire that surrounded the compound but somehow transactions were made. In addition to the innocent stuff, at night some pimps and mama-sans brought in girls. They were mostly hidden out in the weeds, waiting for GIs to sneak through the wire or, if they were authorized to drive out of 8th Army bivouac area on a supply run, to stop beside the road.

Riley squinted at the moonlit hill. “Up there?” he asked.

“Whaddid I stutter? The Provost Marshal wants Sweeno and Bass Comb to investigate, immediately if not sooner.”

Ernie rolled his eyes but started to march toward the Command tent. I pointed at Riley and Dexter. “You two,” I said, “are now officially on guard duty.”

“I can’t do that,” Riley sputtered.

“Yes you can,” I replied. “The perimeter is yours.”

Without waiting for further argument, I turned and trotted away.

Rain had held off all evening, but as if to punish us for our sins, it started up just as we were ready to leave the perimeter of 8th Army Headquarters South. The dirt road to the signal truck was extremely steep and difficult to drive under the best of conditions, but now it was much too slippery. We had no choice but to hump it up the hill.

“Did you bring a rain parka?” Ernie asked.

“Naw, it’s still in my duffel bag. Didn’t think we’d need it.”

“Me neither.”

The rain soaked my fatigue jacket and pant legs. Water trickled off my steel pot and dribbled down the back of my neck. The mud, meanwhile, sloshed over the top of my boots. After a half hour of steady climbing, we were three-quarters of the way up the hill. We stopped for a breather.

Below, the canvas tents that looked so buoyant in the afternoon breeze were now weighted down by the rain and looked like a field of soggy mushrooms. A few lamps flickered here and there but for the most part 8th Army headquarters was fast asleep.

“How did they get the girl up here?” Ernie asked.

“Probably picked her up in a jeep, drove up during the day when the road was still passable.”

According to what we’d been told at the Command tent, the signal truck on Hill Number 143 was tasked with relaying communications from Seoul down to 8th Army Headquarters South. They had just made their routine hourly commo check when the radio man in the
Command tent heard a woman’s voice in the background. Shortly afterward all communications were cut off. The communication boys down in the valley hadn’t been able to raise them since. What the Provost Marshal was worried about was that the two signal men assigned up there had brought the girl and maybe a few bottles of
soju
, and figuring everything would be quiet, they were now passed out drunk and not relaying military communications. The Chief of Staff was hopping mad and so Ernie and I had been dispatched to check out the situation.