His face was narrow and his glasses were polished so brightly that they shone like cheap jewelry. After chewing us out for a while about arriving without an appointment, Colonel Proffert checked our identification thoroughly and jotted down each of our names and badge numbers. He cleaned his glasses and told us to be seated. Then he shoved across his desk a copy of the trial transcript of the court-martial involving the death of Chon Un-suk. He told us that beyond what was included there, the 2nd Infantry JAG Office had no further comment.
Ernie thumbed through the transcript, snorted, and handed it to me. “Were they speeding, sir?” he asked.
“What?”
“The two GIs driving the deuce-and-a-half. Were they exceeding the speed limit just prior to plowing into Chon Un-suk?”
Colonel Proffert rose from behind his desk and placed his hands on narrow hips. He was a jogger, that was for sure. Officers have to stay thin in today’s army if they expect to be competitive for promotion. Especially staff officers.
He wagged his forefinger at Ernie’s nose.
“Whether those two young men were speeding or not,” Colonel Proffert said, “has no bearing on this case.”
It was my turn to be surprised. “No bearing?”
“None,” Colonel Proffert repeated. “Driving conditions in Korea are atrocious. The roads are narrow, jammed with pedestrians, choked with bicycles and pushcarts and Korean drivers who don’t know even the rudiments of safe motoring. On top of that the weather is treacherous, there’s little de-icing equipment or anything as fancy as snow plows and despite all this we expect young soldiers to go out in the middle of night, in the middle of howling storms, and perform their duty and drive where and when their military missions require them to. Under these stresses, can we punish them for driving ten or fifteen miles over the speed limit?”
He waited for our answer. I gave him one.
“When there’s thirty school girls standing on the side of the road, yes.”
He shook his head vehemently.
“You’re missing the big picture.” Dramatically, he pointed toward the north. “We have seven hundred thousand bloodthirsty communist soldiers less than twenty miles north of here. Every one of them just waiting for a chance to push south past the Second United States Infantry Division and invade Korea. What do you think would happen to those middle-school girls then? Rape. Pillage. Murder. That’s the big picture we’re looking at, and we can’t have GIs driving out into ungodly dangerous road conditions while at the same time having to look back over their shoulders, wondering if Division JAG is going to nail them for violating some petty traffic regulations. We can’t do it. Our job, first and foremost, is to protect freedom here in Korea.” He wagged his forefinger once again, more forcefully this time. “And don’t you ever forget it.”
I tossed the trial transcript onto his desk.
“Thanks for your time, sir.”
I grabbed Ernie by the elbow but he wouldn’t budge. He kept staring at Colonel Proffert.
“So the facts of the case don’t matter?” Ernie asked.
I tugged on his arm. Ernie shrugged me off.
“I didn’t say that,” Proffert answered mildly.
“The hell you didn’t. That’s exactly what you said.”
Colonel Proffert’s face started to turn red. “Don’t you come in here and lecture me, young man. Eighth Army CID or not.”
“No point in lecturing you,” Ernie replied. “Because you know what you did.”
Colonel Proffert’s voice lowered. “And what exactly,” he said, “was that?”
“You let two GIs get away with murder.”
Colonel Proffert sputtered but before he could reply, Ernie plowed on.
“And what’s more important, you sent a message to every GI in Division that no matter how recklessly they drive, no matter who they kill or maim, the Division will protect them from having to take responsibility for their actions.”
“Out!” Colonel Proffert roared. “Get out of my office!”
I practically lifted Ernie off of his feet and dragged him out of the office and down the hallway. JAG officers in their neatly pressed fatigues were standing in front of their cubicles now, watching Ernie and me struggle down the corridor, listening to Colonel Proffert cursing behind us.
As she held the front door open for us, the cute Korean secretary stared at the floor. Very modest. Very Confucian. I dragged a struggling Ernie Bascom out of the JAG Office and onto the gravel-covered parking lot. We stood by the jeep until Ernie’s breathing became regular once more.
This time I took the wheel. As we drove away, Ernie sat in the back seat of the jeep, arms crossed, fuming.
Late that afternoon, when Ernie pounded on the door to Kimchee Entertainment, we knew it was futile because the hasp was still padlocked from the outside. He did it out of frustration and to attract attention. A ploy that worked. Within seconds another resident of the two-story brick building emerged from her lair and began sweeping the blacktop in front of the building with a short-handled broom.
I greeted her in Korean and asked her if she knew where Mr. Pak Tong-i, the owner of Kimchee Entertainment, had gone.
“Moolah,” she told me. I don’t know. “Haru cheingil anwasso.” He hasn’t been in all day.
I asked her if he did this often and she told me that he’s in show business and therefore very unreliable and she never knows when he’s going to show up and start making noise. I asked her what kind of noise and she told me that he often plays the radio too loud or has some musician banging away on drums or other foreign instruments. When she couldn’t give us his home phone number or his address, we thanked her and went on our way.
About a half block down the road, Ernie asked me, “Did you see him?”
“See who?”
“The chubby guy. Korean. Bald head. He bought a newspaper at the stand next door and stood around pretending to read all through your conversation.”
“He wasn’t Pak Tong-i, was he?”
“No. Too husky for that little twerp. Just a big guy in pajamas.”
Koreans, especially middle-aged men, think nothing of parading around their neighborhoods in pajama bottoms and slippers.
“What makes you think he was paying attention to us?”
“Maybe he wasn’t. I just wondered if you noticed.”
“I didn’t. Where did he go?”
“Back to the alleyway on the far side of Kimchee Entertainment.”
“Probably just a local resident.”
“Probably.”
The purple Korean night started its slow descent upon the city of Tongduchon. Bulbs burst into brightness; neon flickered to life. Clumps of uniformed students pushed past us, toting backpacks bursting with books. Farmers rolled empty carts back toward the countryside. Without really planning to, Ernie and I wandered closer to the bar district.
“We’ve talked to just about everyone who knew Jill Matthewson,” Ernie said. “So now it’s time to stop talking and do something.”
I thought about that for a minute. A girl in a dirt-floored mokkolli house, an establishment that sells warm rice beer to cab drivers and construction workers, gazed out at us in mute awe. Despite all the American movies and television programs they see, most Koreans still think of Americans as being odd. Almost nonhuman. In all her life, she’d probably never spoken to a foreigner. For a moment, I was tempted to go in and talk to her. Let her know that although we looked strange, Ernie and I were still human. Sort of.
And then I thought of Corporal Jill Matthewson on her first night of ville patrol. How strange the ville must’ve seemed. How awful. Wailing rock music, drunken GIs, desperate business girls, persistent old farm women selling
