in short supply in South Korea.
“Listen, Lieutenant whatever-your-name-is, I don’t give a raggedy rat’s ass about your missing ride. We’ve just come off a six-day alert and I’ve got better things to do than to spend time rounding up a car and driver for every woeful, wayward, green-as-grass replacement wandering around in Korea. Like getting some sleep, for example. Got it?” The captain kept his voice low, but Kevin could swear that every lowly PFC and clerk in the room had heard every word.
Cripes, now what? His first, miserable day in ROTC basic training flashed back to him. The captain had asked a question to which there was only one permissible answer.
Kevin drew himself to attention. “Sir, yes sir.” He almost stopped — why was the captain’s face turning bright red? Hurriedly he carried on, “Could the captain please direct me to the nearest cab stand or bus station, then?”
“Oh, shit, boy…” The man seemed to be trying hard not to laugh, “Don’t you know Americans aren’t real popular around this country right now? You might be able to get a cab, but you’d be just as likely to end up way down in Pusan as at Camp Howze.”
The captain turned to bellow at one of his sergeants standing just a few feet away. “Fergie! See what we can do for this little lost lamb! I guess we’re playing nursemaid today.”
He looked back at Kevin. “Don’t expect too much or anything too fancy. General McLaren, the Big Boss here in Korea, doesn’t like seeing officers spending their time riding around like some kind of foreign potentates.” The captain’s Alabama drawl stretched the word “potentates” into something that sounded vaguely obscene.
The captain yawned. “You’re lucky I’m in a merciful mood, Lieutenant. And now that I’ve put your case in Sergeant Ferguson’s capable hands, I’ve done all that I can.” He yawned again. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some important paperwork to clear up.” With that, the captain sauntered into his office and closed the door.
Sergeant Ferguson, a wiry, little man, motioned Kevin over to a chair. “Better take a pew, Lieutenant. This might take awhile. Not a whole lot going up toward the Z today. Should be able to get you something though.” He started flipping through a huge stack of papers on one of the desks.
Kevin sank into the chair. Jesus, here he was. Stuck in Korea. Stuck in the hands of a bunch of Army clerks. His new battalion commander had probably already listed him as AWOL, absent without leave. He could just see writing to his parents: “Dear Mom and Dad, arriving back from Korea tonight. Please write care of Leavenworth Army Prison.” He leaned his head back against the office partition in misery and then sat bolt upright.
The captain snored.
Two hours later Ferguson came through and Kevin found himself in the cab of an Army supply truck trundling north toward the DMZ. Jet lag was starting to catch up with him; he was tired, sore, and more than a little nauseous, and the truck driver, a shifty-looking corporal, seemed to delight in making hairpin turns, sudden lane changes, and ear-splitting gear shifts.
The driver hadn’t even saluted him when he’d climbed aboard back at Kimpo Airport, and Kevin wasn’t sure if he should report the man for insolence or just ignore it. Maybe they kept discipline pretty casual here in Korea — he just didn’t know.
He looked out the window to hide his discomfort. They’d driven right along the Han River through Seoul before turning north. And Seoul, at least, seemed pretty interesting. Tall, modern skyscrapers and huge freeways all built right next to delicate, tile-roofed palaces and narrow, winding streets. The place was huge, too — a lot bigger than Spokane or even Seattle. It must have been nearly an hour before they left the city’s sprawling suburbs behind.
The countryside wasn’t like anything Kevin had ever seen back in the States either — flat, green, water- logged rice paddies reaching out all the way toward rocky, knife-edged ridges running along both sides of the highway. The tiny villages they passed looked like something out of
The corporal chuckled a bit when he saw Kevin wrinkling his nose. “You won’t notice the smell by tomorrow morning, sir.
“If you think that’s strange, they got that homemade napalm relish they call kimchee. They don’t eat nothin’ without it. Take a bunch of red peppers, cabbage, cucumbers, radishes, and stuff, mash it all up, and let it ferment for months. You can smell kimchee all the way to Honolulu if the wind’s right.
“Course, it ain’t so bad right now. You oughta smell it in July and August when the heat really comes on.” That was just about the last complete sentence Kevin could get out of him all the rest of the way to Camp Howze.
Camp Howze looked like an Army camp. The rows of whitewashed barracks, supply warehouses, and office buildings were all laid out with straight-edged, military precision. There was a big difference, though, from the stateside bases Kevin had seen. The camp was surrounded by barbed wired and cleared fields of fire, and he could see camouflaged bunkers guarding the main gate.
A large sign declared that Camp Howze was “HQ 1st Battalion, 39th Infantry Regiment — 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.”
The driver let him off right in front of the main entrance and watched while Kevin hauled his bags out of the back of the truck. Then, without a word, the corporal wheeled his truck around and drove off back west toward the highway.
A sergeant walked down from the gate to meet him. “Reporting in, sir?”
Kevin nodded, fumbling in his jacket pocket for his travel orders. “My plane was late. I was supposed to be here last night.”
The sergeant glanced through his orders. “Yes, sir. Battalion left word that you’re to report to Major Donaldson, the XO, as soon as you arrive.”
Kevin looked down at the pile of baggage at his feet and was acutely aware that he desperately needed a shower and shave to look, feel, and smell human.
The sergeant smiled. “I think you could interpret that order a little loosely, Lieutenant. I don’t think we’ll be able to log you in here at the gate for another half-hour. In the meantime, we’ll get you up to the BOQ.”
The sergeant broke off to yell up at the two privates watching from the gate. “Malloy, Brunner! Move your lazy asses down here and help the lieutenant with his bags.” He turned back to Kevin. “Welcome to Camp Howze, sir.”
A quick shower at the BOQ — the bachelor officers’ quarters — left him feeling a lot better, but Kevin still had knots in his stomach when he knocked on Major Donaldson’s door.
“Come.”
He opened the door, stepped inside, marched toward Donaldson’s desk, and came to attention. “Reporting in as ordered, sir.” Damn, why did his voice have to break every time he tried to sound properly military?
Major Colin Donaldson, a short, square-jawed man, looked Kevin over carefully for a brief moment, with all the studied disinterest of a man eyeing a horse he might want to buy someday. The major’s gaze made Kevin feel as though he were being X-rayed. He wondered what Donaldson saw.
He knew he wasn’t tall — barely average in fact. And though ROTC exercises and training marches had kept him in good shape, with a trim, flat stomach and muscular arms and legs, Kevin also knew he’d inherited his father’s stocky build along with the older man’s straw-colored hair and pale blue eyes. His father only kept his weight down by working from sunup to sundown on the family’s Eastern Washington ranch. The Littles didn’t have much choice, Kevin thought. It was either sweat or grow fat.
Feeling self-conscious under Donaldson’s gaze, Kevin held his shoulders back and head rigid, resisting the temptation to scope out the maps and personal mementos scattered throughout the major’s office. He had the feeling this wasn’t the right time to give his innate curiosity full rein. Not by a long shot. In fact, if he’d learned anything in the ROTC, it was that there was always a time to just play dumb. A succession of increasingly irritable instructors had made that painfully clear to him over three summers of basic and advanced training. It had been a difficult lesson to learn.
