it hanging, pal?”
“Loosely. I got a bumper number for you. Ready to write?”
“Shoot.”
“Seven-oh-two MB on the left side and then SP fourteen-twenty-three on the right.”
“A truck?”
“Yeah. I don’t think they’ll be going anywhere tonight. They’d be too conspicuous out after curfew. Probably leave first thing in the morning.”
“I’ll be there.” Ernie sipped on something. Coffee, I figured. “What’re you gonna do tonight?”
“Run the ville.”
“That little pissant village right outside the gate?”
“No. The one where the officers and senior NCOs hang out. Kumchon. About a mile and a half down the road. Tomorrownight, I’ll meet you at the club there at RC4 about six, so you can tell me about the truck tomorrow morning.”
After retreat formation I went to the chow hall and ate supper and then over to the orderly room and signed out on pass. The pass stipulated that I had to be back on compound before the beginning of the midnight-to-four A.M . curfew. I wouldn’t get my overnight pass until after I received my venereal disease orientation from the first sergeant. They’d already given us one at the Repo Depot, but no matter how many times GIs are warned about the dangers, they still end up poking around in places where they shouldn’t.
I flashed my pass and ID to the MP at the gate. There were a few paltry bars in a village across the MSR, that’s where most of the GIs went, and a lot of them were shacked up in the hooches that sprawled off into the surrounding rice paddies. The senior NCOs and officers frequented Kumchon—a real town, not just a GI village. I figured that the number of supplies being diverted indicated more than just a little low-level pilfering, so I flagged down a Kimchi Cab and told the driver to take me to Kumchon.
When we arrived, he asked me where I wanted to get out. I didn’t know, but after about two blocks, downtown Kumchon petered out and we were winding through frozen rice paddies again. I told him to stop, paid him, and wandered back toward the bright lights. The road through town was only two lanes, and the shops on either side were pushed right up against the narrow sidewalks. Kumchon had what all towns have: pharmacies, restaurants, a place for milling rice, a stationery store, and a few bars. I peeked through the windows of the bars but saw only ROK soldiers in uniform, toasting one another and laughing too loud. Finally, at the other end of town, I saw a bar with a little more neon than the others. The sign in Korean said KUM GOM —golden dream. The smaller English lettering beneath it said GOLDEN NIGHT CLUB .
There’s a difference between a golden dream and the goldennightclub, but it looked like the Koreans who worked there weren’t going to let the GIs in on it.
I walked in. It was a big club, bigger than the others, and there were already a few GIs in small clusters sitting at the tables. Korean waitresses—young, pretty girls all—served them, and a few sat at the tables, slapping the groping GI hands and laughing. The music was loud, but not so loud that you couldn’t talk, and it tended to be a little more sedate than what I figured I’d find in the clubs across the street from Camp Edwards.
Two grizzled old NCO types sat at one end of the bar, talking to a smiling barmaid. I sat at the other end of the bar, and when she stood up and walked toward me, I saw that she was a big woman. Broad shouldered. Ample dimensions everywhere. Gorgeous.
I ordered my beer in Korean and that made her smile and then she came back to see how well I could really speak the language. After a while, she told me that she was twenty-four, divorced with a daughter, and had originally come south with her family when she was an infant during the Korean War. Her hometown was Hamhung, far to the north in that area of the world that the Cold War mapmakers were still painting in red.
The guys at the other end of the bar grew antsy at the lack of
“Loosely. I got a bumper number for you. Ready to write?”
“Shoot.”
“Seven-oh-two MB on the left side and then SP fourteen-twenty-three on the right.”
“A truck?”
“Yeah. I don’t think they’ll be going anywhere tonight. They’d be too conspicuous out after curfew. Probably leave first thing in the morning.”
“I’ll be there.” Ernie sipped on something. Coffee, I figured. “What’re you gonna do tonight?”
“Run the ville.”
“That little pissant village right outside the gate?”
“No. The one where the officers and senior NCOs hang out. Kumchon. About a mile and a half down the road. Tomorrownight, I’ll meet you at the club there at RC4 about six, so you can tell me about the truck tomorrow morning.”
After retreat formation I went to the chow hall and ate supper and then over to the orderly room and signed out on pass. The pass stipulated that I had to be back on compound before the beginning of the midnight-to-four A.M . curfew. I wouldn’t get my overnight pass until after I received my venereal disease orientation from the first sergeant. They’d already given us one at the Repo Depot, but no matter how many times GIs are warned about the dangers, they still end up poking around in places where they shouldn’t.
I flashed my pass and ID to the MP at the gate. There were a few paltry bars in a village across the MSR, that’s where most of the GIs went, and a lot of them were shacked up in the hooches that sprawled off into the surrounding rice paddies. The senior NCOs and officers frequented Kumchon—a real town, not just a GI village. I figured that the number of supplies being diverted indicated more than just a little low-level pilfering, so I flagged down a Kimchi Cab and told the driver to take me to Kumchon.
When we arrived, he asked me where I wanted to get out. I didn’t know, but after about two blocks, downtown Kumchon petered out and we were winding through frozen rice paddies again. I told him to stop, paid him, and wandered back toward the bright lights. The road through town was only two lanes, and the shops on either side were pushed right up against the narrow sidewalks. Kumchon had what all towns have: pharmacies, restaurants, a place for milling rice, a stationery store, and a few bars. I peeked through the windows of the bars but saw only ROK soldiers in uniform, toasting one another and laughing too loud. Finally, at the other end of town, I saw a bar with a little more neon than the others. The sign in Korean said KUM GOM —golden dream. The smaller English lettering beneath it said GOLDEN NIGHT CLUB .
There’s a difference between a golden dream and the goldennightclub, but it looked like the Koreans who worked there weren’t going to let the GIs in on it.
I walked in. It was a big club, bigger than the others, and there were already a few GIs in small clusters sitting at the tables. Korean waitresses—young, pretty girls all—served them, and a few sat at the tables, slapping the groping GI hands and laughing. The music was loud, but not so loud that you couldn’t talk, and it tended to be a little more sedate than what I figured I’d find in the clubs across the street from Camp Edwards.
Two grizzled old NCO types sat at one end of the bar, talking to a smiling barmaid. I sat at the other end of the bar, and when she stood up and walked toward me, I saw that she was a big woman. Broad shouldered. Ample dimensions everywhere. Gorgeous.
I ordered my beer in Korean and that made her smile and then she came back to see how well I could really speak the language. After a while, she told me that she was twenty-four, divorced with a daughter, and had originally come south with her family when she was an infant during the Korean War. Her hometown was Hamhung, far to the north in that area of the world that the Cold War mapmakers were still painting in red.
The guys at the other end of the bar grew antsy at the lack of
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