Martin Limon: The Iron Sickle

Captain Prevault extended her tour in Korea. She said it was to supervise Miss Ahn’s care, which she did in her spare time. I believed her but I also liked to think that I had something to do with her decision.

Moe Dexter and his MP sycophants knew that Ernie and I had been the ones to flush out the man with the iron sickle but he was still blaming us for the deaths of Collingsworth and the GIs in the signal truck and at AFKN. He didn’t taunt us to our face though, instead he whispered behind our backs. That, I could live with. What bothered me was the change in policy for the ville patrol. The size was doubled to two MPs and two ROK MPs, and a backup jeep with the patrol supervisor, usually Moe Dexter, sat nearby at all times.

It was a Saturday night, just after end-of-month payday, when a fight broke out at the King Club between some 8th Army Honor Guard troops and a handful of infantrymen on three-day pass from the DMZ. Moe and his band of MPs waded into the crowd, batons swinging. Two guys were hospitalized with concussions, another figured to lose an eye.

Ernie and I arrived just as the injured GIs were being wheeled out by medics. A business girl was screaming at Moe, cursing at him for hurting her boyfriend.

“He no do nothing ,” she screeched.

With the back of his hand, Moe slapped the girl hard. She fell backwards and crashed to the ground, her skull bouncing on tile.

Moe started to laugh, as did his buddies.

Maybe it was all I’d been through and maybe it was because I was fed up with Moe Dexter using his official position to exercise his sadism. Before Ernie could stop me, I ran at him.

One of his buddies shouted. Dexter swiveled.

I let loose with a jab. It caught him on the shoulder but Dexter stepped back in time to avoid its full force. Like the bully he was, he seemed surprised anyone would have the temerity to fight him.

A couple of the MPs rushed toward me but Ernie pulled his.45 and waved them off. Cocktail tables were pulled back, out of our way.

Moe bounced on his toes, grinning, moving away from me. I followed, jabbing some more but not with as much crispness as I had at first. I was tired. I didn’t have to fake that, especially considering what I’d been through in the Taebaek Mountains. I even stood still a couple of times, covering up, and let him hit me. Ernie screamed at me to keep moving and to fight back. I didn’t. I let Moe Dexter have his way with me and I could see the gloating in his eyes. He was enjoying himself, savoring his unquestioned dominance and looking forward to the glory of the kill.

The MPs were laughing now and slapping high fives.

Dexter punched me again, and I staggered. He raised his right hand and hopped forward, gleeful at what was about to happen. I backed up. He winged a right at me. I backed up again but this time I planted my rear foot. Moe Dexter let loose with his right, but before it was halfway to me, I jabbed my left directly into his face and his head jerked back, and as I launched my right I saw his eyes blink open, surprise building in his face.

The right landed flush on his forehead, and then I hooked with my left to his ribs and then a left again to the side of his head and finally a cross with my right hand that connected. By the fifth punch I was winging at air. Moe Dexter was down, lying at my feet, his black MP helmet rolling away and finally spinning to a stop next to an overturned cocktail table.

Business girls cheered.

Ernie leaped forward and wiped sweat from my face and spoke into my ear. “Why didn’t you tell me you could do that?”

“You didn’t ask,” I said.

With the graves registration unit, I rode in a two-and-a-half ton truck deep into the Taebaek Mountains. We had plenty of cold weather equipment and tents and diesel space heaters and cases of C-rations but it still took us three days to find the cave. Their faces covered in masks, the recovery GIs pulled the desiccated corpses out of the signal truck. I’d already turned the dog tags over to them.

The men of the 4038th, the Lost Echo, had been missing in action for over twenty years. Now their relatives would know what they’d always known: they were dead. Their families would receive the remains and the dead servicemen would be buried with honors. But some things die hard, as did my memory of C. Winston Barretsford and Corporal Collingsworth and the two GIs in the signal truck and the two dead and one wounded at AFKN. And I remembered Madame Hoh and the man with the iron sickle and I remembered what they’d suffered, and I remembered what they’d been driven to do and I remembered what had caused it.

Captain Prevault told me to try not to think about these things. Someday I’d sleep soundly again, she told me. I made her promise.