The Wandering Ghost Read Online Free Page A
Author: Martin Limon
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective
headquarters compound of the 2nd Infantry Division.
We spent the morning visiting the chow halls and the administrative buildings and the barracks that had been home sweet home to the missing Corporal Jill Matthewson. After inventorying her personal effects, we realized that one complete set of fatigues had disappeared from her room, along with Jill’s MP helmet and her combat boots and her army-issue pistol and her web gear.
Why had Jill packed her full MP regalia? Most GIs, when they go AWOL, don’t take their uniforms. After all, the whole point of bugging out is to flee all things military.
We interviewed the “house girl.” Actually, she was a middle-aged Korean woman allowed on post to clean and do laundry for the female soldiers billeted on Camp Casey. She told us that Jill had also packed a tote bag full of clothes, a hair brush, and other things a woman needs. But not much. Only one pair of soft-soled shoes was missing and a couple of blouses and a pair of blue jeans and a skirt. The rest of Jill’s civilian clothes and uniforms were lined up and pressed, hanging neatly inside her open wall locker.
What we did not find, no matter how hard we looked, was the birthday card Jill’s father had sent her when she was five years old.
In ten more days, when Corporal Jill Matthewson had been gone a total of thirty days, she would cease being merely AWOL, absent without leave; she would be dropped from the 2nd Division roles as a deserter. She wouldn’t be facing local punishment anymore; she’d be facing a court-martial. Time in a federal penitentiary would not only be likely but almost a sure thing.
Could Jill have jumped on an airplane and returned to the States?
Not possible. South Korea is a tightly controlled society. Jill’s name and service number—along with the names and service numbers of every AWOL American GI in country—was on a list at the single international airport in Korea: Kimpo, outside of Seoul. The Korean authorities check such lists carefully. Nobody enters or leaves the Republic without the Koreans being damn sure that the person is who they say they are—and that they’re not on any watch list. Another way out of the country is by sea from Pusan, but that embarkation point is watched just as closely as the airport at Kimpo. After that, the only way out of South Korea is across the Demilitarized Zone. Trying to cross the DMZ would be suicide. You’d either be blown up by a landmine or shot by a North Korean soldier.
Jill Matthewson was still in Korea, of that we could be sure. Maybe dead, maybe alive. But still here.
2
F ootsteps echoed off distant walls.
The 2nd Infantry Division Central Issue Facility was an open warehouse as big as an aircraft hangar. Far overhead, above gnarled wooden rafters, rays of sunlight fought their way through soot-smeared skylights. The entire facility reeked of damp canvas and decayed mothballs. A cement-floored walkway was lined by square plywood bins, each bin filled to overflowing with steel pots, web gear, helmet liners, wool field trousers, fur-lined parkas, ear-flapped winter headgear, rubber boots, inflatable cold-weather footgear, ammo pouches, and everything the well-dressed combat soldier needs to operate in the country once known as Frozen Chosun.
Ernie and I had decided to interview Jill Matthewson’s roommate, a supply clerk who worked here at the CIF. From what people told us about her, she’d be worth talking to. The opposite, they said, of Jill Matthewson.
The facility was quiet. No troops were lined up to receive their initial issue of combat gear. Off to our left, stuffed into wooden shelving twenty or thirty feet high, was more army-issue equipment. This time, an enormous pile of metal canteen cups. In a back office, we heard voices. Ernie and I strode toward a buzzing fluorescent bulb.
Sitting at a desk, shoulder-length blonde hair hanging limply, sat a woman in wrinkled fatigues. Although she was young, her face seemed to
We spent the morning visiting the chow halls and the administrative buildings and the barracks that had been home sweet home to the missing Corporal Jill Matthewson. After inventorying her personal effects, we realized that one complete set of fatigues had disappeared from her room, along with Jill’s MP helmet and her combat boots and her army-issue pistol and her web gear.
Why had Jill packed her full MP regalia? Most GIs, when they go AWOL, don’t take their uniforms. After all, the whole point of bugging out is to flee all things military.
We interviewed the “house girl.” Actually, she was a middle-aged Korean woman allowed on post to clean and do laundry for the female soldiers billeted on Camp Casey. She told us that Jill had also packed a tote bag full of clothes, a hair brush, and other things a woman needs. But not much. Only one pair of soft-soled shoes was missing and a couple of blouses and a pair of blue jeans and a skirt. The rest of Jill’s civilian clothes and uniforms were lined up and pressed, hanging neatly inside her open wall locker.
What we did not find, no matter how hard we looked, was the birthday card Jill’s father had sent her when she was five years old.
In ten more days, when Corporal Jill Matthewson had been gone a total of thirty days, she would cease being merely AWOL, absent without leave; she would be dropped from the 2nd Division roles as a deserter. She wouldn’t be facing local punishment anymore; she’d be facing a court-martial. Time in a federal penitentiary would not only be likely but almost a sure thing.
Could Jill have jumped on an airplane and returned to the States?
Not possible. South Korea is a tightly controlled society. Jill’s name and service number—along with the names and service numbers of every AWOL American GI in country—was on a list at the single international airport in Korea: Kimpo, outside of Seoul. The Korean authorities check such lists carefully. Nobody enters or leaves the Republic without the Koreans being damn sure that the person is who they say they are—and that they’re not on any watch list. Another way out of the country is by sea from Pusan, but that embarkation point is watched just as closely as the airport at Kimpo. After that, the only way out of South Korea is across the Demilitarized Zone. Trying to cross the DMZ would be suicide. You’d either be blown up by a landmine or shot by a North Korean soldier.
Jill Matthewson was still in Korea, of that we could be sure. Maybe dead, maybe alive. But still here.
2
F ootsteps echoed off distant walls.
The 2nd Infantry Division Central Issue Facility was an open warehouse as big as an aircraft hangar. Far overhead, above gnarled wooden rafters, rays of sunlight fought their way through soot-smeared skylights. The entire facility reeked of damp canvas and decayed mothballs. A cement-floored walkway was lined by square plywood bins, each bin filled to overflowing with steel pots, web gear, helmet liners, wool field trousers, fur-lined parkas, ear-flapped winter headgear, rubber boots, inflatable cold-weather footgear, ammo pouches, and everything the well-dressed combat soldier needs to operate in the country once known as Frozen Chosun.
Ernie and I had decided to interview Jill Matthewson’s roommate, a supply clerk who worked here at the CIF. From what people told us about her, she’d be worth talking to. The opposite, they said, of Jill Matthewson.
The facility was quiet. No troops were lined up to receive their initial issue of combat gear. Off to our left, stuffed into wooden shelving twenty or thirty feet high, was more army-issue equipment. This time, an enormous pile of metal canteen cups. In a back office, we heard voices. Ernie and I strode toward a buzzing fluorescent bulb.
Sitting at a desk, shoulder-length blonde hair hanging limply, sat a woman in wrinkled fatigues. Although she was young, her face seemed to
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