Red Ice

“My, my, isn’t this interesting, boys and girls. White camouflage over-uniforms and fur hats with big red stars on the front. Considered very chic in Shanghai.”

The troops’ eyes were opening wider and wider. The back of the truck was cloudy from the vapor of their breaths.

“B-b-botha’s beard, what’s this all about?” stammered Kruger, who could restrain himself no more. “Are we doing a rem-m-make of Mao’s Long March?”

“Close, very close,” I replied.

Puckins stepped forward. He threw his arms to the heavens in mock despair.

Keiko gradually assumed the role of cruise director. She participated in training swims. She demanded better food from the KCIA support section and finagled mulberry-paper watercolors out of the guards to brighten our quarters. Irrepressible, she unearthed obscure holidays for us to celebrate at the evening meal. There were special “guest” chefs. Chamonix and Alvarez presided with great success. Kruger and Lutjens’s contributions were utter disasters. She even cajoled Gurung into cooking up a Nepalese meal.

We normally broke from training an hour or two before the evening meal. The small makeshift galley had the only tables and chairs and the best lighting, so everyone gravitated there.

In back, Alvarez was cooking something with beans. To one side, Dravit was poring over schedules and equipment lists. At two joined tables, Lutjens was loudly losing at cards with Puckins. The German kampfschwimmer carried on as if he were at Monte Carlo and the croupier had miscounted his chips. Redoubtable, Chamonix sat in a corner with a book, alone as usual.

“M-m-mama-san, could you stitch up this…?” Kruger started, pulling at his wispy mustache.

“Mama-san? Who you call mama-san?” she responded, her eyes narrowing. She gave a defiant pistonlike flick to her hips. “Mama-san to wa nan da, kisama! I don’t remember ever wiping your nose for you, you with the Okinawa stone-dog face. But maybe I flatten it for you, if you call me “mama-san” one mo’ time. I look old enough to you to be a mama-san?”

“No. No, mum. Actually you l-l-look like a first-class bird, too young to be a commanding officer’s girl…,” the Afrikaner backpedaled.

“Ara ma! So now you think I look like teenie-bopper, ne? Fresh from the cradle, no wisdom, no character.” She whipped her French braid from one shoulder to the other.

“Hey, Kruger, you got the chart for…” Wickersham bellowed as he stormed through the door and into the line of fire.

“You, Petty Officer Wick’sham. This walrus face call me ‘mama-san.’”

“Uh… hum… er… uh-oh. Kruger, you can’t address Shirahama-san that way,” he offered, shifting his heavy shoulders uncomfortably.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t resist the compulsion to be evenhanded. “Then again, Shirahama-san, we’re a pretty small group and he can’t very well go around addressing you as… as…”

His words had run ahead of his thoughts. He fished futilely for a way to complete the sentence.

“Miss Kosong Perimeter, ja?” Lutjens proposed, gleefully adding fuel to the fire.

“Miss Kosong Perimeter,” Wickersham echoed with as pleasing a smile as he could muster with his bridge out. Wickersham could be devastatingly charming. It wasn’t going to help him today.

“Beauty queen name! I carry my own weight. Miss Kosong Perimeter. Korean name. Big joke, very funny.”

“Now, Kei-chan,” I began, trying to smooth things over.

“I carry my own weight around here, don’ I?”

“From where we all stand, you carry it quite well, Kei-chan.”

“Ha, you’ll see. Not just pretty face. Walrus face, Wick’sham, you’ll all see. You should know better.”

She turned and rushed off.

Kruger and Wickersham looked scared.

There was a tension to being part of the group but not participating in the main event.

After supper I took a walk around the complex. I found Chief Puckins at the perimeter fence looking down into the valley.

“You can see lights down there, Skipper. I reckon it’s a real village.” The Texan rubbed his freckled nose with the back of his mitten. “Kids down there, too.

“Don’t really know how I can tell…. I just kind of know. Sometimes I think I can hear them laugh… on the wind, sort of. Sure, that’s a village down there by the creek. Villages always have children.”

“Seems likely,” I replied. There weren’t that many lights. We were fairly close to the DMZ. It might not be a village.

“Some of the Korean kids look kind of like my half-Viet kids.”

His strawlike hair flickered in the cold northerly wind. Children meant a great deal to Puckins. In theory they stood for hope, renewal, a reaffirmation of the larger plan. In practice, they were a very personal touchstone for energy and life.

“Funny, when I’m with my own kids I always know I’m going to have to ship out again, and that doesn’t bother me. It’s just something that’s gotta be done. If I didn’t do it someone else would have to. But I’d do it better because I understand. My kids wouldn’t be anywhere if I hadn’t gone to Vietnam.