Ernie and Strange had been taken into custody at the MP checkpoint and been shackled all night in the back of a three-quarter-ton truck, the military equivalent of a paddy wagon. When they were finally released, Ernie found me and said, “What in the hell happened to you?”
Katie Byrd Worthington sat next to me on a wooden bench that had been set up near the Command Post GP tent. She was scribbling furiously into her notebook.
Strange, standing behind Ernie, looked around anxiously.
“The medics took your girlfriend to a hospital near Pohang,” I told him. “She’s only wounded.”
For once he didn’t quibble about the designation “girlfriend.”
“What’s the name of the hospital?” he asked.
“Don’t even,” Katie Byrd said, still writing on the pad propped on her knee. “As we speak, the KNPs have her under arrest. The best thing you can do for her is hire a good lawyer.”
Ernie noticed the military coroner’s van.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Mr. Shin,” I said. “And a couple of his thugs.”
“That’s the civilian body count,” Katie added. “They’ve finally been cleared away. It took the army forever to get that van out here. The bodies have just been lying in the sand, covered by ponchos.”
“Who else?” Ernie asked again.
“Two marines,” I said. “The wounded have already been airlifted out.”
“Christ,” Ernie said. “That’s it?”
I looked at Katie. She stopped writing and stared directly at Ernie. “One more,” she said. “Not a Marine but a soldier. US Army. Transportation Corps. You know her.”
“Her?” Ernie asked.
Katie Byrd glanced down at her notes. “Corporal Phyllis A. Hurley, late of the 877th Field Transportation Company.”
In the silence, I asked the question I’d been wanting to ask. “Why, Katie? Why did you all come here?”
She took a deep breath and started to talk. “After that barbaric display at Camp Long, the gals were pretty down in the dumps, especially Phyllis. Maybe I shouldn’t have done it, but I told them about this amphibious landing this morning and how you guys were worried there might be trouble. Phyllis was on it first. She wanted to go. Some of the others were worried about being charged with AWOL along with their other problems, but in the end they decided to grab their three-quarter-ton truck and make it over here to help in any way they could. We drove up here, and once we talked our way past the ROK Army checkpoints, we paid a farmer to let us hide in his barn, leaving his prize ox out in the cold all night. And then we stood by, waiting for the Marine Corps to arrive.”
It made sense that the ROK Army wouldn’t have stopped them. They were looking for North Korean commandos, not a unit of American females.
“She died a hero,” Katie said, staring down at her notebook.
For once, Ernie agreed with her.
Katie kept staring at her notebook for a long time, until finally she dog-eared a page and folded it shut.