A GI Christmas carol (memoir)

On Christmas Eve 1961, on leave from Army advanced infantry training, I found myself in a battered motel room in the sugar town of Clewiston, Florida, hard by the desolate southern shore of the great inland lake of Okeechobee. The fathomless Everglades stretched silently off into the chilly night, their presence washing back though the town and into my room, mysterious and palpable.

My buddy from basic training, who had invited me to stay with him and his family, hadn't arrived yet. As the night slipped toward Christmas, I wept tears of stark homesickness and drank from a pint bottle of whiskey and heard midnight church bells and let the tide of alcohol and melancholy carry me finally into dreamless sleep.

A year later to the day, I was in Korea at Camp Hovey, midway between Seoul and the 38th Parallel. Our battle group was cupped in a long, narrow valley, the surrounding mountains still bald from the artillery fire of the so-called Korean Conflict.

In the mornings, old papa-sans, in black coned hats and padded jackets, A-frames strapped to their backs, would trudge up the face of the mountains, gathering precious firewood. As the sun dropped like a pale ball of fire behind the peaks, they would return to their villages, bent almost double under the impossibly huge loads they carried.

From a distance, they looked like low trees, moving slowly, magically, through the ravines and gullies. They gathered enough wood every day to keep warm through the bitter nights so they could gather more wood the next day. They would endure long after our roaring tanks and coughing deuce-and-a-half trucks and grinding jeeps were rusted memories, no longer profaning the ancient dignity of this Land of the Morning Calm.

Fifty-yard dash

I had a three-day pass over Christmas, and woke before everyone else on the morning of Christmas Eve, anxious to get an early start for my holiday trip to Seoul. Only Chung, our 40-year-old houseboy, was awake in the rear of the Quonset hut, puttering about while a small transistor radio played faint, atonal Korean music.

He smiled at me and put his index finger to his lips and mouthed "good morning." I nodded back and smiled and took my toilet gear and a towel, threw on a field jacket over my long johns, slipped into a pair of rubber Korean slippers, and dashed the 50 icy yards to the latrine to shower and shave.

I dressed in class-A's and the heavy, double-breasted military overcoat and popped into the mess hall for a cup of the wonderful Army coffee. The cooks hadn't finished preparing breakfast, so I grabbed several slices of bacon and tucked them between two pieces of bread and munched my sandwich as I walked to the PX, where the early bus would leave for Seoul. I carried a gym bag"“ an "AWOL bag," in GI parlance"“ with socks, underwear, a cheap Kodak camera and a copy of The Red Badge of Courage inside.

The road was crusted with packed snow, which had frosted over in the night, and my footsteps crunched jauntily as I walked. The morning hum and bustle of the camp hadn't started yet, and I whistled "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen" softly to myself, young and deeply alive, pleased at the prospect of a small adventure in a foreign land. A crow cawed in the distance, and the small, precise cry hung in the still air, the only sound in the world for that long instant.

The cranky, olive drab bus was mostly empty except for a handful of Korean soldiers heading home on leave and Smitty, the company clerk from one of the line companies, and his pregnant Korean wife.

A bunk for the holiday

The bus let us off at the main administration building of the giant, sprawling Eighth Army Headquarters compound in Seoul. A towering fir tree, branches almost drooping with decorations and lights, had been erected at the entrance, and I stopped to admire it before heading inside to find John Parton, now a specialist fourth class I'd met in basic training and had kept in touch with. Parton worked as a crypto analyst and had promised to find me a bunk for my Seoul holiday.

After 20 minutes of tracking through the endless corridors, I found Parton in a cubbyhole at the building's far end, wearing headphones and scratching on a yellow legal pad. We hugged and shook hands.

"You get me a rack, man?" I asked.

"Better. My roomie's on R & R and you'll bunk with me."

"You have a room?" I said. "Jeez, you guys live good down here."

"Nothing but the best, babe. I'm in the headquarters enlisted barracks. I have to work all day, but how about I meet you at the main EM club later on?"

"Great. You know how to get to that big department store downtown? I want to buy some civvies for my R & R in Japan next month, and that PX stuff just doesn't cut it."

"You have to take a cab. Just tell the guy you want to go to Shinsegae. Shin-se-gae. Got it?"

The feel of a village

Even though Seoul was Korea's capitol, it still had the feel of a village on the back streets my cab driver took, blasting his horn incessantly to clear our way though the swarming peddlers and shoppers in the stalls that lined every available foot of curb space. Red-faced kids— their holiday already begun, puffy in padded snowsuits— raced in our wake, yapping dogs at their heels. Baby-backed mama-sans moved from shop to shop, everyone chattering in their guttural singsong native tongue.

The air was heavy with wood and charcoal smoke overlaid with the pungent, omniscient, vegetative tang of the national pickled cabbage dish, kimchi, the hottest food on the planet. At certain points, a faint fecal smell insinuated itself into the unforgettable, evocative mix. It was a stew of humanity in all its thriving, bustling, basic aspects, and I savored it as the cab caromed noisily onward.

At the department store

The Shinsegae department store was roughly equivalent to an American store of the '40s, replete with wooden floors, but with abacuses instead of cash registers. There were no escalators, and I let myself be moved with the flow of the Christmas Eve crowd finally to the men's department on the third floor. GIs were common in Seoul, and I drew only a few curious looks from the shopping throngs.

I picked out a pair of trousers that I wanted to try on and looked around for a changing room, and was suddenly struck motionless. At the next counter, the most beautiful woman I had ever seen before or since was holding up neckties to make a choice. She was literally stunning, in a long black cashmere coat and a grey fur hat, from which her hair, black as the devil's eyes, flowed down to her shoulders.

A breath of perfection

But it was her face that stopped me in mid-motion: slightly heart-shaped, with aristocratic cheekbones, large deep eyes, slightly tucked, a hint of the aquiline in her nose, a perfect bowed mouth and the trace of a cleft in her chin. Every feature came together like a whisper from the divine, a breath of perfection.

She felt my open-mouthed gaze and looked up and smiled at me, and I grew literally lightheaded. What to do? I plunged, taking my camera out of my overcoat pocket and moving toward her. Her eyebrows raised and she moved backward, startled.

"It's OK," I explained, speaking slowly, as if to a deaf person. "I just want to take your picture. You are toksan ipudah," I said, using the Korean words for "very beautiful."

She laughed then, and now my eyebrows went up. "It's OK," she said. "I speak English. It's OK. Go ahead." Her voice was low, almost throaty, moderately accented, but clear as new ice.

She smiled again, good-naturedly, as I aimed and clicked, then wound the film and clicked again, and put the camera back in my pocket, not wanting to push the moment.

"Which tie do you like?" she asked. "It's for my fiancé. He'll be home tomorrow. He's in the army. A lieutenant."

"Uh, that one," I said, pointing to the one in her left hand, with no idea what it looked like.

Like Madame Butterfly

We talked then. She said she wanted to practice her English. Her name was Kim Soo Yun, which means "perfect lotus." She chuckled and said it sounded like something from Madame Butterfly. She lived with her parents in Seoul and was a graduate student in child psychology. She studied English privately and hoped to take a Ph.D. in the U.S. and open a practice in Korea. I got the feeling her family was well off. She conveyed the ease of privilege. Her fiancé, she said, was in banking and was serving his compulsory military duty.

By this time it was past noon, and, still rapt, I asked her if she wanted to have lunch. She said there was a very nice glass-enclosed restaurant on the store's roof where we could look out at the Seoul skyline while we ate. Our conversation had been easy and flowing, and eating together seemed like a natural continuation.

Over lunch, which she ordered with my Western palate in mind, we kept up the rapport, and midway through I asked her how she was going to spend the rest of the day.

"I'm going to a performance of The Messiah," she said. "Would you like to go? It's very long, you know."

"I know," I said. "I'd love to go." I hoped it would last forever.

A cavernous hall

The hall was within walking distance, and was cavernous inside, holding several thousand people. It was unheated, too, and Kim Soo Yun led the way almost to the top of the balcony, where it was warmer. When we were settled, she consulted the program.

"They're doing all three parts," she said. "Would you mind if I left at the end of the second part, after the "'Hallelujah Chorus'? My whole family's coming for dinner and I don't want to be late."

"No, that's fine," I replied. "I have to meet a friend, too."

The curtains parted then and a robed choir of more than a hundred was presented on the bare stage. As the absorbing Handel oratorio moved from darkness to light, my mind moved back a year to that shabby motel room. I glanced at Kim Soo Yun's profile and smiled and shook my head in wonder at the difference.

She noticed and asked, "What?"

"Nothing. Just thinking of something."

As the final majestic notes of the "Hallelujah Chorus" faded, we slipped out and made our way to the street.

"I can get a bus at the next corner," she said. "What about you?"

"I'll take a cab."

Her bus came within minutes, and, before she boarded, she kissed me softly on the cheek and whispered, "Merry Christmas."

And the angels sang.♦


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