Free The Wandering Ghost by Martin Limon Page B

bar district.
    Most of the GIs had already left. A mandatory PT formation was held at 0630 and it was now almost 0700 hours. In the distance, on the other side of the main gate of Camp Casey, we could hear huge groups of GIs doing jumping jacks while they shouted martial cadences.
    The narrow walkway we were following bled onto the main drag of the bar district and soon Ernie and I were walking past the shuttered facades of the Oasis Club, the Montana Club, and finally the Silver Dragon Club. Then we crossed the railroad tracks, went through another narrow alley, and came out on the four-lane wide Main Supply Route. Down the road about a half mile we could see the illuminated arch of the 2nd Division main gate. Beyond that, the twenty-foot-high MP, still standing at the ready, still observing everything. When I thought of what we would face at the PMO today, after the Weatherwax incident last night, I groaned inwardly.
    Ernie seemed completely unconcerned.
    A unit of GIs emerged from the main gate. All of them wore sneakers, gray training pants, gray sweatshirts, and red woolen caps pulled down low over their ears. All fifty or so men ran in unison, a senior sergeant shouting out the cadence. One man ran in front of the formation holding the unit flag. The guide-on, he’s called. We could tell by the colors they wore, and by the unit designation on the flag, that they were combat engineers.
    “Where are the MPs?” Ernie asked.
    “Don’t be so anxious to see them,” I replied.
    We trotted across the MSR until we reached the southwestern corner of Camp Casey. A ten-foot-high cement-block wall on our right, topped with concertina wire, stretched along the sidewalk all the way to the main gate. Ernie and I walked it quietly, both lost in our own thoughts.
    Me, I was thinking about Jeannie. She was a slender woman, and tall for a Korean, but sweet and gentle and considerate. I’d had some good times since I’d been in country but last night had been one of the best.
    Ernie heard it first.
    “What the hell’s that?” he asked.
    It was the typical shouted cadence of a military unit doing its morning physical-training run. The sergeant shouted something out and the men answered as if in one voice, almost like singing. But this sound was close and loud and garbled. Ernie and I glanced around, unable to figure where the noise was coming from.
    It couldn’t be the combat engineer unit. They’d run off in the other direction.
    And then I understood. It came from the narrow alleyway we’d just walked out of. It had been barely wide enough for Ernie and me to walk abreast, certainly not big enough for a company formation four-squads wide. But that’s where the sound was coming from, and that’s why Ernie and I were having trouble locating it. The narrow alley concentrated the sound, causing it to reverberate between its brick walls. And then the sound erupted onto the MSR and spread out every which way.
    “Why in hell did they go down there?” Ernie asked.
    “They came out of the main gate,” I said. “We know that. Then they must’ve entered the village and taken a left down the road running along the railroad tracks.”
    “So close to the ville?”
    Ernie meant that there’d be a lot of civilians woken up by their shouting and the pounding of their feet. In the States, that’s never allowed. Even in Seoul, it’s frowned upon.
    Now it was my turn to shrug. “This is Division.”
    “But why turn up that narrow alleyway?” Ernie asked. “They’ve hardly run a half mile.”
    I didn’t know. But the question was answered almost as soon as it was out of Ernie’s mouth. The guide-on of the unit, holding the unit flag at port arms, emerged from the mouth of the alley. He wore a green cap pulled down low over his ears, the same gray sweat pants, same gray sweat shirt, same cheap sneakers. But the realization of the meaning of the designation on the flag fluttering in the breeze smacked Ernie and me at the same