Today is my birthday! On this day, a lieutenant has survived five months of hell on earth to turn 24 years old. This morning, an American officer once told me that where he comes from, it is customary to give a large cake to the birthday boy. A birthday cake is obviously absent in the rations stockpile, so Captain Monnathy (I think that is his name) was generous enough to send a chocolate bar as a present. That was the first time I have ever had chocolate, and believe me, the first bite puts even a drip of the purest honey to shame. The captain said it was mainly children who ate chocolate, but to me, chocolate is not a child's treat, but a drug, a dose of creamy barbiturate which, for a few seconds, can numb a mind from war's terror and anguish.
I badly needed this mental release. The road from the deathtraps of Busan Perimeter to the frigid autumn winds of northern Korea has been generous to me, in terms of doling out sheer, blinding pain on both the pus-covered outside and the guilt-ridden inside.
After the Americans landed on Inchon, the ROK army finally broke through the Busan
Perimeter on September 23. Three days later, the platoon happened to come across a burnt-down village 4 kilometers from Suwon. The scene jumped out at my eyes like a starved, bloodied tiger upon a silver of meat: Three trenches, 20 meters long and 2 meters wide, were filled to the rim with mangled, bloated corpses, dozens of villagers shot mercilessly by retreating Reds and their folksy village torched down to cover up the stench of spoiled human meat. Few minutes later, I finally gave in to my stomach churns, then while crouching down, with rations covering my face, I tried hard to cry. But I could not cry. The tiger already scratched out my eyes.
After witnessing such atrocity, I expected myself to viciously hate the Reds for what they have committed upon the Korean people. But how could I? I continuously see soldiers in this very ROK army mowing down captured Reds, with absolutely zero sense of empathy towards their pitiful, imprisoned conditions. Not even innocent civilians are spared: I have heard lately of mobilized brigades rounding up ordinary people, whose only supposed crimes can even come down to talking to a Red, and killing them without even a benefit of a trial.
I keep hearing in the radio of how everything horrible in this war comes down to Red cruelty and godlessness. I disagree. Both sides of the war, whether if one side speaks of workers' paradise or another constitutional rule, can and will descend down into the deepest, ugliest, and most wretched point of humanity. My only hope for myself now if that I would never go down such depths.
I badly needed this mental release. The road from the deathtraps of Busan Perimeter to the frigid autumn winds of northern Korea has been generous to me, in terms of doling out sheer, blinding pain on both the pus-covered outside and the guilt-ridden inside.
After the Americans landed on Inchon, the ROK army finally broke through the Busan
Perimeter on September 23. Three days later, the platoon happened to come across a burnt-down village 4 kilometers from Suwon. The scene jumped out at my eyes like a starved, bloodied tiger upon a silver of meat: Three trenches, 20 meters long and 2 meters wide, were filled to the rim with mangled, bloated corpses, dozens of villagers shot mercilessly by retreating Reds and their folksy village torched down to cover up the stench of spoiled human meat. Few minutes later, I finally gave in to my stomach churns, then while crouching down, with rations covering my face, I tried hard to cry. But I could not cry. The tiger already scratched out my eyes.After witnessing such atrocity, I expected myself to viciously hate the Reds for what they have committed upon the Korean people. But how could I? I continuously see soldiers in this very ROK army mowing down captured Reds, with absolutely zero sense of empathy towards their pitiful, imprisoned conditions. Not even innocent civilians are spared: I have heard lately of mobilized brigades rounding up ordinary people, whose only supposed crimes can even come down to talking to a Red, and killing them without even a benefit of a trial.
I keep hearing in the radio of how everything horrible in this war comes down to Red cruelty and godlessness. I disagree. Both sides of the war, whether if one side speaks of workers' paradise or another constitutional rule, can and will descend down into the deepest, ugliest, and most wretched point of humanity. My only hope for myself now if that I would never go down such depths.
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