The Ville Rat

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We left the Main Supply Route and turned onto the two-lane blacktop that led toward the village of Sonyu-ri. The road dropped off precipitously and we both held onto the overhead roll bar as the jeep bounced downhill. When we reached ground level, the tire chains caught and began to crunch reassuringly on freshly fallen snow. Still, even though the time was already an hour past dawn, visibility was poor. Ernie switched on the headlights.

“Are you sure you’re using the right map there, pal?”

“Official army map,” I told him, slapping the folded sheet.

“What’s the date on it?”

I aimed the beam of my flashlight and checked. “Twenty years ago.”

“Right at the end of the Korean War,” Ernie said. “This area north of Seoul has changed since then. Half the roads probably aren’t even listed.”

And half the villages, I thought. With two million dead out of a population of twenty million at the end of the war, the Republic of Korea was only now beginning to recover. And they were still nervous about another North Korean invasion. With 700,000 bloodthirsty Communist soldiers on the far side of the Demilitarized Zone, just a few miles from here, who could blame them? On the trip from Seoul, we’d passed two ROK Army checkpoints and driven around a mile-long row of armor-blocking cement pilings, and rolled beneath tank traps set to explode if the northern hordes ever decided to come south again.

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