| 6 april 2001 APRIL 3 NEW review ! It will make you proud to eat hearty. Really. | close encounters of this kind Jiri Krten is today's guest columnist. He leads an interesting life, and in fact just returned home from Czechoslovakia. Now living in Connecticut with his wife and son, he has one of those jobs that you only hear about on TV. It's governmental, and in a very large, sturdy building. That's about all I can say. Thanks for a totally new point of view, Jiri. See you Monday! I'm convinced that some elderly people can talk forever. There you are, minding your business, when for no particular reason an oldster suddenly interjects himself into your day. You try to be polite, but inwardly you just know that they’ll talk endlessly. So you kinda squirm in your seat, continue to politely nod your noggin once in a while to prove that you haven’t fallen asleep. You momentarily wonder why you didn’t get up and leave the as soon as you realized grandpa was eyeing you as a potential captive audience. That pretty much summed up my train of thought as I found myself fixed in one such grandpa’s steely gaze at our church’s pancake dinner fundraiser the other night. “Is that your boy?,” he asked cheerily. We hardly suspected that Gramps was about to embark on a monologue of epic proportions, but nonetheless acknowledged ownership of our son and sat down next to the man. Just as I plopped down in my seat I noticed that he had something on his mind... something he wanted to say. That “Call me Ishmael” sort of look, like he had a whale of a tale just itching to rear its ugly head. What the heck. I'm always up for a good story. Is your wife Korean? he asks. We tell him that she is. My wife places a premium on politEness to seniors, and flashes a wide smile that just eggs him on. I was over there with the army!, he continues. My wife and I met in Korea, back in 1985. I ask him when he was there. During the war, he says. Suddenly, the mood shifts. I inquire, The Korean War? You fought in the Korean War? He nods in the affirmative. If ever there was a man with a story to relate, we were sitting across the table from him. I was sent there six months after the war started. I was with the field artillery; our job was to survey the terrain for the batteries. I was in the Pusan perimeter when the Chinese just about drove us into the sea. And it was a long swim to Japan! Then MacArthur made the landing at Inchon, and I wound up in Seoul. Incredulous, I ask him, YOU were at Inchon? . MacArthur’s amphibious landing at the port of Inchon probably saved the war for the Americans. Hundreds of miles north of the Pusan perimeter, it was the key to cutting off the enemy’s supply lines. It was also a horrible risk that could have lost the entire invasion fleet if the tides went the wrong way. The enemy fought like mad to keep it out of MacArthur’s hands. All in all, one of the greatest moments in all military history, and here was one frail remnant sitting in front of me, looking me in the eye. He just nodded. I didn’t ask any more questions. He was retelling a tale which had haunted him for these last 50 years or so, which he had probably told his family countless times. About being on a supply train. About the little Korean boy on the train who was selling apples. God only knows how where would have gotten them, without any legs. There were a lot of little kids like that in Korea, that had stepped on mines. It seems that the kid didn’t have permission to be on the train, and that a not very nice MP proceeded to throw him off the train, even though “he wasn’t hurting anyone! He was just selling apples! Not hurting anyone!” Grandpa’s crying now, and I’m not quite sure why until he explains that when the MP threw the kid of the train... it was still moving. Well, all of us yelled at the MP for doing that. And when the train went over a bridge, we threw HIM off! Off of a bridge... God knows what happened to him! , Grandpa is saying. But the tears streaming through the wrinkles on his old face betray his lie. He knows what happened to him. And he’s been waging a battle with that kid and that MP all these years. He showed me his scarred hand, gouged by an enemy bayonet. My leg, too! he stammered. I passed out from the pain... woke up in the hospital! But I think his real scars, the one one’s that still hurt, aren't evident to me and my wife. Men who had gone through combat had gone through hell. A cliche, to be sure, but how else to describe a world gone mad Before we finished that train ride, a guy got shot here , he says, holding a finger to his temple. Snipers! We never saw who shot him! And he’s crying again. I pat his arm, a strange act really, considering I had just met this man. But the realization that I and my wife...all of us, really, owe him more than we can possibly imagine is beginning to sink in It just seems appropriate to comfort him as though he were MY grandpa. By then I’m emotionally exhausted, and really do wish he would just stop, but he continues on, haunted. He recalls how his ship returned him and his comrades home. How all had planned to cheer when they they saw the Golden Gate Bridge. But when they it finally appeared over the horizon, all were silent. You could hear the tears hit the deck , he murmurs. I ask what he did after the war. Not much, I was kind of messed up for a while. Angry at everyone and everything! I’m sorry, Grandpa. Sorry for the disrespect. Sorry about your scars, your hurt, the war. The way we forgot you as though 1950 was half a century ago. For you, it’s still only yesterday. |