No Hero, Part 3

Good Army chow on Fort Leavenworth was a burrito from the Taco Bell outside the Post Exchange. It wasn’t the only food on the Fort, but it certainly tasted the best, and it had refillable fountain drinks, which was the real draw for you. Unfortunately, it being lunchtime, everyone else on the Fort had the same idea at roughly the same

time, and upon arriving you realized that the long line that stretched out of the food court belonged to people trying to get their grub from Taco Bell. You waited in line for a moment before deciding that you’d wait the line out for a bit and hope it died down to some manageable length.

You sat at a table equipped to handle four, and as the people in line for Taco Bell got their food and looked for places to sit, the available seating in the food court became scarce. Two QRF soldiers came out of the cloud of people still waiting to get their food and scanned the available seating until they saw you, sitting alone at a table with three empty chairs. They locked on and made a beeline for your table.

You recognized Barnapel and Hillcrest because they hadn’t removed their combat harnesses like you had. They’d hung their Kevlar helmets on their canteens by the chinstraps. They sat without asking permission to sit, greeted you noisily and commenced tearing into the paper that wrapped their food.

"What do you think of the training?" Barnapel asked around a mouthful of burrito.

You shrugged and said it wasn’t so bad.

"Yeah, they could have us swing them goddamned rifles in the sawdust pit, like did at Knox," Hillcrest said. "I fucking hate sawdust," he added after a moment.

Barnapel nodded vigorously. "We had gravel and sand pits in basic. God, that was shitty," he said.

You told them the Football Field was much better than gravel, sand or sawdust.

"Grass ain’t so bad," Barnapel agreed. It was quiet for a few minutes as Barnapel and Hillcrest ate. The line for food hadn’t gotten any shorter, it was just as long as it had been or longer, despite the people walking away from the counter with little plastic bags or black plastic trays. The smell of food, Barnapel’s seven-layer burrito especially, was making you very hungry.

"You know what? I hope those protestors get rowdy," Hillcrest said as he wiped his mouth with a brown paper napkin.

"I guess I do too," Barnapel said, "I’ve been itching for a fight lately."

"It’s not just that I want to fight, I do, it’s more that I want to do my part," Hillcrest said. "I want to fight the war at home." Barnapel nodded along.

You pointed out that most of the people at the protest would be Americans just like them; that they were the citizens you soldiers were supposed to protect.

Hillcrest shrugged, said, "It’s like the President says, ‘If you’re not with us, you’re against us.’ That’s the kind of logic I can get behind."

Barnapel crumpled his food wrapper and jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the door. He and Hillcrest rose and made their way to the trash to dump their trays. You stood with them and made your way to the food line that had shrunk a little as the lunch crowd sated themselves. Hillcrest flashed you a peace sign on his way to the door, Barnapel in tow.

As you stood in line waiting to order, you thought of the protests you’d seen outside the gates of the Army base in downtown Seoul. You were crossing a walking bridge over a normally busy street, but below on the street the weekly protest had closed down the road. Seven hundred to a thousand people had been in the street in front of the gate with flags written alternately in Hangul and English. Their chants were all English, of the "Americans Go Home" variety.

What had always amazed you about the protests you’d seen in the past was that several ranks of police clad entirely in dark blue ringed the entire crowd. The front rank of police had heavy looking black helmets on, and thick plastic riot shields. The second rank was dressed in body armor and the black helmets, but they carried baton that were almost five and half feet long. You jokingly remarked that these batons were "William clubs," the more adult version of the "Billy club." The other ranks were armed with shorter batons and riot equipment, but they served more as supports for the front two ranks who were working hard to keep their footing as the crowd surged against them.

On this particular occasion, the bigger than normal crowd sloshed inside the big, unwavering blue square like water in a glass. In the center of the crowd a man stood atop a white van painted with various slogans in Hangul. He was shouting his native language into a megaphone and waving his free arm. You were pretty sure he was chanting something, because he would shout for a few seconds and wait for the crowd to shout back at him. His voice was distorted by the amplification of the megaphone and the crowd roared with one voice when he paused.

The man on the van was reaching a fever pitch with his chant, hardly waiting for the crowd to roar back at him before he launched into the next chant. The roar from the crowd became a steady sound, constant like the sound of water crashing into rocks. The crowd began to throw things into the ranks of policemen; they looked like water bottles, but you were far enough away that you weren’t sure what they were. The thrown objects fell into the policemen, disappeared between the blue ranks or bounced off of the heavy plastic shields.

The response from the police was quick. On all sides, the men with shields advanced, and the second rank, the rank with the five-foot batons advanced with them, striking between the shields at those nearest them in the crowd. The other ranks set their shoulders against the backs of the men in front of them and pushed them forward. The crowd began to panic, and fighting broke out between the police and the protestors. Men from the crowd tried to leap over the men with shields, only to be knocked out of the air by the long clubs. Those who didn’t want to jump threw themselves at the shields, trying to throw back or create a gap in the line through which to escape. These men braced their bodies against the shield where the long batons had a hard time dislodging them. Others grappled with the batons themselves, trying to wrench them from the hands of the police.

The man on the van looked like he was trying to stop the fighting, his hand gestures were frantic, his voice pleading. Something hit him in the head, you didn’t see what it was, but all of a sudden the man on the van held his face and lost his balance. He fell flat on the roof of the van and was pulled down by some of the protestors.

A uniformed MP came along and ushered people off of the bridge. A man with a digital camera pointed at the protest took a badge out his pants pocket and showed it to the MP, who left him alone. You hustled to cross the bridge, and from the other side you came to have a better view. You stood several hundred feet to the rear of the protest. Thick white smoke now hung amidst the crowd, and shouts and cries of panic rose from the shroud. The wind shifted slightly and the smoke began to waft your way. It had a spicy taste that clung to the back of your throat, and your skin started to itch. You recognized the smell as CS gas, commonly referred to as tear gas. It looked as though the police in the third and fourth ranks had been allowed into the middle of the square, past the police with shields, and were attempting to arrest and pacify as many people as they could.

"Sir, can I help you?" the woman at the register asked.

You ordered two Burrito Supremes and a fountain drink. While you dropped ice cubes into your cup and filled it with soda, you tried to imagine yourself in the shoes of the Korean policemen attacking and subduing their own countrymen. They were all as educated as you were; at the very least they had a few semesters in college under their belts. Did they have the same kind of misgivings in their bellies as were kicking around in yours? A sip from your drink brought you to the conclusion that of all of those policemen, at least one of them, even alone among his peers, had to wonder at the actions he was forced to take. At least you hoped there was at least one. You let your body relax a little, a smile played at your lips. An image of you and the anonymous Korean policeman fighting hordes of cartoonishly exaggerated enemies back to back played itself in your mind. Behind the counter a harried looking young man with a paper hat called the number on your receipt, and you grabbed your food off the counter and headed for the door.

The afternoon passed much as the morning had, with higher temperatures and more humidity. After being released at the close of business, sweaty and tired, you made your way to your room for a hot shower, some clean clothes and the welcoming embrace of catatonic slumber.