(4 of 5)
A G.I. mutters, "Where in hell are the goddam gooks?" meaning the South Korean policemen who should be here to handle the refugees. ("Gook" is the universal G.L word for any & all Koreans.) The thin file of soldiers and the still, dumb hundreds of refugees stand in the road facing each other. Then the moment is broken, the danger passes. A sergeant walks up to the old man with the stick, puts a hand on his shoulder and wheels him around, not roughly. The women break into a quick protesting chatter, and some of them move, as though blindly, down the road of their choice, toward us. The old man lifts his stick and waves imperatively, and slowly the column turns and the people take the road that, quite evidently, leads to nowhere for them.
All morning they come by the hundreds down the valley, some on the road and some across the paddies. Around 8 o'clock a detachment of South Korean policemen turns up, and an electric change comes over the people. Now, as the police approach and halt them and order them to stand, and then to move on, they leap at every command with a livid and unmistakable fear.
"If You Have to ..." It is midnight and all around the hills are astir. Here a sharp burst of small-arms fire, there the flashing life & death of an American shell, searching out the enemy who we know are gathering within 5,000 yards of this command post. One of the field telephones rings, an officer of the staff picks it up, listens a moment and says, "Oh, Christ, there's a column of refugees, three or four hundred of them, coming right down on B company." A major in the command tent says to the regimental commander, "Don't let them through."
And of course the major is right. Time & again, at position after position, this silent approach of whitened figures has covered enemy attack. Finally the colonel says, in a voice racked with wretchedness, "All right, don't let them through. But try to talk to them, try to tell them to go back."
"Yeah," says one of the little staff group, "but what if they don't go back?"
"Well, then," the colonel says, as though dragging himself toward some pit, "then fire over their heads."
"O.K.," an officer says, "we fire over their heads. Then what?"
The colonel seems to brace himself in the semidarkness of the blacked-out tent.
"Well, then, fire into them if you have to. If you have to, I said."
An officer speaks into the telephone, and the order goes across the wire into the dark hills.
We Must Talk to the People. Another afternoon, another place. The way lies through an area into which the U.S. Marines have just moved. It's good to see them, beautifully equipped and so obviously well trained. Once again I see refugees on this road. But there's a difference. Our own men, marines, surround them. As the jeep comes toward them I witness something of an advance in American communication with the people of the country. A marine is passing a mine detector over the clothing and packs of the refugees. Any metal—a rifle barrel, a pistol, a clip of ammunition, maybe the parts of a radio—will presumably be spotted by the detector. Anyhow, it is better than guns and the policemen whom I have seen at work.