HERMANN HESSE, The Glass Bead Game
It all started sometime in mid-August. A buddy of mine let me borrow a book. Usually such a favor results in nothing more than a good read at best; or, on the contrary, you get bored a dozen or so pages in, and try thinking of reasons why you couldn’t get into it so you don’t let them down too hard upon returning it prematurely; or you keep it for a while, in the bathroom, hoping it will serve some purpose, any purpose, before you finally return it much later so that they forgot they’d even lent it to you, and perhaps forgot what had ever moved them to push it on you in the first place. Not so with The Secrets of Inchon. Eugene Clark USN writes an engaging and intimate narrative of “The Most Daring Covert Mission of the Korean War.” From his makeshift camp on Yonghung-do Island with a couple of ROK military men to assist him, Clark explores the Flying Fish Channel and other sea-approaches of Inchon, as well as the tides, the seawall, the vast mud flats and the personnel and weaponry of the invading communist forces from the north. Meanwhile, he has to repel on what seems like a daily basis the Red infiltrators, some of whom simply walk over the mud flats at low tide from adjacent Daebu-do Island. He’s been given a mere two weeks to recon the sea and landscape in preparation for the amphibious landing of the UN Forces September 1950. If successful, he may play a historic role in liberating the south; fail, and, well, die.
The only complaint I have is that Clark and his editors didn’t include any maps in the book whatsoever. Anything would have helped, even a crudely hand-drawn map of the island would have been nice; perhaps a legend to indicate where they set up their CP, and where the guard posts were located--and the battle scenes--would have been useful. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be a guidebook; it is first and foremost a war narrative. And his description of place is thorough enough to deduce locations of events with some certainty.
As you might be thinking, moments after finishing the read, I actually got on-line and began studying Yonghung-do Island and plotting my own approach to that historical place as an indifferent observer in peace time. It was somewhat tough going, but Google came through as usual (little did I know, the recent geographical map of the Seoul subway system includes Yongheung, though not connected, which is remarkable not only for how vast that system has become, but also for how close Clark and his comrades operated to the hostile mainland.
I called a couple friends but they were busy and the boy had school, so I set out alone at 10am on a Saturday morning early October. I estimated a 2-3 hour drive from Wonju and sure enough around 12:15pm I reached the man-made isthmus connecting Daebu-do to the mainland. My buddy Earl whom I said had inspired the journey in lending me the book, was also with me in the spirit of smoking cessation. He is one of these guys always battling the addiction, wearing the patch, chewing the gum, you name it. I hadn’t smoked in nearly two months, cold turkey, as I crossed the bridge onto Yongheung around one o’clock on a partly sunny afternoon. The first thing I did however was stop at the Family Mart on the edge of town and buy, among other provisions, a pack of Mild Sevens. Leaving the store, I gazed out at the mud, deep dark dank green mud, with egrets and herons out there for a late lunch. It must have been a mile or more to the water.
I had packed for an overnight, and I am not one who often stays in cheap motels. In other words, I packed a tent, pots and pans, a sleeping bag, pork chops, oatmeal, the works. I figured if I’m going to disturb this passage of history, I’d better approach it the same way they did—by rougin’ it.
My first order of business was to find the “Marine Battle Scene Monument” (Hae Goon Jeok Jeon Bi) which I noticed on Google maps. I had a bad feeling about it because according to my calculations, this was not the place I had reckoned the “Last Stand” or any fighting to have taken place. As I drove on, I soon realized that the island was even smaller than I had anticipated, so I over shot the little peninsula first try. After doubling back, I took a right onto what I figured was the right area. Unfortunately, after driving through mud and pot holes up onto the promontory, there was nothing to find except fishing houses. I descended the other side, and came to a marshy low land with a few little construction sheds built of corrugated metal. I got out and asked one of the workers if he knew where the monument was. He had no idea.
I went back up over the hill, keeping an eye out for any signs of a trail or a road that might lead me to my destination, but nothing appeared. I went back to the east side of the little peninsula. This time I got out of the car and walked up a grassy road to a good-sized garden, thinking it could be up there. There was a middle-aged couple—tourists—picking something. It must have been wild for the land was fallow. I high-stepped my way through the weeds and vines before finding a little dry rivulet on the other side. Dense woods covered the hill facing me, not the sort of place you’d find a monument. I shot down to the beach. It was lovely, rocky shores with millions of oyster shells segregated into their own piles and as many flat stones and pebbles. A few fishermen were casting into the surf, and a handful of tourists walking out on a sidewalk-pier. I headed for the rocks to the west and climbed them around the bend of bluff, gazing up now and then to see if there was a plaque of some sort. The rocks were of various colors and kinds, some jagged limestone and shale, others sandstone and sharp. I leaned my right hand gently on one, gazing around its breadth and it pierced a hole in my middle finger. I carried on a bit further and found a small stony beach with a natural altar in the middle of it. I approached and got down on one knee and muttered a prayer. The sun emerged from behind the cloud and I took it to be a sign. I passed one fisherman on the way back and asked him if he knew about the monument and he said no.
When I got back to the beach with the tourists who’d by now been chased back a ways by the rising tide, I said to myself with a laugh, “I came all this way just to cut my finger open…” Then I recalled the T.S. Eliot verses which go, “and what you thought you came for is only a shell, a husk of meaning from which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled if at all. Either you had no purpose or the purpose is beyond the end you figured and is altered in fulfillment." Looking at the poem now, I realize this stanza is about places (real and metaphysical) of the “world’s end” and the “sea jaws,” according to Eliot, are one of them.
Back on the road again, I realized I had bought nothing on my list of things to buy my first time at the Family Mart, so I went back for charcoal and gloves, batteries and Zippo fluid. Inside, I saw an old man of about 65 or so. I did the math and reckoned he would have been 6 had he lived here during the war. I kept my mouth shut. Instead I teased the little boy in front of me: “how old are you?” “seven” “huh? Me too,” I joked. He smiled; the young lady clerk laughed. I drove around the southeastern edge of the island which I read as the Ferry launch. It seems so today as well. There were restaurants and shops , families and kitsch too, but I didn’t see a tourist center. Don’t know if they’d have been able to help me anyhow. I was on the brink of the most invigorating part of the day: the search for Lieutenant Clark’s Command Post or “CP”.
I headed up the coastal road, on the east coast. With my window down to let the ocean breeze in, I rolled by some old folks singing and dancing, in revelry, loaded drunk and having a grand old time at picnic tables outside of a sushi restaurant. I couldn’t help but think they had a damn good reason to be celebrating: they are survivors; and as for those who didn’t make it, tip your makkoli cup a few times for them.
Soon the skyline of Inchon came into view. The new skyscraper they built as the center of the new Industrial Zone dominated the picture—bold and space-age. And this is where the Reds crossed in junks on the night of September 14th, to recapture this little feckin’ island, while Destroyers and Battle Ships crept up over the Yellow sea hours away from pummeling the port city to bits.
When I got to Shimpo Beach, which it’s safe to say, is where Clark and co. launched their expeditions to Inchon under the cover of darkness, I opted to shoot up the wooded hill behind the beach instead, hoping to find the promontory where the guards (young Korean teenagers) kept watch at all hours for invaders. The pavement soon gave way to reddish dirt and mud with potholes and craters three feet deep full of muddy water to negotiate. My little Matiz managed surprisingly well. Meanwhile, it occurred to me that they did not have motor vehicles when they were here. Every run made back to the village with the drunken revelers, or to the Ferry landing was done by walking, row-boat, or at desperate times, by swimming. I found a secluded area which I thought might be good for camping. It was, albeit, near the crest of the hill, but it was protected somewhat by a bank on the side of the road. It wasn’t the lookout I’d had in mind (unless it was tree-less back in 1950), for it offered no view east towards Daebu-do where the Reds were coming from. It did however avail a nice view of Shimpo Bay, Muui-Do to the north and Inchon 10 miles or so north-northeast. I kept the spot in mind nonetheless and headed back down to scope out the beach.
The first thing I noticed as I parked in front of the beach was the trees, lovely little pines that weaved and wandered in every direction on the dunes. I parked under one of them, and got out of the car, taking one last look at the photos in The Secrets of Inchon before embarking on the search for the CP. One word that Clark used to describe it, a word I have since fallen in love with, is “scarp”, or escarpment. Apparently they pitched their tent on top of the scarp on one end of the beach. Which end, we may never be sure. Anyhow, I stepped right smack in the middle of the stony beach and, looking out, I noticed the headland on the left looked eerily similar to the headland in the photo of Lieutenant Clark walking topless, head down, with his back to the sea, one hand in pocket, the other as though he’s about to roll a pair of dice. The photo captures both his pensive mood which pervades the mission and the look of strain he was under for the entire two weeks without respite.
Clearly the natives were restless, as a terrific wind was blowing in off the seas, in constant gusts of 20 or 30 miles per hour.
First, I headed east. I reached the end of the beach where a couple small groups of fishermen were cooking their lunch. Behind them was a slope about 30 feet high. It was covered with grass, underbrush, and precariously leaning trees. It showed signs of erosion. As you might assume, a restaurant had been built, so unfortunately, the top of the slope was not accessible to the sightseer. Anyhow, I took a couple photos and imagined the CP/Camp as being tucked away in there. Now I realize, after reading the section again, that depending on your definition of “scarp”, the camp could have been set up anywhere back behind the beach and away from the water. The promontories on either end of the beach, were simply used as look-outs. Following this line of reasoning, where exactly they set up their CP is a needle in a haystack. Perhaps a military specialist would read the land better and could make an educated guess.
Next I headed west to the other end of the beach. Along the way, I saw a Korean man, maybe 60 years old, walking by himself under the pines. He looked at me as if to say, “What are you doing here?” I was certainly a curiosity, the only white man on the whole island, I’m sure. He looked lonesome and perhaps drunk. I had half a mind to chat him up, pick his brain, but figured he wouldn’t be in the know, and plus I was alone and didn’t want to risk being followed. I took a couple pictures at the other end of the beach, and then walked up a concrete hill, where a couple of guest houses had been built, one of them called “Grace.” There were noisy parties of young people cooking outside and drinking. I shot up the road which led to the top of the promontory and looked out over the sea. It was, as Clark writes, about a 100 foot drop and quite likely where one of the guards given “heavy clubs and one grenade to take care of any single enemy arrivals” would have been stationed. “These would make ideal lookout points,” writes Clark, “for both east and west approaches.”
After I’d had enough of the beach, and come to feel quite sure that I’d located and walked around the area that I was most interested in finding, I was famished. I decided to go set up a camp of my own and BBQ some pork chops. I got back in the car and drove back up the muddy hill. This time there was a lady stuck in a mud puddle. I offered to help her partner push, but he waved me on. I decided near the top to get out and venture down the ravine to the water. There was a somewhat gentle descent in a little rivulet that made a trail. At the bottom, I jumped down four feet to a tiny beach covered with white shells, oyster shells, and what not. It was quaint and peaceful and entirely secluded. I pulled the cigarettes out of my breast pocket, packed them, and opened them. I lit one and it was perversely relieving yet, it tasted horribly and hurt my throat. After a couple more drags I put it out, and littered the damn thing.
I started a fire in the grill as soon as I’d unloaded everything. The wind was much calmer than it was on the beach, but still a bit of a nuisance. I am not the best outdoorsman by any stretch, but I do pride myself on being bold, if not plain stupid, in the “wild”. For instance I was nearly crushed by the rubber tree that an elephant in the Thai jungle decided to snap right above me as a warning that I’d come too close. I was nearly pelican food after descending to a ledge with a 200 foot drop to the brine that didn’t offer much of a way back up on a bluff in Santa Cruz. Anyhow, I got the tent set up, but one of the poles is in need of a replacement and I had forgotten the stakes! I tried to ground the son of a bitch with rocks by placing them on four corners, but that didn’t work at all. Brittle, clay-like rocks, toppled upon each other, crumbled. Basically I sat on a log, cooking pork and potatos, to eat with rice and kimchi, meanwhile placing bets with myself that the tent wouldn’t blow away. I think it was Kerouac who imparted the idea that watching nature, whether it be stars, mountains, or bugs, is better than watching TV, but I was not too thrilled to be watching the place where I intended to sleep bounce up and down, looking more like a parachute than a tent.
I was hoping all along against the hope that nightfall wouldn’t cause the wind to let up. But it was nearly dark by the time I was finishing my pork chops; the sun had set behind me, and it was getting chilly fast. I cleaned up a bit and then I lit another cigarette. I uttered a prayer too. A prayer for Chae and Lim, a very young defender of the island, and one of the cooks, the groom and his betrothed, who were killed during the Last Stand on September 14th. She was bludgeoned to death by the Reds, and he blew “himself to bits with a grenade” upon finding her dead and brutalized body on the scarp. Lieutenant Clark witnessed the drama; was knocked off his feet by the suicidal explosion. I said aloud, hoping their spirits might hear me, “you didn’t die in vain, Lim, Chae, we are here, we are the inheritors of what you died for…thank you.” The wind showed no sign of letting up. I hurriedly folded up the tent, and packed up the red Matiz. It wasn’t fit for man or beast; rain was predicted for the morning to boot. In spite of my courage and adventuresome spirit, I too found myself retreating from this doomed and haunted island.
As I slammed the trunk tight and walked to the driver’s door, I recalled for the thousandth time the real tragedy of Yonghung-do. As the UN liberators were arriving at Inchon to save the lives and freedoms of millions and millions for generations to come, and while Lieutenant Clark and his assistants, Ke and Youn, were boarding the USS Mount McKinley, the people of Yonghung were being massacred wholesale by the vindictive Reds. The Island and its gracious people had served its purpose; now it was being left to the dogs. With that thought in mind, I reached for the pack of Mild Sevens in my breast pocket and, as though it were a grenade, chucked it into the woods, whimpering, “get the hell out of there, you goddam Commies,” and drove home.
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