Part Two

Kyung Soon to Charles: tape 3, October 1953

Dear Charles
Thank you so much for your latest tape. I am glad to hear that your new job is going well, but I hope you are not working too hard. After the hours you all put in at the MASH unit, you should be enjoying your evenings, and weekends off.
I am sorry that it is still so painful for you to listen to music, I know from listening to you talk that you have such knowledge and love of it, and as much as it hurts to hear it, you must miss it very much. Perhaps you could try something totally different to Mozart's quintet - I was listening to the wonderful recording you gave me of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony yesterday. It is so uplifting and joyful, perhaps it might be the sort of piece that would help you find you way back to other music?
Progress with the land here is slow - it cannot be otherwise when my workers know that a false step might kill or maim them. The landmines are everywhere, and almost every day there are news reports of more injuries and deaths. The war may be over, but I'm afraid it is still taking lives. At least we have managed to clear and plough enough land near the house to plant a few winter cabbages, and peppers for next year.
Also, the road to my family's burial ground has been cleared at last, so tomorrow I go to honour my ancestors. It is Korean tradition to do this in August, but at least I am able to pay my respects in person this year, even if it is a little late. Last year I was too far away to visit - I had to make do with carrying out the ceremony from a distance, and hope my ancestors would understand. For the past few days I have been preparing special food in readiness, and cleaning the house. Usually that duty is shared between all the family members, but there is no family left here to share it with me, so I have done it all myself. Tomorrow I will make a formal little bow to my ancestors' memorials, wish them good fortune, and tell them what is happening in my life. I will tell them all about you, and ask themto look on you with kindness.
Each time I go to Seoul, it is a little more like the city I used to know. The concert hall is being rebuilt, and the plans for some of the bomb-damaged sites look very ambitious. There will be big office blocks and department stores, warehouses and factories - though there is still so much that needs to be done. I do not know how much of this new investment we owe to you, or to people you have persuaded to follow your lead, but I want you to know that the help you are sending is so much appreciated, and is already doing a lot of good.
There is food in the shops again and, although the prices are still outrageous, at least we will not starve, especially since you sent all those tins of meat and vegetables. The hens are laying well too. Oh, I gave the chocolates you sent to the children at the orphanage and of course they loved them. Father Mulcahy said to send his thanks and his regards. His hearing is no better, but he has hearing aids now and manages quite well, though he finds it easier if he is facing you when you speak.
Thank you so much for the books. I loved the poetry selection, and I thought the first verse of Kipling's Cities, Thrones and Powers was especially apt:

'Cities and Thrones and Powers
Stand in Time's eye,
Almost as long as flowers,
Which daily die:
But, as new buds put forth
To glad new men,
Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth
The Cities rise again.'

Goodbye for now, Charles - with my love.

Charles switched off the tape recorder and sat back in his study chair, listening to the silence. He found he was doing that a lot these days, since he had moved out of his parents' house and into his town apartment. The excuse he'd given was that it was more convenient for the hospital - which was true, though only to the tune of about five minutes - but the reality was that there had been too much music at home. His mother spent hours practicing for her next concert; Honoria played her record player down the hall; and his father liked listening to the evening concerts on the radio. Charles had found it impossible to explain why he could no longer listen with them, and could hardly ask that the entire house be plunged into silence to suit him. So he had acquired a chef, a butler and a housekeeper for his apartment, and moved.

He missed the music though. Kyung Soon was right: as much as it pained him to listen to it, he missed hearing it.

He sighed. Beethoven's Ninth. He hadn't tried that one, and maybe she had a point - the last movement was, after all, called 'Ode to Joy'. Maybe he'd give it a try.

Charles to Kyung Soon: tape 7, November 1953

My dear Sooni
I so enjoyed your latest tape and all your news. Father Mulcahy must be delighted to have your help with the children's choir, and I do hope the rehearsals for the Christmas carols are going well.
We just had Thanksgiving here, my first with the family in four years. Mother and dad invited all the cousins and aunts and Emersons in New England, I think – certainly there was not much space left at the table by the time we were all seated. It was quite an occasion!

Charles paused the tape, thinking back to the event he was describing and wondering what to say next. Somehow, he felt that reciting the details of seven exquisite courses of rich food to Kyung Soon would not be appropriate; nor would telling her that it had been served up on the best silverware – heirlooms from his mother's side of the family. As for the conversation, he could recall nothing that had been said that was worthy of repetition.

He sighed. He had been so looking forward to Thanksgiving at home, after three years away and two years of MASH swill, but somehow it had felt… strange, off-kilter. Charles had found himself looking around at the wealthy, laughing socialites, and wondering whether their conversations had always been so vapid. He had vague recollections of Cousin Alfred gleefully describing some faux pas that had been made on his last shooting weekend; Honoria and the other young women had discussed the latest fashions, and the charms of some film star named Marlon something-or-other. Of course, there had been polite comments on how glad Charles must be to be back in civilisation, and half-hearted queries about how his new job at Boston Mercy was going, but even as he replied he knew that their attention had already slipped elsewhere, that no-one really wanted to know. Realising that that was how he used to deal with people himself had not made it any easier - nor had the knowledge that he could never change back, that he would never again truly fit into the way of life he had left behind.

He sipped the tea the butler had brought in, and thumbed the 'record' switch again.

I won't bore you with the details of the main meal, but I would like you to know that, once the women had withdrawn and the men were left to the Port and cigars, I did mention once again the opportunities for investment in your country. I'm not sure that anyone listened, but I did try.
At least the evening gave me an excuse to finish the film that had been in my camera since I got back from Seoul. As promised, I am enclosing the photograph you took of me on our last walk together, as well as a picture of your lovely self, of which – I hope you don't mind - I have had a copy enlarged and framed to keep on my office desk.
I am going along to one of mother's piano recitals on Saturday next, with Honoria for company - and support if I need it. You know I had tried to tell her about… what happened, and had never been able to? I finally resorted to writing it down, as though I were still in Korea. I put it all in a letter for her and posted it. She came over of course just as soon as she'd read it, and once we had both finished crying she promised to help me in any way that she could. We've listened to a few recordings together these past few days, but the recital will be a real test, and I'm glad I'll have her there with me.
I have already put a few Christmas parcels in the post for you, plus an extra one which is for the orphanage. Please make sure that they do not know it's from me – I know how highly you value tradition, and this is one of my family's finer ones: that at Christmas we make our charitable donations anonymously.
I will endeavour to be in touch again before Christmas, Sooni, but in case the mail lets me down please know that I will be thinking of you over the festive season, and very much wishing you could be here with me.
Perhaps next year I will see you again, my dear. But meanwhile, I look forward to receiving your next tape and hearing your news.
With my love, always,
Charles.

Kyung Soon to Charles: tape 14, February 1954

My dear Charles,
I'm sure you will remember how cold it gets here in February, and this year seems to be even worse than usual. I am so glad, and so grateful, that I have the generator, which provides enough power for a small electric fire as well as the lighting. It does not sound much, I know, but we all stay together in one room during the very bad storms, so we all stay warm and dry.

Charles smiled, wondering how his parents would react to the idea of settling down for the night in the same room as the servants. Or, indeed, in the same room as anyone else. He still was not entirely sure that they had grasped the idea that he had had to share a tent on equal terms with two subordinates during his time at the 4077th. To hear them talk about it, the Captains might have been Charles' staff officers, there to attend his every need. Charles chuckled, wondering how Pierce and Hunnicutt would have reacted to that idea!

Funny, he missed them. All of them. The banter, the jokes, the repartee. Above all, he missed the understanding – that unspoken bond that had been formed by their common battle to wrest life from the jaws of premature death, the camaraderie that had grown from the shared suffering they lived through.

He pulled his attention back to the tape, rewinding it a little to make sure he had missed nothing.

The orphanage too is well supplied. Father Mulcahy is fond of saying that 'God provides – but it's amazing how often he sends parcels from California, Missouri, and New England!' The children are very excited about singing at the concert hall's reopening, and I go to help with rehearsals when I can. They are going to sing some traditional Korean songs, and I will take my tape recorder along to the concert so that you will be able to hear their performance. Of course, it will not be up to the standard of your mother's Rachmaninov concert on the tape you sent me last month, but what the children lack in skill they more than make up for in enthusiasm!
There is so much still to do, and I sometimes wish that all those reporters and cameras that were here during the fighting were still around to film the consequences – the orphans, the sick, those who lost limbs…

Charles heard her sigh, and the tape spooled on silently for a moment before she went on:

I know that your family has influential friends, Charles, and that you have spoken to many of them already. But if you know of anyone who can help us to spread the message that there are still many thousands of people here needing assistance and aid, please put in another word when you can. I know from your tapes, and the cuttings you send, that a lot of people seem to have forgotten the war already. That is not so easy to do over here.

Nor from where I'm sitting, thought Charles. But he knew she was right. In fact he suspected that many Americans had barely been aware of the conflict even when it had been at its height – certainly there had been no ticker-tape parades for homecoming troops, like the ones he remembered seeing at the end of the Second World War.

If only he could think of a way to bring home to people the impact of what the Korean 'police action' had been!

And then he remembered Clete Roberts, and smiled.

To be continued…