(Us Marines stand with captured Korean battle flag, 1871, near present day Inchon.)

Mac and I paid Elisabeth-with-an-S and she gave me one of those smiles that keeps me coming back. We walked out of Willow’s rich wood bar and down the steps onto the brick patio.

“My usual parking place,” said the Admiral with a note of pride. The sleek Gold Jag was directly across from the gate in the black railing that separated the Willow patio congregants from the pedestrians hurrying to and from the Ballston Metro Station. “Let me give you a ride down to the American Service Center to retrieve the Hubrismobile.”

“I can walk, really,” I said. “I need the exercise.” I also wanted a minute to figure out which of the poor melting credit cards in my wallet I was going to cycle the repairs on to. That was a constant royal pain. But Mac was insistent, and I relented immediately.

He unlocked the pristine sedan and I plopped myself into tanned pale leather of the right hand seat. “So American citizens are butchered by the Koreans,” I said, “And what was the response? We used to be a little more muscular in our overseas relations. At least after the matter of the Barbary Pirates was settled with the establishment of a Navy.”

“That adventure also required the rescue of an American ship and crew.”

“Oh, yeah,” I thought. With everything else going on in modern Libya it was easy to forget that Tripoli had been the source of the first major embarrassment of American arms overseas, and the first place the Stars and Stripes were raised on foreign soil. “Was it the Philadelphia that ran aground and got captured in Tripoli Harbor?”

The Admiral nodded. “There is a tradition as old as the Service: you get your ship back. The Berber pirates hauled the ship off the reef and anchored her to serve as a floating battery. Steven Decatur led a cunning party that managed to get close enough to board and overcome the Berber guards and burn the ship, sinking it.”

“So the principle is that a nation’s warships remain their property, regardless, right?”

The Admiral smiled as he skillfully swung away from the curb. “That is why Pueblo is still a commissioned ship-of-the-line.”

“I know we used to care a lot about it. I have some declassified OXCART imagery that shows her in Wonsan Harbor. She was on the priority collection list for COMIREX for the satellite pictures, too. So what did President Johnson do about the killing of the Americans and the destruction of the General Sherman?”

(A-12 OXCART (CIA Version of SR-71 Image of Pueblo in Wonsan Harbor 1968.)

The Admiral swerved a bit to avoid a Lance Armstrong wannabee who was hurtling through a crosswalk near the International House of Pancakes. “He did what any President of a certain era would have done. He sent in the Marines to punish people who were pains in the ass.”

“Is that what opened up Korea to trade?”

The Admiral put on the blinker to turn right at Quincy and head down to where the American Service Center is reinventing itself from a low-rise to a high-rise structure.

“No, that happened later. Actually, it took five years for the Marines to get there. The Navy landed nearly 700 men landed near what we know now as Inchon. It was partly to resume trade talks, but obviously robust enough to avenge the insult to the Flag. The Koreans again resisted, but in two days of heavy fighting, the Marines destroyed five forts and inflicted as hundreds of casualties on the defending Koreans, while suffering only three casualties of their own. A Marine private killed the Korean commander, General Uh Je-yeon, and took his flag.”

“Is that the one that wound up with all the other captured banners at the Naval Academy?”

Mac deftly swung the Jag down the alley behind ASC. “Yep, the very one. I can wait until you are sure the Hubrismobile is ready.”

“Thanks, but no, I can hoof it back to Big Pink if it isn’t. For the amount of money I am paying to have the rear seats headrests adjust so the top works again, they will probably be happy to give it back.”

I opened the door to confront the highly-skilled technical experts, mentally vowing never again to own an elaborate piece of German rolling stock. Something occurred to me, though. “None of this history is ever forgotten over there, is it?”

Mac shook his head. “No, they have long memories, though what they remember is not necessarily the truth. Great Leader Kim Il Song always claimed his great grandfather Kim Ung U had been a ringleader in the killing of the General Sherman’s crew. Made the whole Kim family big heroes.”

“They claim that when the Dear Leader, that little shit, was born on Mount Paektu there was thunder and lightning and the iceberg in the sacred pond emitted a mysterious sound as it broke and bright double rainbows appeared from it.” I waved my hands in wonder at the miracle.

Mac pursed his lips. “He was most likely born in Siberia, where his father was in exile at the time, a pet of the Russians. I have heard that Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency reported that Venus shed an unusually bright light above the sacred lake when Kim Jong-un was announced as the new King.”

“They have a national pattern of mass hallucination. I have no idea what they are going to cook up for the newest Kim to take the throne. When I was in Pyongyang,” I said, holding the door, “The delegation agreed to go along with the delusion and just believe impossible things before breakfast. The Clinton Administration thought you could negotiate in good faith with them.”

“No,” said the Admiral with a smile. “Every resident of the White House has to learn that for himself. You can’t trust them further than you can throw them. Bill Clinton got rolled when he had a chance to get the Pueblo back and he didn’t.”

“They must think we are chumps, don’t they?”

“I am not sure they are wrong,” said Mac. “Next time at Willow for the Damage Assessment story. That was the high point of my five and a half years at DIA. We had five copies of the final report, and I think they have all been destroyed now.”

“Why would anyone destroy them?”

Mac shook his head. “Some people don’t want to remember.”

I closed the door, careful not to slam it, and waved as Mac roared off down the alley. I hoped the car was ready. The next morning was going to be a royal pain as it was. I had accepted an invitation to start getting drunk at 0530 and watch some couple in England tie the knot.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com