Korean Paradise

by Richard Seifried

Signal Hill Musings

June, 2003

Sometimes, like now, I wonder if each of you, those who read my Musings, have a special place, experience, or situation that has left an indelible impression upon your long-term memory.

I do.

This evening, here on Signal Hill, Jean, a dear friend of ours, and I watched the movie For the Boys, which came out as a movie in 1991. Bette Midler and James Caan had lead roles in this beautiful but sad film.

We own the movie, and Jean and I have watched it a few times. But, tonight the film struck me hard, bringing back an avalanche of emotions and flashbacks from fifty-two years ago.

Because of what the film did to me, I have decided to share with you one of the most wonderful experiences of my entire life. I won’t be able to adequately describe what I saw and felt, but I will try.

Sometime around May 28, 1951, I was on sentry duty in Korea, just before dawn. My immediate task was to keep the telephone to my ear so that I could hear the wake-up command from our company’s captain. When the time came, he blew into the speaker and then, when he knew I was listening, he whispered for me to wake up our sergeants, which I did.

We were camped just off a dirt road a few yards from the 38th parallel. Men were lying all over the earth. We hadn’t “dug in” for some reason; possibly we were just too tired.

As the wispy fog grudgingly surrendered to the trees, grasses, and paddies, the countryside began to emerge, come alive. Men stirred beneath their dew-sogged blankets. The sergeants grumbled at me, turned over, and pretended not to hear me.

My responsibility completed, I slipped my rifle onto my shoulder and walked into the trees that covered the lower slopes of our hill. My destination was a spring, pouring forth sweet, safe water. We had filled our canteens there the previous evening.

Walking alone to a spring that the Chinese and North Koreans certainly knew existed was not a prudent act, especially at dawn. Frankly, I didn’t care. Being alone was a luxury I seldom had.

Perhaps half the length of a playing field from where I had been stationed, I sort of emerged into a tiny clearing. By then my weapon was off my shoulder, ready.

That was when I thrilled to the most remarkable experience. It was nothing dramatic nor spectacular.

Thin sifts of fog arose from the rich-smelling, moisture-laden earth. The spring lay in the center of the forest opening, bubbling its remarkable sound. About the pool lay high grasses, bent over from the weight of the morning dew, all emerald, almost unreal in the dim light. Further back from the spring, a few feet, shrubs and then young pine trees stood, dripping in the chill and wonderful-smelling air.

Downhill, the forest ended, the trees giving way to luxuriant meadows and row-upon-row of miniature paddies. Not very distant, at the base of the little valley, a stream wended its way across my landscape. Then, on the far side of the brook, the earth rose again to present me with the truly enchanting Asian landscape that my memory holds so dear. More rice paddies rising up to more meadows, then to the great forest that extended way up to the tops of low, rugged mountains.

It seemed to me then, as it does now, that there was some kind of noise. Oh, the cuckoo birds were pouring out their wistful “coo-coo, coo-coo, coo-coo” lyrics, but there was more.

The earth, the Korean earth, was stirring, coming awake to greet the sun of a new day. Somehow, the land was creating sounds of the awakening.

All of it, the dull sky, the bubbling spring, the land itself, and yes, the cuckoo birds, presented me with one of the most rewarding experiences of my young life. Seeing, hearing and smelling the earth coming alive created for me a moment of paradise that I would never forget.

I lingered there for some time.

The experience has never left me.

I think of it often. And often I smile.