Once I lived in a village not far <br />from the thirty-eighth parallel <br />near Kaesong, in fact <br /> <br />The snow that February fell for days <br />blowing horizontally to the ground <br />hills and paddy fields filling with drifts <br /> <br />We lived, ten of us, in a hut <br />that smelled of kimchee and garlic <br />we huddled together on the warm floor <br /> <br />The sergeant in charge was from Chicago <br />a big-mouthed Irish guy from the South Side <br />he talked constantly about his gang back home <br /> <br />The North Koreans who ran the prison camp <br />grew to dislike the sergeant and our guys <br />we ate less and worked harder than the others <br /> <br />One night we talked it over with the sergeant <br />we told him that he had to compromise <br />and go along with our captors - or else <br /> <br />No doubt we angered him because <br />he got his Irish up and began striking out <br />an Italian guy from Hoboken put a shiv in him <br /> <br />We buried him next morning behind the messhall <br />the Korean in charge was pleased as punch <br />we ate better and worked a normal day <br /> <br />Today I often think of that hotheaded sergeant <br />who died in a foreign land because we were scared <br />and thought more of our own survival<br /><br />Michael Pruchnicki<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/38th-parallel/
