Successful Era — Episode 2
“One, two! One, two!”
“Calling cadence with a marching song. The song is *Real Men*—one, two, three, four!”
“Born a man, there is much to do, but you and I protect this country…”
They sang military songs nonstop while running in formation, starting with *Real Men*. Normally, let alone singing, even running would have been difficult, but Park Jong-il, who had returned to the fresh age of twenty, ran energetically without falling behind, matching the formation despite being drenched in sweat.
A man who in his later years had shuttled in and out of hospitals like a second home due to chronic illnesses and Agent Orange aftereffects, he was happy and excited simply by the fact that he could run with such a vibrant, vital body, even if he was winded and struggling.
After finishing the 3km run, the soldiers washed off their sweat at the wash racks and enjoyed a brief bit of free time before meals.
However, Park Jong-il, who had been thoroughly marked by the seniors during the run, was dragged to the empty lot behind the latrines and forced to endure a painful time.
“Hey, your ass is sagging.”
While doing Wonsan bombardment push-ups with his head pressed to the dirt, Park Jong-il heard the words of Private First Class Lim Jae-gu, who was squatting and smoking a cigarette. Unconsciously straightening his slightly bent knees, he hurriedly raised his hips.
“You’ve been looking easy to me lately just because I’ve been going a little easy on you, huh?”
“No, that’s not it, sir.”
“You bastard! Then why are you dazed and stumbling around like Samdori!”
“I will correct it, sir!”
“Deployment isn’t far off. We’ll stop here for today. Rise.”
“Rise!”
Park Jong-il shouted the response, jumped up, and snapped to attention. Private Lim Jae-gu flicked his cigarette to the ground, crushed it under his boot, and glared at him.
“If I catch you slipping one more time, you’re going to get wrecked. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll be watching.”
After Lim Jae-gu tapped his shoulder and walked back to the barracks, Park Jong-il let out a deep sigh and relaxed.
“Whew… that bastard’s personality is fucking insane no matter how you look at him.”
As he shook his head, he suddenly seemed to remember something and sprinted toward the mess hall.
Inside the mess hall hung a large mirror and a calendar. The moment Park Jong-il saw it, he froze as if turned to stone.
On the wall hung a calendar—not for 2013, but for 1967.
Though he had suspected it, the sight confirmed without doubt that he had returned to the past. Overwhelmed with confusion, he covered his head with his hands and slumped to the floor.
“How can this be…?”
As he was tearing at his hair, a sergeant entering the mess hall approached him in alarm.
“What’s wrong with you? Are you sick?”
“Ah, no, sir.”
“Then what are you doing?”
Park Jong-il got up, forced his face into a composed expression, and offered a clumsy excuse to the sergeant regarding him with a puzzled look.
“I just got dizzy for a moment.”
“Really? You should stop by the infirmary just in case.”
“Yes, sir.”
Once the sergeant was gone, Park Jong-il checked the calendar once more, scrunching up his face and letting out a deep, despairing sigh.
“Of all times…”
In novels, protagonists who travel to the past rejoice and draw up new life plans, but Park Jong-il felt despair rather than joy.
Getting younger was good, but in two days he would have to leave Korea for a bloody battlefield.
On the left shoulder of the dejected Park Jong-il’s uniform was the Mangho Unit insignia: a roaring tiger inside a shield.
Yet frustration was fleeting. Having endured countless hardships in his previous life, he clenched his fist tightly and steeled his resolve.
“When have I ever lived an easy life? Since it’s come to this, I’m going to live without a single regret!”
With renewed determination, Park Jong-il threw himself into the training that had begun that morning. Two days later, he boarded a military truck and left Oeum-ri, Hwacheon, Gangwon-do—where the Vietnam dispatch training center was located—and headed down to Busan.
Unlike the present day, road maintenance had not been properly completed back then, so the truck convoy took a full day to reach its destination.
After a brief rest, the soldiers moved again to Pier 3 at Busan Port under an officer’s guidance and boarded a US military transport ship anchored there.
The transport ship named *Victory* was a twenty-thousand-ton vessel, boasting an enormous bulk as if a great mountain were floating upon the sea.
Unlike Park Jong-il, who remained relatively calm having once worked deep-sea tuna fishing vessels to make ends meet before his regression, most of the soldiers stared at the massive ship with vacant expressions.
“After the headcount, if there are no issues, board by platoon.”
“Yes, sir!”
At the order of the escort officer, whose helmet bore a major’s rank insignia, the platoon leaders conducted a final headcount and lined the soldiers up to board the transport ship.
Park Jong-il also climbed the metal ladder with his platoon members and went inside.
They were scheduled to receive new M-16 automatic rifles from the Americans upon arrival, so the M-1 Carbines they had used during training had all been collected before boarding. They carried only their field packs on their backs.
As departure time neared, the pier filled with well-wishers: soldiers’ families, friends, and even high school girls mobilized from government offices soon surrounded the ship.
Waving Taegeukgi flags and handkerchiefs, desperately calling the names of sons and friends, and earnestly praying for their safe return, the pier was soon transformed into a sea of tears.
Hoping that perhaps his family had come, Park Jong-il scanned the crowd carefully, but with so many people he could not find them.
*BWOOOONG!*
As the ship’s horn sounded, signaling that departure time had come, the soldiers sang the military song *The Bold Tigers Go* at the top of their lungs, led by someone’s starting call.
*To protect the fatherland for liberty and unification.*
*You have been chosen in the name of the fatherland.*
*That name, Mangho Unit! Warriors of the Mangho Unit!*
*Though the sky is far in the land of Vietnam where you go,*
*The steadfast hearts of our people will follow you.*
*The steadfast hearts of our people will follow you.*
Leaving behind the sorrow of sending sons, brothers, and friends off to war, the transport ship slowly pulled away from the pier and set out into the open sea.
Departing Busan Port, the transport ship passed Taiwan and the Philippines and arrived in Quy Nhon, a city in south-central Vietnam and the headquarters of the Mangho Division, ten days later.
As if welcoming them to the battlefield, US Navy Phantom fighters roared past overhead with deafening engine noise while the soldiers stood on the deck gazing at the shore.
*SHEEEW!*
“We’ve arrived!”
“Goodbye to damn seasickness at last.”
Unlike his excited comrades, who were thrilled to finally set foot on land again after suffering from seasickness, Park Jong-il looked upon Quy Nhon—a city he was seeing again after traveling back forty-four years—with a complicated expression.
Then someone tapped him lightly on the shoulder from behind.
“What are you thinking about so deeply?”
“Nothing, sir.”
Sergeant Park Seok-cheol, standing beside him, pulled a Hwarang cigarette from the breast pocket of his combat uniform, stuck it in his mouth, and spoke.
“It’s a shitty situation, but now that we’re here, what can we do? Don’t get any strange ideas. Just find a way to survive and go back home. Got it?”
“Yes.”
“That said, don’t be too tense. If you hold out, the overseas duty pay is hefty, so you’ll go home with a proper pile of money.”
Park Jong-il remembered how Sergeant Park Seok-cheol had been saying over and over at the Oeum-ri training center that he would earn dollars in Vietnam and buy farming land and cows for his parents. A smile flickered across his face, but fearing what might happen if he smiled in front of a senior, he quickly straightened his expression.
Shortly after, the ship docked, and the soldiers disembarked in formation by platoon.
The stifling, muggy heat of the tropics enveloped their bodies as they gathered in an empty lot next to the pier. A supply officer opened wooden crates that had been set out in advance and distributed M-16 automatic rifles and ammunition.
“You never know when the Viet Cong might appear, so attach your magazines immediately.”
At the platoon leader’s order, the sound of magazines locking into place echoed here and there, and only then did the soldiers truly realize they had set foot in the middle of a battlefield.
*Chack!*
Park Jong-il inserted his magazine, pulled and released the bolt to chamber a round, and set the selector lever to safe to prevent accidental discharge.
Not long after, the soldiers boarded military trucks that had arrived and headed to a garrison on the outskirts of the port. After a week of acclimatization training, they moved south of the city again and established a company tactical base at a place called Song Cau.
Park Jong-il’s unit was the 26th Regiment of the Mangho Division. When the division was first deployed, the Marine Corps’ Cheongnyong (Blue Dragon) Regiment had been inserted, leaving the 26th behind alone in Korea until America requested additional troops, at which point they were sent to Vietnam.
Even within the regiment, the 3rd Battalion had been designated as the final reinforcement unit and arrived last.
*Brrrmm!*
Under the escort of M113 armored vehicles handed over by the Americans, the military trucks carrying Park Jong-il and the other soldiers rattled along an unpaved road—the famous Route 1.
The area assigned to the Mangho Division contained two strategically vital roads: Route 1, which ran north and south through Quy Nhon where the division headquarters was located, and Route 19, which went west through An Khe and Pleiku all the way to the Cambodian border.
Both were essential supply lines and avenues of movement for both US and South Vietnamese forces, so Viet Cong attacks occurred frequently. The mission of defending these routes had fallen to the 3rd Battalion, to which Park Jong-il belonged.
Contrary to the warnings they had received when leaving Quy Nhon, the journey to the tactical base was largely uneventful and peaceful, aside from the trucks shaking violently and the company commander’s jeep getting stuck in a mud puddle and having to be pulled out.
After leaving the dense jungle, wide open fields stretched before them. As befitting a nation counted among the world’s top rice producers, rice paddies dotted the landscape everywhere. Occasionally, they saw farmers wearing the traditional Vietnamese *non* hats planting or harvesting rice. If not for the rifles in their hands and the sweltering, sauna-like heat, the scenery might have been that of a rural Korean village.
But that peace did not last long.
After several hours of driving, the convoy finally arrived at the company tactical base built in the middle of wide open plains.
*Screech!*
“Disembark!”
As the brakes squealed and the trucks stopped, the soldiers grabbed their packs and rifles, quickly climbed down, and formed up.
“Man, my whole body aches.”
“Sitting in that truck all day did a number on my back.”
Park Jong-il also stretched slightly, loosening his stiff body.
At that moment, a sharp whistling sound, like a flute, suddenly came from the sky, and an explosion erupted on one side of the base.
*Shhh-eek, KWAAANG!*
“Wh-what?”
Unlike the soldiers who looked around with bewildered expressions, Park Jong-il immediately recognized it as a Viet Cong mortar attack and shouted.
“It’s enemy shelling! Take cover now!”
Simultaneously, as if to prove his words, an emergency siren blared out loudly.
*WEEEEE!*
“Damn it!”
“It’s shelling!”
*KWANG! KANG!*
In the sudden chaos, the soldiers panicked and forgot all their training. Park Jong-il grabbed Sergeant Park Seok-cheol’s arm, who happened to be beside him, and ran toward the nearest trench.
“This way!”
“R-right.”
The two threw themselves into the trench, held their helmets with one hand, and pressed themselves flat against the ground.
The mortar barrage swept over them like a fierce storm, then stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
“Is it over?”
“I don’t know.”
While replying to Sergeant Park Seok-cheol, Park Jong-il carefully raised his head. Something suddenly came flying through the air and landed in front of the trench.
*Thud!*
Half-buried in the ground was a mortar round.
Fortunately, it did not explode—perhaps a dud—but seeing it, the two sank to the dirt floor with faces that looked as if they had aged ten years.