A Year in Korea — Leaving and an Epilogue

When I arrived in Korea I was extremely naïve about the workings of the world. But as my time to depart approached, I had grown, I had matured, I had learned.

By June 1969 I had been promoted four times by the Army, the most any soldier could be promoted. When I entered the army, my monthly pay was $102.30 per month, and when I left I was earning the grand sum of $254.70. That is not a typo, per month is correct. An army captain in 1969 received exactly $466.20 per month. No one went into the military to get rich. But most of us were extremely proud to have served. And when our time came to leave the military, we were extremely happy to go. I refer to those years as “crazy days.”

This is an example of how things got crazy. A couple of months before I was scheduled to leave Korea, a buddy of mine was supposed to leave. But on the specified day of departure, he was nowhere to be found. It turned out he was shacking up with his Korean girlfriend. He was almost literally dragged back to Camp Coiner and informed he would leave the country either voluntarily or under guard. He left under guard. I cannot say I understand his actions but I can assure you that his level of insanity was no greater than a thousand other guys who did crazy things.

An incident I heard about went like this. A guy was driving a 2½ ton truck through a Korean village. Every GI has witnessed at one time or another mamma-san walking out in front of traffic and simply raise he hand as if to magically stop traffic. She was usually successful but when it comes to a deuce and a half, what we called that type of truck, you need a little more room to stop. Mamma-san was killed. The military police were quickly called to the scene and before the Korean government could react, he was spirited out of the country and out of the reach of the Korean police. The Korean government most likely protested the incident but they were certainly aware of mamma-san’s actions and the inevitability of what happened. It was a terrible accident which happened too many times, but it was tragic, not criminal.

I also heard of other guys, not so lucky, who got drunk and drove a military vehicle through a rice patty. Rice is of course a staple of the Korean diet and the farmers, poverty stricken, could ill-afford to lose any of their planted rice. The GI in question was forced to pay the damages, or so I was told but knowing how thing went over there, there is little reason to doubt it.

The fall of 1969 was quiet for me. Word came down that I would depart Korea on December 20, 1969. The last day for soldiers to leave the country. December 20^th was a very early day. Those of us who were leaving, I think there were five from my unit, had to be at Kimpo International Airport by 6AM for a 9AM flight out of Korea. We would board one of the big “red tails.” We called those airplanes that because Northwest Orient Airlines painted their tails red and the military used them almost exclusively to ferry troops between the U.S. and Korea.

We all checked in with the Air Force Military Airlift Command desk where we were checked against a roster. That done, we had only to wait. But on this day all did not go as planned. Somehow the five or so of us from Stratcom were told the flight had been overbooked and we would not be leaving that day. We all knew that meant we would have to stay another month. One of us, however, was a sergeant major. A sergeant major is the highest rank an enlisted man can gain and he is usually assigned to a battalion commander, a lieutenant colonel or to a brigade commander, a colonel. Our sergeant major went one better. He was part of a general’s staff and he did not take kindly to the news. He told us to wait and he would take care of things.

We heard him tell the desk sergeant he wanted to speak to his commander immediately. We were shuffled away and did not see the sergeant major for another 2 hours at least. I remember when 9:15AM rolled around we all watched forlornly as the Northwest Boeing 707 left the gate and departed. We were certain all was lost. But a little while later the sergeant major returned and informed us that we were going to leave on a 1:15PM flight that day. No one asked him how he did it, we just thanked him profusely. And so at 1:15PM our 707 left the gate with all aboard. We first flew to Tokyo where we changed planes. It was just a two-hour flight and the change in flight was quick. Our next leg took us from Tokyo to Anchorage Alaska, a 14-hour flight. We arrived in Anchorage at 7:30AM on December 20^th. We arrived in Anchorage 5½ hours before we left Korea. The International Date Line came into play of course. Ironically, we boarded another aircraft in Anchorage at 1:15PM on December 20^th. I can claim to have taken off from two different airports, thousands of miles apart, at the same time, day and year.

The flight took us to Seattle, a four-hour flight if memory serves properly. But before leaving Anchorage we got to see the sun rise at about 11AM and set just before we took off. From Seattle Tacoma International airport I had to catch a cab to Fort Lewis when I would be usher out of the army. In 1969, December 20^th fell on a Saturday which meant the personnel office at Fort Lewis was minimally manned. All I wanted to do was to get my final separation orders, my pay, and an airline ticket home. The personnel people were in no particular rush for me, I was alone, and so I had to cajole them into getting the job done and not make me wait until the next day or Monday. They came through.

I then caught another cab back to Seattle Tacoma airport. I was in my dress uniform, a requirement for members of the military back then when traveling on military orders. As I was about to enter the airport I saw a girl sitting next to the door in hippie style dress. She took one look at me, spit at me and said, “baby killer.” In just a year things had changed so much. I left one war zone and returned to another. The military was not very highly though of by many in the civilian populace and I had just gotten a taste of it.

But I was tired, really tired. I had not been able to sleep much on the airplane from Japan to Alaska even though it was mostly empty and I could sprawl across the three seats where I was situated. And the flight from Alaska offered no respite either. By this time, it must have been about 10PM because I remember having to rush to the United Airlines ticket counter to get checked in. Once I arrived there, however, I was informed there we no more seats available. I must have looked pretty bedraggled and crushed because the woman behind the counter asked, “are you returning from overseas?” Of course, I answered yes even though I knew she thought I was coming from Vietnam. She handed me a first-class ticket and told me to rush to the gate. She gave me an extremely nice “welcome home” before I left.

By the time I got back to North Andover, Massachusetts, it was late morning December 21, 1969, and all I wanted to do was sleep. Sleep eluded me, however. I was probably over-tired. I did sleep a little but nothing close to 8 hours. Still, home never looked so good.

Just a little over a month later, on January 24, 1970, my father died from his 3^rd heart attack. My mother told me, “he was waiting for you to come home.” I was crushed, to say the least.

I had enrolled at Merrimack College, just a mile from home. But my heart was not in it. And towards the end of the semester everyone was going on strike. Merrimack called off its commencement because of the student strike. Similar things were happening all over the country. In July I headed out to Oklahoma to learn to fly. I was days away from getting my license when I was in a horrible accident. Aside from a few stiches in my head and an empty wallet, I was all right. But my mother had called me out there asking why the army was looking for me. You see, as someone who had only spent two years on active duty, I was supposed to attended army reserve meeting monthly for two years. I never went to a single one. I knew why they were calling and so I went to the recruiter in Lawrence Massachusetts and re-enlisted.

When I arrived at Fort Dix New Jersey, I was put in one of two barracks which were full of other soldiers, airmen, and sailors who had also not met their obligation. While there, however, I ran into a high school classmate, Doug Middleton. Doug was returning from Vietnam and heading out for Germany. I was heading for Italy. By 1976, Doug had driven to a remote spot in Maine and ate his gun. Vietnam claimed another. Ten years later, another classmate, Jimmy Cippola, was found dead from a heart attack. He had told me how while in Vietnam he had endured countless agent orange sprayings. Jimmy returned from Vietnam full of demons, horrible nightmares. And so Vietnam claimed yet another.

It was the early 1990s before the American public began to thank veterans for their service. Towns organized parades to honor Vietnam vets. Even though I was just a Vietnam era vet, I was asked to March in uniform in a parade in Andover Massachusetts, which I did. Finally someone said thank you.

 

A Year in Korea – The Summer of Love

I must make an apology for the title as the actual “summer of love” happened in 1967 but I think 1969 also qualifies.

The Korean people are a very proud people and considering their history, they have every right to feel that way. In downtown Seoul there is a small monument dedicated to the first iron clad ship that sailed anywhere in the world. Korean culture in born of Chinese culture which makes it some of the most ancient anywhere on Earth. But in 1960, Korea what largely an impoverished nation. Pretty much everything they used came from either Japan or the U.S. Much of it was cast-off but the Koreans only saw it as opportunity. I think one thing which was made in Korea were their buses. There were claims that the buses were made of old 50 gallon drums. I couldn’t tell. I rode on one once just for the experience. It must have been unremarkable because I do not have any memory of the ride itself.

For its part, the U.S. Government tried to keep its troops in Korea entertained. They fell short but I put that more to situation than any true government malaise. There were two movie theaters available to me, one on the main compound and a second, very small, theater on Camp Coiner. We got our fair share of first run movies but intermixed were a lot of oldies. I remember going to see “Gone With the Wind” which was released in 1939. But since I had not previously seen it, it was just as good as first run to me.

Also on the main compound were the enlisted club, the top 5 NCO club and the officer’s club. I never set foot in any although I was welcomed at one time or another in the enlisted and top 5 club. There was also an organization called the Service Club. This was a civilian run, though military authorized, organization world-wide. They would bring in various sorts of entertainment. That did not happen very often so the women, American, who ran the club tried to entertain us with card games, checkers, and other such things. There was also a club called the United States Overseas Mission, or the USOM Club. That is a place I frequented. They had slot machines and a 24-hour bar. I spent a little money in the slots but most of my money on alcohol. The USOM club sat on the north portion of the main compound. The north portion and the main portion were divided by a wide public boulevard. On occasion, I stayed just a little too long at the USOM which meant I had to go out the gate there, cross the road, be given access to the main compound, rush down the main street to another gate which open up on another Korean street. This street separated the main compound from Camp Coiner by a couple of tenths of a mile. It happened to me once that I made it out of the main compound gate only to find myself locked out of Camp Coiner which meant finding refuge with one of the lingering “ladies of the night.” That was not a fun night and one I regretted greatly the next morning. It was actually illegal for us to go into certain portions of the surrounding community. One such off-limits location was actually right across the street from Camp Coiner and that is where I spent that fateful night.

I think the average G.I. had a constant battle with loneliness and homesickness.   I know I did. Most of us resorted to alcohol to pass the time and forget our loneliness. Some smoked some pot and a few got into some harder drugs.

The cold windy dry Korean winter faded into spring. I remember in the late spring, early June, my houseboy announcing that the monsoon was on its way. I was surprised to hear that such a thing happens in Korea. I thought it only happened in the tropics. I can remember him saying it was going to arrive in seven days. I asked him how he could be so sure but he refused to expand upon his pronouncement, just repeated that the monsoon would arrive in seven days. And sevens day later, sure enough, it arrived. Camp Coiner, and many other locales, had these things called banjo ditches. This ditches ran alongside the road, were at least a foot deep and more than wide enough that a man could easily lie down in one. During monsoon their design was apparent as the banjo ditches would be full.

The Quonset huts were lived in were made of corrugated steel and the joints had to be tarred prior to monsoon to protect against leaks. This we did. The picture below is of a Quonset Hut in Camp Coiner.  They are not much to look at but for a year they were home.  The mountain in the rear is Namsan and gives quite a good view of Seoul and surroundings.

 

I think it safe to say that GIs living overseas back that lived pretty insular lives. I cannot say I remember hearing about the Woodstock festival that happened August 15 – 18, 1969. What we did hear about was the impending moon landing. There was quite a buzz in the Korean community too. So that its people could see the moon landing, televisions existed only in very wealthy homes, a large screen was erected and the images of the landing projected upon it. That was July 20, 1969.

What we did not hear about were the anti-war protests which were gaining traction on college campuses across the United States. We knew nothing of the anti-military sentiment. The only news we were aware of was that related to us via mail from our loved ones. It is pretty clear to me now that the only news we heard was that which the Pentagon approved of.

One day that summer I saw an airplane fly overhead dropping leaflets. They were all in Korean, of course, but my houseboy said they were North Korean propaganda. I don’t know how he made it past the DMZ without being intercepted or shot down, but he did. All I can say is, a lot of strange things happened in Korea.

One thing which happened with some regularity was what was called “MPC change.” Without warning the U.S. Government would issue new MPC declaring the old style void. As GIs we had only to go to a predesignated place and exchange the old for new. I remember coming out of work one evening and being told we were being returned to our compound in the back of an MP truck. For reasons I’ll never know, the truck took a very circuitous route through large portions of civilian areas. But we could see the word was out. There were large quantities of MPC being held by Koreans which in itself was illegal but was also impossible to stop. As we wound our way through the town anytime we slowed down we were pursued by Koreans on foot holding large number of MPC bills in their hands begging us to take it in exchange for the new. Of course the MPs would not have allowed this even if we could, but at that point we did not yet have the new currency so all we could do was watch with some sadness. The sadness was because we all knew that even though Koreans could not legally possess MPC, they were just trying to eke out a living and MPC was a currency they used.

Korea was an odd short tour for me. Because of my arrival date, I could not be guaranteed I would leave the country after 12 months. It was a matter of logistics, meaning the availability of military chartered aircraft to transport us. There was a 30 day period over which no troops either entered or left Korea. That date was December 20 to January 20. Another thing I do not know the reason for but at summer’s end I was advised that my return would happen in January. One of the things every GI does from the day he lands “in country,” is he counts backwards from 365 the number of days he had left before he can leave to return to the U.S. By September my count should have been under 100 days but being told I would not leave until January changed all that. Such was the life of a G.I. It was disappointing, greatly, of course but not surprising.

A Year in Korea – The Day It Hit the Fan

On April 15, 1969, a U.S. Air Force EC-121 aircraft (shown below) was shot down after a flyover of North Korea. The plane went down 100 miles off the North Korean coast. All crewmembers were killed. The EC-121’s mission was to gather intelligence on North Korean military installations and positions. Things at the 8^th U.S. Army Headquarters communications center, better known as “where I worked,” became very scary very fast. This first thing that happened was the office in charge of the site went around to each section and announced that no one would be leaving until further notice. He also informed us that the usual guard at the entry gate had been replaced by a Korean soldier with orders to shoot to kill.

In communications, there are four general categories of communications: routine, priority, immediate, and flash. The first three could be used by almost anyone. The four was limited to high ranking officials in the Pentagon and White House. There were actually two more lesser known categories, flash override and red rocket. I do not know if the latter was a real status but it was what we called communications coming from the President. Communications equipment was, and probably still is, programmed to sort through the various levels of demand and proper prioritize messages. Anyway, on that fateful day we were suddenly deluged with flash override and red rockets. Even though I was not in the classified portion of the com center, guys would wander over to our section and tell us what was happening.

A little background. In government communications, there are two general areas which are called the red side and the black side. The black side refers to encoded communications, messages that are scrambled, while the red side refers to messages in plain print, just like on this page. I was always on the black side but the guys on the red side could read these very highly classified messages if the felt like it. I can tell you from experience, as I later in my career found myself on the red side, soldiers purposely do not read what is passing before them. It just keeps things a lot simpler. That was true on April 15^th as far as I know.

Very shortly after things got hot, my battalion commander showed up in my section, the only section he had access to, and sat in a chair. I remember seeing total fear in the man’s face. Maybe it was because I was only 20 and maybe it was because I had never considered my own mortality, but I never felt a twinge of fear.

Sometime during all this we found out that our MPs had mounted a 50-caliber machine gun half way up one of our transmission towers. There was a pre-existing crow’s nest up there already for just such an eventuality. To the front and rear of our com center, the two entrances, were a squad of well-armed MPs. We were allowed out of the com center and so I did observe these things for myself. It was just that we could make it out of the door but could not fully leave the com center grounds.

What was happening that I, and everyone in the com center, did not know was that the rear infantry division had been very quickly moved from the southern portion of South Korea to positions just past the Han River, a river just north of Seoul. Also, many artillery batteries were also quickly moved northward. I learned some years later that a major portion of the Air Force’s Strike Command had left its base in Florida and was 2 hours distant from Korea when they were recalled. The guy who told me this inferred they had nuclear capability but I have no idea if that was true. According to a National Public Radio article written July 6, 2010, President Nixon was in fact considering a nuclear option.

Back in the United States, the nightly news reported that 71 servicemen had lost their lives in Vietnam. There was barely a mention of the EC-121 incident. Maybe it was because by that time the U.S. was truly a war weary nation and such news seemed almost routine. After all, as Sen. John McCain can attest to, aircraft were being shot down almost daily in Vietnam.

The entire incident, from beginning to end, lasted less than a day, but we were almost sucked into another war. President Nixon’s decision to take no action was absolutely correct. That is, unless you asked the South Koreans. My houseboy disappeared for a week. When he returned, he related that everyone one had been called to duty and they were itching for a fight. Just a month earlier, North Korean commandos had infiltrated to the south and ended up killing a South Korean police officer. At the same time, seven U.S. Army infantrymen were killed by North Korean soldiers. One of the lesser known facts about that era is that a portion of South Korea was still labeled as a war zone and soldiers received combat pay 16 years after the “cease fire” was agreed upon by the United States, North and South Korea. It was an uneasy truce to be sure.

Before 1969 ended, four more army infantrymen were killed and a North Korean hijacked a South Korean airliner. I think it unlikely any of these incidents got much press as my general impression from home was they thought everything was peaceful in Korea.

People today cannot imagine the difficulty with communications in the late 1960s. Where today we can dial a number on our cell phone and get someone on the line seconds later in Korea. In 1969 it seemed like it took an act of God to get a phone call back to the U.S.   Even though I was in communications, I had no way to access phone lines connecting to the civilian populace. You had to know someone who did have such access and then make a deal with them. I think I managed half a dozen such calls, maybe fewer, but definitely not more. For the majority of GIs, of all rank, direct communications to the U.S. just did not happen during their tour of duty.

The only newspapers we had access to over there was an English version of the Korean News and the Defense Department published Stars & Stripes newspaper. If you really want to know the sort of news they allowed in that publication, watch the movie “Good Morning Vietnam.” There is a very accurate depiction of what was and was not allowed.

This is probably a good place to mention a phenomenon I have felt and found other GIs feel the same who served in the late 60s and early 70s: survivor guilt. Many of us, myself included, feel that we should have been sent to Vietnam and that we somehow played it safe, or other foolishness, by serving in Korea. We are Vietnam era veterans but not Vietnam veterans. I have never been able to put my finger on exactly what its genesis is, but I have found some relief in knowing it is a shared emotion.

A Year in Korea — Settling In

occurred to me that I need to inform you of several facts I forgot to include in part 1. When I decided to go into the army, my father was in the hospital recovering from his second heart attack. I told him I had joined the army with my mother present. My mother said I was thoughtless doing such a thing but my dad said, “It’s all right. It’ll be good for him.” He could not have been more right. My dad was as World War 2 veteran having served as part of a B-26 team in North Africa, Italy and France. Try as I might, I could never get him to talk about his time in the army. Years later I figured out why. Anyway, I asked him if he had any advice for me which he did. He said, “do what your officers tell you to do, and stay away from the women.” The first part I understood perfectly but the second part was a mystery at that time.

Korea in the 1960s was still classified as a war zone by the Defense Department. As I learned firsthand, men died during DMZ skirmishes with the North Koreans. Even though a truce had been declared 16 years prior, a very uneasy peace hung over the two countries. The Pueblo incident flamed the hostile feelings, and the desire of the South Koreans to reunite with the north surfaced.

A tour in Korea was called a “short tour.” That is military speak for serving in a war zone. Soldiers, and sailors too, who served a single short tour would not be required to ever serve another. It was one of the promises the military always made good on. Still, there were many GIs who volunteered for 2^nd, 3^rd, and even 4^th tours in such areas. The rest of us simply marked off each passing day as bringing us one day closer to returning to “the world.” That’s how we referred to the United States, “the world.” Asian culture was always austere and too difficult for many to even comprehend, even though it was all around you. For my part, I embraced it as much as I could.

In those days, the military printed a thing called MPC, Military Payment Currency. It was a substitute for U.S. Dollars which we were prohibited from using while over there. Our loved ones, however, knowing how poorly paid we were, would send us money, usually $20. Every GI quickly learned that $20 on the Korean black market would get him $25 in return. Rumor was the Korean black market would put in a demand for gold but I don’t know if that was true. To give you an idea of army pay back then a private made under $100 per month and a buck sergeant made a little over $200 a month. But no one complained. After all, we all got “3 hots and cot” for free; that is three hot meals and a place to sleep.

When I arrived in Korea and reported for my first day of work at the communications center, the sergeant in charge, a sergeant major, stood 5 of us in a line. We had all graduated from the same signal course at Fort Gordon. To each of us he asked if we had any electronics background. For those who said yes, he assigned them to communications maintenance. And to those of us who said “no,” as I did, he assigned us as communications systems trouble shooters, tech controllers was the actual title. He said we would learn through on the job training. And that is exactly what happened. And as it turned out, it worked out very well for all five of us. We were each promoted a first time after three months there and a second time after 6 months. The reason for this I alluded to before, we were usually near 50% strength. But there was also a constant turnover of old personnel leaving and we, the new personnel, having to take over their jobs.

The year 1969 was an especially eventful one for America. On December 23, 1968, the USS Pueblo crew was marched to the DMZ where they were reunited with the American military. Even though that happened in 1968, it was almost a harbinger of things to come in 1969, as if to kick things off.

In Korea, every GI barrack had a houseboy, a Korean man who would clean up after us, take our clothes to be washed, shine our boots and keep things tidy in our “hooch.” Hooch is a slang term used by G.I.s in Korea and Vietnam denoting the place where they slept. It could also refer to where the locals slept.

From my earliest days in Korea I always felt welcomed by the Korean people. Maybe it was because they were resigned to our being there, which was probably true for some, but also because they were generally happy for our presence. After all, we had freed them from the Japanese tyranny they suffered through from 1910 until 1945. And then again, in 1950 when the North Koreans unexpectedly invaded the south, it was the Americans who won them back their freedom. I have no memory of ever been looked upon with disdain by any Korean. Maybe I just missed it but I don’t think so.

In Korea in 1969 there were 2 army divisions, the 2^nd and the 7^th, along with numerous support organizations, such as the one I was assigned to, and a large contingent of US Air Force personnel who were station at Osan AFB in the north and Pusan AFB in the south. There was also a detachment at Inchon which was the international airport serving Seoul. In all, there were over 50,000 military personnel in Korea at any one time, almost entirely men.

Korea, like Vietnam, was what the military refers to as an “unaccompanied tour.” That means dependents were not allowed to accompany the serviceman to their duty station. We had a very racist term for American women. We called them “round-eyes” and every GI talked endlessly about what he would do with the first “round-eye” he met when he got back to “the world.”

With exception of the release of the Pueblo crewmen, life in Korea was very uneventful for my first four months there. Working the mid shift, 11PM to 11AM, was always the most boring. Television did not exist in Korea and so we were limited to listening to Armed Forces Radio which was canned, having been recorded in the Los Angeles area. GIs both in Korea and Vietnam got their daily dose of a beauty named Chris Noel. He soft voice and beautiful features seemed the promise of the future. I think most guys either had a picture of Chris or knew someone who did. See for yourself.

But AFRS was not a 24-hour station. From midnight until 5 the station did not broadcast. Being in communications gave us access to certain things other GIs unfortunately did not have. An enterprising GI at Osan AFB managed to pipe music from his hooch to the microwave link and passed it on to any and all who cared to listen. And trust me when I say, everyone listened. In Yongsan, I was at one end of the microwave link and Pusan was the other end. From there it was jumped to Japan and then jumped again to Hawaii. Another enterprising GI came up with a poster for our nascent radio station. We had to have called letters, as does any legitimate radio station, so he came up with WFTA. The FTA part meant “fuck the army.” The poster showed a guy with a pair of bandoleros wrapped crosswise over his chest as if he were a South American rebel. The letters WFTA were printed across the top. I proudly displayed that poster. One day, for reasons I never understood, my battalion commander decided he needed to see what his troops were doing. In fact, he had no business there but who is going to challenge a colonel? When he came into my section and saw the poster. He was naïve to the meaning of FTA and asked what it meant. I do not remember my answer, but whatever it was, he bought it. He asked who had come up with it and I told him who. The guy who made up that poster ended up getting a commendation medal for aiding in good morale.

One night I got a call from the guy at Osan who asked if I wanted to join in on what was called a “B.S.er” I didn’t know what that meant and he told me the idea was to link communications sites together around the world via teletype. If done correctly, you would type on one teletype and a few seconds later see what you had typed come in on a different teletype. As I remember the links went like this, Yongsan Korea to Taipei Taiwan to Phu Lam Vietnam to Tehran Iran to Italy to Ft. Ritchie Maryland to Hawaii to Japan and back to Korea. A single communications line linked around the world was unheard-of in those days but we did it. It was done mostly out of totally boredom but we did it.

The war in Vietnam struck home for me one day unexpectedly. As a communications trouble-shooter, we had to report all communications outages. Those were rather frequent occurrences to the field units in Korea we had direct lines to and less frequent going almost everywhere in the other directions. Being a part of the 8^th US Army Headquarters, we of courses had direct lines to many places around the far east. One line, for reasons I never understood, went to a field unit in Vietnam. It was one of two lines we had there. The other was to Phu Lam. One day the 2^nd line went down while I was on duty. Being really good at my job, I called Phu Lam for a status on that line, if they even had one. They did. The line was out permanently as the position had been overrun by the North Vietnamese Army.

In the early months of 1969 I got more and more comfortable with my surroundings in Korea. I was able to contact the Korean family I had been told of. My houseboy had been instrumental in making that happen as I was clueless on how to bring it about otherwise. Korea in those days was a study in contrasts. There was a huge peasant class, very poor people. There was a smaller upper class, and a tiny middle class. The upper class all drove Toyota or Datsun (Nissan) sedans while the middle class drove refurbished army jeeps. They were always painted black but the interior was made quite comfortable. The family I met were middle class.  Below is a picture of me with a boy about my age from this family.

I cannot tell you where they lived but it was a nice section of Seoul. Nice is a relative term. Nice in those days meant they had indoor plumbing and were not reliant upon charcoal heaters placed beneath the floor for heat. I was introduced to Korean food. Kimchi is a staple of the Korean diet and my family said they would understand if I did not care for it, which one bite in told me I did not. They got a good laugh for my efforts. Unfortunately, that and their cooking bulgogi, grilled beef, are my only memories of the evening.

We paid our houseboys the large sum of $5 a month for his services, the bill being due payday which was the first day of each month. Most of us gave him a tip in addition, probably a couple of dollar more, but I really do not remember exactly. I became very friendly with my houseboy and was invited to his house for supper.

As opposed to the family I had visited, my houseboy lived close by in little more than a hovel. Living with him were his wife, his child and both his parents. The doors to his house were a wood frame with paper where glass would otherwise have been. They all lived in two small rooms. But they were happy, at least that is my memory. The laid out a feast I know they could not afford. They too got a laugh out of my inability to swallow some of what was offered. But I tried. They were very gracious. After the meal, the men were served rice wine, makkoli. Each time my houseboy took a sip of the wine he turned his head. I asked him why and he said he did it out of respect to his father.

Every army company, 200 – 250 men, had a KATUSA assigned to it. A KATUSA is an acronym for Korean Augment to the US Army. In our company, he was the company commander’s driver when he was with us. One day I came across his being beaten severely by his sergeant for an infraction he had committed. I don’t know what it was but I was advised by a senior sergeant that I was not to interfere or even say anything. It was how the Korean army conducted its business.

One thing that became very clear very quickly was just how good the Korean army was. They were extremely well-trained fighters, extremely loyal and extremely reliable. I found out later that our troops in Vietnam cherished having their Korean counterparts attached to their unit. They were renowned for their bravery and skill as fighters. I was informed that every Korean male between the ages of 16 and 60 were either on active duty in the military or a part of the country’s military reserve. Their freedom seemed always in the balance and in any fight, they were determined to come out on top.

This takes me through March of 1969 where I will pick up in the next installment.

A Year in Korea – The Early Days

The Early Days

I spent a year in Korea from December 1968 to December 1969. It was, to be sure, one of the most life changing and wonderful experiences of my life. But how did I get to Korea?

December of 1967 saw me failing miserably at Boston University. I had done really well in my last two years of high school and graduated 19^th in my class. I had gotten early admittance to Boston University, they had accepted me in early November 1966. I thought I had finally gotten my academic act together and was ready. But in truth, those last two years of high school were highly structured which had aided in my exceling where I had formerly failed. When I got to college, and the structure ceased to exist, I lapsed back into my old ways. In truth, I did not know how to study and did not know how to ask for help. I knew in December 1968 I could not continue.

I had heard of a program the U.S. Army was offering to select young men to go to Warrant Officer Flight School. It required testing extremely well in the Army’s basic testing program and then getting a high score in their “flight aptitude test.” I did both and fairly easily too. All I had to do was pass the army physical and I was in.

On February 19, 1968, I was sworn into the U.S. Army and the next day put on a flight to attend basic combat training at Fort Polk Louisiana. I had never been further south than Baltimore Maryland and so Louisiana proved a mild culture shock. I grew up in the lily-white community of North Andover Massachusetts. In high school, we did have one black student. He was an exchange student the Unitarian Church had brought from Africa to study in the U.S. When I transferred to school in New Jersey, Bordentown Military Institute, I came into contact with both black and Hispanic Americans for the first time. But my home town, God bless it, had welcomed our exchange student with open arms and he quickly became very popular. And so it never occurred to me that race made any difference in anything.

My basic training was actually rather uneventful. That was until April 4^th when Martin Luther King was assassinated. Leesville, the closest town to Fort Polk, erupted into riots and all off-post passes were canceled. I did not know who King was really, but the black man in the bunk next to mine broke down and cried.

A few weeks later I graduated from Basic Training and was put on a bus with four other soldiers on our way to Fort Wolters Texas for basic flight training. I made it through the first four weeks of what was called “pre-flight” when I developed a horrendous case of allergies and had to take Actifed to keep them at bay. The flight surgeon, however, informed me that as long as I took the Actifed I could not fly and so my brief flirtation with the flight school ended. I was washed out.

The army had to figure out what to do with me next and they took their time. I got detailed to work at the Army Community Center for some reason. I do not remember the original reason but after a very short time the lieutenant in charge there asked if I would be interested in trying to teach a young Korean girl English. I said I would. No irony there huh! I actually did a pretty decent job and the girl knew enough English to enter the 5^th grade, the grade she would have been in in Korea.

My orders came down and I was assigned to the signal school at Fort Gordon Georgia. I was there from August until my graduation in mid-November when I received my orders assigning me to Korea. It being Thanksgiving week I was given a 10 day leave before I had to report to Fort Lewis Washington for transport to Korea.

On January 23, 1968, the North Koreans captured the ship and crew of the U.S.S. Pueblo. I do not know the entire story behind the Pueblo but my best guess is it was a spy ship used by the CIA or other government agencies. I do remember, strangely, the ship’s commander, Captain Lloyd Bucher being demonized in the U.S. press for allowing his ship to be captured and not scuttling it as was the standing order. My take on it was that had he sunk it, he would have had to do so in North Korean waters and therefor validated the North Korean’s claims. What I did not know was that the “Pueblo Incident,” as it was called, would come into play again but this time while I was on duty in Korea.

As best I can remember, my flight to Korea, taken in the first few days of December, lasted some 16 hours and was routed via Tokyo. The flight itself was not in the lease memorable but once the front door opened up on the Korean landscape I was greeted we a scent in the air that was a mix of alien scents. Part of it was burning wood and part was, I learned later, human waste which was ever-present in the nearby rice patties, so I was told.

We were quickly ushered into a tent where we were met by an army nurse who commanded that we drop our drawers. A doctor came by and gave each of us something called a gamma-globulin shot which was a cocktail of vaccines meant to keep us from contracting yellow fever and malaria. There were probably some other diseases included but I never knew. The sergeants laughed at us as we boarded our bus for the replacement depot. The shot was supposed to make us so sore that sitting would be difficult. I felt a little soreness, but not enough to really bother me.

I did not last long at the replacement depot because my final destination had been determined long before I ever left the United States. I was assigned to US Army Stratcom Company C Long Line Battalion in Yongsan Korea. Yongsan is a northern suburb of Seoul. But while I was at the repo depot, as it was called, I got my first taste of army milk. It tasted, funny. There is no way to describe it but I was told that in was reconstituted milk. I found the chocolate milk to be much more tolerable than the white milk so whenever chocolate milk was available, which was almost always, I drank it.

Once in Yongsan I was housed at a small army camp known as Camp Coiner. It was us, the 304^th signal battalion (a field/combat unit). In the late 1960s, Camp Coiner was a collection of Quonset Huts which held about 20 men each. In the winter, the hut was heated by a single kerosene stove in its middle and in the summer, it was air conditioned by keeping the doors at either end open. There was no plumbing in these huts. We had to cross the street to a cinder block building which held both toilets and showers. There was one rule: when you were about to flush the toilet, you had to warn those in the showers of what you were about to do else they would be scalded by the loss of cold water.

I was just 19-years-old when I arrived in Korea and the culture shock was huge. I had an ace in the hole, however. Prior to my leaving for Korea I had met a Korean family living in North Andover who put me in contact with their relatives living in Seoul.

I worked at the 8^th U.S. Army Headquarters communications center at the main garrison in Yongsan. But to get there, we had to leave Camp Coiner and enter the Itaewon district briefly before going through a gate to the main garrison. These gates were heavily guarded, of course. In those days, there was a curfew when all soldiers had to be at their barracks, if not at work, between the hours of midnight and 5AM. For the foolish soldier to be caught outside of his compound come midnight, his only recourse was to shack up with one of the local prostitutes who were legion. Sad to say that happened to me one time and for the great sum of 75 cents, that was actually all the money I had, one of the prostitutes took me in. The shame I felt in the morning was huge and I must have showed for half an hour trying to get the imagined dirt off me. After all, I was a good Catholic boy from a good family and I had one this! Shame!

From the time I reached Korea until the day I left I generally worked 12-hour days which ran either from 11AM to 11PM or vice versa. It was a time of war, even in Korea, and we seldom were at full strength which meant one soldier had to do the job of 2 much of the time.

I was in Korea for just a few weeks, Christmas was upon us, and our company commander asked for volunteers to help take food and gifts to a Korean orphanage we supported. I was quick to volunteer, always liked a new adventure. And this would prove one of my more unforgettable adventures ever.

On the day of our trip we were told to check out our M-16 rifles and told that we would be accompanied by an MP jeep with a 50-caliber machine gun mounted on it at the front of the convoy and another at the rear. We were heading to a location very close to the DMZ, the demilitarized zone, which in those days was a very dangerous place. And this particular part of the DMZ was not watched over by our troops.

I did not think much of it all and just took it in stride. After all, we were on a good-will mission bring cheer to orphaned children. What I did not realize was that I would be learning a hard lesson in Korean culture on that day.

The orphanage was a single-story cinder block structure of only 3 or 4 rooms, to the best of my memory. And there were only a handful of children there, maybe 20, who were taken care of by Catholic nuns. I do not remember much of what happened that day because of one thing I saw which haunts me to this day. We had been informed that Korean orphans back then where at the lowest rung of the food chain in Korea. They were outcasts having all been born of illicit sexual congresses. Every child but one would easily pass a fully Korean when they became adults and would probably find their way. But my eyes fell upon one little girl who had blonde hair and blue eyes but spoke only Korean. At that moment, a piece of my heart was ripped from me and has never been return. I wanted to do something for her, to save her, but there was nothing I could do and it left an emptiness in me that still exists today. What chance does she have was the recurring question I had. Anytime I think I have it bad I am reminded of her and I know how good I have it.

I do not remember anything more about that trip and our visit. The little girl dominates my memory and does not allow for any other memories.

Korea is a Buddhist country, of course, and so there were no signs of Christmas anywhere. I do not even remember Christmas 1968 but I suspect I worked that day. It was not unusual for us to work 6 or 7 days in a row with but a single day off.

If We Are Going to War, Let’s At Least Do It Right

The latest bombing in Manchester England only reinforces how increasingly dangerous our world is. These terrorists are going to continue what they have been doing in recent years and, I fear, with increasing regularity. It is only a matter of time before such a tragedy strikes the United States, again. Remember the Boston Bombing. The United States is a lot of things, but security against such attacks is, unfortunately, unreliable. I do not say that our law enforcement people will not do their utmost to defend against such an eventuality, they will. What I am saying is that there is just so much they can do and a committed terrorist, such as just struck in Manchester England, is virtually impossible to protect against.

My liberal friends, and even my conservative ones, might find it surprising for me to make the following statement but I feel it is one which must be said. The United States needs to increase its ability to fight a land war. But as we stand now, we are woefully unprepared to do so.

According to the Heritage Foundation, the U.S. Army will be at a strength of 460,000 by year’s end, the navy will have 272 ships which falls short of the 308-ship battle force it needs. The Marine corps will have 182,000 active personnel. Finally, the Air Force a little over 5,000 air craft of all types. It has 76 B-52H aircraft, 62 B-1s, 20- B-2s, almost 600 F-15s of, a little over 950 F-16s, and 182 F-22s. The last B-52H, the latest model, was delivered in 1962 giving the average age of that aircraft over 55 years old. The B-52 is the only long range heavy bomber in our arsenal, a key component to any strategic fleet. The average age of its F-15 fleet, the backbone of its fighters, is approaching 30 years. Equally as bad is that the majority of the Air Force’s long range refueling aircraft, the KC-135, a Boeing 707 variant, is also over 50 years. It does have much newer KC-10s but only purchased 59 of this aircraft.

The Heritage Institute, which studies military preparedness, rates the Army’s and Navy’s preparedness at “weak to marginal,” the Air Force was rated “marginal” in 3 out of 4 categories, only in “capacity” did it score “very strong.” The Marine Corps was rated “marginal” in 3 of 4 categories, and “weak” in capacity. What can we derive from all this? The United States Military forces are overextended, overtaxed, and under strength.

It is likely we will soon be engaged in another protracted land-war. Given the various terrorist organizations and the state of the middle-east, it seems almost inevitable. But it is a sin to send our troops into modern battle in antique aircraft, sparse support organizations, and an overtaxed cadre of men.

The signs of battle fatigue were first noted in WW1, more so in WW2 and by the time the Vietnam war was over, medical science had come up with a name for it, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD is worse now than ever. How can we tell? The rate of suicide in the military is at an all-time high per capita. I was a Vietnam era vet and the promise made to us, and kept, was that if we were put into a war zone, such duty would be required of us one time only. And the Defense Department kept its word on that point. Still, the horrors of war proved too much for some.

Today, it is common practice to send soldiers into a war zone 3 times or more. The reason? We simply do not have a large enough force to guarantee the soldier that one war zone tour my generation was granted.

A mentally tired soldier is a soldier more susceptible to being killed or wounded than one with top mental acuity. The answer is a simple, albeit expensive, one. We need to increase the size of our active and reserve forces first. Then we must put our airmen in the most modern aircraft we can build. Such an action will easily cost trillions of dollars, but sending men up in aircraft that should only be seen in museums is nothing short of criminal.

We face an enemy who seems impervious to our high-tech warfare. Why? He is spread out in small units which can move on a moment’s notice. He can outsmart the smart bomb simply by moving from one place to the next. As advanced as we are in the art of war, we still do not have an adequate replacement for the infantryman, and this is not likely to change anytime soon. Simply put, we need to reactive many infantry divisions which have been retired over the years. The 5^th ID, 7^th ID, 24^th ID, 26^th ID and 2^nd Armored Division. This would add as many as 90,000 infantrymen and tankers and greatly bolster our troops.

What this is going to take, more than money, is our politicians finding the courage to face facts and then be truthful with the American public. The public in general will probably not like the news, but properly presented, they will accept it. It is in all our best interest that we stop pretending we can fight a war with just the men and equipment we now have. We cannot.

The Presidency is not for Amateurs

Until the most recent presidential election, this country has never had a president who had absolutely no experience working within the government. Lincoln is the closest be he did hold a seat in the Illinois House of Representatives and was a captain in the state’s militia. Trump, however has had no such experience what-so-ever and it is beginning to show in spades.

Our country has had several presidents who held no previous elective offices but all were army generals. Two, Polk and Grant, were no good as president and served just a single term. But even they had some understanding of the nuances of governing. Historically, flag officers, generals and admirals, have had to deal with politicians if only to promote a part of the military needing funding or other political favor. As an aside, of the 44 individuals who have served as president, only 13 had no military service. But of those 13, FDR had served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and William Howard Taft served as Secretary of War.

In the 19^th Century and into the beginning of the 20^th Century, our country was isolationist. We were far more worried about what was happening on the home front than on being a force, either economically of militarily, on the world scene. World War 1 brought us part way out of that malaise, and World War 2 ended any lingering effects of isolationism. The United States had become a world leader first militarily and then economically. And since 1945, our responsibilities in both areas have steadily increased to where the rest of the world, even those countries who do not like us, look closely at what we do. This is particularly true of our economic and military partners.

President Trump just showed on the world’s stage how ill-suited he is for the job of president. He took a victory lap for landing a billion-dollar military deal claiming it will mean jobs for Americans. It may mean a few jobs, but the truth is, the contracts will be for equipment American companies are already producing and those companies are not likely to find the need to add many, if any, new employment positions. But Trump missed the more important deal to be had. Saudi Arabia flatly refused to put sanctions on ISIS groups existing within its own borders. Trump’s move was to leave the country with no military deal. For all his bluster about getting tough on ISIS, when the first chance for him to back up his rhetoric, he cowered. He seemed to forget that Saudi Arabia needs us more than we need it.

We live in an extremely dangerous world. There is no shortage of governments who want to take shots at the United States. Iran, North Korea, Russia, China and a number of other countries are not our allies and each has been known to give aid to terrorists. And while we have been able to clamp down on Iran and have decent trade pacts with China, neither of these countries would come to our aid.

The middle east is likely to remain unstable for years, if not decades, to come. Extremist groups in middle eastern and central Asia are not likely to be neutralized any time soon as can been seen in Afghanistan. But a more present danger lies in North Korea. The North Korean leader seems hell-bent on creating a war in his region. The peace that has been experienced on the Korean peninsula has been a tenuous one at best since 1953. One of our staunchest allies is South Korea but even with the tensions that exist there now, President Trump has not seen fit to schedule a visit. Why?

Not far from Korea is a long-time friend we are fast losing, the Philippines. I had the chance to talk to a well-educated Filipino recently and he informed me that even though his country has begged the United States for assistance militarily, none has been given. There is an insurgency in that country that if successful would put the Philippines at odds with U.S interests. My fear is that since the Philippines do not present the military or economic power to gain front page news, something negative will happen there if we do not treat them respectfully, recognize their difficulties and work with them for a resolution.

The Presidency is not place for amateurs and yet that is exactly what we have there now. He has surrounded himself with his billionaire friends who also have no government experience. The American people should consider this to be a most troubling of the Trump regime. Is difficult to navigate a mine field when you know what you are doing and impossible when you do not.