Having escaped the orders to Vietnam it was a short lived reprieve. The next month's levy came out and there it was, my new destination. Korea. I was assigned to report to 8th Army headquarters in Seoul 30 days hence. We packed our stuff and drove back to Missouri for my 30 day annual leave. Funny side story about the trip, Amy was a little over a year old toddler. We made the mistake of putting coca cola in her bottle along with a sedative prescribed by the doctor. The coke was a stimulant and she never slept and would giggle and roll around. Fun trip.
I arrived in Seoul and amazingly bumped into Gene Reed, fraternity brother from MU who had been there for several months. I unfortunately was a day late in joining his unit (Army "intelligence"), and was instead assigned to the 55th aviation company in "yong dong po ku" on Yoido Island just outside Seoul. Arriving on a weekend night was given a bunk of someone on leave for the night. Unfortunately, also not given any mosquito netting and was eaten alive until the bunk owner returned sometime in the early morning hours. Nice start to my stay. I was then properly assigned to one of the many metal quonset huts in our compound. Adequate but hot in summer, they were miserable places heated by oil stoves which were totally inadequate for the brutal subzero winter. They were fifty yards from the showers which were unheated and seemingly always out of hot water. Morning ritual was wrapping in a towel and running over and back rather than undressing and redressing there which prolonged the misery. The only warm spots on the base were the office, mess hall, and NCO club.
My office job involved typing boring reports all day. To break the monotony another clerk, Jim Fillback and I would type bogus funny official looking documents and casually lay them on each other's desks. Good times. Other fun stuff was trips into Seoul in the big deuce and a half, 2 1/2 ton truck to you non vets. Crazy traffic and a game was driving past signs and hitting them with the big side view mirrors. Sometime during my tour I gained a couple of additional tasks, secret document courier, duty roster clerk, and mail clerk. The document courier job meant I got to check out a handgun. More about this later. Duty roster clerk was high pressure as guys would ask for days off duty and would ambush you. Also, it meant that I could show favoritism and not schedule myself for duty. This was later brought to the attention of Sgt Hodges, the alcoholic top Sgt. who made me schedule myself for Christmas guard duty. Karma.
One document courier trip stands out in my memory. We were driving the jeep through the countryside past small villages. An old, very poor, very dirty woman stared at us. We stared back. On the return trip we passed her again. Wham, a big rock hit our jeep. Screeching to a halt, I pulled my revolver from the shoulder holster. She started yelling unintelligbly at us in Korean. We just drove off. It was the only time I ever drew a weapon.
Coming up in next installment, more about the service revolver, paranoia, and why I don't want to fly in a helicopter again.
I arrived in Seoul and amazingly bumped into Gene Reed, fraternity brother from MU who had been there for several months. I unfortunately was a day late in joining his unit (Army "intelligence"), and was instead assigned to the 55th aviation company in "yong dong po ku" on Yoido Island just outside Seoul. Arriving on a weekend night was given a bunk of someone on leave for the night. Unfortunately, also not given any mosquito netting and was eaten alive until the bunk owner returned sometime in the early morning hours. Nice start to my stay. I was then properly assigned to one of the many metal quonset huts in our compound. Adequate but hot in summer, they were miserable places heated by oil stoves which were totally inadequate for the brutal subzero winter. They were fifty yards from the showers which were unheated and seemingly always out of hot water. Morning ritual was wrapping in a towel and running over and back rather than undressing and redressing there which prolonged the misery. The only warm spots on the base were the office, mess hall, and NCO club.
My office job involved typing boring reports all day. To break the monotony another clerk, Jim Fillback and I would type bogus funny official looking documents and casually lay them on each other's desks. Good times. Other fun stuff was trips into Seoul in the big deuce and a half, 2 1/2 ton truck to you non vets. Crazy traffic and a game was driving past signs and hitting them with the big side view mirrors. Sometime during my tour I gained a couple of additional tasks, secret document courier, duty roster clerk, and mail clerk. The document courier job meant I got to check out a handgun. More about this later. Duty roster clerk was high pressure as guys would ask for days off duty and would ambush you. Also, it meant that I could show favoritism and not schedule myself for duty. This was later brought to the attention of Sgt Hodges, the alcoholic top Sgt. who made me schedule myself for Christmas guard duty. Karma.
One document courier trip stands out in my memory. We were driving the jeep through the countryside past small villages. An old, very poor, very dirty woman stared at us. We stared back. On the return trip we passed her again. Wham, a big rock hit our jeep. Screeching to a halt, I pulled my revolver from the shoulder holster. She started yelling unintelligbly at us in Korean. We just drove off. It was the only time I ever drew a weapon.
Coming up in next installment, more about the service revolver, paranoia, and why I don't want to fly in a helicopter again.
2 comments:
Didn't know you served in Korea. Did you ever make it to Vietnam? Guess I will have to wait to find out and I look forward to reading more about your youthful adventures.
Ah, the Quonset hut. When I first started working at the law office we were located in Richland and we had a Quonset hut that we used for storage and a file room. It was quite large and at one point one of the attorneys had a car in there that he was going to fix up and give to his daughter at her high school graduation. It was not one of my favorite things to go out there and file stuff.
On a totally unrelated subject - I finally watched "Lonesome Dove". The series was on about a month ago. I can't believe I'd never seen it before since it has several of my favorite actors in it - Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Anjelica Huston and the incomparable Diane Lane (I just love her). I'm not a huge fan of westerns however so that's probably why I passed it by all these years, but darn it! Now I have to read the book LOL because the movie was super good and the books are always better.
Hey Phil good seeing you last week and I am anxious for you to continue your story.
Mike the pick
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