Writing About Me X - Korea

I am not happy with the title of this series, and am soliciting ideas for another one.  It should be one that readers can follow through, but that doesn't seem so self centered.  That's going to be difficult, because a series like this is, almost by definition, self centered.  I  am considering "Recollections"  as the lead title for the series.  Leave your thoughts and recommendations in Comments.

However, for now it is  "Writing About Me."  I've wandered through the past, rather quickly it seems to me, to the point at which I've arrived at Kunsan AB,  Korea.  Kunsan is a small port city on the Yellow Sea, about halfway down the western side of the peninsula.  The base is about ten miles from the city center, and the road to the city winds alongside the city's reservoir.  The Army Corps of Engineers had paved the road with asphalt, but there were places that little asphalt was left and the road was pockmarked with large potholes.

This was 1963, barely ten years after the Korean War, or Police Action as it was officially called.  Korea was still a poor country.  Either they had never had extensive forests or they had been destroyed in the war and hadn't had time to regrow.  The Koreans had torn up the road and used the asphalt for heating their homes.

Korea had central heating long before most western cultures.  Their homes had floor vents and a distribution system of channels to deliver the heat to the interior.  The "furnace", or source of heat, was outside.  All of which illustrated to me that we didn't invent the concept of central heat.

Our base had new barracks, and most of the buildings were post-war.  But there was one hangar that had been a part of a US base when the Chinese overran the nation.  On one wall, high near the rafters, were large hooks where approximately 25 US service members had been hung, a vivid reminder of how brutal war can become.

After I received my security clearance, I began working.  The Security Police worked out of a quonset hut at that time.  I was on an alert team my first night of work, about six of us charged with responding to emergencies.  I was senior in terms of rank, but very junior in knowing what was going on.  We sat in a room at one end of the building waiting for a call, and the restroom was at the other, so for the most part it was easier to go outside and pee on a snowbank than traipse through an office to get to the bathrooms.  Every few minutes one or another of the guys would get up and go outside.  The door was locked, and since I was sitting closest to the door, it became my job to get up and let them back in.  It seemed that I was getting up every few minutes, all night.  Much later, I was told that it had been a sort of initiation, a test to see what kind of guy I was.  I passed.

I was writing Irene every day, and received a letter from her most days, though they came in bunches.  The mail system seemed to be sporadic, with our mail piling up somewhere.  The courier flight that brought the mail arrived daily, but the mail didn't, coming whenever someone decided it was time to send a bunch.

After several months I was assigned the desk job.  Irene helped me there too.  She typed her typing book practice lessons and mailed them to me.  I've never been a good typist, but however effective I am is a tribute to her.

I have several vivid memories of Korea, mostly in terms of the people I was with.  I remember Mickael M. Coe, and Eddie A. Erwin best, for very different reasons.  Eddie was my drinking buddy, and we had some very good times.  Mike was a guy that I had been stationed with at Clark, then charleston, and then at Kunsan.  He had more integrity than any other person I had been stationed with, and we had some very good, interesting discussions.

Mike is also one of the persons who affirmed me as adult and responsible.  We had a very, very senior Airman First Class, a three striper like Mike and me.  But Paul was absolutely unable to make a decision.  One day I gave Mike responsibility to run the lunch relief for the troops on the flightline guarding the aircraft.  Paul was also on the relief team.  Mike thought that since paul was his senior in terms of time in grade, he should run the relief.  It got so fouled up that a couple of troops didn't get lunch, an unforgiveable error.

Afterward, Mike came to me and apologized.  He said that he should have known I would have a reason to put him in charge of the relief, but that since Paul was so senior he didn't feel comfortable directing him, that I had been right.  Mike's words were very rewarding moment for me, because I respected Mike and appreciated him realizing I had made a good decision.

That seems trivial in the overall scheme of growing up, and there were other times Iwas much less effective, but it was , and is important to me.

An incident with Eddie has also stuck with me.  As I said, Eddie and I were drinking buddies.  One evening we were in a downtown bar, and Eddie was pretty far out of it.  We were standing at the bar when he stumbled.  A Korean laughed at the drunk American, and Eddie took offense.  the next thing I knew he was about to start fighting.  Hitting a Korean was about the worse thing a GI could do while in town, so I hauled off and slugged Eddie.  I hit him hard enough to knock him down, and walked out of the bar.

I was walking the streets feeling very alone and angry when the Town Patrol sergeant, who I knew, drove up, and put me in the back of the car.  He took me to his office.  I just knew I was in deep trouble.   When we got to the office, there was Eddie.  They asked me why I had started a fight.  My explanation was that Eddie had been about to hit that Korean and i wanted to create a sort of diversion.  It had the advantage of being truthful, and successful.  He would have been in much worse trouble if he  had hit that guy, and all of us knew it.  Eddie and I talked, I apologized, and he thanked me for hitting him.  I don't think I've ever had anyone thank me for hitting him, before or since.

Sgt. Fox, one of the NCO's of the squadron, had been a Military Training Instructor and was returning for a second tour.  MTI is a Special Duty Identifier, a volunteer job in which you're supposed to be assigned for three to four years and then return to your primary job.  As he described it, the job sounded good to me.  Irene and I had grown very close through our letters, and I was sure I wanted to marry her.  The MTI job would guarantee that we would be in one place for at least three, probably four, years.  So I volunteered, and was accepted.

In February, 1964, I returned to the States.  March 7th, I married Irene, and left the 9th for Lackland AFB, San Antonio, Texas.  Irene stayed in Ohio until I could find a place for us to live.  I rented a mobile home in a small, family-owned traikler park, and in late April she joined me.  To be continued.

Comments

Recollections would be just fine!

Mac

[Felix Grant]

I agree with Mac - Recollections would be a good title. Alternative: Reflections. But I also think that the existing "Writing about me" does very well indeed!

[Felix Grant]

New suggestion for a title, after mulling for a day or so: "Through the wrong end of a telescope".

That's how I often feel when looking back on past fragments of my life: that they are an incomprehensibly long way away, yet preternaturally clear and bright. You bring the same quality of observed brilliance to your descriptions.

But, the best title is one that just feels right to you ... not anything that I or anyone else foists on you! As long as you keep writing, I'm happy.