Love of Country
Since this will be my 300th blog post since I started back in 2015 I’ll do something a little different. This will be a personal life story snapshot.
After graduating from high school in 1965 I attended college briefly while working a full-time job at a defense plant. I wasn’t able to sustain full time college hours and work a full-time job. I wasn’t about to burden my parents with trying to pay for my education. My dad had been disabled because of having too many heart attacks. He was a WWII veteran and his heart condition was service connected. (He was in the Battle of the Bulge and spent six months under fire.)
The Viet Nam war was raging. In the latter part of 1966 I decided to enlist in the Army for 4 years. It seemed like the patriotic thing to do at the time. The draft was in effect then and when guys turned 18 they could make plans to either get drafted, join up or go to school to get a college deferment. Some of my classmates were able to avoid the draft by getting into the National Guard. The National Guard was REAL popular then. It was kind of poetic when Guard units were called up to serve.
Anyway, I enlisted and got married after basic training. I was stationed in the states for a year.
Since I couldn’t type, the Army made me a clerk. Well, first they made me a PBX switchboard operator, then a clerk. When I was a clerk, I learned that my sergeant would sign pretty much anything that I put in front of him. Our captain signed pretty much anything our sergeant put in front of him. So, I put myself in for a top-secret clearance. We were nuclear in those days hence the need for higher level security clearances. I got the clearance and that solidified my staying in air defense artillery.
While at that unit I learned through practice that I could forge our battery commander’s signature. I signed a lot of weekend passes for him. I’m sure that he would have wanted guys to have a good time. My work went undetected.
For the entire year that I was at the stateside unit, everyone came down with orders to go to Viet Nam. And the majority of those guys ended up ground pounders (infantry). On January 23rd, 1968 the North Koreans captured the USS Pueblo, a ship of the United States Navy.[i] We went on a heightened alert and two weeks later I received orders to go to Korea for a yearlong tour along with 3 other guys from my unit. Of the four of us that received orders I was the only one that actually went to Korea. The other 3 were pulled off for various reasons.
When I got to my assigned unit in Korea, I was issued an M14, ammunition and combat gear. After a few weeks everything blew over, we turned our weapons back into the armory and stowed all our gear. My tour of duty became Korean normal.
While in Korea I made the best of my time there. Life is an education. I have lots of stories from this time. Some good. Some bad. For that matter my entire stint in the Army was quite the education about our society. It was easier for me to understand how we managed to acquire the sobriquet “ugly American” in some parts of the world.
The service was dominated by males then. The only female service members that I saw were in the medical field at hospitals. The behavior of men with the general population was not exemplary. The only American women that we saw at our battalion were the donut girls from the Red Cross who showed up occasionally.
There was the usual prostitution close to our military base. At one time my entire barracks was confined to quarters because all of the guys except me had acquired venereal disease and had to stay on base until they were cured. I was the barracks sergeant even though I was a Spec 5. I didn’t cheat on my wife but in my entire time in Korea I only knew of 3 other guys besides myself that didn’t. None of the three were the chaplain and we went through 2 chaplains.
I understood then why my dad told me that he didn’t cheat on mom during the war. He wanted me to know that I had options. My dad drove me to the train station in Kansas where I left for Kansas City to get inducted and then leave for basic training in Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri.
Our battalion had a medical unit with a doctor on duty. Thursday was the day that “business girls” would come in for their checkup. They were tested to see if they had VD. The Enlisted Mien’s (EM) club was on base and the business girls had access to the club though they couldn’t get to the base from the club. There would be live entertainment and socializing in the club. There were also bars close to our compound. There was a list by the door of entertainers that were currently not allowed into the club because they had tested positive for VD. (The doc would treat them.) Did anybody in the States know that the government was watching over prostitutes for our soldiers?
Naturally the working girls were not looked upon with favor by the local villagers but I had the opportunity to associate with a prostitute, Maria, who was a “steady” for a real good single friend of mine, Big Jim. (If you’re out there Big Jim, I hope you’ve had a good life.) Hm, I should explain the “steady” term. A guy would pay a monthly set fee for a woman’s exclusive companionship. It was usually a hefty fee but some guys considered it worth it because it lessened their chance of getting VD. That worked unless the woman backdoored him and went ahead and had clients on the side. That usually resulted in harsh feelings.
I visited him and Maria at her place in the village to have a home cooked meal. While we were having supper there would be knocks at her door throughout the meal and into the evening. She would excuse herself and I would hear low voices of conversations. Curiosity got the better of me and I asked her what was going on. Well, as it turned out she was kind of a village banker. Villagers would borrow money from her. Yes, the very people that would spit at her during the day would borrow money from her. They would come by at night to make payments because they didn’t want to be seen at her place during the day. Maria said that’s just the way that it was and that she understood their position. She was a good decent woman doing what she had to do to make a living in a tough world.
It wasn’t uncommon for prostitutes to get physically abused by GIs including a pair of mute sisters who were working girls. Guys would come back and brag about what they had done. They soon learned to leave me out of such conversations. A particularly religious married guy that led bible study on Sunday loved to go to the whore houses where he could buy a virgin. Often these would be young girls sold by destitute parents to a house. This guy would come back and tell how gentle he was with them while they screamed and cried. This is the kind of shit that turned me away from organized religion for a very long time.
Abortions took place on a regular basis. The babies that did go to term went to orphanages. Our unit contributed to an orphanage that was primarily filled what locals called GI whore babies. Life wasn’t ever going to be easy for them.
Occasionally I would go out to a local bar for drinks. Business girls would sometimes pester me for work. I would politely tell them I wasn’t interested. That didn’t always work (being polite I mean). If Marie was there she would come over and drag them off to explain that I wasn’t a customer. I will always remember one young woman looking over at me during the talk and she had the saddest look on her face. She held out her hand to Marie with a finger pointed out straight (Not that one) and then dropped the finger down. Marie nodded, turned to me and laughed.
As barracks sergeant I had to handle the guys who came back in from the club drunk. I hate dealing with drunks. Forget reason. They’re drunk. They often wanted to fight. Married guys would want to fight because I didn’t cheat on my wife. (It isn’t like I talked this over with anyone. I just didn’t do it. Some resented that.) I never really had to fight them. They were usually drunk enough that I could steer them to their bank and get them bedded face down so they wouldn’t drown in their own puke if they vomited while on their back. A guy at a previous unit died like that. Stupid way to go.
One married sergeant started the rumor that I was really a homosexual and that’s why I didn’t cheat on my wife. Now that bothered me. Not because I minded being called queer but being called queer in the military then could cause some problems. So, I waited in the barracks until he was sitting on a footlocker in the cubicle shooting the bull with a bunch of guys, walked up beside him, bent down, grabbed his face in my hands and gave him a big ‘ol forceful mafia kind of smooch right on the lips. Then I just stood back to see what happened next. Nothing. He was stunned. I was prepared to fight him but nothing happened. I just walked off but that was the end of the rumors. Never really figured that out either. It just seemed like the thing to do at the time. I guess either guys figured we were both queer or if they spread the rumor they would run the risk of getting a smooch. I may have sold the mafia part of the kiss enough IDK. Anyway, that was the end of that.
Then during the month that I was due to rotate back to the states the North Koreans shot down one of our EC121s, a spy plane, on April 15th, 1969.[ii] Our tours of duty were extended due to the possibility more escalation. The United States did not retaliate for the loss of the plane and 31 crew members. Nixon was President then. Everything settled down again and I finally rotated back to the states to Ft. Bliss in El Paso, Texas.
Now my orders were for me to be in a Nike Hercules air defense artillery unit there.[iii] However, a First Sergeant came over and pulled me out of line when I was processing onto the base. He told me that I looked just like a guy that wanted to be a Drill Sergeant. I explained to him that I already had orders, had a security clearance, was drawing superior performance pay in my Military Occupation Specialty (MOS) and that it was a critical job. He laughed.
That was obviously not a good sign. Then he put his arm around me and said, “come over here. I want to show you something.”
He walked me over to an office doorway and pointed inside. There was a guy standing at attention in front of a Captain. He said to me, “You see that guy standing right there? He didn’t want to be a Drill Sergeant either. He USED to be a Spec 5 (Specialists 5th Class) just like you.”
I said, “Well Top (What a 1st Sergeant can be called) thank you for explaining that to me. I’d love being a Drill Sergeant.”
He gave me another gentle gleeful squeeze and said, “I thought you would!”
And that’s how I ended up being a Drill Sergeant for a while.
It was during this time back in the states that while home on leave I ran into a buddy of mine that had just come back from Viet Nam. He had been badly injured in a mine explosion. I told him of my intention to put in for a transfer to Nam. We talked a long time and he convinced me not to do that. Essentially, he said that we had no business being there and knowing me I would regret what I would have to do. He said go if they send you go but don’t volunteer. I took his advice.
Not long after that I did come down on a levy to go to Viet Nam. But because of the extension in Korea I ended up being pulled from the levy because I didn’t have enough time left in service to be sent on another hardship tour. They sent me to Germany instead because that wasn’t a hardship tour. The Army offered me another stripe and wanted me to reenlist and thought a stint in Germany might do the trick. I didn’t.
I can still remember sitting on my duffel bag on the curb at the airport after I was discharged waiting for my then wife to come and pick me up, amazed that I made it through my 4-year hitch and didn’t go to Nam. So many others were not so fortunate. That was a moment where many would say “there but for the grace of God” etc. But God had nothing to do with that any more than God was causing those other young men to die in the war.
Those were different times. I did have to check in with the Veterans Administration. When I was talking with some other vets there they told me that it was best to keep my mouth shut about being in the service when I was looking for a job. They weren’t wrong either. I had people turn me down for work because I was a veteran, including one who was a veteran himself. The job was to be one of the guys that rode on the back of a trash truck that loaded the garbage into the truck. He told me that as far as he was concerned we were all druggies and not good soldiers. Hard to believe now I know but those were different times and the war was really unpopular. I have been thanked for my service plenty of times since then.
However, because it was so hard getting a job I ended up going to back to college with financial assistance from the GI bill just so I could have some income. Those were my hippy days. I did end up at a protest against Nixon. Lots of people were arrested. Not me but that’s another story. I did get a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. So there’s that.
Life can end up taking some odd twists and turns. The choices that we make sometimes unknowingly are like ripples in the water of life that reach clear to the end but really a lot of the time it’s just the luck of the draw. I feel fortunate and blessed to have made it to the end and have the love of a good woman.
Agnosco diem.
[i] https://www.britannica.com/event/Pueblo-Incident
[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969_EC-121_shootdown_incident
[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nike_Hercules
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