15 May 80
 
Dear Folks,
 
Well, here I am in lovely rioting Seoul.
 
 I am ensconced in the dubious luxury of the Bachelror Offier's Quarters, the BOQ, and the mama-sans are bustling around, washing things I own that haven't been plunged in hot H2O since I have owned them.
 
Gives me the willies. I am beginning to think that privacy is something non-existant. Mama-san is better than an alarm clock. At eight each morning she is in the room dusting things up and making a great show of being quiet. The fact that I work nights disturbs her not in the least.
 
I'm glad the language barrier is a chasm so deep, leastwise I might offend her. I am trying to economize on paper at the moment, as the felons who ransacked my belongings at the Supply Depot saw fit to leave my battered Smith-Corona but make off with all my paper and carbons. And both of my stereos, as well as anything glittery which caught their fancy.
 
The shipping agent says they will settle my claim in as little as a year or two, with perhaps as much as six cents on the dollar. Is there no outrage to great in serving one's Motherland?
 
Well, they left me my .357 mag, and I hereby give them fair warning.
 
Let's see: I'm not sure when I wrote last, but I think it was before I strapped on one of our thundering P-4 Phantoms for a spectacular departure from our gray mobile home, the famous aircraft carrier Midway.
 
One moment we were perched on the catapult, and then the J-79 engines were spewing all manner of hydrocarbons  behind us. My pilot Black Cloud saluted the Cat officer and the next thing I knew I was squashed by the force of eight instantaneous Gs. We went from a standing start to 200 knots in something less than four seconds. It was fantastic!
 
Short, yet long enough to think several random thoughts. Like: "God, No I"
 
Then we were wobbling off a quarter mile in front of a progressively smaller toy ship, arcing up to ten thousand feet, the blue ocean advancing up over my left shoulder as we rolled out over the top. We had some fun on that hop; aerobatics, pulling five-point-three Gs sustained over the top of a loop, swooping through the cloud canyons at six hundred miles an hour.
 
It was an undeniably colorful way to depart mighty Large Building 41.
 
Then the wrap-up for departing Nippon. Many drinks, carefully packing the stereo, so that the thieves might get the goods undamaged. The interminable bus ride across the Kanto Plain to the airbase of departure at Yokota. I had flown across the congestion on titanium wings and now the little shoebox cars made us crawl.
 
Then a mystery flight, early in the gray morning, a weather recon WC-135 hauling balls across the unending swells of the Pacifc, arriving two hours before we left a day before. The receptionist wouldn't sell the mini-bottles of likker to a returning decorated vet because they don t do that in Sacramento at 0430 in the morning.
 
"Sacramento?" I said wonderingly. So that is where we are...
 
Then fighting aboard the only PSA commercial flight out the next morning, roaring drunk on 50-cent beers,
 
I was there in plenty of time for them to loose my luggage. More airports. The Midwest. Losing the day I had gained as we raced toward the sunset. Looking blankly at a business seatmate who was bitching about some foul-up in his delicate arraignments to get from 0'Hare to Detroit Metro.
 
"Travel is such a hassle" he said, and I just shook my head. "You don't know the half of it, buddy."
 
Renting the newest shiny toy from the Hertz people at Detroit. "Gimme a Camaro" I said boldly, "And charge it."
 
Driving through the depression-stricken Motor City evening, speeding of course, hoping for false promise and the sitrrings of embers banked two years before.
 
I'm tired. More later.
 
Vic

747-7 Hannam-Dong Yongsan-Ku Seoul Korea Telephone 795-0061 Telex :hyatt K241 36 Cable'Hyatt Seoul