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THE COMMAND BUNKER
HEADQUARTERS UNITED SNAKES FORCES SEOUL 20 MAY 1980 Buddy,
It's Tuesday, and I am drinking a stiff Bourbon. I have earned it, and besides, I still have three bottles to buy this month according to my ration card. You will be able to envision how I am doing by how my typing, erratic under the best of circumstances, disintegrates as we progress through this missive.
I am listening to the Rolling Stones on the portable cassette deck. It is really the only music for a Military Dictatorship. (Sorry...I was just talking to Mama-san about Buddha's Birthday tomorrow. Unless I am mistaken, I think I just told her that all U.S. Forces have the day off).
Ah well, I like the language barrier, really. She thinks I'm great because I just gave her a bottle of Tang. No accounting for taste, and boy, any nation that has made Tang a heavily rationed black market item has got more problems than plain T-54 tanks up the road.
The weather is nice today, and the nice pair (brace?) of pheasants are strolling around outside my window. I am seized by a nearly uncontrollable desire to pull out the Dan Wesson and make them vanish in a cloud of pin feathers. Vaporize the fuckers
Excuse me. I may be letting my emotions show. Let's see how I'm doing in a couple paragraphs.
So far, this tour sucks. I am back to being just another J.G. in the Joint Mother-fucking Command. I have been patronized within an inch of my life. Most notably by an Air Force First Looie who seems to think that this is a 'remote assignment' in the heart of the world's tenth largest City. He has no conception that remoteness begins about a thousand nautical miles northeast of Garcia Diego, and gets worse the further West you get and it starts to get East again.
Oh well.
Worst, the Navy assigned here are mostly Black Shoes. The first words spoken to me (besides Welcome Aboard) was "Shave."
You see, wearing a beard offends the Koreans. Only the old and wise can grow the few white follicles that they possess. "But," I said calmly, There is a thing called 'U.S. Navy Uniform Regulations' that say I can grow whatever I want, so long as it is neatly trimmed. You see, I am not a Korean. And if they want my help in staving off the Communist Menace they can just dig it or eat it."
"What you don't see, young man, is that you aren't in the Navy anymore. You are in Korea." It got worse from that moment on.
They had no room at the BOQ, of course. The Army has only been here in strength for 26 years, and they haven't got around to fixing that little glitch. They are going to get right on it as soon as we are in imminent danger of being over run, or I get out of country. Whichever comes first. So I wound up at the Hyatt up the hill. Not too bad: the place was tolerable. What they didn't tell me was that they could only reimburse me $25 dollars a day, and the room was $52. I explained to them that it really wasn't my job to subsidize Army Housing, but it didn't seem to get me very far. Just another one of the Good Deals I have come to know and love in my time over in this corner of the world.
After about two weeks they allowed as how they could shoe horn me into one of the plush permanent facilities, as all the important people had left the country. I moved in and notified Household Goods that they could deliver my shipment any time. They said they could get right on it and have the stuff over at the place in as little as week or so. Certainly before Buddha's Birthday.
"Swell," I said enthusiastically. "Why don't you fuckers just take your sweet fucking time. I don t want to see my stereo or blankets until I have time to let the silence start to get to me, and I have a nice set of chilblains."
Well, the silence was barely tolerable, and the chilblains are healing nicely. Unfortunately, when my shipment arrived, I discovered that I was not. going to be able to listen to all that nice stereo equipment I had so laboriously hauled all over the Kanto Plain. Somebody had left the Customs seals nicely in place, removed the top of the crate, and carefully examined every thing I own on Earth for items of interest.
Among the missing were both of my stereos, earphones, two tape decks, a couple blankets, some Midway lighters, and generally anything that glittered. They took their time and did a good job. I was proud of them. The only thing they fucked up on was not taking the guns, which were in an innocuous box. I was very glad, because if I so much as see somebody looking In my window, I am going to splatter his brains all across the green hill.
So aside from the fact that all the Postal Clerks are under Indictment for theft and mail fraud, and that the disbursing clerics haven't been able to pay me any funds, and the job sucks, things are just great.
Except for the rioting and the coup, and the nasty assortment of fanatics that live up the road, and the shooting on the DMZ.
In order to Impress us callow newcomers to Asia, they drove us across town and up to the Joint Security Area. There we were able to see actual Communists in their cute little Sam Brown belts and 7.62 mm pistols.
They didn't seem very happy to see us, but then I didn't really get off on them, either. We saw the Stump, and the guard-posts, and the fortifications and everything. Including the caps belonging to the Major and the Lieutenant who are "still on guard," whatever the fuck that means.
The Mad Monks are the people who live in the Monastery, which is the O Club at Camp Red Cloud. They told us that the work party was so well disciplined that they never pulled a weapon during the Incident. 'Course, the majority was too busy blasting back up over the hill to do much about it.
And the guys in our guard post were too busy making sure the thing was photographed for the Permanent Record to do anything. They documented It so well that one of the rear posts with Big Eyes had to call them up and tell them that they had inadvertently left the Lt behind, and that he was still alive.
Naturally, by the time they got back, there wasn't much left of him. "Say," I asked, "doesn't this say a lot about our over-all Command and Control system? I mean. If somebody kills off the only person empowered to give the order to load n' lock, don't that mean the discipline Is all wasted? Can't you teach people to think, too?"
"The Officer's Club is open now. Sir." I went in and had about four beers, standing astride the military demarcation that bounds the edge of the DMZ. I had already stood in North Korea that day, on the other side of the conference table In the MAC building.
The funny thing about the Commies was that the faces on our side of the line looked just as fanatical. Just another bunch of Koreans with a passion for wearing uniforms.
Speaking of which, the Coup. I was doing a training Mid-Watch, on a Saturday night. It should have been quiet, so I could practice my Orders of Battle, and answer the phone and process messages. All that good fun shit. Instead, When I wheeled around the bottom of the stairway to the Indicationas Center, I saw LTGEN Rosencrans huddled with some of the Embassy types and a couple of the real spooks.
The room rapidly filled up with all the power-junkies, flunkies, analysts, and Movers and Shakers. It was a thrill a minute through the night, as our trusted allies blew whatever claim they had of being a Republic. It was General Chon's play, and it was a great one.
Three thousand Pigs....I mean, Korean National Police, surrounded the Women's College where 78 of the Student Leaders were getting together to plan the next step for the demonstrations. The cops cruised in and only managed to grab 18 of the ringleaders. So then they went out-side and began busting people at random to get the requisite amount for the body count.That was the early story. Then we discovered that Emergency Marshall Law was going Into effect that night at midnight. This Is not to be confused with ordinary Marshall Law, which we have been enjoying since President Park got scragged by the Generals. This is the Big Bopper. No warrants. Immediate jail time for gossip, round up the political opposition.
Tremendous! And to think I was there to see it.
We don't know what the North Is going to do.
One theory holds that they are terrified that the South will take this opportunity to move North. I don't think so. I got out my camouflage fatigues (they tried to Issue me Army greens) and made sure the weapons were oiled.
Maybe It doesn't matter that I already lost the stereo after all. Well, I wouldn't have It any other way. I'm glad I work In a bunker, shift work In a bunker, and not stuck with you on some lousy white sand beach with the Doctor's Wind blowing over my darkly tanned body with some Eurasian girl giving me great head while I sip on a Primo Beer.
Say hello to the Boss for me, I tried to call him on the circuit last week but they said he was off screwing the wife and drinking a bottle of Drambuie. And If you see LCDR R_______, make sure you tell her that I will never forgive her for passing me In Strategic Warfare back at Intel school and getting me Into all this. It is her fault.
Take care, |
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