Editor’s Note: As you know, I have been rambling on about a Med Cruise in 1990. I am going to do something completely different this morning and take you back a decade, to a troubled time on the Korean Peninsula. There may be more to this saga- I recently came across another manuscript of incoherent recollecctions from my 14-month one year tour there, and thought I would just mix things up a bit.

BOQ BUNKER
SEOUL
27 MAY 80

Dear Sluggo,

I got your kind postcard last week sometime…or was it this week? Hard to tell with the cities falling and the troops moving about in their fashionable tanks and smashing designer fatigues.

It has been a great crisis thus far. I will recount the various intricacies as soon as I vent some spleen.

U.S. Forces Korea, to which I am assigned, is a joint command. I have been ‘Standing the Watch’ in the Command Bunker this week. The Bunker on the Yongsan military Garrison in Seoul was once the bathhouse of the Imperial Japanese, so we have come down in the world a bit.

The training schedule is a little behind; every time I came into the Bunker to study there was a new Martial Law Proclamation, or the arrest of an Infiltrator, or the Fall of Kwang Ju to leftist students.

(Look here: Socotra, it is pronounced Gwong-jew, not “Kwaang-ju.” “But we pronounced it that way for years and nobody minded.” “It matters here. You are in Korea!”)

So there I was, flat on my back under the desk at fourteen feet below ground level. I was turning over the watch to the young First Lieutenant who was to relieve me. I was over by the air status board- a wall-sized piece of Plexiglas placed over a big TPC-size DMA chart of North Korea. The Senior SIGINT analyst would track the progress of NKAF flights as he got updates from Field Station Korea. I started a rendition about a long distance flight the North Koreans had made from someplace up north down to some place down near the DMZ.

“So this IL-28 Beagle drove on down from Umpty-Dong to….” I said.

The First Lieutenant boldly cut me off: “Planes don’t drive places. Boats may drive places, but airplanes fly.”

“Oh yeah. So this guy flew down here and drove around for a while…” That tore it. The young man began to boil. I mean, here he was, straight from a real operational base like Carswell, Texas, with B-52s and everything and this Navy puke is telling him about airplanes. I mean really.

We got through two more map-boards and things erupted. He explained to me that he was in the By-God Air Force, and us ship drivers were incompetent jerks.

Ah me. I am not what you would call a real military type guy. In fact the bulk of the ‘time of my life’ out on the Midway I was moaning and bitching and plotting to get off it. Get back to someplace safe, on dry land. How strange to want to break somebody’s teeth in defense of the Fleet, and Naval forking Aviation in particular.

A scene from Dr. Strangelove flashed through my mind. “Gentlemen, Gentlemen, this is the War Room!”

So it was Fear and Loathing in the Bunker. I am in the middle of a six pack right now, recuperating. C’est la Vie. Been here an unpalatable month, and I am almost hoping the North goes ahead and does it.

Speaking of which, I am at least getting my Asian Slice of History lesson, which is a diversion from all that Shi’ite Muslim crap we dealt with off Iran.

Things began to disintegrate almost from the first day. Was it only a week ago Sunday that I walked into the Bunker to see the three-stars puffing earnestly on their pipes, the CIA hastily phoning the Embassy, the one-stars going bat-shit to emphasize their importance.

The power groupies and the analysts were franticly blowing smoke into the congested atmosphere. The shit had hit the fan.

The ROKs had gone out of control, and the man in the drivers seat. General Chon Tu Hwan, had determined the only thing he could do about the student demonstrations was to come down on the kids, and hard. His troops swarmed onto campus and arrested eighteen of the leaders in what had been an unchallenged sanctuary. Then the word swept through the Bunker that Emergency Marshall Law was going into force at Midnight, and anyone caught rumor-mongering or non-main streaming was going to pay a heavy price indeed.

Well, the weekend passed in Seoul with nary a squeak from the kids.

Downtown, by the train station, the ROK Government Black Berets wheeled in a show of force, bayonets fixed, and the children shrieked in mock terror, and left the field to the Special Forces.

No trouble in Seoul.

But down South, it was another kettle of kimchi altogether. Now, realize that the Seoul-City folk view the South as a land of rubes, hicks and general non-sophisticates, and that furthermore the views from Kwaang-jew are equally acerbic regarding the mentality of the Northerners. Sort of like everyone in Ohio viws New York City. Accordingly, it was only to be expected that the Emergency Martial Law (E.M.L.) wasn’t going to be welcomed with open arms. I don’t think the leader of the ROK’s military junta, General Chon Tu Hwan, could quite have anticipated what the complete reaction was going to be.

We in the United Snakes Forces don’t have the story in all the complete and unvarnished gory details. The ROKs who work in the Joint Command were cut off almost as thoroughly as we were from the full partnership, which is tenuous even in the best of times. One thing was sure: they didn’t want us to know what they were going to do, as our old- maid niceties would only interfere in putting down the Communist-inspired desire for Democratization with the jackboots of Mainstream Thought.

The first try at calming the situation, which at first was just a few dozens of thousands of demonstrators, was to drive in the tanks and fix bayonets.

For some reason, this appeared to be counter-productive. Obviously, it was Non-Mainstream-ism was of a most virulent sort. It called for a firm dose of Dr. Chon’s magic elixir. At one point, they were calling for Cobra Gunships to put down a march on a provincial prison.

Oh, Lordy me. You have read the story in the Stars n’ Stripes by now, and my mind couldn’t help but wonder at what a decade of military interference in the civilian government can bring.

In the late Sixties, (by which, of course, I actually mean 1971 and 1972) this was the kind of crap that enabled Ho Chi Minh to fight the war in the United States, and win it politically. We got all confused and tried to fight it on the ground in the country he was determined to unify.

Well, you live and you learn.

(I have to note, I have had a most interesting conversation with SFC Volsko, who is one of the senior SIGINY analysts on my watch team. He was involved in the military intelligence assault on the Weathermen and the Panthers in the San Francisco Bay Area. By now I am sure that you are aware of the threat to “Blow up some Pig Fascist Military Complex” on the West Coast by the Weathermen, which legitimized the involvement of DoD assets in what had here-to-for been a purely law enforcement matter.

That gave the Services carte blanche to get into the mass federal assault on the anti-war movement. I was most favorably impressed with the news that- and did this one fascinate me- that the Panthers operated a clandestine manual Morse Code net right there in ourt beloved United Snakes….. Using Chinese Cypher codes. And the ruble-laundering that brought all kinds of neat electronic gear to the SDS…but I commence to wander a bit far afield).

It is, none-the-less, damned fascinating to hear that all the paranoid fantasies during my time on campus were in no small part true. We were being duped by Moscow and Washington simultaneously. It does have a certain symmetry to it that I can appreciate as a former Global Analyst Without Portfolio to the Navy’s finest Air Wing. Plus, I really enjoyed the story of the SDS coordinator with his $478 dollar Motorola walky-talky being targeted by an Army MilSpec field-jamming device that made his radio explode and produced RF burns from his ear to his buttocks).

So where was I? Railing about a war lost ignominiously, or the Air Force? Ah, yeah, so there we were in Kwaang-joo City. The subsequent rioting spread throughout Cholla Province, previously best known for its locally-grown firey red pepper. The Students (what a catch phrase that is, these days!) were at one point in possession of thousands of weapons, APCs and all the trucks they could drive. They said that if they were denied passage across one of the local bridges one click away from the Air Base, they were going to occupy one of the ROK Army family housing areas. The stories, rumors, of the dead were scraping a half thousand. Certain irresponsible parties announced that the joint ammunition storage area at the Air Base was to be captured.

That got our attention, big time, since among the munitions stored were those that We Don’t Talk About.

A word of commiseration for poor Col. Ouster, the aptly named Facility Commander of the U.S. weapons depot at Kwaang-joo. He was about up to his ass in ‘gators. The State department had all kinds of things to declare to the hapless man, I don’t believe he has had much sleep the last few days. The entire foreign community that got the propensity to move dem happy feet was his personal baby. Of course travel was cut off. What of the determined folks who refused to leave their brass and their rugs?

What is a poor career man to do?

So I sat on my ass- quite literally- and watched the thing go down in a flurry of phone calls from Washington to Seoul. “What’s going on now?” says DIA. “I’m having a cup of coffee. How about you?”

We were literally in the dark. I went down to the Naija Hotel bar for one of my two days off last month (hey, I thought I was on shore duty!) and looked at the Armored Personnel Carriers with the heavy-starched guard in the turret as immobile as Buckingham Palace and the M-60 light machinegun dead down the centerline. The people were cruising by, pretending not to notice.

Sends tingles down the spine, you know?

Then the talks began, and a sigh of relief began to settle on the American community. At last, I thought, sweet reason. Things had to get better.

Oh yup yup yo. A rumor began just about the same time that the Prime Minister (which Cabinet, you ask, after all, there have been two in the last week) went down to open negotiations. This particular one went something like: Wait them out. Then storm the city. Wait till they are tired, and hungry, and the working people are beginning to want Peace, the only thing that really matters in the world. Then bring in a few brigades of selected troopers in the dead of night.

And thus shall order, and the slow process of Democratization, be truly fulfilled.

For all the dramatic, but largely boring, responsibilities of Briefing Cyclical Ops on the ship, I must say that one evening last week I had the power to kill with just a phone call. But that is a bit dramatic. You live in this particular fairy-land of rumors and classified operations for long enough and it starts to seem almost like it is real or sumpin’.

So, about this morning- I walked in to the Bunker about an hour early to try to make sense of all the computer print outs. And it was the second shoe hitting the floor. The ROKS were going in, and it was to be the decisive move.

Well, we shall see about that. But Seoul radio announced the city was secured by 0530. Military casual ties were described as ‘light.’ No civilians were reported injured A few Rebels were killed. (The trusty Watch NCO to my left spoke the wisdom hard-learned in other climes. “A suspected Vietcong is one you shot at. A confirmed VC is the one you shot in the head.”)

Well, my name is Uncle Wiggly, after all.

Getting late, so it must be time to go back to work in the Bunker. Be in touch.

Vic

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303