Korea, ORD 52 Company, Eighth Army, near a nameless little. Village

​     We arrived at the port of Inchon, on the West side of the Korean Peninsula about mid day and it took us the rest of the day to get off the ship and into some barricks.  Then, the next morning we got another round of 8 shots to protect us from various diseases. I was assigned to ORD 55 an ammo dump about 80 miles South and a little East of the capital city (Seoul). I had to wait for 2 days to catch a ride to my new assignment. It was a fenced in (8 foot high fence topped with razor wire) compound.  A small Village had grown up around outside the main gate and there was a lake just outside the compound from which we drew our water and the people used for bathing and washing their clothes. They would take their clothes and a washboard down to the lake and clean clothes and diapers. It was so dirty they had to really treat the water that we drew from it with a heavy dose of chorine, it was almost undrinkable. Got used to it after a while. 

     Their mud, 1 room huts, were made with a hollow area under the hard clay floor which had access on each of the 4 sides.  They had cylinders (like small keg) of charcoal that they would light and roll in under the floor to warm the house and they slept on the floor. The roof was a thatch material that kept things dry and the cylinders of charcoal kept things toasty warm

     I was assigned to a Quonset hut with 25 guys and an oil burning pot belly stove in each end. Each  hut had an assigned house boy who took care of cleaning, laundry and polishing boots. Each of the 25 guys pitched in 3 dollars a month for him.  When I went home at the end of the tour in Korea, he had a wood crate made to ship most of my stuff direct to my new assignment at the 8th Army Headquarters at the Presido, San Francisco.  My work assignment was in the ammo records hut out among the underground storage bunkers keeping inventory records. We rode in the back of  Duce and a half to and from work it was cold in the winter. There were 3 or 4 Korean civilians that worked out there and they would bring their lunch in a tin box (it was rice and kimchi) they would bring it in to heat on the stove and it smelled awful. Kimchi is made in earthin jugs. They put cabbage, garlic and other vegetables and spices, close it up and bury it in the ground for several weeks to age. In my opinion the worse it smells the better they like it. 

     I worked out there for a couple of months and then they needed an assistant company clerk so they brought me in to fill that position. Then a couple of months later the mail clerk got to go home to civilization and they added his duties to mine. Then the training NCO went home and I got his assignment also. OK, the training NCO wasn’t much. It was once a month training for the Sargents in our company and I didn’t have to do the training, just make out a lesson plan and set the date and make sure it happened. The part I liked best was being the mail man. I would get together with my counterpart from the security company (they provided soldiers to guard the perimeter fence) and drive a jeep or a truck to the K55 Air Force Base (about 35 miles) to pick up the mail. Because the mail truck was subject to thieves we had to carry .45 pistols to protect the mail. We always timed our trips to get to the Air Force Base about noon so we could eat lunch there. At the Army chow hall we used metal trays cafeteria style, we would go down the line and they would plop food on our tray and we would go to a table and eat. At the Air Force chow hall they had waitresses and 3 different choices on the menu and they would bring the food on china plates for the great price of 16 cents.

     Several things happened as the result of my assignment to mail man:

1.  We had to go thru 3 villages and we always slowed down. One time while I was driving thru a village I came around a corner an there was a baby and a bag of rice in the middle of the road, Mama San saw me coming and grabbed the bag of rice and once she saw I had stopped she went back for the baby.

2.   My partner was driving and along the way a convoy of 2 1/2 ton trucks (they were called Duce and half) coming from the other way.  The roads were narrow with a rice paddy on either side and in front of us was a Papa San on a bicycle. There were places where he could have pulled over and let us pass but he wouldn’t.  The driver honked at him several times and he just looked back and grinned.  So finally the convoy passed and we went around him, the driver said shove him in the rice paddy and I said no, that’s not right so when we went by him I grabbed his hat and sailed it into the rice paddy and we went on about our business.  Well, about a week later a car pulled into our compound to talk to our Company Commander and then to me  they were from CID ( the criminal investigation division of the army)  it seems the Papa San memorized the vehicle number of our jeep and made a complaint. They asked me which one of us threw Papa Sans hat in the rice paddy?  I said: oh that was me.  They said the Papa San said it was a new Panama hat and he wanted $50 to get a new one.  I told them it was an old beat up hat and I would not give the old man $50 but what I will do is go with him to the village and he can pick out any hat he wants and I will pay for it. So that’s what we did and after he got his hat I apologized to him and we shook hands and parted as friends. It cost me $3.85. He did come to our compound a couple of times and set in the office while I worked then I would take him to lunch with me at the chow hall, he was really a nice old man.

3.  I was almost shot by friendly fire:  whenever we went into the Air Force chow hall we had to remove the ammo clip from our .45s and clear the gun and we would return the clip when we left. I was driving this day and as I was looking over my shoulder backing the truck out of the parking slot I felt my partner lift the .45 from my holster and I thought “what’s he doing with my weapon?  I turned as he racked the gun and I swung my arm and yelled “it’s loaded” as he pulled the trigger. Three things happened which saved me. The dash board in an army truck is made of steel, an upper half and a lower half welded together in the middle, the bullet hit directly on the weld, the strongest part and ricocheted back between my arm and ribs and buried itself in the seat back and filled the cab with gun smoke. I don’t remember what I said to him or called him but it scared the heck out of me about what might have happened. Now I had 3 problems:  when I turned the weapon in to the supply room I had to account for a missing bullet.  I had a gash on the dashboard with missing paint and a hole in the seat back. I swore my partner to secrecy and said I would take care of it because he was looking at a court marshal. So when we got back to the compound and before I turned the truck in I went to the supply room where I had a friend and explained what an idiot I had for a partner and said I need the bullet replaced and some touch up paint which he supplied. The only thing I could hope for was that no body would notice the hole in the seat back. So my partner was safe, I was safe, the truck was returned and probably used by many other guys before the hole was noticed.

     Half way thru our tour in Korea we received a week of R&R (rest and recovery) so me and my buddy from the supply room went to Japan on an Air Force shuttle. My buddy’s name was Eberhard Rapp, of German decent, so he took me to a German Restaurant and I ate something I couldn’t pronounce but it was delicious. We went to a play that I couldn’t understand and a tea room that was on 3 floors with a stage at one end that went up and down taking mandolin players and singers between floors. We went to some beautiful parks and gorgeous Japanese gardens and had a ride on a bullet train. That thing was really fast for being in the late 50s. On the last day we went back to the German restaurant. I started laughing because there we sat in Japan, in a German restaurant, eating hamburgers and fries.

     Well the rest of the tour sailed by, I was a couple of months late going back to civilization because I had to have 3 replacements.  Training NCO which they did right away, they finally got a company clerk for that job and then a little later a mail man showed up. The silver lining then showed up because I was 2 months over due going home they put me on a plane instead of a troop ship. Thirty three hours in the air instead of fourteen days on the ocean. What a life.  I had no idea I was destined to meet my sweetheart!!!!!!!❤️ what can I say, she changed my life. Many times we stepped out together in faith not able to see the path forward but feeling the guiding influence of the Holy Ghost. I love her with all my heart. She gave me 7 wonderful beautiful children she was the guiding influence in their lives.