In my mind

My first duty station was the 2nd Infantry Division, 2nd MP Company, 3rd Platoon. FRONTLINE! We were an “outlying” platoon, meaning that while the Company and most of the Soldiers were stationed at Camp Casey, my platoon was in charge of the Western Corridor and we were stationed at Camp Howze. The Western Corridor was comprised of about eight different camps, and ran from Camp Howze up to the Joint Security Area. You might have seen the JSA in the news some time past. Donald Trump and Kim Jung Un were there. When we got to Yongsan, we were lined up against a wall and a VERY large officer walked up and down the line picking people that he wanted. Turns out that was the JSA commander. He wanted the largest, meanest bastards that the USA could offer. North Korea is always viewing/taking pictures/surveilling the US Soldiers who are stationed at the JSA, and he wanted every picture to be of the biggest, meanest looking sons of bitches we had. You had to be at least six feet tall. I was five foot eleven. I missed it by one inch. I did visit the JSA later in my tour while on duty. I don’t know if I would have enjoyed it or not. While we were at Yongson, they called out the names of people who would be stationed either in or around Yongson, or places further south. Maybe one-third of the group had their names called out. The rest of us went into the 2nd Infantry Division.

I arrived in Korea as a wet-behind-the-ears Private. I grew up as a military brat, so I wasn’t completely unprepared for what was coming, but being a military brat is not the same as being in the military. I can remember sitting in a Quonset hut at Camp Casey while large men wearing a special belt buckle ran us through the administration process of people coming in to a unit. After all the paperwork was done, I waited for my ride to Camp Howze and wondered just what the hell I’d gotten myself into.

Korea, at least when I was there, is a country that’s hard to define. Seoul was a bright, shining technicolor metropolis full of technology and people, while three hours away men used a buffalo to plow their terraced fields that were fertilized with the worst smelling manure I can ever recall. It was three hours from porcelain toilets to an outhouse.

In order to make sure that we stupid round-eyes don’t get into too much trouble, the US Army has what are called Katusas. Korean Augmentation To the United States Army. These are ROK Army Soldiers that either have a good grasp of the English language, or rich parents to buy their conscripted kids a path to work with the US troops. The Republic Of Korea still has a draft, and apparently their military culture is pretty brutal. Being a Katusa is seen as the golden ticket for your military service. Katusas acted as interpreters, guides, cultural educators and the people that kept their US counterparts out of jail. The thing is, they still only got paid the ROK pay rate. Now, if you’re in the ROK Army on their army base, it’s much like what the US used to have. Everything on the base was open to you. Need a haircut? It was either free or dirt cheap. Need uniform items? Go to supply, they’ll issue it. The US Army doesn’t quite work that way anymore, and the pay rate for Soldiers reflects that reality, but the Katusas were getting paid around $17 a month.

Not $1,700. Not $170. Seventeen dollars a month.

The ones who had wealthy families were typically getting a stipend to help them get through the month, but the ones who were picked for their English language skills often didn’t have that kind of financial backing. And so young Dave decided that he was going to buy them lunch on occasion. “Hey, Lim! Let’s go have lunch!”

Corporal Lim: “OK. Where are we going?”

“I have no clue. This is YOUR country, right? Pick a place.”

And so I got to experience the culture of Korea, such as it was around Camp Howze. They would take me to some hole in the wall that I would have never been able to find on my own, and we would feast. I still love Korean food to this day. I make my own kimchee. Gochujang is a staple in my fridge. And I wish I had kept in better contact with my Katusa friends.

The camp was turned over to the ROK sometime in the 2000’s, as the US began to draw down their troops in Korea. You can still see where the motorpool used to be. Most of the buildings, including my old barracks, have been torn down. The Ville still exists, although without the steady influx of cash from young troops eager to have a beer and some local food/company I imagine it’s not as vibrant as it used to be. The bars would be blasting whatever music the Koreans seemed to think we enjoyed. The beer was pretty much crap, but young men tend not to care about that. And every bar was staffed with “Juicy Girls”. Young, attractive, and always asking you to buy them a shot of whiskey. The whiskey was actually just apple juice, for $5 a shot, and then the girls would sit with you and rub your arm and tell you how handsome you were until their apple juice “whiskey” was gone. And then they wanted you to buy them another shot. Me being rather contrarian, and fresh from getting my heart ripped out by a woman back home, didn’t give a shit about the Juicy Girls. That saved me quite a bit of money.

I finished my tour in Korea, and got sent to Fort Riley, Kansas, where I learned an entire new level of suckitude. My time in Korea was probably one of the best times in my career. I had leadership that were excellent. I learned more in one year in country than I did in three and a half years in Kansas. As my platoon leader put it, we were eight miles away from an entire country that wanted to kill us, we didn’t have time to fuck around with stupid bullshit. That one year set the tone for the rest of my military life. It made me rather contrary, which is both a help and a hinderance. “Why are we doing it this way? It seems kinda stupid.” Well, it’s by the book. “Well then, it seems to me that the book is stupid. Why don’t we try THIS way?” But we’ve always done it this way. “You been successful with that? Nah? OK, then why don’t we try to be successful instead?” Dave, why are you a troublemaker? “Because I want to win, not lose” That was a great attitude to have in Korea, not so much in Fort Riley in the late 90s where leadership was based off of who you knew and who you blew, rather than on how lethal you could be. The lethal aspect would only come into play later after a group of goat-fucking barbarians started a game of fuck around and find out.

I ETSed in October of 2000. I figured I’d done my hitch, and I was good. The afore-mentioned goat-fuckers kinda ruined that plan, along with my broken brain not allowing me to sit on the sidelines while my brothers-in-arms were going into harm’s way. 2004 saw me back in uniform, and 2005 I was on Active Duty again. Twenty three years.

The thing is, in my mind…. I’m still that young man. I think a lot of guys have that in their heads. I’m not some old, grey-haired, broken down wreck. I’m still that guy who can crash through brick walls and keep going. Limitations? Fuck limitations, I don’t have those because I’m young and invincible and able to move mountains through sheer willpower alone.

You’re told that you are the meanest motherfucker in the valley, and then you train like it, and then you go do it. And there’s a portion of your brain that will never accept the fact that you’re not capable of doing that again. Like the bits and pieces of you that broke off somehow are going to grow back. The injuries are going to somehow disappear. The ringing in your ears will magically go away.

I have a fair number of photos from my early Army times. I have almost no photos of the latter part of my career. I don’t want them. I don’t want to be reminded that the lean, steely-eyed killing machine is old and slow now.

I was still Private Dave back then. Not even mosquito wings on that uniform. Drinking coffee in the fall, with a Katusa, about to go patrol the Western Corridor. The buildings in that photo are gone now. The Katusa probably doesn’t remember me. And that bad-ass bastard has turned into something and someone he wouldn’t recognize. As happens to all of us.

But in my mind, I’m still that guy.