Korea 64-65 Part 2: the Tac Site

Korea

I was in Korea for about a year, serving in C Battery of the 7th Missile Bn, 2nd Air Defense Artillery Brigade, first as a Fire Control Operator and then, when I became a Sergeant, as a Target Selector in a HAWK – Homing All the Way Killer – SAM ( Surface to Air Missile) system. We were in the business of providing an air defense umbrella for the Republic of Korea and the United States troops stationed there. Everything in C Battery revolved around the Tac Site which was the home of all the radars and missiles in our system and sat on the highest hill around. The Tac Site overlooked the Yellow Sea and had the best view of any place I have ever worked. By far.

To the northwest and west were  islands and inlets off of the port of Inchon, which opened into the aforementioned Yellow Sea. To the north and east were rice paddies and the village of Nam Yang.

To the immediate north, in a small valley just below the Tac Site was a compound with a Buddhist temple (I went there several times but it always seemed deserted except for the laundry and I now have the feeling they were ghosting us).

To the southeast and south was an almost endless view of hills and valleys. For awhile, when the Air Force took the troublesome F-105 offline, we ran practice missions against the Marines who were flying A-4 Skyhawks and they used to sneak up these southern valleys at about 350 miles per hour. They were much harder to “kill” than the Air force planes.

In the winter, on top of that hill, it was sometimes bitter cold with the wind coming off the Yellow Sea. Most of the snow was blown off the hill by the wind, but the cold remained, and we were often stuck out in it.

The Quonset hut, in the middle right in the picture above, was called the Ready Room or something equally pretentious. Our basic work schedule, if that is the right term, was that our Battery would be On Status or Hot for about half the time (I don’t remember the time frame, maybe 24 hours out of 48, 48 out of 96, something like that).  On the Tac Site, when we were not On  Status, it was a regular work day and we would be working on the equipment or running drills. When we were On Status, in theory, we were ready to launch missiles at airplanes if we were attacked. Well, semi-ready, we had to be ready to launch  in fifteen minutes and meant hanging out, waiting for an alarm from Battalion with somebody, in the Battery Control Central – BCC – wearing an headset listening to the Battalion comm-line all the time. Passing time when we were awake and sleeping in our clothes when it got late or we got bored (when pulling duty in the BCC, I discovered that the headset connection cable was long enough to allow me to sleep on the floor, a tactic based on my theory that Battalion talking to me over the comm-line would be loud enough to wake me). On one day, off one day, for a year, in theory. In practice we were on much more than we were off, the longest run being almost full time from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Eve. It got tiresome.

This was the early 60’s, and the HAWK system was based on vacuum tubes. The BCC had a wall of racks and racks of tubes that required a huge air-conditioning system to keep the inside temperature reasonable.  It was so noisy inside that even though we were within touching distance, we couldn’t hear each other, relying on headsets and microphones. This was 60’s state of the art meaning that everything was unreliable and required daily, hourly, minute by minute maintenance. The missiles, especially demanded constant tinkering and replacement which required taking them to the assembly building on little crawlers and constantly running operation checks while they were on their launchers.

Our most distinctive radars were continuous wave radars, called illuminators, which lit the target with a radio frequency beam that the missile then homed in on. The radar frequency was controlled by a gizmo called a klystron that was encased in its own glycerol cooling system which was very unreliable and had to be replaced way more than seemed reasonable.  We had different crawlers to help move them around.

Keeping the HAWK system running required almost constant activity but it was activity to no end. It was practice and maintenance – and changing klystrons – over and over again ad nauseam . It was sitting in the dark, watching small dots – bogies or blips – move across a radar display. It was running system checks and then re-running them. It was lugging heavy machine guns into bunkers in a snow storm but not being issued any ammunition.

Except for August 2, 1964, when the destroyer  USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin thought it was being attacked by the North Vietnamese and everybody went amok. We were off status but came up, as fast as we could, accompanied by klaxons blaring, and orders to change code books.  Ammo was issued to us without anyone keeping track, the missiles were armed, and our battery commander went sort of bonkers issuing orders nobody could follow. It was an interesting couple of days, followed by another half year of pointless drill.

And another half year of great sunsets.

“The Greatest Honor of my Life”….His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios A Couple of Thoughts on the Inauguration

Americana, Obama, Politics

In talking to various people yesterday, I was surprised at how many hadn’t watched the inauguration on Monday. After all it was a holiday – maybe not on the same level as Christmas – without any football games to compete with it. Michele and I started watching it – DVR delayed – at eight in the morning and, after taking the middle of the day off, were watching, or re-watching, parts of it at ten that night. To me, it was a great reality show about America; the best, the worst, the meh. It was a reality show about the transfer of power.

Before he gave the  benediction at the Congressional lunch for the president, His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios of the Greek Orthodox Church, looking at Chuck Schumer – the head of the organizing committee and MC for the day who was clearly having a great time – said Thank you, this is the greatest honor of my life. I can understand that, it seems to me that it would be the greatest honor in almost anybody’s life. He was the first Greek Orthodox anything to give such a benediction and it underline the theme for the day; inclusion. Inclusion in the American Dream, in the American tapestry. Acceptance and Acknowledgement in being an American.

In this case Acceptance included a second term African-American President. As an aside; I am one of those people who thinks winning a second term is even more important than winning the first. As Ta-Nehisi Coates said on Colbert the other night, using a football analogy, Winning once was like a Cinderella  Team, winning the second time was defending the Championship. During his first term, Obama did some things very well and others not so good. He didn’t solve all our problems – I don’t think anybody could, they are just too big and too pervasive – but he diligently kept working at trying to solve them. I think he won re-election because the American people looked at him and saw an hardworking guy taking on huge problems as well as anybody could be expected to do.

Inaugurations are about the transfer of power. Something that was as rare as an unicorn until George Washington walked away from power after his second term. We are no longer the world’s only Democracy and, in some ways, we are not the most democratic, but we transfer power as well, if not better, than anybody. And, in a bigger and far more important way, we are the world’s leader in the transfer of power. The white, male, landowning, elite has transferred power to the rest of us. That is amazing. Just as George Washington was the first winning General to walk away from being a Dictator, I think that the American power elite was the first – and maybe the only, even today – power elite to transfer power.

Watching the Tuskegee  Airman being honored by President Obama, in the Presidential Viewing Stand in front of the White House, brought tears to my eyes. But, the bigger, more important, image was the Tuskegee Airman’s escort, a black, female, Army Major. A black female who, during her career so far – and she looks pretty young so she is probably on a fast track – has commanded white troops. They might not have all liked it, but when she said Jump, they all jumped. That is astounding!

The parade that the President watched contained his Power Base. The new Americans: Mexican Americans, Chinese Americans, African Americans. Without these Americans,  Barack Hussein Obama would not be President. Without the Gay Vote and their Money, Obama would not be President. Without Women, Obama would not be President.

As an aside, it goes both ways;, Tom Ricks over at The Best Defense, posted, I think I didn’t appreciate how important Obama’s inauguration speech on Monday was to gay Americans. This thought dawned on me as I was walking my dogs on Monday night and passed a local gay bar. The entire second floor of the building was covered by a huge American flag. I found that moving. I find it moving, too. End aside.

I know that there are members of the White Elite Class that don’t like this transfer of power, that resent it and are afraid of  the future, I know that there are some who want to take up guns and stop it. I know that there are those who want to go back to the Old Ways, but that will not happen.

 

The marchers in the street  have felt their power, the power of being part of the American Tapestry, and I doubt they will be willing to go back. I hope and I expect the interlaced threads will only get more inclusive. Stronger. This Inauguration made me very happy.

Watching the 2nd Obama Inauguration

Americana, Politics

 

Watching  President Barack Hussein Obama’s 2nd inauguration made me proud to be an American. Again. From the time I saw him leave the White House to go to the Capitol, I kept tearing up (and marveling at the number of armored Cadillac limos it takes). The pomp, the tradition, a black man taking the oath of office on Martin Luther King Day, life is sweet.

And then to hear Obama acknowledge the Civil War and slavery with Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free. 150 years after that war, almost 50 years after The March on Washington, is to see our collective picture of history start to change. To hear Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall together in an inaugural speech is not something I ever expected. Then to hear him talk about Immigration Reform and Climate Change. was way more  than I expected. It was the  progressive Obama I had hoped for and worked for four years ago.

Life is sweet today.

Korea 1964-65 Part 1

Americana, Korea

Recently, I started going through my old slides to have them digitized. The slides were shot on Kodachrome 25 and Ektachrome 100Plus and they are pretty soft and fuzzy compared to today’s digital images. So are the memories they evoke but, as I touch up the slides in Lightroom – a great software program – the memories start to get clearer also.

One group of slides memorializes a year I spent in Korea in a HAWK missile Battery overlooking the Yellow Sea ( humm? is that name racist or just a coincidence?). Actually, I didn’t spend all of the year at the actual missile Battery which we called The Tac Site and which was on top of a nearby hill (reached by the road at the far left in the picture above). Somewhere between one half to two-thirds of the nights that I was in Korea – at C Battery, 38th Brigade, Air Defense Command, or something like that – were spent at the place pictured above. This was lovingly called The Compound and life here was sweet (especially compared to life on The Tac Site). We had good food, were allowed to have women on base, had an Enlisted Men’s Club where we could see movies, and none of that was quite like it sounds.

The food in Korea was a pleasant surprise. While it wasn’t particularly interesting – before Alice Waters, most food wasn’t particularly interesting – we could get eggs cooked to order in the morning. Sometimes we had a delicacy called creamed beef on toast – informally known as SOS, Shit on a Shingle -that I found to be very tasty. It was very salty and fatty (think McDonald’s french fries). On Sundays, we often had barbecued steaks acquired by our mess sergeant by trading booze to some Air Force mess sergeant from  Osan Air Base. On Thanksgiving and Christmas, we had turkey with all the trimmings and mashed potatoes (actually, we had mashed potatoes with almost everything). I don’t remember ever having a salad.

Close to The Compound, was a small village called Nam Yang ri and in it was a small bar and women we, euphemistically, called businesswomen. Their business was us. At night, after work, or on a day off, we could go down to The Vill for drinks at the bar and/or a date. There were – it is hard to remember exactly – about twenty women and we all knew their names and, delicately put, their behavior patterns. The only names I still remember were Mrs. Song who went steady with our Battery Medic and Annie who was very enthusiastic about her job. It was, maybe, a fifteen-minute walk to The Vill and a date was – I don’t really remember exactly – probably less than five bucks (in those days a Private was paid, I think, $91 a month plus clothing and room and board with an extra $10 a month for being in a war zone).

As I recall, alot of guys went steady which cost about thirty to forty bucks a month (it was a sliding scale). Guys who were going steady were able to bring their girlfriends onto The Compound for a movie at the Enlisted Men’s Club (and drinks, of course). One nice perk, if that is the right word, is that a truck was sent down to Nam Yang ri at ten o’clock to bring the happy warriors back home. It was sort of like a taxi picking you up at a bar at closing time if the taxi was an open truck and you rode in the back (less comfortable in winter).

Our Battery Courier made daily runs to civilization, in this case, 8th Army Headquarters and our Ordinance Depot in Seoul, and the 38th Battalion Headquarters near Osan Air Force Base. All were considered distant places of unimaginable luxury. One was about two and a half hours away by 3/4 ton truck on dirt roads, the other, maybe two hours away and it required a full day pass to go to Seoul (where we walked around, gawking like rubes).

A couple of times a week, the courier picked up a movie that was chosen for us by some unknown force. Most of the movies were very mainstream and very pro-American – I saw Dr. Strangelove two days before I shipped out to Korea and, as far as I know, it never got to an Army Base – and they were always highly anticipated. I probably saw Mary Poppins, Hud, The Train, Charade, The Birds, Lilies of the Field, From Russia with Love, The Great Escape, and The Pink Panther. I don’t think I saw Tom Jones, A Hard Days Night, or The Pawnbroker in Korea. The major problem we had was that movies were starting to change to the widescreen format and that required a special lens because they were compressed on the film and had to be expanded back out to be shown. We did get the special lens but the room was not big enough and the lens could not focus that close. We ended up showing the movies in an un-expanded form which made everybody look extra tall and extra skinny. I do remember Cleopatra being a problem and some basketball picture with Jane Fonda where everybody was extra, extra tall. Still, it was much better than no movie.

It was also better than spending the evening back at the barracks. My barracks was in the third building down from the top on the right side, in the picture at the top of the post. In the picture below of the inside of the barracks, my bunk was on the bottom left. Neatness counted, but, after we left for work, Korean Houseboys – they were really men, Jeez! the causal effrontery – came to work to clean up the area, shine our shoes, sort laundry, refuel the diesel space-heaters shown in the center of the picture, and, in general, make our life more pleasant.

To be continued…

 

 

 

Lance Armstrong is a dickish sociopath

Uncategorized

I am not a bicycling aficionado and have little  idea how prevalent doping – or juicing which now seems to be the preferred word and, somehow, seems to make it sound both better and worse than doping – is in the bicycling world, and that is not my complaint with Lance Armstrong (Lance Gunderson, before he changed his name which might be a clue). My complaint is the way he attacked everybody who tried to tell the truth. My complaint is that he dragged other people into his world.

Sally Jenkins, a columnist The Washington Post and author of two books with Armstrong, says I think that there’s a level of anger at Lance that is out of proportion to the offence of doping. I think she misses the point. Maybe everybody juiced, but not everybody threatened people who wanted to tell the truth (and Gundrson’s threats were pretty heavy duty). Not everybody coerced other people into juicing. What a dick!