by Ed Bethune
It took two full days to get from San Diego to Little Rock and I loved every minute of it. In those days, passengers could raise and lower the windows in the coach cars and we took our meals in a sit-down dining car staffed with porters in starched white coats. The meals were fantastic, especially after twelve weeks of boot camp chow.
I stayed two days with Mother in Little Rock and then caught the bus to Pocahontas. On my first day there, I wore my dungarees and boondockers and strutted around town and to the beach at Current River. It was against regulation to wear the dungarees in public, but I was puffed up with pride. It was not long before my old friends teased me for showing off. Since that is exactly what I was doing, it got to me. I took off the dungarees and never again broke that regulation. For the train trip back to California, I followed the rules and wore my dress uniform bearing the single chevron of a newly appointed private first class.
When I got back from Arkansas and reported to El Toro, I got my first liberty, an official pass to go off the base for the entire weekend. A new friend, Technical Sergeant Seimer, invited me to go with him to Long Beach to do what single Marines usually do when they go on liberty; check out the girlie shows and drink. By midnight Saturday I was stinko, a perfect target for the silver-tongued hustlers luring Marines and sailors into an infinite array of brightly lit tattoo parlors. Soon I was next in line to get a three color globe and anchor with USMC beneath it tattooed on my upper left arm. I would have it today if Sergeant Seimer—a true old salt and a veteran of World War II—had not intervened. He pulled me out of the tattoo parlor and promised that he would bring me back the next day and pay for the tattoo if I still wanted it. Tattoos are all the rage nowadays, but one day those who resist the urge may join me in saying, “Thanks again, Sarge.”
On May 2, 1954, I received orders to report to the Intelligence Section of an aviation squadron where I began my work as an intelligence specialist. There I met a number of Marine Corps pilots who encouraged me to apply for the Naval Air Cadet program and become an officer. That forced me to think seriously about my future. I already knew that I did not want to be an enlisted man for the rest of my life, but I was not sure whether I wanted a career as an officer in the Marine Corps.
I was now eighteen years old, but I had never had one mentor to replace my father. My idea about how I should develop was a collection of thoughts that I had pieced together from all the men who had taken the time to mentor me, at school, in the Corps, in Boy’s Club, Scouts, band, and sports. While this can be confusing, and it was to me, it may actually be a good way to develop a worldview and a plan for your life—if you can survive the process, that is. I went through a number of crying spells and painful admissions, but I did mature and wound up with a strong commitment to achieve all I could with the tools I had.
My lofty thinking about becoming an officer and pilot, and my periods of introspection came to an abrupt end in September 1954. My company master sergeant ordered me, a lowly PFC, to serve one month of duty at the El Toro Enlisted Mess Hall. Mess duty is 24/7 because you start at 4:30 a.m. and work until 8:00 p.m. At the end of the workday, you have just enough energy left to shower, fall into the rack, and sleep the sleep of the dead. Out ranked by most everyone, I drew the scullery assignment. My job was to scrape leftovers off the metal trays, a yucky job made worse if there was a glob of sticky peanut butter on the tray. The slop went into garbage cans that we carried to the dump. We put the scraped trays through a huge steaming machine and returned the sanitized trays to the mess hall. I hated the scullery. The sights, smells and sounds of clanging metal trays in the small steaming room were borderline sadistic. I cannot stand, to this day, clanging noises or the smell or site of slop. My scullery experience, has led me to a lifelong insistence that any food served to me must have a clear separation from any other food served on the same plate. No slop, thank you very much.
The long month of mess duty ended and in October 1954, I got orders to go to Korea. The armistice, signed July 27, 1953, at Panmunjom, Korea, was in effect, but no one knew whether it would hold. We all hoped it would. I was to leave by troop ship for Korea in late December so I got another leave. On October 22, 1954, I rode the bus from Santa Ana, California to Phoenix to see my dad, who I had not seen in several years. Unannounced, I went to the address he was using at the time and was surprised to find that he was living alone in a little beat-up trailer parked on an otherwise vacant lot. I could not get in so I just waited for him to get home from his job at a fly-by-night insurance agency where he was posting accounts. About 4:30 p.m., a bus stopped a block away and I saw a man get off. Then I saw the unmistakable gyrations of my father walking from the bus stop. He was coming across the vacant lot toward the trailer. He was conspicuously older, had grey hair, and moved much slower than I remembered. It was painful to see how hard it was for him to walk. Images from my childhood and the love he gave me when I was little came back in a rush. I broke down, sobbing and crying big tears. As soon as Daddy saw me, the grimace on his face disappeared and he broke into that old familiar smile. I collected myself and shouted, “Hey, Old Man,” and ran to him as a baby would run into the arms of his father. We hugged and cried in the middle of that empty lot, ignoring the litter, the old tires, and the empty cans. For that moment, we were in Heaven.
The few days I spent with Daddy gave us a chance to talk about our lives after the separation and divorce. He had kept up with my activities in Pocahontas and wanted to hear all about my successes in scholarship as well as athletics. He was proud of me for being a Marine and was interested in what I planned to do once I got out of the military. It was the first time I ever had a chance to talk to Daddy, man to man, about grown-up things. I found out what he had been doing during all the years he spent in New Mexico and then Arizona. It was a high point in my life.
The days passed quickly, and then on November 9, 1954, I had to leave for Santa Ana to make ready for the troop movement to Korea. I spent Christmas Day on the base at El Toro and our unit left for Korea on December 29, 1954. We took the train to San Diego where we boarded the troop ship, General N. M. Walker, and got underway at 2:00 p.m. on December 30, 1954. We celebrated New Year’s Day on the boat. We got USO packets as a going away memento. There was nothing much in the packets—a deck of playing cards, a comb, and some other stuff—but it meant a lot to me, and to everyone else.
We lived in the ship’s hold. In olden days mariners referred to the space below the deck as the hold, especially when the space was used for storage. On the General Walker, we called it the “hole.” There were rows and rows of triple tiered bunks, situated side-by-side with barely enough room to get in and out. Once you were in your bunk, there was only about ten inches of clearance between your body and the canvas bunk above. For that reason, the top bunk was the prime spot, but it was hotter up there. I had the second, middle bunk and a huge black man was in the canvas bunk that connected to mine. He got sick on the first day and for two days threw up every time he tried to eat. On the third day, he quit eating and dry-heaved most of the time. He lost at least twenty pounds and was so sick that I would have sworn under oath that he got a shade lighter. He was an affable sort and even though he was not in a mood to talk we got along well for two people who were sleeping side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, for twenty days. I often brought him some crackers from the mess hall and urged him to eat. I would say to him, “Man, you are wasting away and turning white, you need to eat.” He would grin and eat the crackers but after a few minutes, he was throwing them up.
My black friend was not alone. Sick people were forever running from their bunks to the head hollering: “Hot chow coming through!” It was the same warning that linebackers (the men on mess duty who carried the big hot pots of food from the stoves to the food line) shouted to get people out of their way. It worked pretty well in the mess hall to clear the way for those carrying steaming-hot food. It worked even better, down below, when a nauseated Marine was making a beeline to the head.
On January 15, 1955, during the night, we made landfall in Kobe, Japan. I went on deck at first light and got my first view of a foreign country. It looked like “Anywhere, USA,” but all the signs were in Japanese. It was just breaking day and there was no one on the dock, not a soul. Then, all of a sudden, I saw a little Japanese boy run to the edge of the dock. He turned his back to the water, dropped his pants, and unceremoniously took a shit off the side of the wharf. Then he wiped his butt with a flick of his finger, pulled up his pants, and ran back out of sight—welcome to the Orient!
The General Walker was in Kobe a half-day, and then we left for Korea via the Inland Sea of Japan. Soon, we were well into the Yellow Sea, which is actually yellowish in color. We were heading north, up the west side of Korea to Inchon. The sea off the coast of Inchon is shallow and deep draft vessels cannot get close to land. That difficulty is what made General MacArthur’s surprise amphibious landing at Inchon in June of 1950 so successful. Troops, material, and vehicles must move from a ship in deep water over long pontoon docks to a shore that is one mile away. We arrived there on January 17, 1955, disembarked, and marched over the pontoons to Ascom City, a tent camp midway between Inchon and Seoul. There we would spend the night, in tents with no heat, sleeping on cots and doing our best to keep warm. One Marine left his arm outside his sleeping bag and the next day a corpsman treated him for frostbite. It was that cold.
A couple of cold Marines in Ascom City, Korea,
January 17, 1955. I am the tall guy.
On January 18, 1955, we boarded a confiscated Korean train for a long, slow ride to Pohang Dong, midway down the east coast of Korea. It was only 180 miles by rail but the trip took twenty-five hours. The seats on the train were unpadded wooden benches so it was a long, uncomfortable overnight trip. Upon arrival in Pohang Dong, we marched to a makeshift airbase designated as K-3 and I reported to G-2, the Intelligence Unit of the First Marine Air Wing.
Our job in Korea was to maintain the recently signed armistice. The serious fighting had stopped, but there were incidents from time to time. For the most part, we Marines did what Marines always do when standing by for a call to duty. We trained, we prepared, and we waited. We were on duty seven days a week. Boredom was our biggest challenge. We certainly did not want the shooting war to start up and counted ourselves lucky to be serving after instead of before the armistice. Nevertheless, it is hard to maintain sanity when you have little to do but to stay prepared for war, and wait. It is even harder when you are nineteen years old and marooned in a backward country for at least sixteen months.
Korea, in 1955, was like stepping back in time. The country, a victim throughout history, never developed and conditions worsened due to the ravages of World War II and decades of Japanese occupation before that. Housing in the villages was a hodgepodge of huts with thatched roofs. Most people wore native costumes, the most conspicuous item being the trademark Papasan Hat, a stovepipe black hat made out of horsetail hair and worn by elderly men to top off their white gowns. Younger people frequently wore blue jackets, buttoned in front, that resembled the Mao jackets of China, but for adults the most common attire was a white robe-like garment. If a young woman was in western dress, it signified that she was a working girl, a euphemism downplaying the fact that for $2 she would give anyone a “short-time.” Civilian vehicles were nonexistent. Military vehicles belonging to the USA or the ragtag Korean military had to weave their way over dirt roads littered with oxcarts, the main form of transport for Korean civilians. Each morning there was an antlike stream of men carrying honey-buckets full of fecal matter, one bucket on each end of a pole, to the rice and vegetable fields. Throughout the day, the honey-bucket brigade gave way to men carrying loads on A-frames—ancient backpacking devices the Koreans used for moving almost anything. Smallish Korean men routinely carried A-frame loads that were bigger and heavier than they were.
The odors of Korea were almost unbearable. The villages had no plumbing, no safe water supplies, and no electricity or gas, thus no refrigeration. The Koreans heated their huts with whatever they could find that would burn. In winter, the stench of whatever the Koreans were cooking and burning was the dominant smell, but in summer, the unmistakable aroma of the honey-buckets and rotting things took over.
The Korean people seemed to like us. They were friendly but it was advisable to keep them at a reasonable distance because a staple of their diet was Kimchi, a vegetable concoction that includes a green similar to kale that grows wild throughout the country. The Koreans cook it with a heavy dose of garlic; consequently, you could smell most of the villagers before you saw them.
Most of the time, we stayed within the confines of K-3. On base, there was work and more work. When we were not working, we slept, read, listened to the radio or played softball. There was the Slop Shute where after 6:00 p.m. you could buy a beer for five cents, but otherwise there was absolutely nothing to do. K-3 was boring, but it was safe, it was clean and it did not smell. In spite of its shortcomings, we Marines made occasional forays into the village of Pohang Dong looking for something different to do to break the monotony of our time on K-3.
On one such trip, my friend Sergeant Ackerman found a Korean who claimed to be the town barber. Ackerman, looking for a little excitement and pampering, decided he wanted a real shave from a barber using a straight razor. I suggested the barber might be a communist sympathizer who would enjoy using the occasion to cut Ackerman’s throat. He was not about to be deterred. The sergeant stationed me and another Marine on either side of the barber chair with our M-1 rifles at the ready. The barber got the message, gave Ackerman a good shave, and never made the slightest suspicious move.
On February 15, 1955, only one month after arriving in Korea, the company master sergeant assigned me to thirty days of guard duty. It was not a punishment. Guard duty is something every low-ranking Marine has to do, and you usually get it soon after assignment to a new unit. We would walk one four-hour daytime shift and one four-hour nighttime shift. It is definitely better to do guard duty in the summer than in the winter, particularly in Korea. When I reported to the guard company, the quartermaster issued me a huge down-filled parka and a pair of rubber thermal boots, essential gear for the bitter cold of mid February. The boots were state of the art in 1955. Each boot was essentially a close-fitting inner rubber boot suspended inside a big, tough outer rubber boot. The air space between the inner and outer boot protected the foot from the cold. The boots were enormous so we dubbed them “Mickey Mouse Boots,” but they were a godsend for those of us who walked guard duty around the perimeter of K-3. The size and shape of the boots made it clumsy to walk, but they kept our feet warm even though our socks were wringing wet when we took the boots off.
Those of us assigned to guard duty lived in the Guard Shack for the entirety of our thirty-day tour. Our quarters were next door to several Quonset huts, which were home to the Korean Marine Corps, KMC for short. I had never heard of the KMC, but it was not long before I learned to respect them as much as I respected the men in my own unit. They shared responsibility for guarding the perimeter of K-3 and the standard procedure was to post a U. S. Marine for one segment of the fence and then post a KMC Marine for the next segment. KMC guards walked the same four-hour shifts that we did, but there were differences: The KMC troops were not on guard duty for a mere thirty days; guarding the perimeter was their permanent assignment. They did not eat as well as we did, nor were they dressed
as well. They wore hand-me-down long wool coats and boots, United States of America surplus from World War I and the early years of World War II. They had no Mickey Mouse boots, and their officers were as tough on them as any boot camp drill instructor in the U. S. Marine Corps.
One day in my second week on guard duty, I saw the KMC troops in formation outside their Quonset huts. The officers were ordering the men to hold their rifles in both hands above their head, parallel to the ground. The officers then instructed the men to bend backwards as far as they could and then hold in that position. I first thought they were doing a callisthenic exercise, but then the officers started hollering at them as they whacked them across the belly with a rifle. Several of the KMC Marines fell to the ground in pain, but the officers forced them to get back in line and the drill went on for a good ten minutes. That night, when I got to the end of my segment of the fence, I saw the KMC Marine who was guarding the next segment so I waited until he got to where I was and then I offered him a cigarette. The KMC troops loved to meet up like that because we Marines would always give them cigarettes. We bought cigarettes for a dollar per carton, so it was nothing to us, but it meant a lot to the men of the KMC. We lit up and exchanged knowing looks as we rubbed our hands together and stamped our feet in mutual recognition that it was cold as Hell. He had only the old wool coat and regular boots, both worn to a frazzle, but he still managed a smile. I was determined to find out about what I saw that morning so I said, “Today … KMC,” and I leaned over backwards with my rifle over my head. I then took my rifle and simulated a KMC officer swinging it hard into the belly of the troops. At first, he did not get it but after a couple of tries, he suddenly knew what I was asking. The challenge was for him to tell me in broken English what had occurred. It took awhile but he finally said with full Oriental dialect, “Uh … KMC … uh … inspection … uh … inspection … uh … all fucked-up.” Only a U. S. Marine could appreciate the plight of the Korean Marines. I had found a soul mate, a brother in arms, on the other side of the world.