ED:CETERA
What Did You Do in the War, Dad? BY ED ZAHNISER
Write and edit newspapers in the United States and the Republic of Korea, a.k.a. South Korea—which latter place locates this bit of reportage on a journalistic trip to outlying batteries, i.e., units, of the 38th Artillery Brigade, Air Defense, meaning missiles, mostly Hawks with “conventional warheads” but some Hercs—Hercules missiles, which must’ve carried “unconventional warheads” because everyone who worked on them had special, red-flagged personnel files. Most of these outlying batteries were set atop small mountains where, in winter and early spring, two and a half-ton military trucks episodically slid off the mountains on the steep, unstable soils while parked. From some of these mountain tops we could look across the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea. The newspaper of the 38th Arty was called The Gauntlet. Don J. Harris of Lompoc, CA was assistant editor. Sgt. Baek Sung Ho—a graduate student in electrical engineering now doing his mandatory military service— wrote and edited the two-page Korean-language insert that served the Korean soldiers attached to our brigade. This was late 1969. The Viet Nam “police conflict” was still raging— which tempered our complaining about our situation in Korea. I had hoped that Asst. Editor Don J. Harris, driver without peer on our recent journeys throughout this “Land of the Mourning Calm” would write up this account so you’d get a fresh point of view on things, but Don got caught by the military inspection games and had to put in time at the motor pool, etc. etc., so he never got beyond a second paragraph. 44 | fluent
Because our Orderly Room (administrative office not always that orderly) was out of DA Form 647s (the sheet you have to officially sign out on to leave the battery area or to leave on TDY—temporary duty, as we were trying to—(OR WHEN YOU GET OUT OF THE MAN’S ARMY!), we had to wait around and didn’t get off on time. Finally, we went up to the Brigade office ourselves and fetched our orderly room a new supply of the Form 647s. We drove south on the MSR (Military something Route) and dropped off our commanding officer 1st Lt. J.G. Ballard at AADCP (you don’t want to know), where I am now writing this in their orderly room)— then we drove south toward Reno Hill, the isolated battalion headquarters of 6 Bn 44th Arty (missile). We stopped a couple times to rest our innards from the beating administered by the Korean answer to ox cart trails and Indian paths. We also bought a little cantaloupe-like melon and feasted on its fruity freshness and simultaneously prayed we wouldn’t get the royal hepatitis from it, or spinal men-gi-tus (as our Drill Instructors in basic training used to call it). I wish I could put Don’s W.C. Fields inflection on these things in print. Don imitates Fields to perfection. The rice paddies were a beautiful, indescribably deep yellow-green with the low rays of the down-daying sunlight bleeding through them, and the little kids smiled and waved at us all our way along. We had to make many turns on roads which we didn’t know, so whenever we got to a crossroads we’d whip out the note that Sgt. Baek Sung-ho had written for us in Han-gul (Korean) and lay it on the most knowledgeable looking bystander. Like everything