A Special Kind of Stupid

Gene of Borscht and Kimchi fame has an entertaining post up about pulling guard duty in Korea, the battle of Chosin and the wimps he currently works with. :P He and I were in the same unit together a few years ago and although I wasn't there for his wintry gate-guarding adventure I had my own later on.

A few years ago some army dudes driving a bridge-layer accidentally ran over two little Korean girls and everyone was up in arms about it. Even by Korean standards, though, the protests were going a little over the top; one camp had molotov cocktails hurled over the gates, and at another camp a guy climbed over the barb wire fence and up a tower where he set an American flag on fire.

Ordinarily I could have given two shits about any of this, but the army being what it is demanded that something be done. In the case of Camp Humphreys, "something" meant a bunch of lower enlisted soldiers patrolling the perimeter armed with whistles and flashlights. Seriously. Some smartass (and it might have been me) asked just what exactly we were supposed to do if we did see someone trying to break in, whistle them to death? Nope, see the whistle is a warning and then.... and then....... well, the plan kind of fizzled out there. World's most powerful army, at its finest.

Did I mention that it's cold in Korea? REALLY REALLY cold? Well it is. And someone hadn't been issued her cold weather boots yet.

My friend Kate and I managed to score the twelve hour night shift! Weren't we happy! As predicted, not a damn thing happened. We did meet a Korean security guard whose shack was in such remote corner of the post that he might not have EVER seen another person out there. Especially not Korean-speaking American girls. We brought him some coffee a few hours after discovering him and I learned about three new ways of saying thank you. I've never seen someone so excited over coffee! Poor guy.

By the fourth night there was a foot of snow on the ground. We had done about two hours when the shift NCO shows up with the van and takes us back to the office. "Look guys, this is a special kind of stupid. No soldier is going to freeze to death for the sake of retardation if I have anything to do with it. I'm putting on a movie." About the time the bigshots were due in we hopped in the van, drove in circles and pretended like we had patrolled all night. The rest of the week continued the same, with said NCO covering for us the whole time. He was one of the first, and unfortunately, one of the last senior NCOs I met that still had one of those backbone things.

Boy, thanks for the memories, Gene. I knew I did something that year other than drink stout at The Wall.