The DMZ Chronicles

Episode I
I got sent to Korea in June 1966 after being tossed out of OCS at Fort Benning for being a punk kid. My Tac Officer, 1LT Grandgeorge said, “You got potential, kid. You’re not stupid. But you need some seasoning. You need to go into the real Army for awhile. I’m gonna give you a good recommendation so you can come back here one day if you want.” And with that, I failed at something I really cared about for only the second time in my life. The first time was in high school when I got cut from the wrestling team. So I sat in a holding company at Benning waiting to get sent to Viet Nam. I mean I was an 11Bravo after all. One afternoon a sergeant came in and asked who wanted to go to jump school? Now I enlisted for just this kind of thing, maybe even to be a Ranger. But I just sat there, numb and dumb. A couple of guys raised their hands and departed immediately. I went back to putting wall lockers together and painting rocks. Then one afternoon another NCO arrived and started reading off a list of names. Mine was on it. Right at the top. He said, “You’re goin to Korea. Get your stuff. You ship tonight.” Korea? Where’s that? I mean, I’d read about it, the Korean War and all that. Maybe seen a movie or two like “Porkchop Hill” with Gregory Peck, or “The Bridges at Toko-Ri” with William Holden. But Korea? I was supposed to go to Viet Nam. I was stunned. I was on a levy for Korea. Why? Just dumb luck. And that’s the Army. So they put me on a plane to Fort Lewis, Washington, and then another to Korea. But I did get a copy of T.R. Fehrenbach’s “This Kind of War” to read on the plane.  

 I arrive at the 177th Repl. Depot in Korea after a near crash landing in Japan during what I came to know as a monsoon and a six hour wait on the tarmac to get airborne again. A crusty old E6 hands me my orders. “You’re goin North, kid. The truck is loadin outside.” So, on I get with my duffel bag and my few other Earthly possessions and head north. At some unnamed compound the Deuce and a half stops. “Okay, everybody out. Last stop.” I present my orders to the gate guard who says, “You’re in the wrong place soldier. You got orders for up north of here.” By now the Deuce has turned and headed back to where it’s come from. The guard won’t let me in. It’s late afternoon and I’m stuck. With no place to go. I ask what am I supposed to do? His reply? “Start tryin to hitch, cause you gotta be there by tomorrow morning.” Great. Now what?

So I stand outside the gate looking stupid. Another Deuce and a half pulls up, and I wave. What looks like an officer of some kind gets out but with an unfamiliar uniform and face. He motions me over, looks at my orders and says, “Okay. No problem.” One of his soldiers throws my duffel in the back and I get in the cab next to him. They’re Turks. The Korean Turkish Brigade. Just my luck. But he does speak English. So off we go.  

We’re rockin and rollin through town after town, throwing a dust plume behind the Deuce when we hit a traffic jam of carts and buses and pedestrians. We grind to a halt and then a slow crawl. Suddenly, there’s a commotion in the back of the Deuce.  I look back through the plastic window and the two Turk soldiers in the back are using the butts of their weapons to eject Koreans from the tail gate. The truck stops. The Lieutenant jumps out and draws his 45. He calmly fires three rounds down the middle of the street. In a millisecond there’s not a soul to be seen. He holsters it and gets back in…and smiles at me. Subsequently, I heard that when “Slicky Boys” broke into the Turkish compound and they caught them, they placed their heads on poles outside the gate as a warning. True? I don’t know. But…given my experience? However that may be, the Turks dumped me at a compound that turned out to be the home of the 1/23 Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division in what I think someone said was Blue Lancer Valley…but I’m not sure.

Episode II

So…here I am…a stranger in a strange land…at the HHC of the 1-23 Infantry. I’m ushered into the Company Commander’s office for assignment. I salute: “PFC Batty, reporting, SIR!” He smiles. I hand him my entire life in the military…which isn’t much. He peruses it…turning the few pages and stopping at one.
“So I see you’ve been to OCS.”
“Yes sir.” I don’t know where this is leading.
“Hmm. Very good. I would like you to be my driver.”
I sit stunned. His driver? What I didn’t know was that his “driver” was rotating out in a couple of weeks. But I didn’t come here to be someone’s “driver.” I’m an 11B. That’s what I do. And what I want to do. I kind of choke for a moment…and then reply. “Sir…I’d rather not.” And, yes, I know, this would probably be some kind of cushy job, overall.

He sits back in his chair and surveys me. “Soldier, do you know what I’m offering you? Why don’t you want to take this assignment?” There’s no good answer to this one. But I have to come up with something. I think on the fly. “Yes sir. But I don’t like officers. I want to do something real.” As if, of course, driving for him wasn’t “something” real.  He nearly launches from his chair and then leans forward and glares at me. “Okay, soldier. You’re going to RECON!” As if this is the kiss of death. All I can think is: “Recon. Yeah, that sounds interesting.” He says: “Dismissed.” I salute. And to Battalion Recon I go…And into the world of the “Old Duff.”

I report to recon to find a bunch of mental misfits from who knows where. The Platoon Sergeant is a grizzled old vet from some ancient wars that I’ve read about. His name is Carruthers, or something on his right shoulder…Tropic Lightning. And has all kinds of ridiculous ways of doing things. But then, I’m just some punk kid with no respect…or not much…because I know things…I’ve been to OCS. Me and the PSG don’t get along all that great right from the start. My first encounter with the Duff is when I haul my sorry butt and my duffel bag up to the Recon hooch to try and find an open bunk and see on the door: RECON-WETSU. Subsequently, I learn what this means. WE EAT THIS STUFF UP. And that sure was the truth. And inside the door the Duff is posting the duty roster.
I wave to him. “Hi, Sarge. I just got here. PFC Batty.” He looks me up and down. “Batty. Right. Have you got a military driver’s license?” “No Sergeant.” “Well, you gotta have one to be in this platoon. Get down to the motor pool and get one. We’re moving up north in a few days.” I have no idea what all this means, but I say, “Right away, Sergeant.” And down to the motor pool I go.

The Battalion Motor Pool is another conglomeration of misfits and shady characters. No one wants to deal with me because they are all packing up to move North. The only bright light is the current Company Commander’s driver SP4 Vinge. Although he is rotating soon, he takes me under his wing. He is doing a TI on Head 15, the CO’s vehicle. But he asks if I need any help. Obviously, I need tons of help.
“Well, yes. I need to get a driver’s license.” “That shouldn’t be hard. Can you drive stick shift?” That’s a killer. The only cars I’ve ever driven were my Father’s automatics. “Uh, well, no.” He laughs. “Really?” “Yes.” He laughs again. “Okay, I’ll teach you.” And we begin lesson One, Two, and Three.

it turns out I’m not a natural. I bump and start and jerk all over the motor pool, almost clipping a couple of deuce and a halves and a motor pool hooch in the process. When we finally come to a stop, he says, “Well, not great, but I’ll sign off on your license.” And all I can think is, “Yep, it’s the Army. And now I’m a bona fide member of Recon.” And then we move North…into the unknown. The DMZ. Whatever that is…

Episode III

The names in this Chronicle have been changed to protect the innocent…and the guilty.

So now, we have moved North, to somewhere called Camp Young, north of the Imjin Gang. I have no clue as to what’s up or where we really are. All I know is my job is pulling guard duty, filling sand bags, cleaning ditches in anticipation of the monsoon, and saying “Yessir and Yes Sergeant.” I come to realize I’m just another brick in the wall. Until one afternoon one of the squad leaders says: “You better go check the roster the Old Duff posted on the door.” On it, my name, PFC Batty at the bottom. MDL Patrol. It seems MDL stood for Military Demarcation Line or border patrol. Well, okay. I guess this what I enlisted for.

Fall out: 0800 for inspection Recon TO&E hooch; Issue weapons, ammo, hand grenades. Now this might sound a bit strange to some, but at that time in the late spring of ’66 all weapons and other implements of destruction were locked up in the TO&E hooch. The Company armorer would come and check the stuff out. And you had to sign for it. Subsequent events would change all that. But you know, UN rules and regulations and protocol.

A ten-man patrol. Turn your uniform jacket inside out so no rank shows. Do nothing unless ordered to. Today’s mission: Patrol one half the sector from GP Johnson to GP Seiler. So we pile onto the 3/4 and off we go into the Zone. At the end of Johnson’s Road we unass and spread out. The Old Duff forms the patrol and I’m in the center. Onto the Lane we go. I’m astounded. The border wire is only about three feet wide, and in some places doesn’t exist at all. But I’m not the only newbee here. Only a few of my comrades have been out here before with the 3/23 we replaced. We start out, over hill, over dale, through the remnants of rice paddies and the occasional abandoned village, spread way out so the whole patrol is never in the killing zone of an enemy patrol. And then we come to an abrupt halt.

Our Platoon Leader, LT. Reardon, points off to our right at something in our sector. And as we all slowly pass, we see what looks like military equipment just a few meters off the lane. We’re Recon. Our job is to report and move on. We do. No collecting souvenirs. Later we find out it was booby trapped with a couple grenades, just waiting for some idiot American to try and grab it. The 2nd Engineers came out and dealt with it later.

We continue the march. As we snake along the MDL, we come again to an abrupt halt. Everyone goes to ground. As we surface, LT Reardon is coming down the lane waving his right hand over his M14. Even I know what that means: no shooting. And then I see them. Two NKA soldiers about 10 to 20 meters from the MDL on the North side. We approach slowly. They wave and shout things at us. We try not to gawk. It’s them: The Enemy. But it’s the reaction of our two KATUSAS that’s revealing. They’re real upset. And in the end won’t tell us what the North Koreans were yelling at us. Later I learned that if you saw two of them, then there were at least 2-4-6 or eight more where you couldn’t see them. And that as I came to understand it, meant these guys were pros: the NKA 17th Recon Battalion, a bunch kind of like our Rangers and Special Forces. We were just ordinary leg infantry.

Well, we got to Seiler okay and our pick-up point and got back to Camp Young. So much for the first time out. But I would add this: In that patrol and many others, LT Reardon showed himself to be a fine infantry officer. I don’t know if he was West Point or OCS, but I’m sure he wasn’t ROTC, because he actually knew what he was doing out there.

Finally, after the “first patrol,” I check the duty roster and find I’m supposed report to the First Sergeant ASAP. I do. “First Sergeant, PFC Batty reporting.” “Batty? Oh, yeah. You’re on orders for ACTA.” “What First Sergeant?” “The Advanced Combat Training Academy. Get your shit packed and report to the Orderly Room for transport ASAP. Dismissed.”

School? I didn’t want to go to any school at this point. I’d been to enough of them. But orders are orders. (To be continued)

Episode IV

I don’t know if you remember from last time, but Recon had it’s first MDL patrol and I got assigned to school at ACTA, something I wasn’t much interested in doing. The First Shirt’s only explanation was, “There’s a quota…and you’re it.” This is eerily familiar of how I got to Korea in the first place: A levy…a quota. However, the really perplexing thing at the moment was why did we run into an NKA patrol first Ladid they know we would be out there? Well, it turns out our “security” north of the Imjin was as rigorous and tight as a rubber band and porous as a sieve. And why? Think about it. We had all the comforts of home: houseboys, a tailor, KSCs, and many other “service” people all over our compounds doing things like “cleaning” in our hooches and the 3rd Brigade/1st Battalion S2/S3. The extent of this was only brought home when our girlfriends in Shang-pa-ri would say things like: We no see you next week. You be too busy.” And, of course, we laughed. “Yeah, right.” And then the next morning we’re called into formation and delivered the news that we’re on “lockdown” until further notice because of (you pick it) an operation, an alert, an exercise, a visit from some dignitary, or whatever. Once again, this would change. But at the time, the fact the 1-2-3 switched with the 2-2-3 was known to all…especially the enemy. (A note: last time I said we replaced the 3/23, but it was the 2/23. The 3-2-3 was on our far left flank on the delta and the 1/38 was in between)

But what about ACTA, you ask? Well, a good school when I went through. I’d almost say like a junior “Ranger” course given the POI and cadre.

So here I am at Camp Sitman in school…again…for three weeks. But what a surprise, given that I knew stuff, having been to OCS, I now learned more. (However, I didn’t know then that the compounds and OPs/GPs were named after soldiers killed in the Korean War and DMZ from the 50’s on.) The ACTA agenda was similar to OCS---up at o’dark thirty and into the breach…meaning training, whether you liked it or not. Initially, formation, PT, presentation of instructors, rules/regulations, do’s & don’ts, and curriculum-Land Nav, Patrolling, Water-born operations, Rappelling, Demo, Sanitation, Weapons Qual., Camouflage & Concealment, and UN Protocols in relation to DMZ operations. (Next episode: A typical day or two more as a student at the Advanced Training Academy---Imjin Scouts)

Episode V

So the accommodations at “Imjin Scout” school aren’t what you’d call “first rate” or “5-Star.” Basically, we’re in wooden shacks with canvas tops, bunk beds left over from the 50’s, and piss-pots outside…also called drainage ditches. But it’s the Army, right? Right. But when you come from the post WWII middle class, and are a so called “Boomer,” you expect more…but get what is. LOL! Anyway, if memory serves me right, and we all know how accurate and faithful memory is, all of the following is true. To confess, I don’t recall much about the Land Nav Course, but I passed. UN Protocols come down to don’t fire unless fired upon, and if you do shoot, bring back a body. Also, no automatic weapons like M14A2s or other useful armaments like M60s allowed in the DMZ. Slingshots okay. UN Protocols. As to water born operations, well, that’s something else. We’re issued rubber rafts and paddles and injected into the Imjin River. Now it all looks very tame until you’re in the water. The Imjin Gang has real currents. In order to get back to land, we have to paddle like crazy. In fact, I lose my watch to the River. The one my Mother gave me for high school graduation. It’s ripped right off my wrist while we’re frantically paddling back to shore. (But the loss of a watch will come up later in far more dire circumstances.) Having survived the Imjin, it’s into the actual DMZ, somewhere I’ve been already, unlike some of the guys from south of the river. So we spend a day and night on GP Barbara in the 1/38’s sector. Interesting. But the best course of all is Demo, taught by the ACTA XO, ILT Kluger, or as we affectionately called him Herr Kluger, The Mad Nazi. Seems he’s an ex-Wermacht NCO, who came to the US and went to OCS. I think he was a combat engineer by trade, but now was infantry. However, he still loves to blow things up. So we learn about C4, Det Cord, Blasting Caps, and how to knock down trees or hillsides to inconvenience the enemy. And so we do…with interesting results. We troop out to the Demo Range and start the fun. Blocks of C4, place the blasting cap, run the det cord, yell “Fire in the Hole,” and light it off. Very interesting. Much fun. Take down a small dead tree. But now, the real thing. Block a road. We plant our C4 and back off. “Fire in the Hole!” And the whole hillside disappears. Dirt and rocks come raining down on everything and everyone, including the HQ compound. Ooops. Maybe too much Mojo? One rock goes right through the canvas roof of my tent and lands on a bunk. Good thing we weren’t there! And of course you guessed it, there were repercussions, so to speak, but that was the 1LT’s problem. (Next episode, back to Recon…back to work.)

Episode VI

So I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but I ended up carrying the radio on MDL patrols. Why, you ask? Because no one else wanted to do it…and I had something to prove. Maybe more to myself than anyone else. MDL patrol—we always planned it to hopefully confuse our opponents. Never start or end at the same place twice; never start at the same time of day twice; do the whole thing…or half…but never be predictable. East to west, it was Seiler, Johnson, Dessart; or go west to east starting at Dessart. Or start at Johnson in the center and go either east or west? Today we’re doing the whole thing, east to west, Seiler to Dessart…and that’ll take the whole day. We drop off on Seiler Road, just inside the DMZ. A ten-man patrol. I’m carrying the radio, a Prick Ten. Also, to keep a record of things, I’ve got a camera stashed in my left ammo pouch. So I’m only carrying half a combat load—two magazines, forty rounds of M14 ball ammo. We start picking our way carefully toward the MDL, often skirting the division gate with the 25th ROK Division. We’re half way to the MDL and all hell breaks loose. Gunfire, automatic weapons, explosions, grenades…chaos. We go to ground. Rounds are bouncing over and around the hill we’re hugging. What to do? I call it in to Battalion S2. “Malty Lifer 21, this is 76. Contact, over.” “76, this is 21, what is your position?” “21, about 200 meters south of the MDL. Taking fire. Please advise.” “76, do not engage. Continue your mission.” “76, roger, out.” No matter how much we wanted to work our way around the hill and see what was up, we slip out of the area and ultimately conduct an uneventful MDL patrol. But what happened? Who knows? Were the ROKs out hunting and fishing with machine guns and hand grenades? Was it an encounter with the NKA? It certainly wasn’t our imagination. But as far as the ROKS were concerned, we were on a need to know basis…and most of the time, they figured we didn’t need to know. We never found out what happened that day, no matter how many times we asked. So after a day like that, we’re drinkin’ in the NCO/EM club on the top of the hill at Camp Young. Our PSG the “Old Duff” is on leave, probably somewhere in the ‘Ville doing who knows what, and 1st Squad Leader SSG Rivera is in charge. Rivera’s a good guy…he’s buyin’ us drinks and hangin’ out with “The Troops.” We’re all more than “three sheets to the wind” when it happens: The SIREN. An ALERT. And we basically do ”you know what” in our fatigues. This can’t be happening…is it for real? Or just a drill? Who knows? Who cares? We chug our booze and unass the place running down the hll for the RECON TO&E hooch. (Next episode: Is it real…or is it Memorex?)