The almost war

In the winter of 1975 to 1976 I found myself pledged through contract default of my US Army enlistment deal for Germany to serving 18 months deployed to South Korea. All of Korea I had learned from the TV sitcom M*A*S*H and the Movie that had inspired it. I didn’t watch it much. I hadn't liked the movie. The hair was all wrong. Nobody in 1950-52 had hair like that, like they just stepped out of a shampoo commercial, fluffy headed over the ears 1970s hair. I thought if they couldn’t even get the hair right how much of it could be accurate. Smart Alec-y Doctors make me nervous too.

And now that I had managed by accident to have graduated from Infantry School at Fort Polk Louisiana the Drill Sargent was telling me they had too many buck Privates in Germany and I couldn't go. Technically this put them in default of my enlistment contract. He mumbled that I could get out if I really wanted. The new post Viet Nam all voluteer military could no longer force you to go somewhere you didn't want to go, at least not right out of training.

Well there went my plans to tour Europe while based near a Bavarian town full of large breasted blonde girls handing me giant mugs of beer. I could get anywhere else of course 'just not Germany' he said. A guy in the barracks, a re-enlisted Viet Nam vet, had talked up Thailand a bunch so I blurted out “Thailand” and the Sargent gave me a look like 'yeah right' and said he'd see what he could do. I sat in the hallway on a plastic chair while he pretended to 'request' or 'pull strings' or whatever he would have done if he had actually tried for ten minutes, which was probably how long it took him to smoke a leisurely cigarette, before he called me in to say all he could get me was “Korea for 18 months”. It counted as a 'hardship tour' so I would get more pay. The Army wants me to go to Korea? They need privates there? It's like by Japan right? Like the mash place? He 'yes'd' to all of this while I signed the new contract he had somehow already prepared which gave me the right to sew on the 2nd Inf Division Indian chief head patch for the last week of my stay at Fort Polk. Six of us in my company who all wanted German beer girls got 2^nd Inf Division patches to sew on. Nobody had picked Korea first.

But one guy from my platoon, a returned to the army Viet Nam vet had been there before.