Vintage Korea

Today I got on the plane. November 1985. Just two short weeks after my darling Emily and I were wed, I am leaving for a year. As I walk up the steps to the airplane, my uniform spiffy and neat, my 2nd lieutenant bars shining on my shoulders, my eyes search the windows of the airport lobby hoping for one last glimpse of her lovely face.

Above: Mr. and Mrs. Andrew C. & Emily C. McDonald, November 9, 1985

My heart is heavy and light at the same time. Melancholic; yearning for reunion already with my new young bride. Me age twenty-three and her age nineteen. We have a life planned together. Yet, I am boarding this plane alone, bound to the far side of the world. From Florida, USA to South Korea. Yet, part of me is excited as well. This is my first true step away from home. A brand new butterbar in the Army Signal Corps with his shiny mathematics degree embarking upon his career as a military officer.

Emily is in good hands with my family who will ensure she is well looked after. Will I miss her? Of course. I already do. Still, this journey is my true step into the responsibility of adulthood and marriage. As I shuffle down the aisle and find my seat my mind roams both ahead and behind.

Tokyo Airport. What a bustling place. We have a layover here and a chance to exit the cramped plane, stretch our legs, and enjoy the ambience of Japan - at least as much of it as one can get from the airport. The air smells different. Tokyo doesn't have the humidity so rampant in Florida. Man it feels good to stretch out my legs for a bit. Nobody really pays any mind to one more American soldier passing through on the way to some assignment. I decided to take the elevator up to where the most restaurant type businesses appeared to be located. Imagine my surprise when, upon entering the elevator I found myself enclosed with an actual famous person. Dr. Ruth Westheimer, herself. The Little old Lady Sex Therapist was right there. I don't know how many of you will recall Dr. Ruth, but she was quite popular at the time. A tiny little woman, older, wrinkled, smiling. She looked like the stereotypical grandmother, yet she was a noted sex therapist. I had seen her many times on television in talk shows and such. She nodded at me. I nodded back. The elevator stopped and we exited. Not much of an encounter, yet I have always remembered it. My brush with fame.

Back on the plane, and off we go. We landed at Pusan Air Base and from there moved north to Seoul. Wow. What a change. Just over twenty-four hours ago I was breathing in heat and humidity in Melbourne, Florida, and today I'm slogging through snow in Seoul, South Korea. What a wonderful world. I bought myself a fur lined jacket with a stitched dragon picture on the back. A blue one for me and a pink one for my lovely wife. It'll make a nice Christmas present. I miss her, but this is an exciting adventure. No, it's not my first time out of the good old USA, being the offspring of a soldier. I have been in Germany and Taiwan. But it's my first time in a foreign country as an adult out from under the parental wing.

My assignment is with A Company, 304th Signal Battalion at Camp Red Cloud, even farther north from Seoul. Camp Red Cloud is in Ouijongbu just twenty miles south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) which is the border between South and North Korea. On a trivia note, for those fans of television and books, there was actually a 4077 M.A.S.H. Yes, the good old 4077 Mobile Army Surgical Hospital was a real thing and it was located in Ouijongbu, South Korea. I'm pretty sure they did not have a Dr. Hawkeye Pierce.

Reporting in to the base late, I was given a room in a transit bachelor officer quarters by a bored Staff Duty Officer and pointed the way. In the morning I could report to my new superior officer, Captain Solomon. Nerves kept me awake a large part of the night. I was scared. I was frightened. I was nervous. Would I be able to actually lead soldiers and do my duty in a proper manner befitting a U.S. Army officer? Time would tell.

I remember that first morning, absolutely clueless, I was awakened in the wee hours of the morning by a loud claxon alarm. The base was under an alert. I tumbled out of my bed, threw on my uniform, and stumbled up the road toward my uncertain future. What a bustle. Soldiers were trotting purposefully toward their assigned places of duty as I wondered where in the heck I was even supposed to be. Oh well. That feeling was a harbinger of the next year for sure. It turns out my most popular place to be was generally sitting on top of some remote mountain trying to get the guys below on one side of the mountain the be able to communicate with the other guys below on the other side. Retrans. That was what we called it. Basically a jeep type vehicle sitting on a high point with two radios. The job was to pick up the signals from each side and retransmit them via the other radio to the units on the other side. We played a lot of gin rummy, me and my driver.

Michael Chase, Maria Wilkes, Carlos Sanchez. These were my contemporaries. The other brand new butterbars out to make their mark on the Army Signal Corps. Maria, like myself, was white as snow - cute, but tough. Michael was a young black man (African American if you prefer), and Carlos was a dark skinned Hispanic man. We were four utterly different individuals thrown together by circumstance. Each of us was in the same boat and we tried our best to row in tandem. We each had our platoons to run.

Our only actual supervisor/boss was Captain Solomon who was the company commander. A Company was part of a larger battalion, of course, but said battalion was spread across the northern part of the South Korean peninsula. Each company of the battalion was responsible for tending to the communications needs of various other Army elements within a specific geographical area.

Back to Michael, Maria, Carlos, and myself. We were kind of like the four musketeers I guess. I think each of us felt like we were probably D'Artagnan in this Dumasesque story as we were each swimming in unfamiliar waters and pretending we had a clue. Thankfully, the NCO's were there to make sure us shavetails didn't muck things up too badly. Thank you Staff Sargent Lewis.

2nd Lt Andrew McDonald, 2nd Lt Maria Wilkes, 2nd Lt Carlos Sanchez

Above: Staff of A Co., 304th Signal Battalion, Camp Red Cloud, 1986

This tour in Korea was one year, unaccompanied. That means no family was deployed with you. This, of course, being the reason my young bride was languishing in Florida. However, the army did allow for visits. A soldier on an unaccompanied tour could, at their own expense, bring over a spouse for a visit of up to ninety days. After three months in Korea, running field exercises, playing pool in the bars outside the gates, and trying to learn how to find my butt with both hands, my darling bride came for a holiday. This was February 1986. I have some wonderful pictures of the two of us there which I still treasure today. I rented a small apartment outside the gate on a temporary basis and Emily and I stayed there. Three months of bliss before she would have to return to sunny beaches and loneliness.

Emily and I explored South Korea in our way as my duty allowed. We climbed mountains. We ate Kimchi, fried shrimp, and octopus. Yes, kimchi is indeed spicy cabbage buried in pots to ferment.

It’s actually pretty good. We shopped in Itaiwan in Seoul and shot pool in the bars off base. I remember quite well the first time a bar girl came up to me saying, "Buy me drinky G.I.?" with Emily nearby. The look on my lovely young wife's face was priceless. Can't blame the bargirls. Most of them are paying off the owner who most likely is the reason their family is able to eat and not living in a gutter. They are almost slaves, to be honest. But, the more money they earn for the owner, the quicker their debt is paid off and they can move on to a life of their own. Do many of them sleep with the soldiers for money? Yes. But, their circumstances are not mine to question or judge. They have to survive as best they can. Besides, in my experience, most of them are quite pleasant, intelligent, and industrious persons just trying to get by in a world more difficult than most Americans would understand.

Above: Andrew & Emily McDonald, Ouijongbu, South Korea, 1986

Now, mind you, Emily and I were young newlyweds. Emily was in Korea for three months. She left Korea in May, 1986, right about three months pregnant with our first child. At that time, I was halfway through my year long tour with six months to go. So, long story short, my firstborn son was born two days after I returned from Korea: November 23, 1986. So, all told, my lovely wife and I had a total of three months of married life together without children and she wasn't even pregnant when we married.

This was an epic chapter in my life. The time in which I truly was forced to grow up, face reality, and learn how to be an independent adult. I will never forget it, of course. After all, I stamped my firstborn son's infant clothes with the moniker "Made in Korea."

Benjamin Jason McDonald was born November 23, 1986. My oldest is, as of this writing, thirty-five years old with three boys of his own. All made in America.