Camp Libby South Korea

April, 1973 -- I was 6 months old, living in the small town of Pohang, South Korea with my mother. Roger Willenbring and I had not yet become acquainted. He was not yet my father - he was at that point, merely staff sergeant (SSG) Willenbring, making his way to Camp Libby by way of Taegu (aka: Daegu) in the cab of a five ton dump truck at an average speed of 14mph. His driver was twenty two year old corporal Mike Starnes of Indianapolis, Indiana, whose greatest wish in the world was to own a Pontiac Trans Am convertible - to be seen driving it up and down Fall Creek Boulevard by people he had gone to high school with.

Starnes' moustache and sideburns were weeks overdue for a trim - even by the lax standards of the motor pool. He wore his dog tags on the outside of his fatigues, and kept his cap tilted far back like a baseball player's. His front trouser pockets bulged. The contents were varied: half a biscuit double-wrapped in paper towels, a zippo lighter, a half-melted Tootsie Roll, a black Ace rubber comb, a set of keys, $2.88 in change, a leatherman he had shoplifted from the PX, three bandaids, and a pill container of aspirin he received from a visit to the medic a month earlier. Running up the side of his right thigh, a rolled up magazine with frayed edges poked out of the top fold of his cargo pocket. Jammed in with the magazine was something that looked like it might be a small hand towel. Starnes chain-smoked Marlboro Reds down to the filter, and in between smokes, he'd bite down on a fingernail or a piece of dangling cuticle, then gnaw at it for a bit, before spitting it out at the dashboard. Occasionally, some of the epidermal scraps would ricochet on to Willenbring's lap.

A few miles short of Camp Libby's gate, while in the neighboring village of Tong Bae, Willenbring asked Starnes to pull over and let him out. Starnes happily obliged. As Willenbring exited the cab of the truck, Starnes unbuttoned his top left shirt pocket, and pulled out a fresh pack of Marlboro reds, shook it a few times, held it up to his mouth, then fished out a single cigarette between his lips. He reached back into his pocket for a zippo lighter, banged the flip top open on the steering wheel, and lit up. He turned toward sergeant Willenbring, and leaned forward to aim his gaze downward a bit so the two men could eyeball each other. Before speaking, he blew a plume of smoke forcefully out the side of his mouth without breaking eye contact.

“Arright sergeant, you see this road we’re on?”

Starnes withdrew the cigarette with his right hand, and clamped it between his index and middle finger. Then he stiffened up his cigarette-holding hand, and slowly swiveled it, forearm and all, toward the windshield. It wasn’t clear if Starnes was fucking around, but the way his arm moved, it was like he was pantomiming a 203 millimeter gun turret, the type you’d see on the deck of a navy destroyer. Willenbring didn’t appreciate jokers, so he remained stone faced, and just glanced downrange to where to Starnes’ hand aimed, then back again to Starnes and nodded.

“You wanna stay on it until you see a bridge.”

Starnes paused, grinning slightly. Then he made an extremely quick and very small chopping motion with the blade of his hand, so that the gun turret transformed into a chef’s knife. The chopping motion was infinitesimal, as though Starnes were severing the tip off the world’s smallest invisible carrot. And for a moment, it appeared as though Starnes was barely holding in a laugh. This nearly caused Willenbring to lose his shit. For the next 30 seconds, he summoned every bit of self control he could muster to not scowl, and to just aim his eyes at anything but Starnes’ hand. Starnes went on grinning...

“You’ll reach the bridge in about 10 minutes."

 <PAUSE...slice>. Willenbring's eyes were narrowing. With considerable effort, he trained his gaze on Starnes' mouth, nose, and eyes.

"Take it over the creek, then turn left and walk another 5 minutes."

 <PAUSE...slice>

"You’ll see a cinderblock wall with concertina on it. Follow that wall until you reach the main gate.”

“Got it. Thanks.” He glanced quickly at Starnes, smiled dryly, and turned so he could use his duffel bag to shut the door. 

The corporal's hand and arm relaxed, and once again became human appendages. He put his cigarette back in his mouth, shifted into first gear, and made the truck lurch forward.

The smell below the bridge

Willenbring looked down at his watch, and began to walk. He followed the bend of the creek as he was told until he came up to the steel-framed bridge described by Starnes. He slowed down and glanced at his watch. Eight and a half minutes had passed. He grinned, pleased that his travel time had beaten Starnes’ forecast. The bridge was small, maybe twenty or so feet wide and seventy five feet long, with freshly painted criss-cross steel mesh side panels standing chest high. He noticed several young Korean men traveling in both directions over the bridge on bikes. As the bicycles rumbled over horizontally laid out wood planks, there was the steady rattling of metal bike fenders. He moved over to walk along the right side, as far away from the center as possible. A light breeze picked up. Over on the far side of the bridge, down by the creek bed, he saw several people with wheelbarrows, piling up heads of cabbage into a large mound on top of a tarpaulin. A few feet away were a half dozen stone vessels about five feet high and flared out at the middle. He kept moving forward, with his eyes fixed on the activity below. He wondered where they obtained the wheelbarrows, and how heavy the stone vessels were. He judged by the pace of their movement, nothing illegal was going on, but he wanted to understand what they were up to.

When he reached the end of the bridge, he caught a whiff of a smell that immediately reminded him of Vietnam. It carried notes of rotting fish and compacted fecal matter, rancid mushrooms and old tampons. It was moist, heavy and viscous. His cheeks puffed up immediately, and he clenched his stomach, forcing the air out of his body as a countermeasure. He began taking much longer steps, then finally reached the end of the bridge, immediately turning left. For the remainder of his walk, he focused on breathing through his mouth. The curtain of stench had so thoroughly penetrated him that during the walk, he drew up lists of things to do upon arrival - boiling his hat, brushing his teeth and showering, maybe even trimming his fingernails. Unconsciously, he had picked up the pace, and wound up arriving at the gate a full minute and a half earlier than he anticipated.

There were two MP’s on duty. He set down his duffel bag, and fetched his ID from his billfold, and handed it to the shorter stocky one whose name tape read Delaloza. Willenbring was convinced by the man’s name and appearance that he was Mexican. He was in fact Chippewa Indian. The chinstrap of his helmet was pulled tight, and caused two crooked buck teeth to spill into view. When he asked Delaloza how to find the quartermaster, he replied in a slow San Diego lilt with slightly accented English.

“A mile down the main paved road. Cross the railroad tracks, then look for three buildings on the left. It’ll be one of those. There’s a shuttle that goes to Camp Henry. The quartermaster is one of the stops along the way. The next one is…”

And he trailed off to look at his watch…

“Sixteen hundred. You can get it right in front of the PX.” 

Willenbring looked to where Delaloza now gestured, and saw the PX. It was the smallest among a cluster of three wood and brick buildings. He looked at his watch. It would be 45 minutes until the next shuttle. He nodded at Delaloza, and made his way along the main road. It was light grey asphalt with a single unbroken white stripe down the middle. Soldiers at Camp Libby called it the main road, but its official name was Eisenhower way, and it traced the perimeter of the camp like a nearly circular race track. Willenbring didn’t know it at the time, but he was standing in the six o’clock position, and would be headed counterclockwise.

He passed by two parked jeeps, a sandbag emplacement, and the post flagpole, but not much else for the next five minutes. He kept along the shoulder of the road, a ten foot wide patch of pale yellow dirt; chalky on the surface, but as hard as baked clay beneath. Beyond the yellow dirt was a rumpled quilt of shrubbery and grasses that reminded him of chaparral he had seen in Northern California. The Korean soil was darker though, sometimes brown, but mostly gunmetal grey, and flecked with pebbles. A bucket loader passed by just then, moving in the same direction he walked, and as it did, a still-lit cigarette flew in a perfect line drive for fifteen feet, then struck the side of a telephone pole. He walked over to where it lay, kicked some pebbles on to it to extinguish the butt completely, and picked it up to dispose of in the next trash can. His thoughts turned to the tank farm. That would be the place he would spend most of his time for the next two years as a Petroleum Analyst. He wondered if the NCO’s there were any good at taking samples. He wondered about the sort of equipment they used in the lab, and whether or not they had a system for double-checking each other’s calculations. After a short while, his attention turned back to the god awful smell by the bridge, and he again resumed his list of disinfecting procedures. He looked forward to removing his shoes and socks, and taking a hot shower.

But he would need to see Jewitt first, to get his quarters squared away. Jewitt was the name printed on the paperwork he carried in his duffel bag. It was a strange name. He wondered if it was perhaps Jewish. At the rank of staff sergeant, Willenbring was comfortably in the midpoint of his military career. Jewitt would consider this before assigning quarters to him. Probably. In places like Camp Libby, it was a smart idea to be quartered far away from the lower ranking enlisted men. Two years in Alaska gave him ample firsthand knowledge of how young enlisted men are affected by long periods of boredom and isolation, and he wanted no part of it.

Fuckin’ Jewitt

First sergeant Jewitt spoke at you like a carnival barker. He had rotated in from Fort Campbell a year ago, a bow-legged lifer from the 101st airborne, coming up on twenty years in the service, and suffering from all manner of ailments: torn ACL, rheumatoid arthritis, sciatica, clogged arteries, baggy fucking eyes, chronic halitosis, irritable bowel syndrome. He constantly had a Stanley thermos filled with hot black coffee on standby, and every question he asked was prefixed with YOU! Or alternately, YOU -- NUMB NUTS! -- or some variation thereof. It was a detail that made him uniformly disliked across Camp Libby. Jewitt was forty two years old, but looked like he could be someone’s great grampa. When he saw sergeant Willenbring walk into the quonset hut with his duffel bag, he stood up right away from his desk, cup of coffee in his right hand, and pointing with his left finger.

“YOU -- NEW FUCKING GUY!” 

“First sergeant Jewitt?” said Willenbring. He closed the door behind him, and walked up to Jewitt’s desk. 

“You’re the NEW GUY, right? In from FORT LEE?” 

“Right.” he said flatly. Something about Jewitt made him nervous. He was like an intricate machine that had been damaged in some small irreparable way. 

“Delaloza, FUCKIN’ COMANCHE INDIAN. Just called me from the gate. Told me you’d be by. Gotch’er PAPERWORK here.” He grabbed a clipboard with some papers on it, and handed them to Willenbring. “You’ll be with uh… AW SHIT, FUCKIN’ SCHLARB. Well, at least you’ll be away from them fuckin’ SECOND I.D. BROKE DICKS.” 

Willenbring was relieved. A little. Though he didn’t ask anyone about Schlarb, he was intent to find out more about him at his earliest convenience. He spent the next ten minutes signing various forms, and jotting down notes about where to go to get ration cards and bedding. He had to resist the urge to attempt small talk with Jewitt, so as not to trigger him unpredictably. When the paperwork was done, he shared a jeep back toward the gate with him -- in complete silence -- then headed to his quarters, located in a cluster of cinder block buildings, adjacent to the PX. Sergeant Schlarb was not there, but by the looks of the room, was reasonably neat. Later that evening, Willenbring met him at the mess hall. He was shy and extremely tall, about six foot eleven. Schlarb was a Pittsburgh native with two passions in life: motorcycles and pinball.

The Enlisted Men

Over the course of the next few weeks, Willenbring had the opportunity to meet a few dozen of the lower ranking enlisted men, usually at the mess hall, but sometimes at the PX. Most were second infantry division troops, on loan from Camp Saber for some shit detail like digging a hole or building an entrenchment. Others were off duty military police. At the PX, these men all bought the same useless crap: decks of cards, cigarettes, hunting knives, titty magazines, car magazines, and zippo lighters. They reminded him of Starnes - the white ones, anyway. The white guys always had lousy moustaches. They owned two, maybe three proper sets of civilian clothing, actual shirts with buttons, and real shoes with real socks. The black soldiers were different. They had more clothes, more accessories. As soon as last formation was dismissed, they were half way out of their fatigues, and into their outfits, which they liked to pronounce as alfits. They’d walk into town with scarves and hats and bracelets, and some of them even wore shoes with heels. They almost all had nice teeth, and generally took better care of themselves.

Standard issue OG-107 fatigues consisted of the following: white t-shirt, black belt, black combat boots, olive drab green shirt jacket, field jacket, soft field cap, and trousers. Trouser bottoms were bloused and tucked into boots, which of course, were always expected to be polished and laced through every eyelet. The field cap was different than the one I would wind up wearing many years later. It was more pointed toward the front, similar to the one still in use by the marine corps. Most military bases in South Korea at that time, Camp Libby among them, had no female troops, no military dependents, no gigantic commissaries (yet) stocked with twelve types of sliced bread, no record stores, no basketball courts or swimming pools or movie theaters, not even a lousy pinball machine.

In the evenings and weekends, the men would head straight to the NCO club. The club had a jukebox, a pool table, and a few dart boards - the really heavy kind with plush felt fabric on the black parts of the face. There was also a color tv which showed re-broadcasted baseball and football games, courtesy of the AFKN (Armed Forces Korea Network). Along one of the walls, there was a column of diner-style booths with high backs, and on the other was a bar counter with round stools. Although the place was kept immaculately clean, it always smelled like salty hamburger lettuce.

The younger men usually arrived first, and left last. They would sit together in booths with pitchers of budweiser, and trade stories about trips to the beach, or a strange rumor they heard about the DMZ while up at Camp Saber. They’d eat hamburgers and french fries, and play endless games of pool and cards - mostly hearts. After the cards, they would play drinking games, and argue about topics that nobody really gave a rat’s ass about -- like which sports team’s curse was more long lasting: the Boston Red Sox or the Chicago Cubs. And these types of arguments would continue for an hour or so, until a smaller group of young men, the ones who DID GIVE a rat’s ass about sports curses, would break off. And these men would saunter outside of the club and walk off post, where they would continue to drink beer, but in a local place. Within two hours, these men would be brawling. Twenty minutes later, they would get clobbered by a jeep full of MP’s responding to a phone call about drunk Americans fighting in a bar.

The enlisted men could sometimes be very creative. For example, perhaps during one of the major holidays like Thanksgiving, one of them might find himself on guard duty at the motor pool on a noiseless moonlit night. And he would begin to think of his girlfriend back home in the Quad Cities. And after an hour or so of that, the man would look around to make sure no one could see what he was doing, and open up his field jacket and uncap a small bottle of Jim Beam he had brought with him. And he’d take a small sip, cap the bottle, and stash it back in his pocket. After five minutes, the sips would become more frequent. Within ten minutes, the bottle would remain uncapped, and there would be no more sipping, just gulping. And at some point during the night, after the bottle was done, the man would go behind a tree, remove his pants and underwear, sit on the barrel of his rifle and start jerking off. But the rifle would get stuck. And the man would panic because the rifle had live rounds in it. And he would call to his buddy to come over, please, to help him out. And the buddy would arrive, but he would have no choice but to call the medics. And then the medics would arrive, take this poor young man to the infirmary, and safely remove the rifle from his anus. And the doctor on duty would call the first sergeant. And there would be several uncomfortable descriptions and questions and pauses, followed up with an official blotter report that would have to be typed up by whoever was at the CQ desk. And on one such evening, sergeant Willenbring was at the CQ desk.