First Words/Lasting Impressions
Chaplain (Colonel) John Kowsky, a decorated Viet Nam veteran, wore thick “coke bottle lens” glasses, and he was seated behind his desk. My first—and lasting impression of him as a jovial chaplain—was when he taught at the US Army Chaplain Center and School at Ft Hamilton in 1970. He taught something about the “chaplain’s image.”
His first words, as he peered at me through his thick lenses, were six words: “Decker, can you run three miles?” Not a word about remembering me from chaplains’ school or chit-chat about the trip over. He got right to it: three miles was the 2nd Infantry Division’s morning run requirement for all soldiers assigned to the division. Unfit soldiers were at risk and some actually died from the exertion.
I said, “Yes, sir.”
His comment, laced with the chiding innuendo of his beloved Brooklyn, was, “Don’t overdo it. I don’t want to have to write any letters home to your wife!”
He then said, “There are 3 things you need to know. Number one, watch the booze. If you drink, don’t overdo it.
Number two, no broads.
Number three, if you’ve got anything to do with the chaplain’s fund, do it by the book! Any questions?”
I said, “No sir!”
He said, “See you ‘round!” And that completed my in-processing with the senior chaplain in US Forces Korea.
What I had received from Chaplain Kowsky–although I didn’t know it at the time–was the chaplaincy’s standard lecture on the three killers for a military career, encoded “SAM,” for sex, alcohol, and money. Everyone, sooner or later, had to deal with “SAM,” and I was to learn that unit ministry teams were not exempt from the allures of SAM—in the Land of the Morning Calm—or elsewhere.
The first words from the Commander of the 2nd Infantry Division Support Command (DISCOM) were also unexpected and unforgettable. Chaplain Ford G’Segner—whom I was replacing after his year long unaccompanied tour—took me in to meet the man. Ford said something like, “Sir, I’d like to have you meet Tom Decker….” The Commander looked up from his desk to eye me, and said to Ford, “Get him a green tee shirt.” That too was the end of the discussion. The “green tee shirt” came at the time when the Army was transitioning from white—which I still wore from my time at the CONUS unit at Fort Carson. In the wisdom of the The green tees were not available except at overseas stations.
My first meeting with the Division Chaplain was also memorable in its brevity. His first words to me were something to the effect of, “The lawn at the Happy Valley Chapel needs cutting. Get it done.” His abrupt manner was not what I had expected, and I probably muttered something like, “Yes, sir, I’ll take care of it.” If it was the first word, it was also the last, until I met him again some years after he was out of the Army and working on the social services staff at 121 Hospital in Yongsan, where I was the senior chaplain in the USFK’s 18th Medical Command. I thought I recognized the name—and his face—even though 16 years had elapsed. He was most cordial and happy to meet again. The reality was that he—thankfully—probably didn’t remember the extremely green chaplain at Camp Casey from 1977. In the ensuing years, I settled on the probability that he was in a different place in his life than from our first very curt encounter. Life’s circumstances allow the wheels of change to move all of us on. The lawn of the Happy Valley Chapel—long since cut –was no longer in the picture. We both had crossed many bridges in life—thankfully—and it was only necessary to learn from the past rather than to replay the grief. #
Korea, 2nd Infantry Division
TDC,
aka “the Ville.”
The hardship tour
was one day
from over,
but it had not
been so hard
with a temporary wife,
his yobo, available
for the hard times,
for which he received
a dollar a day extra
for overseas duty,
and it was
his last night in Korea,
his last night with his yobo
close by, in his arms,
his sweetheart,
beside him,
and his sweet dreams
of his permanent wife
and children stateside,
soon leaving for
the airport to pick him up;
it’d been a long year,
and there was a chill
in the air, so
“Whaddya say, huh, yobo,
you light heater, huh?
And they crawled down
beneath the thick, richly
embroidered bed cover,
bought with his money
from the Second Market,
and his yobo
—that is to say
his temporary wife—
slipped the cover
off the ondol heater.*
And
they went
to sleep together,
one last time, with
no wake-up call,
no flight,
no return,
no reunion,
no problems,
no “Good morning, yobo!”
no tears at the bus stop
for the ride to Osan
for the stateside flight, and
no one last greeting of the dawn
in the Land of the Morning Calm,
and the Army ruled it, “line of duty.” #
*Ondol is a manufactured compressed charcoal brick used for cooking and heating.
Korea/Tongduchon
KATUSA.
Korean
Augmentee
To the
United
States
Army,
died in a
brief vehicular
almost
non-accident
on the Main
Supply Route
just as it
comes into
Tongduchon,
about a mile from
the front gate,
when he
went to sleep
in the front seat
of the jeep,
and it swerved
in traffic, and his
body lurched out
of the jeep’s open door
swinging his head
into the cargo of phone poles
on the back end of
a single parked truck,
killing him instantly,
a merciful but
inglorious end
to compulsory
military service
to the good ol’
ROK ’n USA. #
Korea/2nd ID/DMZ
August 14, 1977. Due to a navigational error, a Chinook CH-47 accidentally flew over the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) into North Korea and landed to inspect the damage. Apparently, the crew did not realize that they had sustained ground fire, and thought that the problem was mechanical in nature. When a truck with North Korean soldiers approached, the pilot decided to take off and escape. The North Koreans shot down the fleeing aircraft, killing three crewmen in the subsequent crash. The copilot survived and was taken prisoner, and returned to US control after 57 hours of captivity. Bodies of the three other crewmembers were returned on August 18. This was the sixth US aircraft shot down since the armistice. (Taken from an online source, the Aviation Safety Net and other internet sources.)
The news reports all
sound so matter of fact,
how many of these, how long did it take,
who survived, who didn’t,
and—in this case—
6 down
since the armistice.
Any cub reporter
knows the 5 Ws
of good reporting.
The Division
Chaplain also
had a report
when he returned
from the repatriation
of remains on the Z,
gesturing with his
hands, maybe 3 to 4
feet, the size
of the boxes
that held
our soldiers.
He didn’t have
to say,
Stunned.
Hurt.
Angry.
His tears did
the talking
for all of us. #
