By CH(COL-Ret) Tom Decker

Prayers by chaplains for the troops have been a part of Army life since the chaplaincy’s inception in 1775.   Some of the prayers were mandatory and moving for the bravery and sacrifice of soldiers.  Other prayers were perfunctorily intoned with eyes moistened in respect and tribute to those who have gone on before.  Truth be told, the prayers were polite and perfunctory and correct, bordering on the mundane.  Prayers were always requested in times of change when in anticipation of a transition—a movement—was anticipated.  Probably every chaplain has had the occasion to offer a prayer for a dedication or a retirement.  Some prayers were obligatory at patriotic events to commemorate the bravery, sacrifice, and service of soldiers and families.  Prayers have been offered at stateside enemy POW grave sites and for the dedications of new barracks in which soldiers would live in military luxury with new furniture beyond the fondest dreams of soldiers of previous eras.  Older chaplains have seen it all; newer chaplains will see it too.  Well, most of it but perhaps not all:  one unique event was when asked to be the designated pray-er for the rededication of a dispatch office in the motor pool of the Far East Engineer Compound in Seoul.  I got a phone call from a retired NCO—who worked the compound—and who was tasked to set up the ceremony for the newly remodeled dispatch office.  He asked if I could do the honors.  I didn’t recall ever providing a prayer—let alone being asked to give one—for the dedication of a motor pool building, a remodeled one at that, and so I agreed, admittedly somewhat puzzled as to the sudden burst of religious zeal in this out-of-the-way dispatch office.  When I arrived, the retired NCO, who was also the MC, came alongside to explain the layout and the procedures.  The folding chairs were for visitors.  A color guard stood by with the unit’s colors.  Dignitaries walked about, making small talk with other dignitaries, both Korean and American.  The motor pool staff had set up 2-3 long folding tables covered with table cloths on which sat about every kind of libation imaginable in 1.75 L bottles.  Obviously, no alcohol is allowed in any motor pool in the US military, but somebody must have got permission with the provision that the motor pool would be closed, with no vehicles entering or leaving,  for the special dedication.  The NCO then explained to me about the pig’s head, which by then, had my complete attention.  The quite naked and quite dead head of a quite large hog was lying—eyes closed—on a low table more or less centered in the area between the booze tables and the chair for guests and dignitaries.   A single podium faced the head of the hog on its table.  The designated head was surrounded by 3-4 bowls, each carrying 3-4 pieces of whole fruit, melons or apples.  As festive as the table appeared, I swallowed hard.  Perhaps to set me at ease, the NCO Master of Ceremonies explained that the hog’s head—with the accompanying fruit arrangements—were for Mr. Cho’s part of the ceremony.  He explained that Mr. Cho, the senior whatever of the motor pool, would come out, bow, to the head, bless the wine, and….  “Well, you’ll see,” he explained, “it’s part of the dedication ceremony.”  I was beginning to sense that the ceremony had a religious element beyond the obligatory invocation delivered by the MEDCOM Chaplain.  The ceremony followed the usual protocol for such events with the introduction of guests followed by the invocation and the appointed ruffles and flourishes.  I did my part, saying the prayer, written specifically for the engineer compound, but as I stood at the podium, I could not help but keep an eye on the hog’s head.  As promised, Mr. Cho soon approached the table and ceremoniously bowed low before the unblinking head.  Needless to say, all eyes were on Mr. Cho and the immobile head.  Cho took a bottle of rice wine and moved to the side of the building about to be honored with a dedication.  He sprinkled wine on the walls on both sides of the entrance door.  He then moved to the buildings’ corners where he liberally dashed more wine on the foundations, and then returning to the table with the hog’s head and fruit, he bowed low again, sat the bottle down, and reached for his wallet, and with a flourish, pulled out a wad of 10 or 20 thousand won notes, and holding them aloft, counted them with a flourish for the benefit of guests and dignitaries who, as if on cue, generated oooos and aaahs.  He then placed the now-rolled-up wad of won into the mouth of the dedicatory hog.  He thereupon invited other attendees to come forward to make their offering.  There was some hesitation, but one by one, men stood up, reached for their wallets, and walked to the table, fanned their offering notes for the audience’s appreciation, and placed their their wad of won—visibly sizeable—into the mouth of the unblinking hog’s head.  All the time, I was thinking, what in the world am I, a conservative Lutheran—taught to eschew every form of idolatry—what am I doing watching the purveyance of wine and won before the veritable head of a pig?   I had done my part by walking to the podium and reading my prepared prayer to bless the renovation of this building for the service of the vehicles of the Far East Engineer Command.  On further thought, quite frankly, I was glad to be present for the event.  As I reminisced much later about Mr. Cho’s splashing  wine on the walls of the renovated dispatch office, I recalled that this very act was a throwback to the dedicatory prayers in ancient Greece when the offerings or “libations”—as they were called—were spilled out on the ground or with dedicatory splashes on temple walls to appease the local gods.  I wondered how this Greek ceremony, as ancient as it was, had made its way to the Army’s Far East Engineer Compound in Seoul, Korea.  I could also have wondered about the effect of such libations on the local gods as well as those in attendance at such sacrificial rites.  As near as I could recall Mr. Cho had done almost exactly as we–as students–had read in our senior level Greek classes at my alma mater when Professor Walter Bartling explained the ancient oddity to the puzzled Midwesterners who were contemplating a lifetime of service as ordained ministers.  He would have nodded, smiled his irrepressible smile, and told us, “Yes, they did it pretty much like that,” and then let it sink into our malleable minds to contemplate how this could be.  On that day 30 years ago in The Far East Engineer Compound Motor Pool, Mr. Cho and his cohort of businessmen also did it “pretty much like that.”  As I remember, the offering was successful with a large number of won notes in the pig’s mouth, ultimately designated, no doubt, for the upkeep of the motor pool’s benevolence fund.  The motor pool dispatch building was dedicated one day and designated sober the next.  Soldiers who served in the USFK would have said it was another memorable day in the inscrutable Far East.  #