Sometime in the spring/summer of 1994 I arrived at the (now defunct) 751st MI BN located at lovely CP Humphreys, Korea. The whole trip there was
a blur of confusing faces and uncertainty for a young PFC Greywar who was out of the country and alone for the first time. I had left my new bride
at
home and trusted that the loving arms of the US Army would see me through to my duty station.
The Army didn’t do too badly until I actually arrived at CP Humphreys proper. I got of off the Myungjin (aka as the Mung-mung) Bus at a shoppette and proceeded to watch every other soldier get picked up by their unit sponsors. I was already too shy to speak Korean as I had just been made fun of by two korean ladies on the bus when I asked them where there bus driver was in Korean. (Apparently I used an incredibly antiquated word for driver, whatever…I resolved then and there to never speak Korean unless it was a complete necessity. (Laugh at my Korean? How’s your English bitch? Sucky? I thought so)) What was I to do? After a couple of fruitless attempts to get useful info out of the local nationals running the shoppette I called the Base Watch Officer and he managed to figure out that Ops company 751st MI BN should come and pick me up. After 20 minutes of him making obscenity laden threats over the
phone (while I listened because the phone had no hold, he just put it down and used another to call them) they reluctantly agreed to pick me up in about an hour.
Two hours later two SGT’s pulled up in a HMMWV (the first I had ever seen) and tossed my shit in the back. They gave me a ride back to Zoeckler Station (about 2 miles away) and took me to the chow hall to eat. There I puzzled over the fact that these two guys, SGT Carl the One-Eyed Nord (a fellow Minnesotan) and SSG Misery, seemed to have no fucking interest in my soldier skills. In fact the only thing they really seemed to care about was drinking and whoring (not necessarily in that order). Both of them dwarfed me in Korean ability as they constantly demonstrated by breaking into Korean when they were talking about what they had done in “the ville” last week.
My spirits lifted as I finally found a familiar face, SPC Pigeon who I had known at the Defense Language Institute. He took me to the KATUSA Snack Bar (KSB) for dinner and explained that Carl the One-Eyed Nord was his roommate. This confounded me as throughout my entire two years in the Army thus far the Non-Commissioned Officers (NCO’s) had been totally separate from us junior enlisted.
In any case my confusion faded as we had two bottle of Soju each during dinner…Feeling no pain I stumbled over to our barracks only to find Carl the One-Eyed Nord passed out mere feet from the door to his and Pigeon’s room. I helped Pidge drag his SGT back into bed and hit the hay myself. Tomorrow would be soon enough to experience what I would learn to call VOB.