Recently, North Korea’s Little Rocket Man, Kim Jong Un has been showing off by blowing up stuff, mainly Japanese ocean water. His actions brought back memories of his granddaddy, Kim Il Sung, the Grand Poobah of the North, who ruled when I was enjoying my military vacation in the Korean south at G-1 Eighth Army Headquarters in Seoul. Being 35 miles from the DMZ, we were considered part of a hostile zone because of occasional skirmishes between our guys and their guys. Every so often we’d be subject to a surprise phony alert, when everyone had to report to their respective duty stations. Somehow, some lowly enlisted man in the office would find out when an alert was scheduled, so we were never surprised.
That ended in late Spring when Kim Il Sung said he would march into Seoul on his birthday. The Army issued a real phony alert and the whole headquarters packed up and moved 50 miles south to a sports field on a Cheong Ju Army base. A half- day in camp, while I was sweating under the canvas setting up portable desks and file cabinets, my sergeant came over and told me to get my worthless posterior over to the headquarters tent to find G-2 Col. Powell, who was looking for somebody with at least a Secret clearance to draw some maps or something. I guess my reputation had preceded me because I was the one who was constantly pulled away from my regular job assigning officers to make posters or birthday cards or party flyers for the big brass.
Avoiding the MP guards hanging around the perimeter, I went through the back flap in the headquarters tent. In front of me was a low-rise platform with a couple dozen folding chairs set up facing it. Near the front was a group of colonels and a major. The major saw me. “What are you doing in here,” he asked. I told him and Col. Powell came over to me. He said he’d be giving daily morning briefings and needed overhead transparencies. He pointed to a podium, cords, and a bunch of audio-visual paraphernalia at the side of the tent. “You know how to operate that equipment?” I’d never touched anything such as that, so I said, “Sure, Sir.” I wasn’t going to pass up a good thing.
I unscrambled the electronic pile and the next morning I had a screen, podium and overhead projector set up and ready for the 0800 briefing. The colonel met me with his notes at 0700 and I’d created the overheads.
The daily briefings went fine, but the colonel, a decent guy, was not much of a public speaker, visibly nervous before a group. On projected maps of South Korea, during each briefing he outlined unit positions and tactics should Big Daddy Kim invade. On the final day, about halfway through his presentation General Ridgeway, the Eighth Army Head Honcho with nearly 40,000 troops under him (in the country, not in the tent), entered and sat in an empty chair. The poor colonel began shaking so fast, his face was blurred, but he managed to get through it and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Colonel, where’s the 23rd Infantry,” asked the general.
“It’s in the 2nd Infantry Division, sir,” replied the colonel.
“I’m well aware of that, colonel. Where is it on your map?”
The colonel turned and began running his pointer over the screen. I scrambled through my notes; no 23rd. The desperate colonel looked over to me. I just shrugged.
“Colonel? Where is it?”
“Um…uh…”
“Are you telling me that you’ve lost an entire regiment?”
“N-no, sir. It was here yesterday.”
With that, the general stood up and walked out, leaving the colonel to pour over his slides and notes and confer with a few of the other G-2 officers, while I packed up the equipment, then made my way back to the G-1 tent, mulling over all the “missing in action” letters I’d have to send out.
As far as I know, to this very day, the 23rd Infantry is still missing.