Time at Fort Dix, N.J., and Camp St. Barbara, Korea

Grand Rapids, MI

I'm from the Midwest, so snow is no problem unless it's a foot or more. Was I surprised one morning in January when 1 inch of snow fell and the fort was shut down. I guess they don't know how to deal with such an event because it usually is quite rare. Us Midwesterners had a good laugh about that. When I was stationed in Korea, two things stand out. I was in an 8-inch artillery gun unit near the DMZ at the base of a mountain. When I first arrived I was surprised to see these big cement culverts all around the camp. I asked what they were for and was told to wait for the rainy season and I would find out. When the rain started there was little drainage, but the next day the culverts started to fill up. It was amazing how fast that happened. We were on a peninsula with rivers on both sides. The bridge over the main river was 15 feet up. After a few days the water filled the river up to the bottom of the bridge, and the next day we were marooned because the water was over the bridge by a foot. As fast as it went up it went back down. It was amazing how backward the local peoples lived up there. Everyone was poor and lived in huts with thatched roofs. Electric to the town by our camp was on four hours a night. None of the huts had electric. I saw water being pumped by a screw well operated by an ox walking in a circle to pump water. I read about that kind of thing in history books in school but never thought I would ever see the real thing. The last month I was there, January 1965, the Vietnam War was heating up. We were put on alert and moved out to live in the field for a week. At night it was -10 degrees or more below zero. At night we slept in sleeping bags under the duce and a half trucks because none of us had tents or shelter halves. It was really bone-chilling cold and just got above zero doing the day. Now i know how the GIs felt fighting the war. It must have ben really bad on them.

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