Korea
Inchon, Seoul
We drove our vehicles into the hollow gut of an LST
(Landing Ship Tank); Whiteside was now the Motor Sergeant and had arranged for
me to be temporarily assigned to the Motor Pool and I drove a jeep aboard. Passenger Quarters were on each side of the
LST; they were not the most seaworthy ships ever designed but at least you
could smoke on deck in post war relaxation.
I would not have liked to ride out a storm on an LST; even in relatively
calm seas ours groaned as it twisted from stern to bow and, at the same time,
bent from fore to aft with every swell.
I hadn't realized steel was so flexible, but after a few hours of
corkscrewing through the Yellow Sea I decided we were going to make it to
Korea.
When we arrived at Inchon (called Jinsen by the Japanese)
it was dark; purely by chance my jeep was the first off the LST and as I drove
on to the dock a Japanese Officer got into the front eat and directed me to a
staging area. We were one of the first
ships carrying American troops to arrive in Korea. There were fully armed Japanese soldiers
lined up along both sides of the dock as
we drove off. I was not comfortable as
the Japanese Officer and I spent the rest of the night sitting in the jeep,
smoking my cigarettes (he did volunteer that American cigarettes were much
better than Japanese) and immersed in our own thoughts.
With daylight I understood why we landed the night
before; Inchon has one of the largest tidal fluctuations in the world, the
whole harbor was bare mud and the nearest ship a half mile offshore. Shortly after daylight we left in convoy for
Seoul, the Japanese Officer still in the front seat. Somewhere enroute, he suddenly said "I
went to UCLA". When I said I went
to Texas A&M, he said "Oh yes, John Kimbrough". That was the end of our conversation. It was awkward for both of us.
We drove through
Yong Dong Po, past Kimpo Air Base, with a few sick looking Japanese airplanes,
and crossed the Han River to the outskirts of Seoul. My guide directed me to the Keijo (Japanese
name for Seoul) Imperial Hospital on a mountainside overlooking the Han River
that we were taking over. It was an
impressive physical plant, old solid, and fully equipped. Of course, that was not good enough for the
US ARMY MEDICAL CORPS. We had to Americanize everything.
It began with the living quarters; we hadn't slept under
anything but canvas at best for almost two years and now we had houses with
indoor toilets (Japanese style porcelain straddle trenches), bath tubs with
running water and a place to heat the water with coal underneath, and even a
kitchen/ dining room in each house.
First, the Army declared the indoor plumbing off limits, reinforced by
turning off the water for the sewage system.
We, just like the Manual said, dug latrines and covered them with tents
and installed diesel stoves to heat them.
When winter came and the temperature plummeted to zero, you REALLY had
to go to bundle up and walk to the latrine.
It was even less pleasant when the stove had run out of fuel.
Stoves were also installed in all the houses, supplied by
a hose through the wall to a 55 gallon drum of diesel fuel on a wooden rack
outside to diminish the danger of fire.
The stoves blew up occasionally, but, with the fuel outside, it was only
a matter of cleaning up the soot instead of putting out a fire. I don't know
why they didn't shut off the water to the kitchen and the bath tub; both,
especially the latter, were much too good for the enlisted men.
The bathtub was a big iron pot, much like the one my
Mother scalded the hog and made soap in over an open fire when we lived on 26th
Street. It sat in a wooden frame with a
fire box underneath. When you wanted a
bath, you filled the tub with water and the firebox with coal, doused the coal
with diesel and threw in a lighted match before slamming the door. I once
burned off my new beard and mustache, plus my eyebrows, eyelashes and the front
part of my hair when I opened the fire door and peered in to see if the coal
was burning. It sure did when it got the
extra oxygen provided by my opening the door.
We also had running water in the lavatory so we could wash, shave and
brush our teeth without walking to the latrine.
What luxury.
No comments:
Post a Comment