Prelude by Bill Greenhut

The Army, from day one, suppressed individuality but provided the infrastructure for one and all — the location, the food, the bed, the clothing, the transportation. You were told where to go, what to eat, when to sleep, and what to wear. But there was no control over the internal life of the mind.

How successfully can you substitute the thoughts you tell yourself, for the immediate external reality of someone who has free rein to scream in your face - that you will remain calm...remain calm...remain calm? Does it work? Do you become confident or more afraid? Can you function or do you want to hide in the latrine? Do you anticipate things getting better or do you dread what is to come?

Before the military I hadn't traveled extensively. For the most part it was wherever I could drive within a few hours. Upon induction, at twenty-two years of age, the Army sent me first to South Carolina in May of '66, and in the following autumn welcomed me to Columbus, Georgia for Officer Candidate

School. Most recently, I had a sojourn of a few days in the Pacific northwest at Fort Lewis, about sixty miles south of Seattle, where boredom fought with anticipation while I waited for a flight assignment.

The military determined every destination and the mode of transportation from place to place. But it did not control the impact of how all you saw, and all you experienced, affected you. Are you curious, anxious, terrified? Do you analyze? Are you alone with your thoughts? Does anyone sympathize? Are you amazed? Dazed?

Self-doubt was far behind me, smoothed out as the Army intended, at tail's end of a combined sixteen weeks of basic and advanced infantry training, culminating with those six months in Georgia at Infantry Officer Candidate School. I was ready for adventure.

Now, I may as well be on a different planet. Words in print have not prepared me for what my senses are experiencing. I have crossed the international dateline and the Army bus from the airport that is transporting my fellow passengers to the replacement depot has its windows open and the odor of feces is everywhere.

And I am fascinated. Oh, not by what I can smell; in this impoverished country, what would otherwise be referred to as human waste is an essential nutrient so that rice, the staple of the national diet, will sprout from the wet, fertilized ground and grow tall by harvest time. But I am engrossed in what I can see wherever I look; under a warm May sun and a cloudless sky, vast flatlands stretch to distant hills on both sides of the road. In open fields, men and women in white clothing with baggy pants rolled up to the knees are lined up five or six abreast. Stooped over, they shuffle backward, embedding green chutes by hand into the dark muck.

Built atop widely separated large dirt mounds, clusters of wooden shacks with roofs of straw are elevated above the wet fields. Low, narrow earthen dikes and shallow canals section the land into rectangular plots. Higher, wider dykes define subdivisions and, moving along them, wooden ox-drawn carts that hold the manure and short nascent rice plants travel between roads and fields.

We spend the weekend at the replacement depot awaiting transportation to our final destinations. I walk around the compound and am attracted to the barber shop by a sign posted beside the door that states: "Haircut 25 cents, Shave 35 cents, Massage 25 cents." This is a different planet indeed. I take advantage of all three.

On Monday morning, our bus arrives, the driver's rifle propped beside him and his armored vest draped over the back of his seat. I have a brief, troubling thought about security. We pass through the capitol city, its streets crowded with buses, taxis and military vehicles streaking noisily from one traffic light to the next. A ceaseless flow of pedestrians, some in modern dress of muted colors, others in billowing traditional white, cross the wide boulevards on narrow overhead bridges under a haze of diesel exhaust. The side streets carry the odor of fumes and fish. There are few civilian cars. In the right lane, men on foot strain to pull wooden carts laden with furniture piled this way and that, and merchandise covered with tarps. They look straight ahead and seem impervious to traffic speeding past to their immediate left.

A ring of mountains encircles the city, hovels packed precipitously on the lower slopes. The main route north, designated by the U.S. Army command as 'Main Supply Route 1,' courses through small villages. The road is slightly higher than the abutting rice paddies so that rainwater, instead of flooding the surface, will flow off to where it is needed for the crops. Houses are constructed of dull gray cinder blocks, the surrounding walls topped by barbed wire and shards of colored broken glass. Connected to a water source, ditches snake through the villages. Beside the road are a few small shops with sliding wooden doors containing panes of glass. Those that we pass near the American Army compounds have signs in English with names such as, 'Texas Bar,' or 'Hollywood Room.'

The day is hot and I transfer at division headquarters to an open jeep with a driver that has been sent for me. We soon reach the regional center. It is a small-town occupying about one quarter mile of frontage. Here is an abundance of two and three-story buildings constructed of the same cinder block I see almost everywhere. There are many shops and pedestrians moving from place to place.

We entered on blacktop, slowly passed through and head further north on dirt. The road is uneven and our jeep creeps along. Young men, idle at mid-day, squat beside the road, almost equidistant from one another as if planned that way. Expressions impassive, they look at me. Going by I can almost reach out to my right and touch them. Why are they there? What is their intent? I am unarmed. Are we safe?

Every few minutes my driver pulls over and stops, making way for trucks transporting troops and supplies, and armored vehicles raising low clouds of dirt, engines roaring and tank treads squealing. Their presence is comforting.

When I begin to wonder if it is possible to travel any further and still be in the south of the country, I reach my final destination.

The jeep pulls up at battalion headquarters and I step out. As with anything new and unfamiliar, I have a mild feeling of uncertainty. I walk in and am directed to the battalion commander's office. I knock on the door and hear, "Enter." I step before his desk, come to attention, salute, and say, as is customary, "Sir, Lieutenant Greenhut reports." He returns my salute and welcomes me with a smile, and speaking louder than is necessary replies, "Relax lieutenant." He is a lieutenant colonel and a World War Il and Korean War veteran. His narrow, craggy face is well weathered and a short thatch of gray hair hangs down on his forehead. I estimate him to be in his late forties. He tells me I will be assigned to one of three rifle companies and explains the battalion's mission, then has someone show me to my temporary quarters.

I go out to explore. The mechanized battalion (meaning its mission is achieved with the use of armored personnel carriers) occupies two compounds with a short walk between. The three rifle companies have approximately two-hundred-fifty men in each, and headquarters company has a similar number. Each company has its own mess hall, supply room and motor pool. The enlisted men's club is on one compound, the officers' club on the other. There is an industrial size laundry, Post Exchange and rifle range in one of the compounds. All the buildings are Quonset huts, the curved corrugated metal painted green.

It isn't long before I move in among my peers of Bravo Company, three other second lieutenants that includes the company commander who greets me as a welcome addition. Imagine what it is like to meet my platoon, forty-plus young men who, at age twenty-three, I now command. They are all unknown to me but it does not matter that I am a stranger; the Uniform Code of Military Justice requires them to acknowledge the bars on my collar and obey any lawful order I choose to issue. But that is only ever a last resort.

I walk confidently into the barracks to meet them. Still, I'm wondering what they are like and what they are thinking. It will take weeks of interaction before I know.

You would assume it will be most difficult getting used to the soldiering before me — the minefields, the barbed wire, the searchlights, the explosions, the gunfire - and adapting to operating in the monsoon rains, the fog, the sub-zero winter and freezing wind, and you would be right. This country, this Korea, will be my home for the next year plus...if I last that long.

End