Korea was an interesting place...
As an eighteen-year-old who was away from my country for the first time, other than when I was a kid and my parents took me to see Niagara Falls, and we stayed in Canada for a few days, I was never out of the United States.
Now overseas, I was seeing a world that was different and unique, and even shocking. There were rice paddies almost everywhere. Local villagers used outhouses as there were no flush toilets other than the ones we had on the Army post. While farmers plowed their vast fields using oxen, and rows of women
worked side by side in ankle deep water as they tended to their crops of rice.
Then on certain days dozens of women, many with infants in tow, would gather together in small groups, each taking her spot along the banks of the local creek. Here they would wash their clothes by hand, vigorously beating each item, one at a time, on the rocks that were along the shore. For me, it was like a scene out of America's pioneer days of the 1800s.
As a member of the First of the Seventeenth Mechanized Infantry, 2nd Infantry Division, we went on training maneuvers across miles of often difficult terrain as well as on open roads which connected many of the towns. We marched on foot through mountains and valleys, trudged through rice paddies, and navigated across streams and rivers in all kinds of weather. As foot soldiers, we endured the torrential rains of the monsoon season, and the bitterly cold winter months when we marched and slept for days at a time in subzero temperatures.
Korea was a land of extremes. The people were friendly, but also rugged in character and determination.
Having gone through the Korean War of the 1950s, and living with the constant threat of more war from a maniacal North Korean government, who until this very day continues to intimidate the world with its rockets, those of the Republic of South Korea showed an inner strength and a level of perseverance that most Americans, including myself, know nothing about.
Now age nineteen, my thirteen-month tour in South Korea was coming to an end. Still a teenager, I couldn't wait to head back to the States. Not mature enough yet to see my stay in Korea from how I view it today, I was simply a big kid happy to leave a foreign land and return to modern America.
I don't remember the exact date, but on the final day of my thirteen-month tour, I boarded a military plane and headed back to the USA.
D.B.
Now overseas, I was seeing a world that was different and unique, and even shocking. There were rice paddies almost everywhere. Local villagers used outhouses as there were no flush toilets other than the ones we had on the Army post. While farmers plowed their vast fields using oxen, and rows of women
worked side by side in ankle deep water as they tended to their crops of rice.
Then on certain days dozens of women, many with infants in tow, would gather together in small groups, each taking her spot along the banks of the local creek. Here they would wash their clothes by hand, vigorously beating each item, one at a time, on the rocks that were along the shore. For me, it was like a scene out of America's pioneer days of the 1800s.
As a member of the First of the Seventeenth Mechanized Infantry, 2nd Infantry Division, we went on training maneuvers across miles of often difficult terrain as well as on open roads which connected many of the towns. We marched on foot through mountains and valleys, trudged through rice paddies, and navigated across streams and rivers in all kinds of weather. As foot soldiers, we endured the torrential rains of the monsoon season, and the bitterly cold winter months when we marched and slept for days at a time in subzero temperatures.
Korea was a land of extremes. The people were friendly, but also rugged in character and determination.
Having gone through the Korean War of the 1950s, and living with the constant threat of more war from a maniacal North Korean government, who until this very day continues to intimidate the world with its rockets, those of the Republic of South Korea showed an inner strength and a level of perseverance that most Americans, including myself, know nothing about.
Now age nineteen, my thirteen-month tour in South Korea was coming to an end. Still a teenager, I couldn't wait to head back to the States. Not mature enough yet to see my stay in Korea from how I view it today, I was simply a big kid happy to leave a foreign land and return to modern America.
I don't remember the exact date, but on the final day of my thirteen-month tour, I boarded a military plane and headed back to the USA.
D.B.
