11th & 12th November, 2006
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Photo by
Edward Habib McKuen. ©2006 by Stanyan Audio Video Archives
A Thought for Today
The historian says, "It was thus"; the veteran, "I was there."
FROM the¨BOOKS
IT WAS ALWAYS WINTER IN KOREA
It was always winter in Korea
–
no matter what the time of year,
the seasons ran unto each other
in one long thread without a gateway.
Snow melted into snow.
Ice iced over ice.
And sparrows like the soldiers of both sides
didn’t seem to notice
the absence of spring.
or the neglect of summer on the landscape.
Some days were colder than others,
that’s all
but even looking back through army snapshots
I came across no comrades, no buddies
posing or going about their business
with
their shirts off.
Only black and whites or slides,
but even they look faded-
black and white like winter.
One shot of me and a friend –
whose name
I can’t remember –
shows us squatted, bent over at a table
In T-shirts, eating kimchee,
and that’s the closest photographic memory I own
depicting a single summer soldier.
I wasn’t quite eighteen
I had a year and some months yet to go
till I would be called up
so I volunteered for the draft.
The government used to let you do that –
that way a man or boy-man
got his service over early
and headed home a certified reserve civilian-
a veteran, a hero, experience hardened,
a big shot till his severance pay
and unemployment check ran out
The first combat I saw was at Fort Ord,
down the coast from San Francisco.
During sixteen weeks of basic training
thirty-six men in my division were killed
or killed themselves.
An instructor, "funning it"
threw a live grenade at one recruit;
it blew off half his arm.
He was reprimanded, given four days’ leave with pay
and then came back to work.
One night, jogging through the darkness on a hike,
A non-com coming in off pass
plowed into the tail end of our squadron
in his nineteen fifty Cadillac
killing five men instantly, wounding seven more.
Few soldiers oversees could make that boast.
No board of inquiry was convened
and no Inspector General came
That never happened in The Flying Sixty-Third,
but he was told by the Commandant himself
that drinks and driving just don’t mix
a popular slogan of the day.
We’ll never know how many lives it saved.
Six weeks into basic,
long after the infiltration course
would take another nine men’s lives,
Corporal Garner, I think that was his name,
got up from bed while the barracks slept
and hanged himself
from the rafter just above his bunk.
His deed did not disturb the quiet.
Only each man soloing
His individualistic snore
sliced the silence.
Stumbling out of bed, but half awake
on my way to take piss
I bumped against his body
and set it twirling in mid-air.
I did not cry out or cry.
I only sat down on the footlocker
opposite this slowly-slower still-turning man
and staring straight-ahead said shit.
I might have tried to wake the others,
but that emotion, the reaction would come later.
The noose around the deepening purple neck,
the head bent over, eyes bulging
ready to drop out like aggies.
The shape of him that morning still circles
in my mind.
He had been the mailman,
the quartermaster passing out reality
in envelopes of every color, twice a day.
Pink envelopes from pink-cheek girls
some of us had left behind
blue envelopes from mothers
and envelopes with stamps embossed on them
from practical, utilitarian fathers.
It took the company commander one full week
to appoint another mailman
and then I think he only did it
to alleviate the bags of mail
that started stacking.
All of us wrote home about it
but of course the letters never left the post.
So much was going on,
being pushed and crammed into our heads
that most of us forgot to rewrite
the incident
in letters sent again
that finally reached their destinations.
Three men died of poisoning
over a long weekend.
Another seven had their stomachs pumped.
We were never told and never knew
where the poison came from
or any other circumstance
related to this latest inconvenience.
We did not know we were pieces of meat
expendable
to be delivered to the battle ground
after we’d been made ready
for the sport.
And after these new deaths
whole sackfuls of Hersheys and Baby Ruths
were carried to the class or field each day.
Mess hall attendance dropped
and packages of food from home
were usually half eaten
by the newest mailman
before he made delivery
War is hell.
Especially in training camps.
I should have started realizing that
the first morning we fell into the street
to stand formation.
The barracks sergeant gave a little speech
just before the role-call
You men, he said, there are two things
we don’t allow and we don’t stand for
in this man’s army…
Eagerly I listened on
I didn’t want to break no rules.
…racial and religious prejudice, he continued
and gum in the urinals.
I suppose those are pretty useful truths
in army life or just in life.
The first we take self-evident.
Ah, but the second is much more practical
if you’ve ever had to clean
a row of barracks’ urinals.
Finally on a boat
that headed toward Japan
one day out of harbor you could see
the snow cone of Mt. Fuji,
then boxed inside a flying boxcar
for the ride from Tokyo to Pusan
someone said aloud, I hear it’s cold there.
Memories of boot camp,
not yet completely gone
would soon be taken over by that cold.
I never talked to anyone about it much
or heard somebody else express it
but I knew it to be fact
and far away from fiction,
it was always winter in Korea.
I wonder if the climate’s
that way still?
Surely snow is not the normal covering
for ground where farmers work the earth
every day of every year.
Maybe it was only one long winter
made up by both sides for the war.
I’ve heard that steam rose up
and covered everything like
fog
in the Asian jungles of Cambodia
and the squatting forests
of North and South Vietnam
and that no matter
what the time of year
it always seemed like summer there.
Someone else will have to write
of that.
I only know for sure
that it was always winter in Korea.
- from "The Power Bright & Shining", 1980
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