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1971 Korea

December 1970 - After only three months on the job, I was told one afternoon that I should pack my bags and be ready to leave for Tampa radio site at 5:30 the next morning. Tampa was our problem site. It was always going down and acting weird. It’s radios were designed to reach up to 45 miles but the remote mountain where that radio relay/missile site was located was 57 miles away. The military planners tried to compensate for the distance by using a very low frequency on the FM radio. However, the low freq’ meant that there were twenty or more other transmitters on the same frequency. When I loaded my bag in the truck the next morning my sergeant met me with my transfer orders. He also gave me two other sets of orders. One promoted me from private to specialist, backdated to the date I arrived in country, and the other made me an acting sergeant. My boss told me that I was the new site chief at Tampa and my mission was to get the communications operational and keep it going. I asked which is more important, voice or data communication. He said that data was more essential. Eighteen hours over the roughest roads and back trails I have ever seen got me to the smallest military base I had ever seen. Five guided missiles and 250 men to maintain them ready to launch. I was successful. After four days of work on that ancient frequency modulated, cathode ray tube functioning equipment, I was able to get a weak data signal. I went to the radar van and told the guys they need to send a 'start pulse.' They had no idea what I was talking about. I said, "somewhere in here is a cabinet with a lot of buttons and switches." They pointed it out to me. I opened it and started reading the labels. I turned a nob to 'start pulse' and pushed the button. When I turned the nob back to operate, their radar screens lit up with aircraft IDs and target locations. They picked up their head sets and started talking, excitedly with the other missal guidance controllers. They could finally do their job, after a year and a half of doing nothing. They started calling me 'Tampa Honcho'. A staff sergeant transferred into our unit, assigned as my boss. Therefore, I was no longer the ‘site chief’ at Tampa radio site. However, everybody still referred to me as the Tampa Honcho and I still had three privates working for me. Within a two week period a lot happened and everything changed. One of my privates finished his tour of duty and got out of the army. One private finished his thirteen months and transferred back to the states. My senior operator, Cooper, beat his best friend to death with a bat, fighting over a cheep bottle of Korean whisky and was sent to prison for life. This left me alone, to run the site. When we begged headquarters for operators, they sent me another ex-site chief, the same rank as me. At least now I could work a shift instead of all the time. In Korea, if you want to marry a Korean you have to bribe the local magistrate to do the paperwork. It seems our new man had started the process of marrying a Korean at his previous station. Then when they turned over his station to the Korean Army he was transferred to our headquarters. This meant his ‘wife’ moved to a new area and they had to start the process over again. Then he was moved to my site. If his ‘wife’ moved also it would mean paying a third set of bribes and starting all over again. Therefore, she stayed in An Jan Ni, seventeen hours away, by taxi. We discussed his problem and negotiated our work schedule. He needed one day to get there and one day back. If he stayed there one day it would mean three days away. However, since we change shifts each day at noon, we decided we would each work four days on and four days off. The off days were fine but, since sleeping on duty was punished harshly, that meant going 96 hours without any sleep. That leaves plenty of time for meditation. My telephone relay site was on top of a huge mountain. Each day at noon the truck would lumber it’s way up the mountain carrying the next shift of workers and food for the next 24 hours. Naturally, at supper time the Headquarters site changed shift. Therefore, I had to talk them through their daily adjustments, which took till 10:00pm. By the time I got to the ready room, at midnight each night, all the food was gone. So, I had a pretend hamburger; catsup, mustard, pickle on a bun, with no meat. Therefore, I was fasting (no food available) and meditating (no sleeping allowed). One night I prayed mightily. I told God that I knew my wife would not be a Korean. So, who will be the woman I will love? The answer was a vision. A nice looking girl with dark rimmed glasses. She faded away and another girl appeared. This one looked a lot like my sister, Teresa, but with a smaller chin and not as sharp features. ?Why two girls??