AUTHOR’S NOTE: I was writing to a squadron buddy 43 years ago. I was stuck in a Snake Ranch, the term used for officer housing at the Yongsan Garrison in Seoul, Korea. It is an odd letter, transferred in some ancient Word format via Government Xerox machines a couple times and then tucked away someplace else. It has moved in the same stack of old papers that held the accounts of the Atomic tests down at Bikini Atoll. The Snake Ranch Papers will be the next manuscript to emerge. It includes an account of the military coup d’etat that brought General Chon Tu-Hwan to the Presidency and the dozens of students shot down at the Kwang-Ju University. It was interesting!
– Vic
THE SNAKE RANCH RUE DE L A CHON
SEOUL, Republic of Korea
2 AUG 1980
Dear T.R.
It was dark that night dark enough for me to be almost fully passed out, listening groggily to some tape turned up full on the cheap Panasonic that serves as my link to the hidden electronic world. The phone rang, echoing weirdly on the linoleum and florescent hallway. It is never former, as I have few friends in the Green Machine, and don’t, on principle, give out my number. Usually, the calls are for the Military Police. You know the type.
“Riot In progress up in Itae-won. You want us to stop it, Mr. Humphry?” or, “Yeah. Right at the bottom of the excavation. No, sir, he ain’t going anywhere and he really don’t mind.”
But not this one. Glen rapped on the door and shouted it was for me. I stumbled to the door and went out into the hall. I saw the baggy white Jockey shorts disappear back into Luxury Suite One. I picked up the phone with same small amount of trepidation. When you are in my business (and remember, my business is trouble) you don’t get late night calls about safety programs or evaluation forms the Junior Officers gaffed off weeks ago. Tech Sergeant McCarron was on the line. You could hear the little click as he depressed the security buttons on the handset in the Impregnable Command Bunker.
“Say, Lieutenant Socotra, we just got something across the back channels about the Midway. Apparently she was in a crash or something.”
“Oh wow” I responded cleverly. “Tuckin’ A.” I tried to think for a minute and all the Ranger Stories flashed through my mind. Fuel oil fumes spreading throughout the ship, the towers of Singapore glinting in the darkness ahead.
“Any additional information?” I asked, thinking back to the last collision in the Malacca Strait.
“No sir, that’s all we got.” “Is it classified?”
“Not as far as we know.”
“OK, thanks Sarge. I appreciate the call.” I wandered back to the bedroom and flipped the tape over. I was just about unconscious again when the phone rang once more. I raced toward the door, colliding with only one of the upright barriers I am allowed to call ‘walls’ Instead of bulkheads. Reeling, I got to the phone and lifted the receiver.
“Hey, Lieutenant, this is McCarron again. That Information I just passed to you?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, we checked and It Is Secret.”
“Good. So now only us, the ROKS, the Russians, and the North Koreans are in on it, right?”
“Well, yeah, that’s right. Sorry to bother you.”
“No, No, entirely my pleasure.” I dropped the phone back on the cradle. I knew I would be walking the floor all night, or at Least that portion of it that was left before my wake up to the shrill buzzing of the clock radlo at 0330, so I went to the reefer and removed a can of Olympia beer. I popped the top and looked out into the darkness.
An Engineering Company spray truck ground up the hill outside and continued
the defoliation program against the mosquito population. The chemical cloud agent drifted up against the open window and the beer tasted sour. I went back to bed with the fan propped up against the window to exhaust the fumes.
Some people will do anything to avoid the Indian Ocean, I suppose.
Once I had gotten to work, and examined the scanty available information, I wasn’t as concerned as before. From preliminary data, it appeared that the impact of the collision had occurred around the port elevator, and it probably wasn’t our fault. The dawning horror of the possibility that it had removed a large portion of the One Hundred and Fifty-First Medium Pursuit Air Squadron at a single swell foop began to haunt me. I could barely answer the sophisticated telephone system.
“J-2 Indications Center, This is a non-secure line, LT Socotra.”
“Yeah, this is LCDR Blank over at Navy-K. Anything new on the Midway?”
“Just the press report from Manila.” I reached for the yellow file copy and pulled it across the desk. One of them has the Nuclear Carrier Midway limping back to Subic from the Palawan Channel. The second one (shuffling the large sheaf of Xerox copies, tape, flimsies and messages) “Ah here it is, the second slug says ‘Midway steams back to Subic.’ I liked that one a lot better. They have revised the aircraft totals to eight damaged. Still the same casualty figures.”
“Say, thanks a lot. I was on the Ranger for her collision, and I know how you must feel.
The Impact of the phone going down onto the hook chipped part of the ultra modern console. Which flew off and injured a light colonel reading the message on the other side of the desk. They were applying a tourniquet on it as I lit up a health cigarette and reflectively blew a cloud of smoke at the North Korean Order of Battle across the room.
After I ground out the cigarette, I said “Shit. This Is going to kill Nick Danger sales.”
In reaction to a general spiritual malaise, I was forced to go on a foray to the Ville. I scraped hundred won currency pieces out of the desk drawer. It was quite a bundle, perhaps five or six beers worth if them. I was headed out the door when Dave, the MP Captain, offered me a ride up the hill.
That suited me just fine, because the sooner I was sitting in Sam’s Club the sooner I would be unconscious and singing along with Merle. We walked down the steps to the battered Torino. The roof was partly caved in, the fenders would have made fine washboards for mama-san. Someone had gone over the interior with a razor blade.
It was a fine automobile. Dave turned the k e y and four hundred-odd cubic Inches thundered into life. We lurched out Gate Eight with a negligent wave to the guard.ave cut off two kimchi cabs, sideswiped a motor cyclist, and we moved with stately grace up the slope.
With masterful ease, Dave piloted the Torino through a gas station and into the curb across from the steps to the theater. We walked up past the 007 Club (now seeing dark days) and up an alleyway to the back door to Sam’s Club, modestly billed as “Best in Korea.”
I don’t know about the quality claim, but it certainly is in Korea. We went In and smelled the delicious Asian smell that made me homesick for the Philippines. The odor was part urine, part dryrot, part black-market Lysol, and stale beer. I drank five beers and listened to the perilous life story of the former Army Narcotics Officer in Command (OIC) for Central and South America.
Yuck.
Later, after listening to another life story, this one heartrendingly described by a diminutive bar girl about terror from the North. The Ville has been plagued by violence of late, violence of a particularly virulent and racial caste. Being pleasantly lit up, Dave wanted to see how his Military Patrol was doing. I looked downslope and saw a large crowd of Black Americans and Koreans glaring at each other. “Discretion is the better part of valour,” he started to say, but Dave was already moving into decisive action I shrugged and followed him, little knowing that I was about to play a bit part as:
好非於站於又 Vic Socotra ! 我都於料格梦好
I know, I know, this self aggrandizement has got to have a limit somewhere. I mean, it is sort of like the McCarthy show trials when the Army Secretary deflated the whole Witch Hunt by calmly asking “Have you no decency?”
Well no. But like I was saying, there I was, walking down the crude paving through a crowd of angry Americans and Koreans. This one seemed to be breaking up into component groups.
They appeared to be about to ‘apprehend’ a suspect for mashing at some windows, acting up and generally disorderly. The clubs on that part of the hill have been doing their hanging out on the street in the heat, as appeared to be the case this evening. We breezed through the one crowd and not to where they were bracing the suspect up against the wall. Two bars were spilling out into the street to watch the show. I noticed I was one of the only three pale faces in evidence and the famous line “What do you mean us, Kimo-Sabe?” occurred to me. A fight broke out upslope, and one of the MP garrison hats had come off an MP head. Dave moved towards the suspect with handcuffs and told me to race forth toward the rocks-and-shoals of the riot squad.
This was definitive tasking, and what’s more, it involved moving my feet. Ideal. I raced off downhill through a group of three or four surly looking individuals.
I made the Police Box In near record time. I rushed 1nwaving my I.D. card.lookingdebonaire In myhawalian print shirt and faded Jeans. Inl e s s time than I t takes to type these misspellinge we had summoned reinforcements, and were rushing out to jump in t h e squado oar.
If I had not already been drunk, I’m sure the rational option would have occurred to me; to wit, squaddies north, me south.
But the excitement of the moment carried me away and I leaped into the back seat with a heavily armed Korean, and off we sped, lights Flashing cattle prods drawn, Itching for Danger and Army enforcement.
We came to a halt outside the UN Club of song and story. The doors opened as our little task force raced uphill. The “suspect is struggling with his cuffs. Dave was trying to order some Blacks back into the club. Another fight was going on. The reinforcements had turned on the siren and were getting closer. I viewed it all with alarm, and a certain adrenaline-inspired truculence.
There was, I am embarrassed to say, only one prisoner.
Say: I have to go to work now, so take care. What did you mean by that crack about the village of Kami-seya in your letter? I felt the term “Area Specialist” ominously on the back of my neck…Thumbs up & Bums away
Vic Socotra
HONORARY RESERVE MILITARY JUNIOR PATROLLER
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