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\n(Us Marines stand with captured Korean battle flag, 1871, near present day Inchon.)<\/p>\n
\n(Us Marines stand with captured Korean battle flag, 1871, near present day Inchon.)<\/p>\n
Mac and I paid Elisabeth-with-an-S and she gave me one of those smiles that keeps me coming back. We walked out of Willow\u2019s rich wood bar and down the steps onto the brick patio.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy usual parking place,\u201d said the Admiral with a note of pride. The sleek Gold Jag was directly across from the gate in the black railing that separated the Willow patio congregants from the pedestrians hurrying to and from the Ballston Metro Station. \u201cLet me give you a ride down to the American Service Center to retrieve the Hubrismobile.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can walk, really,\u201d I said. \u201cI need the exercise.\u201d I also wanted a minute to figure out which of the poor melting credit cards in my wallet I was going to cycle the repairs on to. That was a constant royal pain. But Mac was insistent, and I relented immediately.<\/p>\n
He unlocked the pristine sedan and I plopped myself into tanned pale leather of the right hand seat. \u201cSo American citizens are butchered by the Koreans,\u201d I said, \u201cAnd what was the response? We used to be a little more muscular in our overseas relations. At least after the matter of the Barbary Pirates was settled with the establishment of a Navy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat adventure also required the rescue of an American ship and crew.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, yeah,\u201d I thought. With everything else going on in modern Libya it was easy to forget that Tripoli had been the source of the first major embarrassment of American arms overseas, and the first place the Stars and Stripes were raised on foreign soil. \u201cWas it the Philadelphia that ran aground and got captured in Tripoli Harbor?\u201d<\/p>\n
The Admiral nodded. \u201cThere is a tradition as old as the Service: you get your ship back. The Berber pirates hauled the ship off the reef and anchored her to serve as a floating battery. Steven Decatur led a cunning party that managed to get close enough to board and overcome the Berber guards and burn the ship, sinking it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the principle is that a nation\u2019s warships remain their property, regardless, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
The Admiral smiled as he skillfully swung away from the curb. \u201cThat is why Pueblo is still a commissioned ship-of-the-line.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know we used to care a lot about it. I have some declassified OXCART imagery that shows her in Wonsan Harbor. She was on the priority collection list for COMIREX for the satellite pictures, too. So what did President Johnson do about the killing of the Americans and the destruction of the General Sherman?\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n(A-12 OXCART (CIA Version of SR-71 Image of Pueblo in Wonsan Harbor 1968.)<\/p>\n
The Admiral swerved a bit to avoid a Lance Armstrong wannabee who was hurtling through a crosswalk near the International House of Pancakes. \u201cHe did what any President of a certain era would have done. He sent in the Marines to punish people who were pains in the ass.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIs that what opened up Korea to trade?\u201d<\/p>\n
The Admiral put on the blinker to turn right at Quincy and head down to where the American Service Center is reinventing itself from a low-rise to a high-rise structure.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, that happened later. Actually, it took five years for the Marines to get there. The Navy landed nearly 700 men landed near what we know now as Inchon. It was partly to resume trade talks, but obviously robust enough to avenge the insult to the Flag. The Koreans again resisted, but in two days of heavy fighting, the Marines destroyed five forts and inflicted as hundreds of casualties on the defending Koreans, while suffering only three casualties of their own. A Marine private killed the Korean commander, General Uh Je-yeon, and took his flag.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIs that the one that wound up with all the other captured banners at the Naval Academy?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mac deftly swung the Jag down the alley behind ASC. \u201cYep, the very one. I can wait until you are sure the Hubrismobile is ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks, but no, I can hoof it back to Big Pink if it isn\u2019t. For the amount of money I am paying to have the rear seats headrests adjust so the top works again, they will probably be happy to give it back.\u201d<\/p>\n
I opened the door to confront the highly-skilled technical experts, mentally vowing never again to own an elaborate piece of German rolling stock. Something occurred to me, though. \u201cNone of this history is ever forgotten over there, is it?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mac shook his head. \u201cNo, they have long memories, though what they remember is not necessarily the truth. Great Leader Kim Il Song always claimed his great grandfather Kim Ung U had been a ringleader in the killing of the General Sherman\u2019s crew. Made the whole Kim family big heroes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey claim that when the Dear Leader, that little shit, was born on Mount Paektu there was thunder and lightning and the iceberg in the sacred pond emitted a mysterious sound as it broke and bright double rainbows appeared from it.\u201d I waved my hands in wonder at the miracle.<\/p>\n
Mac pursed his lips. \u201cHe was most likely born in Siberia, where his father was in exile at the time, a pet of the Russians. I have heard that Pyongyang\u2019s Korean Central News Agency reported that Venus shed an unusually bright light above the sacred lake when Kim Jong-un was announced as the new King.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have a national pattern of mass hallucination. I have no idea what they are going to cook up for the newest Kim to take the throne. When I was in Pyongyang,\u201d I said, holding the door, \u201cThe delegation agreed to go along with the delusion and just believe impossible things before breakfast. The Clinton Administration thought you could negotiate in good faith with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d said the Admiral with a smile. \u201cEvery resident of the White House has to learn that for himself. You can\u2019t trust them further than you can throw them. Bill Clinton got rolled when he had a chance to get the Pueblo back and he didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey must think we are chumps, don\u2019t they?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not sure they are wrong,\u201d said Mac. \u201cNext time at Willow for the Damage Assessment story. That was the high point of my five and a half years at DIA. We had five copies of the final report, and I think they have all been destroyed now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy would anyone destroy them?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mac shook his head. \u201cSome people don\u2019t want to remember.\u201d<\/p>\n
I closed the door, careful not to slam it, and waved as Mac roared off down the alley. I hoped the car was ready. The next morning was going to be a royal pain as it was. I had accepted an invitation to start getting drunk at 0530 and watch some couple in England tie the knot.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Us Marines stand with captured Korean battle flag, 1871, near present day Inchon.) Mac and I paid Elisabeth-with-an-S and she gave me one of those smiles that keeps me coming back. We walked out of Willow\u2019s rich wood bar and down the steps onto the brick patio. \u201cMy usual parking place,\u201d said the Admiral with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":929,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions\/929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}