Return Stateside/Instructor Duty/Mom's Fatal Illness/ Oklahoma/Germany

C H A P T E R 13

(1973-1978)





My assignment at Fort Gordon put me in the Signal School, teaching prospective radio teletypewriter operators, but before I began teaching, I had to go to an instructor school myself. A young man named Bill Barker and me, had both arrived at the same time, so would be going to school together.

Bill and I were billeted in the same room in the barracks when we first arrived. He was a married man too, his wife being in Texas at the time. He was going to scout out the location here in Georgia, and when he found an apartment he could afford, would send for his wife and daughter.

It didn't take us long to figure out that we didn't want to live in the barracks. As a matter of fact, the first night we were there, we decided to go to the NCO Club and discuss our situation. I discovered him to be of a companionable nature and within three days, we had rented a small, two bedroom trailer in Grovetown. We moved out of the barracks and into the trailer where we could have a little more privacy.

We both made it through the instructor school in about three weeks, got a certificate and card saying we were qualified to teach, and began teaching at Brant Hall.

Then, we were teaching only O5Bs and O5Cs (radio operators and radio teletype operators), and were responsible for certain sections of their training. For example, Basic Electronics, Morse Code, Netting, Procedure, Typing, Voice Communications, Teletype Communications, and the various different types of radios that they would be required to learn. I was in the Procedure section, and Bill taught in a different area, so we only saw each other on breaks and after the work day.

It was our responsibility to make up our own lesson plans, and plan and practice our presentation in a specific manner, and on time. Of course, the lesson plans were subject to review before we taught them, to make sure that they followed established procedures. Other than that, we were given free reign as to how the material was presented.

Our classes were monitored occasionally, especially when we first began teaching. We were graded on our appearance, proper presentation skills, the completeness of the material covered and class participation. These inspections were enough to keep us from becoming slovenly.

It became our custom, Bill and I, to go out bar hopping on Friday nights. We both enjoyed the atmosphere in the bars, playing pool and drinking with friends. I don't think either one of us had intentions of trying to pick-up women for sex.
Saturday mornings, we would jump in Bill's car (he had driven from Texas) and head downtown to a little bar on 7th Street.
There we would get a Bloody Mary to take the pain out of our hangovers, then I would switch to beer and Bill had his usual Scotch-on-the-Rocks. At about 10 a.m., Fat Albert came on T.V. This was always our favorite cartoon program to watch on
Saturday, so we would ask the bar maid, Helga, to turn up the volume. Since we were usually the only ones in the place at that time of the morning, she didn't mind, and as a matter of fact, became fond of watching the program also.

It wasn't supposed to happen like that, but after a couple of months, Bill and Helga became a thing. Our trailer wasn't presentable enough for entertaining ladies, so he would go to her place and I'd have the trailer to myself.

I suppose I should say a few things about our household chores. Bill wasn't much on cooking, so I did most of that. We both took turns washing the dishes and would have a good day cleaning and straightening out the house on Sundays. That was the day too, when we would bundle up our dirty clothes and take them to a laundromat.


After about three months in the trailer, we moved to a small two bedroom apartment - still in Grovetown - but it afforded a little more security. I told Bill to go ahead and invite Helga one day and I would fix them a fine Supper. I made stuffed peppers as the main course and they both enjoyed the meal, but I could tell that they were a bit awkward in my company. They soon excused themselves and left.

Shortly after this, Bill got word that his family was arriving, so the hanky-panky had to cease. They found a nice small place in Hephzibah, and I helped them move in. Bill was supposed to be locked-in to that assignment (he had just come back from Vietnam), but soon after Christmas of 1973, he got orders to Germany. They were gone before I knew it.

I didn't think I'd ever see Bill again, but some years later, in 1981, I got a call from him. He was at the Holiday Inn Motel out on Washington road, and he wanted to see me. I had been medically retired from the Army the previous year, and wasn't working, so I went there to get him. We came home and I introduced him to my wife and daughter, and we had a nice meal and caught up on what had been happening in our lives. He said he was just traveling around to see some of his old friends. He'd been out of the Army for a few years, not retired, but he said it got so that he couldn't take the Army life anymore.
According to Bill, his tour in Germany had been interrupted by him having to go back to Vietnam on the "Phoenix Program," a clandestine, U.S. program to seek out and kill North Vietnamese, VC, and other sympathizers that had been inimical toward our cause. He told me a whole bunch of gruesome stories that I didn't want to believe, but his telling of them, made them seem very real. He said his wife wasn't aware of this, she thought he had been in the field on an exercise.

Bill stayed with me for about four days, but then he had to move on. It was on a weekend, and he hadn't the cash to do any traveling, so he asked me if I would give him some money and he would give me a check in return. I said okay, and went to the ATM and got him the money. He gave me a check, but about a week later, I was called by the bank. The check had bounced.

The mystery was solved about a week later. His wife called me from Texas; it seems that Bill must have been having some kind of nervous breakdown. She claims that he had run away from her and his kids, and she was calling all over to try to locate him. I gave her what information I had, but told her not to worry about repaying the money he had taken. I never heard from either of them again. I truly hope that Bill got help and returned to his family.

During Exodus 1973 (the name given the Christmas and New Year Holidays, because most of the troops went home on leave), the O5B and O5C course moved, lock, stock, and barrel, back to the old school area (the area it was in when I first came through here as a student in 1965). These were the old wooden, WWII buildings built in 1941 and immediately adjacent to the Commissary Annex, PX area.

My job had changed too, I found out. I was now working in
Student Records with Bob Valdick, another E-6 who I'd gone through the NCO Academy with at Fort Riley, Kansas, back in 1968. It was our job to keep track of every student in the course; what grades he made on the various test and what his standings in the class were. Usually, the two students with the highest grades, would get a promotion of one rank. I keep saying "he" here, but there were, in fact, female students going through the course also.

In January, 1974, I bought a house in South Augusta, in anticipation of Kum Cha's arrival. It was newly built, and the landscaping was not satisfactory. Every time it rained, large gullies would be formed in my yard by the runoff from the adjacent property. My immediate concern was for getting the inside of the house ready, so I left the landscaping to a later date.

For two months I was busy buying furniture, curtains, pots and pans, silverware, food, spices, etc., everything I could think of that I would need to begin housekeeping; all this, without the benefit of my wife's counsel. In March, when she did arrive, I was to learn that some of the choices I'd made were not exactly pleasing to her, but I'd done the best I could.

Having the idea of forming a little security around my house, I decided to build a picket fence. I rented a post hole digger, bought the necessary cement, sand and 4 x 4's. I even bought a circular saw to cut the lumber. After digging holes all around my property, mixing and filling them in with cement and the post, I was beginning to congratulate myself on a job well done. I needn't have bothered! The night of the day I'd sunk and set the last post, a man came to the door and told me that I was violating the "protective covenant" by building the fence beyond the face of my house.

When I'd bought the house, the agent hadn't told me about such a document, so I didn't know anything about it. You can believe I was on the phone the next day, arranging to get a copy. Unfortunately, the man was quite correct; the fence had to come down. I tore the whole thing down and decided to concentrate on my yard drainage problems.

Kum Cha arrived in Atlanta while I was building the fence. I'd gone to pick her up in our new 1973 Chevy Vega (she hadn't known I knew how to drive, and was quite pleased). She had lost so much weight from worry, she looked like a skeleton! Our
daughter, Jean, wasn't with her. She would come by herself, later in July.

I bought a front-end roto-tiller, and began attacking the yard. Our house had been built on a slope, and as a result, every time it rained, the runoff dug deep ruts through our yard. With Kum Cha's help, we slowly began leveling out the yard. I would till the upper portion, fill a wheelbarrow, and Kum Cha would take it to a lower location and dump and level it with a rake. It took several weeks to get it where we wanted it, but eventually we got it there. All this time I was working at Fort Gordon during the day and slaving over my yard at night.

I built Kum Cha a small garden in the back yard when I learned that she was interested in growing things. She had never done that in Korea, so it was a learning procedure for her - trial and error. Over the years, she became pretty good at it. We still have a garden to this day, and grow many different vegetables. Her favorite is Chili peppers, green onions and garlic; we use a lot of that.

One day I returned from work and Kum Cha wanted me to taste her kimchee, she said it didn't taste right. After tasting it, I had to agree with her! It turns out she had used paprika instead of chili pepper - they both looked the same in the bottle, but boy, did they taste different! She couldn't understand why the kimchee wasn't getting any hotter and kept adding more paprika.

Whenever I would be working the garden, tilling in fertilizer or lime, Jean, who was just learning English, would ask me what that bag of fertilizer was. I must have explained it to her about five times. I didn't think she could handle a word like fertilizer, so I told her it was horseshit. I should have said manure, I know that now. One day, while shopping in the Four Seasons Store at Fort Gordon, Kum Cha had Jean sitting in a basket and I was looking at some pesticides. Jean hollered out loud and clear, "Daddy look, there's the horseshit," pointing to it excitedly. Talk about wanting to find a hole to crawl into and hide, that sure was one of those moments!

Jean wanted a sister or brother to play with, she was lonely at home. The other boys and girls in the neighborhood couldn't understand her yet. Another day, while shopping at that same store, the lady in front of us had her baby in a car seat, and placed him on the checkout counter so that she could free her hands to get at her purse. Jean looked solemnly at that baby for a while, then she turned to me and asked me why we couldn't buy a baby too. It was a while before she could speak and understand enough English that I could explain where babies came from.

As for having more children, Kum Cha and I both tried, even going so far as seeing the doctors to make sure we could, and trying some of their methods. Unfortunately, it wasn't to be. In those days, they hadn't any fertility drugs that are so common today. Perhaps we might have tried it if they had.

In 1975, I was given the task of coordinating all the Communications training for National Guard and Reserve troops during their summer training. That meant, not only did I have to assign the subjects they would be taking, but schedule the times, instructors, buildings and equipment to be used. I had to arrange their billeting when they arrived and act as a greeting committee also. They usually arrived on the weekends.

All summer I struggled with juggling classes and instructors, and meeting incoming troops on the weekends to coordinate their training. I got a couple of nice letters from some of the Reserve and National Guard components, but no recognition at all from the course office.


In 1976, I was back in the Equipment section, teaching classes on the operation of the AN/GRC-26D. The two buildings I taught out of, had mock-up positions of the actual radio, built upon a platform. There were eight radio sets in each laboratory, and we usually had five or six students seated at each set, with one of them up on the platform going through the motions of tuning the radio set.

I would talk them through the process step-by-step the first two or three times. I had a microphone for making myself heard above the noise of the equipment. After they had been talked through it, we (my assistant and me) would turn them loose to learn it on their own (using a handout), with critiques by the other students at that position. When they thought they had learned the tuning of the radio set sufficiently enough to pass the module, they would call one of us instructors over to check them out. Most of the students would pass the module within the proscribed amount of time, but occasionally we got one that took longer than usual and had to be set back to another class.

At the end of the class day, the students were allotted the task of sweeping, mopping, and buffing the floor. On Fridays, we would knock off earlier than usual to include dusting and waxing also. The class leader was told what had to be done and he would assign the individuals to do this work. This almost always worked well, but sometimes the work had to be given to someone else. For example, not everyone knew how to run a buffer, or, believe it or not, swing a mop. When I noticed this ineptness in any individual, I asked for and got a change of work assignments.

In addition to this usual cleaning procedure, we instructors were assigned as building custodians, meaning we were responsible for other upkeep too. Painting the classrooms, fixing the windows or plumbing, and maintaining the equipment in operable order, was also our task. The log books and other paperwork that was necessary to complete the record of work done on a piece of equipment, had to be accurate. All aspects of our custodial work were constantly inspected by the IG (Inspector General) branch of the Army.

In the winter of 1976, I got word that my mother was being admitted to a hospital in Massachusetts for an operation on her lungs. The doctors suspected cancer. I flew up to Massachusetts by myself. It would have been too expensive to take Kum Cha and Jean, besides we weren't sure just what the doctors would find.

My Uncle Joe came out to the airport to pick me up and drove me to my mother's house in North Attleboro. She was in the hospital already, so I just dropped my stuff off and walked up the hill to the hospital. My mother looked awfully weak on the hospital bed. She told me that she had passed out at work and they had called for an ambulance to take her to the hospital. She was scheduled to be operated on the next morning. She was scared and looked so frail. I prayed with her and said I would contact Harold and we would be there when she got out of surgery. I went back the next morning and was with her when they wheeled her out to the operating room.

Meanwhile, the night before, I had contacted Harold and told him that mom was about to have an operation and that it didn't look good. If he wanted to see her while she was still alive, he'd best come to Mass. He arrived the next day while mom was in surgery.

That evening, we both talked to the doctor. He said that they'd opened her up, but when they got a look at the extent to which the cancer had advanced, they decided there was nothing else they could do for her. They sewed her back up. He didn't think it wise to tell her right away that she was inoperable.

Harold and I stayed at her place for the next few nights. During the day, we would visit mom in the hospital and try to cheer her up. We discussed what would happen to mom when she was well enough to leave the hospital. She would not be able to go on living at a third floor walk-up. Harold had four boys of his own now and was having a difficult time of it as it was. I told him I would take care of arrangements for packing and shipping her things to Georgia and she could live with me. I hadn't consulted Kum Cha on this decision because it was rather spontaneous. Harold left on the forth day; it was the last time he was to see mom alive, but we didn't know that at the time.

I stayed an extra week, arranging the packing of mom's things and having them shipped to my home. Every day, I'd go visit mom in the hospital. She seemed to be recovering from the operation okay, and I guess the doctor hadn't told her because she thought she was going to be okay. I told her that I'd made arrangements for her to come live with me when she was well enough to travel. She was happy about that.

When I got back to Georgia, I told Kum Cha of my decision. She didn't fuss about it, so I thought it was settled. About two weeks later, my mother's things arrived at my house while I was at work. When I came home, I knew I was in trouble when I went to the bedroom and saw on the bureau, an old wedding picture of Chong Hui and me from 1966. I'd forgotten that mom had a picture of that wedding. Kum Cha was quite hurt that mom had kept the picture, knowing that I'd divorced and remarried. I tried to reason with her that I couldn't control what my mother choose to

keep for her memories, but from that moment on, Kum Cha disliked my mother.

When my mother was released from the hospital in April of 1977, she flew to Georgia. I drove to Atlanta to pick her up.
Although Kum Cha was with me and made small talk with my mother, it was obvious to me that there was a lot of friction between them. I don't think my mother knew what was wrong at first.

For the first two weeks, we put my mother up in our third bedroom. I told her she had the run of the house, but she chose to stay in her room most of the time while I was at work.

I managed to get my mother declared my dependant and as such, she was entitled to treatment at Eisenhower Army Medical Center. They started her on a chemotherapy program which began to reduce the cancer, but they too, held out little hope for a remission.

It got real bad during the day between my mother and Kum Cha, and there came a day when Kum Cha took Jean and moved out to a friend's house. I was disconsolate, but I wasn't about to put my mother out on the street. I did have to explain why my wife was so bitter towards her though. Mom was sad that she had become the object of contention in my house, but I assured her it wasn't her fault (if I'd been smart, I would have found and destroyed the picture during the packing phase in Massachusetts).

After about three weeks of commuting back and forth between work and home, fixing my mother's meals and making sure she was taking her medicine, I managed to find a trailer park home for her. It was a nice, secluded park, in among the pine trees. I began moving mom's things into the trailer and fixed it up real nice for her. It was a three bedroom job, and I turned one of the bedrooms into a television room for her. It was only about three miles from my house and I planned to make daily stops at her house to see that she was alright and taking her medicine.

Once mom had moved out, Kum Cha came back to the house, but we were barely on speaking terms. I would go every evening after work to my mother's house to fix her supper and clean up the dishes. I'd keep her company for a while, but it never seemed to be enough. Still, I had to get home to my wife and daughter too; they need attention and I had to do things around the house.

The situation remained like that for about four months. Mom had made a friend in another trailer in the same park. It was another old man, living by himself. He, too, was in poor health, and he was a drinker. On one occasion, mom called me at about 9 p.m. and she was hysterical, saying a man was dead in her
trailer. I must have broken several speed records getting to her house. It turned out to be that old man, and he was dead alright, dead drunk. He'd passed out on her floor while visiting my mother. They had both been drinking rather heavily. I managed to get him on my back in a fireman's carry, and carted him off to his own trailer. Luckily he hadn't locked it. We got him into bed and I took my mother home. I asked her not to associate with the fellow and she agreed, but they continued to see each other.

One day, I got a call from the Fort Gordon Provost Marshal's Office (the MPs), saying that they had my mother there. I hurried over to the MP station, and sure enough, there was my mother sitting on the bench, waiting for me. She looked and sounded very confused. She had been picked up by a motorist while walking on the side of the road. The motorist hadn't known where she wanted to go, but did manage to make out that she had a son in the army at the nearby fort. He was nice enough to contact the MPs, who contacted me. There weren't any charges against her, but it hit home that she had become incapable of taking care of herself.

About two weeks after that incident, I had gone to her trailer and found her to be incoherent. I could see that she hadn't been drinking, so I knew it was serious. I picked her up and managed to get her into my car and to the hospital. She never recovered from that episode. Several times when I visited her in the hospital she seemed lucid for moments, talking about past happenings, but then she'd begin to ramble.

I called Harold and told him I thought mom was dying and he'd better get here. He got two of his oldest boys and his wife and drove to Georgia. Halfway here, he stopped to call me, and I had to tell him that mom had died and that he shouldn't break any speed limits to get here. We buried my mother three days later.

While all these family problems were going on, I was promoted to E-7 on March 15th of 1977. The promotion was as an O5B, radio operator, the only slot available. Almost as soon as I got that promotion, the company commander took me out of the teaching slot at the course and made me his operations sergeant in the company. He'd had an interview with several sergeants that he was considering for the position, but had decided upon me. I told him that with all the family problems I was having at home, I didn't think I could concentrate on learning a new job in the company. He was adamant, so I began working in operations.

It was a demanding job that I found myself unable to devote all my attention to. When my mother ended up in the hospital that last time, and through the efforts of the course chief, the company commander finally relented and released me back to the course. That action removed some of the pressure I was under, but it didn't delay the inevitable.

After my mother's death, I expected to be pulled back to the company but the course kept me. I began teaching the AN/VSC-2, another radio teletypewriter set that we used. These modules were smaller than the AN/GRC-26D, consequently we had more positions in the lab, about twelve, with three or four students around each set. The drill was the same though. The course seemed to be taking more interest in the paperwork on each student. While it was self-paced, we kept track of the student at all times and warned him when he was getting close to the time allotted for that module.

In preparation for sending me overseas, the Army sent me to a 31V (tactical communications chief) course at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. This was during the winter of 1978-79. I drove there from Georgia, taking my neighbor and his friend with me. We took I-20 through Atlanta and on out to Dallas where we switched to a northerly route for Lawton, Oklahoma, just outside Fort Sill.

My neighbor and his friend got off at a friend's house in Lawton and we made arrangements to meet later. I reported to Fort Sill and was given a barracks room to myself in the BEQ. The next day, I found out there were about thirty of us attending the course and another E-7 and I were the ranking men taking it. Since he had a date of rank that came before mine, he was made class leader. I was thankful for that because I didn't feel like shepherding this bunch through the course.

The curriculum was geared to Artillery communications mostly, but since most of the communications equipment was used in all branches, ie: infantry, armor, engineer, etc. if we learned one method of working with the equipment, we would be able to use it in any of the other branches. I hadn't worked too much with wire or switchboard equipment, so that training came in very handy.

Several times during that first month of November, I met my neighbor from Georgia at a local bar in Lawton. He had been a regular in that place before, so was well known. He introduced me around and I, too, began to frequent that place regularly when off duty. They had six pool tables in the bar and ran regular elimination tournaments, with the winner pocketing a cash prize. The entrance fee was $5 per person and this was used to pay the tables and the winner. Both men and women played, with the winners advancing against a winner from another table. This continued until the final two players faced off.

Usually, I would be eliminated about halfway through the tournament, but after I'd been playing there for about two months, I finally did win one tournament.

One of the students in my class named Dibartoli (reputed to have Mafia ties), began going out with me to that bar. We went to a dance in town and met a Spanish lady there. She was very sweet on him and friendly with several of the others in our crowd (there were about four of us who hung out together). Eventually, she invited us to her house on a couple of occasions after the dance. She had two kids of about 5 and 7 years of age. She was a divorcee, working a daytime job and she would pay for a baby sitter at night so that she could go dancing. I think she was looking for someone to take care of her and Dibartoli fit the bill nicely. As far as I know, they became committed to one another and after we'd graduated, I think he had plans that included her and her kids.

The school let us go home for Christmas and New Years so on the way back to Georgia, I stopped in at Joe Norwillo's place in Dallas. He and I had last seen each other in 1973 at Kimpo. He hadn't changed much, gotten a little fatter and older, but he was still bowling regularly. His wife, Sun Hui, was working at sweat shop work (piece work, sewing clothes at home and getting paid by

the number of pieces she completed), which is illegal but still being widely practiced in the border states.

We had a few beers, but Joe had cut back on his drinking, and reminisced about old times at Kimpo. Joe was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas and commuted home to Dallas on the weekends. I told him that it was a lousy way to run a marriage. I slept over at his house that night and he showed me around the neighborhood the next day. We went to the Mall there in Dallas, reputedly one of the biggest in the United States. It was very impressive. That Sunday night, I said my good-bye's to Joe and his family and resumed my trip back home.

After the holidays, I returned to Fort Sill to complete my training. The weather was abominable during the drive back. I hit a snowstorm and the roads became very icy and slick. At one time, when I was attempting to pass an eighteen wheeler, my back end began so skid in towards his rear wheels. That scared the hell out of me! After I got the car under control, I dropped behind that semi and was content to let him break trail for me.

In February of 1979, I completed my training at Fort Sill and returned to my home in Georgia. I had fifteen days leave and then I was to begin my journey to Germany. I'd talked it over with Kum Cha and we had decided that I should go unaccompanied. That way, it was only a 20 month tour. If I'd elected to have her and Jean come to Germany, I'd have had to sell or rent the house, and if the latter, to store the furniture. An accompanied tour lasted three years at least, many times longer.

When I got to Germany, the unit I'd been sent to had already filled their vacancy. The first sergeant called around in-country to see if there was any other place that needed a 31V, E-7. There was an opening in Heilbron, Germany with an Engineer outfit. They sent a man in a 3/4 Ton truck to pick me up.