Site Visits – An Ode to Military Humor

I had settled into my new position at the 19^th Support Command at Camp Henry, South Korea, quite nicely.  I was appointed as the Chief of the Armament Maintenance Branch for the Deputy Chief of Staff, Matériel.  I had learned that I would be responsible for fielding a bunch of new weapon systems in the Republic of Korea.  The first major weapons system that I would be responsible for fielding was the M1 tank.  Since I had just learned a lot about that tank at my advanced course, and since I had also driven the M1 tank at my advanced course, I felt uniquely qualified to field that tank in Korea.  What was that?  You don’t think so?  Well, if you don’t believe me, just ask me.  As a matter of fact, let me give you a for-instance. For instance, when I drove that tank, I drove it like Mario Andretti drove a Formula One race car.  See, that right there proves my point.  The defense rests.  When I test drove that baby, I don’t think I made many friends at Aberdeen Proving Ground during the field training phase on the M1 tank.  The instructor was telling us to keep the tank at or under five miles an hour.  However, when they had demonstrated the capabilities of the M1 just prior to allowing us to drive it, they had let that sucker fly.  Well, I don’t mean that it literally flew.  But you know what I mean.  When they hit some of those berms, they got that sucker airborne.  Cuz they were showing it’s maneuverability at speed.  So, I thought, “Hey!  There’s an idea.  I’ll just do what they say don’t do and let ‘er rip.  Shit.  Maybe I can make that baby fly.”  So, that’s what I did.  When I immediately poured on the coals straight out of the gate, the instructor standing in the open captain’s hatch was caught off-guard and got quite a surprise.  He yelled for me to keep it under five miles an hour, but his words fell on deaf ears.  I was having a blast zipping around the proving ground test track.  When I finally brought the tank to a stop, the instructor warned the other students that they had better not pull another stunt like I did again.  Like I said, I don’t think I made a lot of friends that day.  Now, did that little extemporaneous test drive make me uniquely qualified to field the M1 tank?  I think so.  And I was checking the list of other qualifications that I needed.  Oh, by the way, there was no list of qualifications.  My supervisor walked up to me one day and said, “Masters, by the way, your first major project is to field the M1 tank.”  In true Kato (Green Hornet’s sidekick) fashion, I responded, “Check boss.  I’ll put together a plan and come in to brief you.”  I put together a plan for fielding of the M1, which basically involved facilities, equipment, personnel and training requirements.  My plan also included site visits to all of the affected units and organizations included in the M1 fielding plan sent out by the Department of the Army.  Before I could plan any site visits, I first needed to formulate lists of requirements that each affected unit and organization wanted to discuss and have evaluated for further consideration.  So, I prepared a document requesting lists of requirements from each of those affected units and organizations.  I had to have a starting point from which to assess the requirements of those affected units and organizations.  Those lists of requirements would give me talking points around which to build discussions when I conducted my site visits.  Of course, each site visit included a lay of the land and face time with all of the major players involved in the M1 fielding project.  When I traveled to each site, I traveled by train.  Most of the time, I booked the blue train between Taegu and Seoul because that meant that the trip would only take three hours one way.  From Seoul to outlying areas, I would have to travel by bus.  Most often, I used the Korean bus lines because they traveled more frequently to the outlying areas for a much lower cost.  The only real drawback to using Korean bus lines was that they stopped every couple of minutes along the way.  If the journey was 30 kilometers.  That trip could take one helluva long time.  The other major drawback was that usually, generally, always, I would be the only American on that Korean bus.  And nine times out of ten, that bus would be packed to the gills like a sardine can with standing room only.  I would say laying room only like in a sardine can except, there never was any room to lie and rest.  Hell, there wasn’t even any room to sit, and barely any to stand.  And you could bet your biffy that the Lone Ranger American on that bus was like a monkey in a cage at the zoo.  And everybody would stare at him.  And it seemed like every damn woman on those buses just had to crowd around him and rub against him like he was a hand towel or a dance pole in a strip club.  I understood why.  But goddamn!  Give me a little room to breathe already.  But oh, hell no.  They just couldn’t do that.  If there was a train going to an outlying location, I would take that.  But usually, those trains were the slowpoke, carry your chickens and vegetables and other assorted luggage with you right on the train, with all of the other passengers.  Of course, those trains were also standing room only.  The only difference between those and the buses was that they only stopped once every 15 or 20 minutes during the journey.  As a result, a 30-kilometer journey would take less than half the time of a bus ride of that length.  Those site visit journeys were crowded exercises in futility.

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