Well, my days serving as the Commander of the 305th Supply and Services Company in the 227th Maintenance Battalion At Yongsan, Seoul, Korea, had come and gone. And my fantastic vacation to the island of Guam with my family had also come and gone. It’s funny how time flies when you are having fun. And it is also funny how time seems to drag on and on when you are doing something boring and mundane. If you recall my final act commanding the 305th, you will remember that I invited three general officers to my change of command. In fact, five general officers actually showed up for my change of command, three US Army general officers and two Republic of Korea Army generals. One of the three generals, the General Officer in charge of the Eighth United States Army G4 showed up because I was going to be working for him immediately after I left command and returned from Guam. Well, going by my more recent adventures, you should know that I had subsequently started working at the Eighth United States Army G4 and that the general that I went there to work for subsequently departed for a new assignment in the United States. Then the newly assigned general in charge of the Eighth United States Army G4 tried to whip all of us into shape with his new get-tough, physical training program and promptly died of a heart attack while demonstrating to us how out of shape we were. Things had then settled back down to a dull roar here at the Eighth United States Army G4. We were gearing up to take part in the Combined Forces Command (United States Forces Command, Republic of Korea Forces Command) exercise Ulchi-Focus Lens. The exercise was originally created by the Combined Forces Command in order to enhance ROK-US interoperability by training commanders and staffs from both nations in wartime planning, command-and-control operations, intelligence, logistics and personnel procedures necessary for the successful defense of the Republic of Korea. I know. I know. All of that sounds like a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. And it is. Basically, it’s an excuse for a bunch of military people to go on temporary duty to Korea for two weeks on a boondoggle. Basically I gave you all of the important highlights of the exercise while speaking of my 12 hour night shifts previously. While I was on the staff of the Eighth United States Army G4, I also had time to relax and spend more personal time working out and relaxing with my family. Additionally, you may also have read about my escapades while running in the Hash. However, I am not going to discuss any of those things because I turned toward talking about the master of disaster. Who was the master of disaster? Well, you may remember that I mentioned someone who is Trouble with a (capital) T. You may also remember that I mentioned that troublesome person was (is) my son. Well, he was quickly becoming the master of disaster. In fact, he was becoming a legend in his own mind. I recently described a couple of examples to illustrate how my son earned the nickname Trouble with a (capital) T. However, he was just warming up. His crowning achievement would come the week that we were preparing to out-process and clear from the Eighth United States Army G4 and our apartment at Hannam Village in order to return to the United States. We planned to take a vacation in Hawaii en route to the United States. We were really looking forward to that vacation. While we were attempting to clean our apartment at Hannam Village, we had our neighbors take our son and daughter to see a movie to keep them busy for a while. We needed to keep them out of our hair so that we could get things done. Apparently, they saw the latest Superman movie in the movie theater because that was all my son could talk about when he came home. In fact, my son was running all over the house jumping off of furniture, pretending he could fly and yelling Superman. Well, I wish that was the end of the story, but sadly it was not. The next day, the master of disaster decided to turn things up a notch. Now, to prepare you for what comes next, I have to set the stage. We lived on the first floor of our apartment building. However, that said, the floor and the balcony of our apartment was about four feet off of the ground. Of course, the balcony outside our living room had a railing that was about three feet high. Thus, the total height of the balcony with the railing was about seven feet off of the ground. Now, right outside of our living room window in the front yard of our apartment building were some rather large boulders. These boulders were big enough for people to sit on or climb on, but they were definitely too big to pick up and move. That is unless of course you had a small bucket loader or backhoe. The bottom line is that those large boulders weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Do you see where I’m going with this? The master of disaster climbed up on that balcony rail and yelled Superman and jumped off. Don’t ask me how he climbed up on that balcony rail because I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I didn’t see it. All I know is that ‘Superman’ couldn’t fly in real life. Not ‘the’ Superman, but my son, the pretend Superman. Superman fell like a rock. And the master of disaster hit one of those big boulders with his right wrist and broke it. GR8, great. Just great. Once again, the emergency alarm sounded, and I was called home to take my son to the hospital. Sure enough. The prognosis was not good. The master of disaster had broken his arm. But the even worse news was that they couldn’t put a cast on it because they had to let the swelling go down and we were flying out to Hawaii in just two days. GR8, great. Just great. It looked like the master of disaster had ruined our wonderful vacation in Hawaii, but that is another story. Need I say that the master of disaster managed to cause yet another significant exercise in futility before we escaped from Korea.
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Hello. And Bye.