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 as the 305th commander, you will remember that I invited three general officers to my change of command ceremony. In fact, five general officers actually did show 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. I was going to work for the General Officer in charge of the Eighth United States Army G4 because I had kind of worked for him while I was assigned to the Matériel Readiness Office under the Deputy Chief of Staff, Matériel, 19th Support Command, Camp Henry, Korea. In reality, I had worked for multiple people while I held the position as the chief of the aforementioned Matériel Readiness Branch. I had worked for the Deputy Chief of Staff, Matériel, 19th Support Command. But I had also worked for the Chief of Staff, 19th Support Command, the Commanding General, 19th Support Command, and General Officer in charge of the Eighth United States Army G4. One of my duties and responsibilities while I was assigned to the Matériel Readiness Office was to participate as a member of the Eighth United States Army Command Logistics Review Team. After I reported for duty at Headquarters, Eighth United States Army G4, I was again assigned almost immediately to the Eighth United States Army Command Logistics Review Team. As a result, I spent a lot of time out on the road with the inspection team. As a result, when I came back from one of my trips out on the road with the inspection team, I came back to a new General in charge of the Eighth United States Army G4. Of course, the new General thought he was the commander in chief or God or some shit and treated all of us like privates instead of the senior officers and NCOs that we were. One of his new commandments was mandatory Friday morning physical training runs for all of his rank and file sheep. The inaugural Friday morning physical training run didn’t meet the General’s ‘standard’ and he was none too happy about the run times for some of the people assigned to the G4. This caused General God-complex to lecture his flock on their poor performance, and this coffee drinking, donut eating General decided to lay on us during the formation for the physical training run on the following Friday. During the physical training run in formation on the following Friday in which the General actually did run in formation with the rest of the G4 staff, there was a shocking finish to that somewhat ominous and gloomy physical training run, where the general lectured us and then turned around and took ten steps and fell flat on his face. He was subsequently given CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation), and then rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. However, it is what I observed during that somewhat ominous physical training run that has haunted me since. As we were running in formation, I was running in formation next to the General and I noticed something rather peculiar starting at about the mile and a half point. I noticed that the General seemed to be checking his wristwatch on his left wrist every few seconds, while he steadied his wrist with his right hand. I thought at the time that, either he was concerned with the pace of the formation or with how well he was doing on the two-mile-run. We didn’t learn until the following Monday that the General had died of a massive heart attack. As I thought back to the General’s actions during that run, I realized that he probably had not been checking his wristwatch for the time at all. He may have been experiencing early warning signs of that heart attack during the run. What I mistook for time checking was actually him feeling pain or numbness in his left arm, and he was rubbing his arm in response to that pain or numbness. Hindsight is 20/20. If I had been more vocal, I could have raised warning signals to stop the run and seek help when I suspected that something was wrong. But, I did nothing because I gaffed it off as a micromanaging worrywart checking the time too often. True, I did not like him. True, he was a micromanaging worrywart. True, he treated all of us like privates instead of the senior officers and NCOs that we were. But, was that a reason to slough off what may have been symptoms of a heart attack in progress as just more of his silly micromanagement? His death began to weigh very heavily upon my conscience. If I had sounded the alarm when I first noticed him checking the time (massaging his left arm), perhaps he would not have died. The Eighth Army medical examiner, who used to work for me when I commanded the 305th Supply and Services Company, assured me that the General could not have survived the heart attack that he suffered. We also later learned that this was not the first time that the General had suffered a heart attack. What the hell? What in the hell was the General trying to prove? Surely he must have known that something like this could have happened again. Anyway, learning from the medical examiner that his death was inevitable once the heart attack started and learning that the General had previously suffered a heart attack and was prone to another did not ease my guilt. I carried the weight of a guilty conscience in a huge exercise in futility for a long time to come.
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