When I served as the commander of the 305th Supply and Services Company in the 227th Maintenance Battalion At Yongsan, Seoul, Korea, I inherited a lot of problems from the previous regime. One of the inherited problems that I decided to deal with early was the issue of the ARTEP (Army Training and Evaluation Program) failure. The company had failed its previous ARTEP miserably, and they had attempted to perform their ARTEP in the middle of the winter. Those were two mistakes that I was not about to repeat. I appointed an ARTEP advance party to go out and scout for a good field location to set up for our ARTEP and to deploy in advance of the main body of the company during the actual ARTEP to establish initial perimeter defense and communications. The ARTEP advance party had selected one helluva good field location to host our ARTEP. When we rolled out to the field near Uijeongbu to start the first day of our ARTEP, the ARTEP advance party deployed to the field site first. We had contracted with a local Korean contractor to deliver and set up Port-a-potties. We had planned the delivery of the Port-a-potties to coincide with the deployment of the ARTEP advance party. The Port-a-potties were delivered and in place in the proper location by the time the main body of the company arrived at the field location. Since we did not want to deal with Republic of Korea Road permits, we deployed the main body of the company to the field location by infiltration. What that meant in simple terms was that we deployed the company by team with no more than five vehicles per team. We spaced deployment of each team 15 minutes apart. Each team leader was responsible to ensure that all team vehicles maintained proper vehicle speed so that no team would overtake another team. Maximum convoy speed was to be maintained at 40 miles per hour. The deployment to the ARTEP field location went pretty well. The ARTEP advance party already had the field site laid out pretty well with platoon and section tent locations already staked out. The company Tactical Operations Center (TOC) was already set up and communications wire had already been run to all of the platoon operations tent locations. Communications wire had already been run to all of the crew served weapons locations on the perimeter as well. When I arrived at the field location, the mess team and the ARTEP advance party were already working on setting up the mess hall. It was crucial to get the mess hall operational as soon as possible. I pulled Sergeant First Class Ward aside to chat for a few minutes. I said, “SFC Ward, I expect the interior of the mess hall to have seats and tables where the soldiers can sit and dine just as if they were back in Garrison. I don’t give a shit that this is our ARTEP. They are going to have at least one hot meal per day, is that right?” SFC Ward replied, “Yes Sir. They will get one hot meal per day, and we will serve fresh fruit and have hot coffee throughout the day as well as bread and condiments. We will also have hot soup for people standing watch at night. You know. Soldiers on guard duty.” “I just want to make it clear that people pulling guard duty cannot arbitrarily come off the line to get soup. Either the Sergeant of the guard has to deliver it to them, or they have to wait until the end of their shift, and they are relieved of duty to come back to the mess hall to get that soup. Is that clear?” “Yes Sir. We already have a sign made to that effect, Sir.” “Outstanding. Do you understand why I am requiring the tables and chairs out in the field, Sergeant Ward?” “Well, I kinda do. But could you tell me again.” “It’s like this, I want you to get into the service-to-the-soldiers mentality all of the time. Cuz I think we have a Connelly award winning mess hall. And with the headcounts that we are starting to pull in, the word is getting out about our mess hall. We are doing something right.” “Yes Sir.” “You’re doing a fine job, Sergeant Ward! Keep up the good work!” I started to walk over toward the southern perimeter where the ravines were when I heard a loud KA-BANG! Followed by a bunch of screaming. That did not sound very good. I walked over to find out what in the hell had happened. Staff Sergeant Richards was over there in that vicinity setting up some perimeter defenses. Staff Sergeant Richards was my training and Armament NCO. Staff Sergeant Richards was basically another radar if you remember my explanation of what a radar was. If you don’t remember, I’ll tell you. A radar is essentially an infantry soldier assigned to a unit other than an infantry unit for which there is no job available. As a result, that infantry soldier usually ends up becoming an administrative clerk (radar) role. I found something more appropriate for Staff Sergeant Richards to do, than shuffling paper. Staff Sergeant Richards was deploying the booby-traps and showing other soldiers how they worked. One of the M-80 pyrotechnic devices that they were implementing into their booby-traps had accidentally gone off too close to Staff Sergeant Richards’ right hand, causing it to absorb the blast. No physical damage was done to his hand, but he was very numb. The accident occurred because Staff Sergeant Richards had a small lapse of judgment. I sent Lieutenant Andrews, our safety officer, over to write up an accident report. I told Staff Sergeant Richards to ice his hand as soon as possible to reduce the numbness and pain. I told him he could get ice over at the mess hall. ARTEP field operations were coming together, and perimeter defenses were starting to tighten up. However, Staff Sergeant Richards did have the one small lapse of judgment with the M-80 that did give me cause for concern. I briefly halted operations to give a safety pitch to all of the soldiers and I cautioned them to put their ‘pay attention eyes and ears’ on. After all, we could not afford to have any more exercises in futility.
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