The final cut

It was one of those days in Korea where you are like this can only happen in Korea.

Yesterday I returned to a former home of mine. I went back to Camp Carroll, South Korea.

When I joined the US Army back in 1989, I told the Army MEPHS center that I wanted to go to Korea for my first duty assignment and they gave it to me. I was told by my Drill Sgts. that, since I'm 6'4 (1.93 Meters) that I would be going to the DMZ area and they helped me memorize the camps of the 2 ID. So imagine my surprise when I get to Korea and they tell me that I am going to Camp Carroll. I had not a clue where Waegwan was and the only reason I recalled was that it was close to Taegu.

So I get their from May 1990 and I do not leave until Aug 1991. It was my first duty assigment and it was A very different one to say the lease.

I have been putting off going back their for various reasons and to be honest I'm still not sure why I was dreading going back, but I'm glad that I did.

I took a taxi to gate 4 from the train station and it was like memories from the past came back real fast, I was recalling all of the nights that I has guarded this gate and all of my MP friends and what we did and didn't do here. I walked around for a few minutes and I saw the old store where I used to get my hats and other Korean items from and It was the same guy their that sold me my hats along time ago. We talked and he updated me on a person from the 260th MP Co. I will go back and start to buy more clothes from him.

Then it got intresting.

I was walking down and I saw that their was a bar open, and it was about 3pm and i wanted an OB. So I walk in their and get a beer and I'm looking at this person and it was like ok you look familar and the reason he did was because we were both MP's together in 1995-96 in Ft Sill Oklahoma. We talked for awhile and I was like, ok this is strange..

Nope, it got even stranger.

An older man walked into the club and i was like Sgt... He looked shocked because nobody had called him that in years and he looked at me and he didnt at first recall my face but he did my name. He was my first Platoon Sgt here in Camp Carroll Korea. After we started talking the more he remembered me. To be honest my first few months in the Army I was not the best soldier at all To be more honest I was a screw up. I just couldn't do anything right for the longest time. He said you always seemed to be in trouble, I saw alot of him my first few months in his office. We were talking about my first inspection and I so fouled that up, he told me that the SGM (Sergeant Major) chewed my ass, his and stopped the inspection after that. We rememebred people that we were stationed with and caught up on a lot of things.

Then I left and had dinner at one of the ville restaurants and it was just as i remembered the food tasting then.

It was good to go home again, I'll go back next month again.