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Korea

From 1987 to 1991 I worked as a turboprop engine mechanic in the United States Marine Corps. This is a true story about a trip we made to Korea in 1989.

We were heading towards the South Korea airfield of Pusan in one of our squadrons KC-130s to participate in the annual exercise the US and South Korea have to keep the man eating hordes of North Korea at bay. Our plane had been nicknamed "BOO" back in Vietnam because it had the unenviable task of transporting all the dead Marines back to the US. The planes tail number was 149800, which is likely how the name got started. Over the years the people painting the plane had even squared off the left side of the 8 so it looked like a B. Thus keeping "BOO" alive for the twenty odd years since it last carried a dead Marine in Vietnam.

As we lumbered past the coast of South Korea we picked up our escort of two South Korean F-5s. They took us all the way into the airfield at Pusan. They were armed, not to threaten us of course. Just to protect us from any wandering North Korean MIGs that may be in the area I guess. It was kind of frightening to look out the window and see those Sidewinders hanging off the wing tips of those F-5s. It was an all too real image of death and destruction for me only a few hundred feet away.

We arrived at Pusan about 10:00 am, parked the plane and set up our stuff in the tent provided for us by the advanced party. I feel sorry for those poor bastards. They had to put up over 200 tents and altogether themselves used only two or three. These were the giant tents that hold 20 or so men in relative comfort. We used our tent and left it for them to tear back down when we left at the end of the week.

There were helicopters, airplanes, ships, tanks, and trucks were everywhere. I've never seen so many trucks in my life. There were huge ten wheelers and the even larger "Dragon Wagons" along with the hordes of the small Hummers. The Koreans even had some old Jeeps. Every kind of helicopter and airplane imaginable was flying around, Hueys, Super Stallions, Cobras, F-4 Phantoms, OV-10 Broncos, KC-130 Hercules, F-18 Hornets, F-15 Eagles, South Korean Air Force F-5 Freedom Fighters. All told there must have been over a billions dollars worth of toys there.

As soon as we were settled into our tent I went back out to the plane and checked it over.  All being in order I filled it up with fuel and went back to the tent and played cards with the boys until late in the night.

The planes had to be checked on each time they came back from a mission and right before they left for another. It's what we call a daily inspection. Basically you make sure the oil and hydraulic fluids are okay and fill it back up with fuel. If there ever were something wrong with the plane, like no oil in one of the engines, the next time it flew the person that did the daily would be the one blamed. I took my job very seriously and enjoyed it. It’s kind of fun crawling up on top of the plane 16’ off the ground to check the oil and just sit there and enjoy the view for a few seconds.

We spent a lot of time bugging our boss to let us go off the base so we could get at all the great deals in town, $15 Reeboks, $5 Ralph Loren shirts etc. It was all imitation stuff but you'd have to look pretty close to be able to tell. It’s not like we could afford the real stuff anyway.

On about the fourth day of our stay we received a call informing us that we had some a helicopter full of passengers on the way. We didn't normally carry passengers so it was kind of strange to get the call.

I put my little deck helmet (brain – bucket we called them) on my head and my blaze orange vest on over my camouflaged field jacket and went out next to our plane to wait for the helicopter. It was about five minutes later when I heard the first unmistakable whoomp whoomp whoomp of a Huey approaching. A few seconds later I spotted it coming towards the field between two mountain peaks way off in the distance. The sound of the 'copter brought the rest of the people in the tent wandering out onto the tarmac. I think there were eight of us in all. The 'copter rushed towards us at the speed of a fatally wounded snail. About ten minutes later when it got close enough for me to take control I taxied it to the parking spot closest to our plane, BOO. 

The second it touched ground the crew chief leapt out and started to franticly wave me towards him. As I got closer to him I noticed there was a pile of large pale green bags on the floor of the Hueys. After a few more steps I realized what the bags were. Body bags. And yes, they had dead bodies in them. They were not the kind of black plastic body bags you see on TV. They were made out of the exact same material as the liner on the inside of the jacket I was wearing. The crew chief wanted me to help him get the bags out of his 'copter. One after another, around 15 or 20 in all, we pulled the bags off onto the concrete of the parking area. None of them could have possibly contained an entire body. I could tell that some of them had only a head and torso. Almost every single one I carried made crackling sounds as it swayed between myself and the person on the other end of the bag. The people inside must have been burnt till there was nothing left but crisp flesh and bones. All the bags were sopping wet with blood, water and mud. The smell was nearly indescribable. Kind of like burnt hair I guess but much worse.

We managed to get all of the bags loaded into the back of BOO in less than three minutes. We put them in some sort of order on the floor so the load master could strap them down. In less than 10 minutes I was standing in front of the plane calling “clear” on the motors as they fired them up. The pilot and I went through a routine we had done a hundred times.

“Clear two”

“Two’s clear”

“Turning two”

“Two’s turning”

In another three or so minutes I taxied the plane off to the runway. In less than another five minutes the plane sat at the end of the runway, all four turboprops at full power. As the pilot released the brakes and let all 20,000 horsepower pull them into the air I paused and realized what I had just done. I watched the plane climb off into the dark gray sky and then slowly made my way back to the tent. Not a word was said. We had moved the bags and launched the plane without so much as a single word between us. I began thinking about what I had done and it made me want to sit down and cry. But I could not, not in a tent full of America’s finest. I’m sure some of them felt the same, but none showed it. The human beings in those bags had died long before their time playing a small part in a big game. The most serious game we as a society of "civilized" people play, war. 

Around midnight that evening BOO returned. We spent a few minutes helping the Load Master clean the dried up blood from the floor of the plane.  The back of the plane smelled like crisp flesh. This despite them having flown the entire way back  with the ramp partially open to vent the smell out. The Load Master was visibly shaken and I wanted to comfort him somehow. But the best thing any of us could do was  just help him get the plane clean so we could all go get in our cots and try to sleep. 

The next day

Not everyone in the crash were killed. Twenty or so wounded had been flown from the crash site straight to an aircraft carrier off the Korean coast. Carriers have the best burn units in the world on board. Most of the wounded had stabilized by the next day, so our squadron was ordered to transport them to an Air Force hospital near Kasan.

I went out and waited for the chopper to come in. I spotted the Sea Knight a long ways off. I taxied it in right behind BOO so the their cargo ramps were facing each other. There was no rush this time, so the chopper pilot shut off the engines and we started to carefully move each stretcher from the back of the chopper to our plane. There were only six stretchers on the chopper. The one I carried was a black man about 30 years old. I could only tell he was black because his hair had somehow managed to stay intact. All of the exposed skin on his body was gone. His flesh was a bright pink, almost like a new born babies.  Again there was the sickening strong scent of charred flesh. I thought I was going to be sick. As we carried him he begged for water, his mother, and some other unintelligible things. It was almost more than I could take. We strapped him in to the stretcher rack on BOO and got out of the Load Masters way.

After I had helped strap him in, I stood off to the side with the large crowd of high ranking Marines that had gathered to watch. Not sure how they all got there so fast but there was quite a crowd gathered. As the last burned Marine was taken off the chopper, a young Navy man, a kid really, carrying the front right corner of the stretcher, tripped on something and lost his grip on the stretcher. Before he could do anything the entire crowd of Marines, including myself, had lunged forward in an attempt to stop the head of our wounded comrade from striking the hard metal of the chopper's ramp. But we could not,  the head of our wounded comrade made an awful "whack" as it struck the ramp. The entire crowd was on the stretcher in an instant. Four Marines took over from the now Navy men and continued to carry the stretcher to the plane. I looked into the eyes of the man who had dropped the stretcher and saw sheer terror. I wasn't the only one looking at him, all of us were. He realized he was in real physical danger and retreated to the interior of the chopper. The first instinct I had when I saw him trip and loose his grip was to kill him. Just having such a thought is scary. But when I looked  around and saw 20 other people just as angry, it was too much for me to deal with. I realized how much I had changed in the past two years in that instant and that I had to get out of the Marine Corps.  

I learned later that day that the crash was classified as "pilot error." That is what all the wives and children of the dead and wounded would be told. Being there though we all knew that he, and the other pilots, had just been playing a game of one-up-man-ship all week.  The choppers had been flying along some stream beds all week and each time they did it the pilots were daring each other to go lower and faster. Finally one of the pilots lost the dare, he took his giant CH-53 full of young Marines into the ground. The 18 year olds in that chopper could have cared less if the pilot could turn a little lower or go a little faster then the other pilots. All they wanted was a safe ride to wherever they were going. 

I spent the first 20 years of my life studying and glorifying war. I knew enough trivial facts about it to get an award from my history teacher. Let me make this very clear, war is not glorious. All I saw was a few dead bodies. I can not even begin to comprehend what a real war is like. Wars should be about survival, not commerce. In my mind only survival justifies the horrible price of war.