October Recap

If you have been following this blog you may have noticed that the last few postings were annotated now and then with "note" in parenthesises.  I started doing that because when trying to recap each month there was to much to explain in detail and quite frankly I could hot remember what all I, or Dad, had written.  So from now on I will only give an over all impression of each month.

It seems like October finds Dad settling into Army life.  He is interested in making rank but doesn't see a whole lot of promise because the vacancies for advancement are less and less.  He is very eager to receive letters about what is going on back home and he is thrilled with the packages that my grandmother keeps sending especially the cookies.  He describes things like my Grandfather sending him whiskey in After Shave bottles and validates the family stories that I heard growing up and only half believed.  He makes some very interesting observations as to the Koreans.  At first they started out sort of negative but now and then there is a glimpse of real compassion for the way the ROCKs are treated by their own government.  He gives me a history lesson now and then which could be viewed and was, as what we called in our history classes "primary sources."   For instance I did not know that the Koreans, at least from Dad's perspective "chanted or sung" the letters they received, or that there was a Boy's Town in Korea.

I guess the thing that struck me the most was how many of his childhood friends had been drafted and were serving in Korea at the same time and the lengths he went to to find out their addresses and even visit them if he could.  It was really a coincidence that the guy he calls Zink stationed just down the road from him lived just four doors down from us on Lake Drive.  Also the guy he calls Sipes was the nephew of his ROTC instructor when he went to Northeast High School.   Small world even though it was  a "World Away."