Return to the Index for 1970

On this page I am going to put any pictures I took this year that aren't associated with some event or particular trip that I took.

June, 1970: At Charlotte Douglas Airport

Actually, the first two pictures I took with the Argus camera my Dad has lent me to take to Korea in a week or so were taken at the Charlotte Airport as Steve Lee boarded a plane to head to Dallas, Texas, where he is attending SMU to get his degree in Sacred Music. There is not a lot to say about these pictures as he boards the Eastern Airlines plane. (I could say that a picture like this would become quite rare years later when outside aircraft stairs went the way of the dodo bird, and friends could not come out to the gate to see travelers off on their journeys. Thank modern terminal design with jetways, aircraft hijackings, and 9/11 for that.)

July, 1970: My BOQ at Camp Howze

In early July, I took a few pictures around the BOQ; even though they weren't all taken on the same day, they are all in this section. First, here are a couple of pictures taken inside my small room:

This was an experimental shot of my room taken with some fast film. But there was still not enough light.

Another shot, showing how small my room is.

I am beginning to acquire some stereo equipment, one of the benefits of being assigned overseas where fellow soldiers can buy it in Japan and have it sent to Korea. I have my first tape deck and a receiver already. I can tape the AFKN station and then edit the announcements and other stuff out of the music.

My new Nikon camera, a 35mm, has arrived, and I hope to retire the Argus as soon as I learn my way around the new one. It has lots of features the Argus doesn't have, including the feature of requiring the film to be wound between each shutter release unless specific actions are taken. This should eliminate my tendency to forget when I have wound the Argus resulting in about eight double-exposures so far. You can still create double exposures, but you have to want to.

I am also going to get two more lenses for this camera- a wide angle and a telephoto. I also have ordered a flash attachment.

Anyway, this is my first shot with the new camera, and it shows the "front" of the BOQ. (My room's window is at the back, and the part that juts out towards the camera is the large bathroom.) I am standing on the gravel road that goes down behind me to the Officers' Club (which I think I will refer to henceforth with "OOM", which stands for "Officers' Open Mess").

I guess I never mentioned it before, probably because I didn't take any pictures at Fort Lee before heading overseas to Korea, but most stateside Officers' Clubs are referred to as something like "FLOOM" ("Fort Lee Officers' Open Mess") or "FBOOM" ("Fort Ben Officers' Open Mess"). Not all posts end up with catchy acronyms, and some, like Fort Benjamin Harrison, would result in hard-to-pronounce acronyms if their official names were used. Try pronouncing "FBHOOM", for example.

Prior to that first picture with my new camera, I took two other pictures of the BOQ from the front and back:

This is the front of our hooch, with the front door down the walkway a ways. This side of the hooch faces downhill to the Officers' Club.

This is the back of the hooch which is right up against the fence around Howze. You can also see one of the "guard stations" that are placed every so often along the fence. Ours is rarely occupied by a KATUSA save for times of higher alert.

July, 1970: At the Officers' Club

I and my fellow officers spent much of our time in the OOM; it's where we had most of our meals, it's where we spent Happy Hour (you will see some pictures a bit later on showing just how happy we sometimes became), and it's where we watched evening shows of one kind or another.

On a typical weekend afternoon, the OOM would look much like this picture which was, oddly enough, taken on a Saturday afternoon. There are some officers playing cards (the one facing me is LT Granville), one or two officers having a drink or a snack from the kitchen, and maybe a few others just sitting around conversing or reading.

Not that I didn't like being in the club, but with my new stereo equipment, I am working on a project to record as many of the popular songs being played on the radio as I can, to edit the broadcasts and make tapes of just the songs themselves, one after the other. I don't have really sophisticated equipment, but the editing process isn't all that difficult.

However, at night there is almost always something going on at the OOM, even if it is just a lot of officers drinking and getting mildly rowdy. You can really blame them; there is not a whole lot else to do around here, unless you want to go catting around in the Ville outside the gate. It's not like we all have cars and can go driving off to restaurants or movie theatres. Usually, there is some sort of show put on by Korean performers on Friday and Saturday nights, and these are almost always fun to watch.

Taking pictures isn't easy, though, since it's kind of rude to use the flash during the show. Here are a few pictures I got of one of these shows:

August, 1970: Around Camp Howze

In early August, I took a few pictures around Camp Howze, and I want to put those incidental pictures here.

This month, Eighth Army got a new commander, and he came to Camp Howze to meet General McQuarrie- as part of a tour he was making of most of the major installations in his command area. Our General pulled out all the stops and welcomed him with a cannon salute on the parade ground.

I thought I'd stay out of the way of the festivities, and so I came up to the BOQ after lunch until the ceremonis were over. In this view, taken from the end of the ridge to the south, I can look down past the Finance Office towards the parade ground (although it isn't visible from here). All that smoke is from the cannon salute.

Actually, while I was walking around up here, I went all the way along the fence line to the point where the fence heads downward, and from there I got an excellent picture of much of Camp Howze.

In the picture at right, you can see how the fenceline descends into the little valley where most of the buildings of Camp Howze is located. Later this same day, I actually decided to clamber down this hill to see if it was a valid shortcut to get down to the Finance Office. It was a bit shorter, but not worth the trouble.

The Finance Office has the green roof, and the dispensary in center foreground. In the center of the picture are the theater and the snack bar- a popular place at lunchtime. That tall tree near the Office (just above it) was the site of the earlier picture of the Office taken on the "walking" tour of Camp Howze.

This is a picture of the front of my BOQ- the side facing the OOM down the hill.

Here is another picture of the center of the camp taken from our BOQ.

Taken late in the day, this view looks north towards Bongilcheon.

August, 1970: In the Finance Office

One day in mid-August I took a couple of pictures in the Finance Office:

Here is the interior of the Finance Office. My own desk is actually at the opposite end of this quonset hut- behind me in the picture. Sadly, you really can't see a lot, and I'll try to get some better shots later. It's hot, so the dress code is relaxed in the summer.

Here, in LTC Fuentes' office, I took this picture of two of my fellow officers- Warrant Officer Jones on the left and LT Dan Tworek on the right. Mr. Jones is the Admin Supervisor, and Dan is chief of officer records.

August, 1970: Sunset Over Camp Howze

On another evening, I took this picture from my BOQ of a typical sunset. I was a couple of minutes late to get it at its best.

Sunset Over Camp Howze

August, 1970: Sunrise Over Camp Howze

Usually, I am more likely to photograph a sunrise than a sunset; I don't like to get up any earlier than I have to.

This morning, however, I happened to be up early and took this shot from my BOQ looking across the area just in front of Camp Howze.

So how did I happen to be up this early? Actually, I never went to sleep. And why was that? All junior officers (Lieutenants [both flavors] and Captains) have to take their turn as Officer of the Guard. Since there are maybe 25 company-grade officers here, that works out to about once a month.

As Officer of the Guard, we have five or six enlisted men who actually man the guard posts or walk the perimeter fence at night, and also a few KATUSAs that man the more remote guardhouses. The Officer of the Guard musters the men assigned for that evening and then stays in the guardhouse itself through the night in case something happens that has to be reported up the chain of command.

When something "happens", it is almost always something innocent, or a mistake, although I understand that some of the posts further north, near the DMZ, will occasionally spot an infiltrator, but even that is very, very rare, and is front page news when it happens.

This morning, the fog was still heavy and the sun just rising. Korea, as you may know, is the "Land of the Morning Calm."

August, 1970: Stereo Gear Expands

This page has already had a couple of pictures of the stereo gear I have been getting. I really shouldn't waste the film, but I'm keeping a record.

The new arrival that prompted this picture was my Sansui stereo receiver. It is a multifunction unit into which just about everything else, including the turntable and the tape deck, are connected.

I don't actually have any reccords myself, but I have been borrowing them from the library here on post and then recording them onto reel-to-reel tape.

Now with the receiver, I can also record off-the-air music and just about anything else that is broadcast.

August, 1970: The Landscape Around Camp Howze

The reason for today's pictures is that today was exceptionally clear, and the late afternoon landscape around Camp Howze at its very best.

We are looking directly towards Seoul, which happens to be at the foot of, and behind, the multi-peaked mountain in the center of the picture. For obvious reason, we refer to the mountain as "Crown Mountain", although I am sure that is not its real name.

A view of the area just southwest of Camp Howze, taken late in the day from outside the hooch. The dark green is how the hills actually appear.

This view looks South from Camp Howze. South is the "downriver" direction.

August, 1970: El Jefe

My leader, LTC Fuentes. He is Puerto Rican, short, stocky, and one of the greatest people I have ever met. The bottom of the picture is the table the camera is sitting on. (I left that last sentence in, because at the time I took the picture, you could see the table. For this web page, I have cropped it out.) The little red sign on the phone says: "The Enemy is Listening." I rather doubt it.

Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Fuentes

September, 1970: More Stereo Gear

The new addition this time is the Sansui tape recorder that has arrived. I'd had a small tape deck (a tape unit that only plays, but requires a receiver and speakers), but now this new tape recorder records and plays, and I can plug headphones into it.

But the nice thing is that now, with two tape decks and a receiver, I can simply set the big recorder to record three hours of music off the air, and then I can play that tape on the small deck and re-record the music on a second tape- editing out news, commercials, announcements, and other patter. I hope to build a collection of popular songs on three-hour tapes. Then I play these as background or just listen to one song after another without having to change reccords or listen to anything inbetween.

September, 1970: Sunrise, Sunset

Over a few nights and morning this month I was able to get some pretty good pictures from the BOQ.

Here is a particularly nice sunset picture, taken from my hooch.

I missed a very good shot one evening, but the next evening afforded an even better opportunity, however.

I even took the precaution of reading the section of my book on photography that discusses sunsets. As a result, I learned that the best sunset photographs are taken a few minutes after the sun disappears. So I tried that tactic here, and was rewarded with this result.

Note from the present:
One has to remember that in 1970, digital photography was a quarter-century in the future, and so I did not have the ability to actually see what I'd captured until I finished the roll of film, sent it off to be developed, and got it back- a process that took weeks. So when I found an image like the one above in my slides, I was very pleased. We are so very spoiled today with our camera phones that it's hard to imagine what photography was like a half century ago.

The Land of the Morning Calm

Mornings are also a good time for some pretty amazing pictures, although if you try too early, it's hard to distinguish anything in the fog.

These calm Fall mornings are kind of magical, and why Korea is known as "Land of the Morning Calm." Dense fogs like these blanket the valleys, and one feels that one is looking out of an airplane window. We've had a sucession of foggy mornings like this, although the days turn out to be very nice by about nine in the morning. These foggy mornings are also a harbinger: Fall is coming.

On one particular morning, I got two good pictures in sucession as the sun rose over the mountain peaks east of Camp Howze:

September, 1970: A Sunday Afternoon at Camp Howze

Today I have a bunch of random pictures, beginning with a couple I took in the early morning.

The morning was cloudy early on, and the valley near Howze was shrouded in shadow. But the weather brightened as the day went on.

In the Fall, the air is less humid, so there's less haze, and Camp Howze looks its best.

I know I should send you more pictures of myself, but when I am photographing everything around me, that's tough to do. But in response to one of your latest requests, I had a fellow officer take a couple of pictures of me.

It being a lazy Sunday with nothing on the agenda, all of us are just hanging out around the BOQ. I was working on my song-collection project, but when I saw Dave Zehrer head outside, I thought I'd grab my camera and have him take a couple of pictures. The results are at left and below.

(Picture at left) Dave Zehrer is an officer in G4 (Supply), and he took the pictures of me above. Dave is from Missouri, I believe, and can usually be identified as the guy holding a bourbon on the rocks.       (Picture at right) Jack Lancaster is an Operations Officer; he works in the General's Staff Office. He is from Ohio, is always joking around. Here he is standing on our barbecue grill and posing at the barbed wire, perhaps trying to tell us he want to go home.

I was close to the end of a film roll, but my usual practice is to keep taking pictures until the shutter won't wind. Sometimes that last picture will turn out, sometimes it doesn't. But when I'm near the roll's end, I'll usually photograph something where I won't be terribly disappointed if the photo doesn't turn out.

This one did, although I had to crop out a portion at the right that went beyond the end of the film.

It's a staged photo, with CPT Halloran (he wasn't a close friend and so I'm not sure where he was from), LT Lancaster, and then something unusual- an officer's wife. It this case, it's Mrs. Halloran. (She's looking for North Korean infiltrators, I guess.) I think I said earlier that some officers actually do bring their wives over (at their own expense) and ensconce them near Yongsan in Seoul. (There's some folks that help find suitable housing, but again the officer has to pay for it with his regular housing allowance.) Most times, these officers may go down to Seoul on the weekends, but if they have duty or something, the wife can come up here.

We don't get to see many American women day to day; the most frequent are the Red Cross folks. So it's always a pleasure to have one come visit.

September, 1970: "The Rains in Sp... Korea"

About three weeks ago, we had the last big rain of the season, and it was by far the heaviest and most destructive of them all. It caught all the farmers unaware, as they were getting ready for the harvest. The monsoons were supposed to be over, but, as usual, somebody didn't get the word. It rained for two days, and early on the third began to abate.

When it did, I went out to take some pictures, beginning with the one at left, taken from the BOQ, that shows the general extent of the flooding. The road to Seoul is almost underwater; it is the line of trees you can see down in the valley. It's hard to distinguish the river from the rest of the water. And everything east of the road, between it and Camp Howze, is flooded.

For the next two pictures, I went down the hill to the front gate, walked through the ville and along the entrance road to the highway. Both these pictures were taken as I was walking to the highway:

Reaching the highway, I walked along the road for a ways towards Bongilcheon, just to see what I could see.

Quite soon I cam across a casualty of the heavy rains and the slick highways.

The road from Howze to the highway was covered with water a couple of inches deep, and the water completely covered the rice fields. The water level was almost up to the main highway, as this shows. The highway is on a raised embankment. The winds were strong.

On the other side of the road, the river drained the water, and that's where I found this truck. I can only assume that the driver of the truck went off the road in the early morning hours. It took the motor pool most of the day to extricate the truck, as they had to bring a winch truck, position it on the highway, and winch this vehicle back up th embankment to the roadway.

Actually, there were TWO casualties here, as the truck and the winching process left an ugly gash in the otherwise very neat rice paddy. I can only assume that the farmer suffered a modest loss, and I found myself wondering if he gets reimbursed for the damage by the US Army. I would think that only fair.

Here are more pictures I took today of the flooding around Camp Howze:

September, 1970: In the Finance Office

When I got back to the Finance Office from my walk out to the highway, I took a few pictures inside, since I had my camera with me.

This is the disbursing section with SP4 Chapman (right) and SP5 Noreck (left).

My office is in back, with LT Cannon. The office has a small leakage problem in heavy rain, as Quonsets are, as a rule, not waterproof.

Inside the Finance office, this is Quality Assurance and SGT Garlit.

September, 1970: Views from the Top

I have never lived in a "room with a view" like the views we have every day from our BOQ at the top of the hill at the back of Camp Howze. No matter what the weather is, there is always something to see.

It has been a week now since the deluge that we had, and as you can see in this late afternoon picture taken from the BOQ, the waters are receding, but the fields and the river are not yet back to normal.

Even though I don't recall a rainbow last week as the rain came to an end, we have not had any rain to speak of since those very heavy rains flooded almost everything around Camp Howze. Much of the rice was damaged, and it is particularly sad to see so many people work so hard, backward as their methods are, and have their work ruined in the end.

The sunsets can be spectacular from the BOQ, but the early mornings can be downright ethereal.

The weather is changing as fall approaches, and morning fog is becoming quite common. Korea is known as "The Land of the Morning Calm", and views like this can give you a sense of why.

October, 1970: Fall in Korea

After the heat and humidity of the summer, Fall is a very welcome time of the year. The temperature has cooled off and the air has cleared. What's most interesting, though, is that the rice has matured and ripened. And, I had been told earlier in the year, it is now a golden brown. From a distance, the paddies look very much like fields of wheat.

I went for a walk outside the gates of Camp Howze, and was rewarded with these beautiful scenes that express as little else can "Fall in Korea". The golden rice, the purple mountains, and the blue sky combine to make an almost poetic scene. The harvest is beginning. Pretty soon, the entire landscape will be dotted with the mounds of harvested rice.

Back at Howze, late in the afternoon, some Koreans happened to be paving the parking area near the office, and it is interesting to see the extent to which human labor is used for this kind of work.

It is not unusual to see entire work parties made up mostly of women out on the highways, and each group is accompanied by other women who cook the meals and direct the traffic.

They may be a little backward, and some Koreans may be dishonest, but an incontrovertible fact is that they work very hard for very little. I can already say that all the Korean civilians I have had contact with have been hardworking, consientious people, and I have no doubt that they will soon follow Japan into the twentieth century.

November, 1970: Late Fall at Camp Howze

The last two weeks in November, which encompassed my birthday, were "golden" days at Camp Howze. All the summer heat is long gone, as is the summer's humidity. The days are largely clear and cool (by the end of the month actually chilly). During these weeks, I took a number of pictures around Howze and just outside, chronicling this particular season in Korea.

This is Camp Howze in the late fall. Although Camp Howze is pretty drab, all in all, here is as much color as we are likely to get, and it really isn't bad, given the lack of trees.

From the BOQ, is is the view looking southeast towards Seoul. The day was very clear- one of the best we've had all fall.

I had the next two pictures taken in response to my parents asking why I wasn't in any of my pictures.

(Picture at left) Me, on a typical Saturday afternoon.       (Picture at right) Me, on a typical Saturday afternoon.

One evening in the fall some of us were in the common room of the BOQ, so I pulled out a camera to snap this picture.

From left are WO Haillet, LT Riffe, and WO Wood.

I have no idea who the young ladies in the pictures on the wall are.

This is the road out behind the BOQ on a typical Fall day.

One afternoon I walked out to observe the rice harvest. This is the road from the Howze main gate to the highway.

On this Saturday afternoon, when I had to be on the compound and couldn't go into Seoul, LT Cavendish and I wandered around trying to find worthy subjects for our photographic skills.

Almost all of the rice paddies have been harvested, now. And this is the worst that these fields will appear during the year, with the rice stalks chopped off near the ground. The remainder is left and will be plowed under come spring, but for now it will look as if the landscape has received a bad haircut.

Here are the paddies across the highway after they've been harvested.

This woman is carrying harvested rice through the fields to the mill.

As I have mentioned elsewhere in these album pages, there is a rice mill right near the entrance to Camp Howze along the highway, and we took a couple more pictures there:

As we walked back into Camp Howze and up to the Officer's Club, I took this picture looking across at some of the newer buildings on the other side of the camp:

December 8, 1970: Winter Arrives at Camp Howze

South Korea is one of those places (and I guess there are a great many of them around the world) that has two beautiful, pleasant seasons (Spring and Fall) and two seasons one has to endure in between (Summer and Winter)

One night in mid-December I went to sleep with a gentle rain falling outside. The day had been trending colder, and clouds had come in during the afternoon. But the golden Fall was still much in evidence in the views from the BOQ, so what happened next was unexpected.

One thing that I missed in Korea was being able to count on watching the news and weather on television either in the morning before work or in the evening afterwards. Not only were we usually out-of-touch with the day-to-day goings on back in the States (and just about everywhere else, for that matter) but we were also quite in the dark as far as a daily weather forecast was concerned, not having access to some smiling, over-coiffed weatherman on television to tell us what was in the offing.

So when I went to bed, I had no idea that before I drifted off to sleep I would begin to hear rain pattering on the metal roof of the BOQ. And I was certainly not prepared for what I saw, just outside my window, when I got up in the morning to get ready to head to the Finance Office.

I have nicknamed the picture at left "Welcome to Winter, 1970".

The snowfall was such a surprise that before I went down to work, I threw on some clothes and went outside to take a few photos. At right is the valley behind Camp Howze during the first snowfall of the season.

Looking to the front of Camp Howze during the season's first snowfall.

The front of Camp Howze, looking towards Bong-Il-Chen in the snow.

I thought it was interesting that just yesterday, the predominant color of the landscape was gold, while this morning it seems as if the world has gone all black and white.

Major Henderson

As I got dressed to head to the office I noticed some continuing snow flurries, and throughout the day we had more light snow until there was maybe two or three inches on the ground.

The BOQ in Snow

As I left the BOQ, I turned to look back, and thought the hooch in snow was worth a picture. Being from North Carolina, I didn't get to see snow much growing up, so seeing in in Indianapolis and now here in Korea was something of a treat.

I was one of the first people to get to the Finance Office. Just like everyplace else, snow tends to mess up people's schedules, and the office was a half-hour late getting fully staffed. Another early arrival was our new Finance Officer, Major Henderson. He came to Korea from Okinawa via the Philippines and Vietnam. He says he is now the Finance Corps expert on the Far East, or ought to be.

Since this photo album is not really a diary, unless there is a picture to attach some narrative to, I don't have an opportunity to tell you about what happens when there are no pictures to record it. I could say here that my "tour" as Second Division Finance Officer lasted about eight weeks; I was just a stopgap before the position that LTC Fuentes left could be filled by at least a field-grade officer. It was actually very unusual to have a Captain in the position- a first since the Second Division came to Korea.

But now MAJ Henderson, a very congenial officer, has arrived, signage has been changed, and he has settled in to his new post. I am, once again, his deputy, and am, sadly, no longer in line for the perks that his position on the General Staff accords. No more helicopter trips to football games, I guess.

Since I happened to photograph the Finance Office ladder sign out front in taking my snow pictures this morning, I should probably take this opportunity to run down the list of who the officers are at the moment.

Actually, the sign is identical to what it was when I arrived save for the top slot, which used to read "F FUENTES LTC FC FO". This indicated Francisco Fuentes (he never used his middle name, Carlos), Lieutenant Colonel, Finance Corps, Finance Officer. Now, of course, it is "C R HENDERSON MAJ FC FO" (Charles Raymond Henderson, Major, Finance Corps, Finance Officer). Now we come to my ladder entry. Major Henderson has not been here long, and so there has been no time to change the next two signs. I am no longer the Finance Officer, but am back to being the Deputy Finance Officer. Peter Cannon, who was my Deputy, is back to being an Assistant Finance Officer, just like the other three officers- Bill Granville, Dan Tworek, and Mr. Jones (Maurice, actually).

It's now Major Henderson's call to have the signs changed, but he may not do so right away. The reason is that LT Granville is going to be rotating back to the States in just two days, and Peter Cannon is going to be leaving in January, I believe. (Actually, Peter's two-year tour is up in April or something like that, and I think the Army will be send him to Fort Shafter in Hawaii where he is from for his final couple of months, as Fort Shafter is only a few miles from his family's house. That way, the Government won't have to pay for transportation to Hawaii from some other duty station when he leaves the Service.)

So it may be that Major Henderson will have all these changes made at the same time- I just don't know.

Anyway, the snow lent an air of frivolity to the morning- something that the first snow of a season often does, no matter where it falls.

Mr. Jones, taking a few pictures of his own, and the houseboy, Mr. Yu, shoveling the walk.

LT Granville is before the snowball firing squad. Since Bill is leaving in just two days, I maneuvered him under our "Out Processing" sign and coaxed the Major and Mr. Jones to heave a few snowballs.

The Closing of the Year

Well, this has been an eventful year for me, what with my first trip overseas- and to such an exotic place, as it turned out. I've learned a lot this year, and made (and said goodbye to) some good friends. Our little community had about the best Christmas you could expect, being half a world away from home, and a good many of us attended the Bob Hope Show over at RC #1 a couple of days ago.

I don't have any idea what 1971 will bring, although there are rumors that the Second Division will be undergoing many changes next year, and that one of these will be a move to a larger installation east of here. I've gotten very comfortable with Camp Howze, but you don't join the Army expecting stability. I am very much looking forward to my R&R trip in January, which I will be taking over to Japan with my friend Dan Gunn.

For now, though, I can close out this page with a few random pictures that I took in the last few days of December.

A Beautiful Sunset at Camp Howze

The Moon

I had occasion to take a couple of pictures from the BOQ on the morning of New Year's Day.

Korea is known as "The Land of the Morning Calm", and one of the reasons is the frequency of the morning fogs that blanket the valleys in this rugged, mountainous area.

This is the morning of New Year's Eve, December 31st, and so the picture at right, looking out beyond the boundary fence, is literally my last picture of the year.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

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