<Begin Segment 17>

TI: Okay, so you got Korea. What were some of the things that... well, I guess one question that came up, so how many men were you in charge of when you were in Korea?

EW: The first assignment I got, because they needed somebody there, and they needed an officer, I was in charge of about 160 men. I was, I was second in command of, it was a service and administration battery or company, was the, kind of, name of the unit. [Interruption] So that was a pretty daunting task for a brand-new lieutenant who knows almost nothing about how the real world army works. So there was a very steep learning curve there.

TI: And so what does it mean to be in charge of so many men? I mean, so they come to you for, for directions and orders?

EW: Directions and... basically, it all lies on the commanding officer, but you are, I was basically assisting him in everything. And so it's, it's not what I expected my role would be first going into the army. But eventually there, the commanding officer said that, you know, I think your career needs to be more well-rounded, or your experience, so he was, he put me in a platoon, in charge of a platoon, which is optimal for a junior officer or brand-new lieutenant, to be in charge of anywhere between twenty and forty guys. I had eighteen guys in a platoon, and I was in charge of a missile or rocket platoon.

TI: And so what would be a typical day as a platoon leader like that? What would you, what would happen?

EW: Well, in the morning you wake up at six o'clock and do physical training for about an hour, running, pushups, sit-ups, obstacle courses and things like that, just to stay physically fit. We show up, we have our breakfast, we show up to work about eight-thirty, nine o'clock, we have a morning formation for the whole battery, in which the commanding officer gives out orders and things like that, announcements. And then we work on our vehicles for a little while just to make sure, those vehicles are always breaking down, there's a lot of, it takes a lot of repair and maintenance. And from there, then we'll go over, we'll go over the mission that we have, maybe visit the sites that we'd have to deploy to in South Korea in case of an attack, and then we go over some drills and things like that for the crews, launcher crews to go over. We might have some other administrative training to do and things like that. Then I'd have to do some paperwork, I'd have to go back to the office while my guys are training, and then... that'd be a typical day.

TI: But in this case, I mean, you had this, this fairly tight-knit group that you were in charge of, and had to form a strong team with.

EW: Yeah.

TI: How long were you, did you do this?

EW: This was for about six months, and we had a, we had a competition at the end, and one of my crews won -- out of eighteen launchers -- the best crew. The other, the other crews I had were pretty, fairly new, so I had one that placed first, another placed fourth, and one that was like eighth or something like that. But overall, I had, like you said, a pretty tight crew. I think that I was at least respected as a person and an officer within that small unit.

TI: And how did you like this? Was this what you expected as --

EW: This is what you want, because this is what officers do. They work with, they train soldiers, and they, they serve their soldiers and they try to provide the most opportunities and education, and just, just, I don't know... a good standard of living for those soldiers you're trying to train.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.