I finally made it to 7th division Special Services where the musical groups were located. This was in “Camp Casey” close to the Korean village of TungDuChon, about 40 miles north of Seoul. Within this compound were several different services of the 7th division, including headquarters, 7th med(a MASH company), 32nd Infantry, 7th REPL-depot, 7th division band, Red Cross, and other support groups. I was assigned to a small all-soldier combo called “The Far East Playboys”, a name borrowed from “The Texas Playboys” which was a popular western swing band at the time.
We lived in a tent that had a wood platform floor and could hold 20 people.
My new home in Camp Casey
Inside our tent were double-deck bunks and two pot-bellied heaters that ran on fuel oil. These heaters each had a stovepipe that ran through the tent roof and a heat control with numbers 1-10. We could lift the knob and turn it up past the inscribed numbers to about a 12 or 13 – we called this “Chinese overdrive”. On Chinese overdrive the stove and 3 or 4 feet of the stovepipe would turn completely red. Although risky, we did that when the outside temperature went below -15°.
Inside our tent showing the liner and fuel oil heater
The tent was normally quite comfortable. Occasionally at night when everyone was asleep and the weather was cold, the wind caused the heater to be disconnected from the stovepipe. The tent would then fill with smoke and the soot would hang in festoons from the inside of the roof. You could tell at reveille which tent had this problem because the occupants would emerge completely black, except for their eyeballs.
We had a Korean in the camp that painted signs and did some minor art work. In exchange for painting a picture for our tent door we gave him an old table radio that didn’t work.
Our new door
The painting was much more appealing at first, then some Red Cross girl who visited the camp got a “case of the asses” and convinced our commanding officer that our girl should be wearing clothes. I guess the RC girl just couldn’t stand up to the competition! So we returned the painting to the artist who added clothes (almost).
Helicopter landing at 7th Div HQ
This place was somewhat more civilized than the 49th field artillery where I was previously stationed. We had Korean “houseboys” who did our laundry and other chores. There were even Red Cross girls and service club girls from the States with ROUND EYES!
Kim, our houseboy
Houseboys doing laundry
No matter what job a person had he was expected to go on field maneuvers one week per month. In the field I was no longer an artillery fire-direction man, no longer a musician, but an infantry soldier. That was OK with me as long as we were not fighting and I could play music the other 3 weeks.
It turned out that the band had been depleted by members who had served their time and rotated back to the States. Upon my arrival it had no vocalist and only 3 members: Curley, a bass and accordion player, Peewee, a fiddle player, and Elmer, a comedian-magician. They had ceased putting on shows due to lack of members. When I arrived we started doing service club gigs with me as a singer – guitar player.
I finally found a 6-string lap steel at a service club. It didn’t have any strings but I scrounged some from another service club along with an amp. I then concentrated on playing the steel, and used every available hour working on that instrument.
Would you buy a used car from this guy?
We put on 4 or 5 shows per week traveling to the different units. After a week or so we would take a day to work up a new show and then make the rounds again.
We traveled to the different Army posts riding in the back of a duce-and-a-half truck that was open in the back. I would always carry my amp on my lap to prevent the glass vacuum tubes from shattering due to the rough roads. The trips were up to 50 miles each way and the roads were not paved, so we usually arrived at our destination looking like dust-bunnies. We often returned to our camp after 3AM.
On this road at night I would sit with my feet over the tailgate ready to jump!
We were constantly checking the new arrivals for musicians. After a month or so of searching for talent we finally put a good band together. We were provided with colorful outfits to wear on stage. The Army also hired a civilian producer from the states to work with us. He didn’t know much about music but he was a theater type and knew how to make us into a first class show band.
Far East Playboys
We sometimes traveled to Japan. We rode in one of these.
C-124 Globemaster
One disadvantage of being at Camp Casey was that there were many new gung-ho officers walking around with nothing to do but harass the underlings. Consequently the Army “chicken$h]+” was worse than it had been at 49th Field Artillery. Many of these guys thought that since we were entertainers we were a bunch of goofoffs trying to get out of work, so they harassed us when they had a chance. Here is an example – even though we often got to bed later than 4AM after putting on a show at some distant outfit, some of these officers had us falling out at 6AM to stand reveille. We could then go back and try to get some sleep except that many times some hard-ass captain or major would come barreling through the tent, get us up and ask why the hell our lazy asses were still in the sack. Our immediate superiors would eventually get this straightened out, only to have a change in personnel cause this process to repeat itself.
In spite of this, It was much better to be stationed here than in most other places in Korea.