Comments on: Christmas in Korea http://mccrarey.com/2005/12/25/christmas-in-korea/ Sat, 19 May 2012 10:51:42 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.4 by: buy valium http://mccrarey.com/2005/12/25/christmas-in-korea/#comment-53320 Fri, 30 Jun 2006 05:50:11 +0000 http://mccrarey.com/2005/12/25/christmas-in-korea/#comment-53320 <strong>buy valium</strong> uk. buy valium

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]]> by: Jim Caruso http://mccrarey.com/2005/12/25/christmas-in-korea/#comment-40670 Sun, 25 Dec 2005 07:48:20 +0000 http://mccrarey.com/2005/12/25/christmas-in-korea/#comment-40670 You reminded me of my first Christmas away from home waaaay back in 1963. I was a teenaged soldier stationed in a place north of you called Camp Casey. I arrived a week or two before Christmas and that made me one of the FNGs (new guys). New guys, of course, were more than likely to get stuck with any details on Christmas Eve, one of them being guard duty. So there I was, on Christmas Eve, in a guard tower, an M14 cradled in my arms, it was very cold and awfully dark. Raymond Burr had come over and was chatting with the troops at one of the Service Clubs on post. Perry Mason! I do not know if he got publicity for that. Bob Hope usually got all the publicity for his Christmas tours. I did not get to meet Burr that night, and he is gone now, but he still has a place in my heart for doing that. Anyway, there I was shivering (from the cold) and thinking, if the bad guys made a move across the DMZ that night, stealthy bastards that they were, at any given time I could receive a sniper’s bullet through the chest. (No Kevlar vests with plates in those days.) I do not remember feeling particularly frightened, sad, or homesick, but I seem to have erased a lot of my negative recollections of that year. Toward the end of my tour I counted down the days as was the custom. However, I am an "older" man now, and when I look back, it seems like one of the best years of my life. Tonight, Christmas Eve 2005, I am in a warm home in California editing pictures of my grandchildren. I am thinking of other teenagers tonight, in fact, all the American forces in Iraq (Afghanistan too), some away from home for the first time. I only hope that each and every one of them can wind up forty something years from now, mentally and physically intact, at home with their families, surfing the galaxy wide web...or whatever it will be called by then. Merry Christmas to all! You reminded me of my first Christmas away from home waaaay back in 1963. I was a teenaged soldier stationed in a place north of you called Camp Casey. I arrived a week or two before Christmas and that made me one of the FNGs (new guys). New guys, of course, were more than likely to get stuck with any details on Christmas Eve, one of them being guard duty. So there I was, on Christmas Eve, in a guard tower, an M14 cradled in my arms, it was very cold and awfully dark. Raymond Burr had come over and was chatting with the troops at one of the Service Clubs on post. Perry Mason! I do not know if he got publicity for that. Bob Hope usually got all the publicity for his Christmas tours. I did not get to meet Burr that night, and he is gone now, but he still has a place in my heart for doing that. Anyway, there I was shivering (from the cold) and thinking, if the bad guys made a move across the DMZ that night, stealthy bastards that they were, at any given time I could receive a sniper’s bullet through the chest. (No Kevlar vests with plates in those days.) I do not remember feeling particularly frightened, sad, or homesick, but I seem to have erased a lot of my negative recollections of that year. Toward the end of my tour I counted down the days as was the custom. However, I am an “older” man now, and when I look back, it seems like one of the best years of my life. Tonight, Christmas Eve 2005, I am in a warm home in California editing pictures of my grandchildren. I am thinking of other teenagers tonight, in fact, all the American forces in Iraq (Afghanistan too), some away from home for the first time. I only hope that each and every one of them can wind up forty something years from now, mentally and physically intact, at home with their families, surfing the galaxy wide web…or whatever it will be called by then. Merry Christmas to all!

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