Worst Day of My Life
There is a clear frontrunner as The Worst Day of My Life. Every year around August 3, I think of it again.
US soldiers stationed overseas may forget their SSNs or blood type even though both are prominently displayed on their dog tags. But they never forget their Termination Date — that magical day when the Big Silver Bird will take them out of this hellhole and back to the Land Where The Toilets Flush. For Lieutenant Dufton in Korea that date was August 3. I would be back in Scranton in time for my mother’s August 5 birthday and for my cousin Jackie’s August 6 wedding. What a homecoming!
Most officers commandeer a Jeep and head off to Seoul a day to two early and indulge in drunken revelry before departing the Orient. Conscientious to the end, I finished off my final project and rode to Seoul on the morning of August 3 in the daily Battalion Mail Jeep. “The plane doesn’t leave until 3 PM. If I get to Seoul by 10 AM, I’m golden.”
“What the hell, the Military Air Transport Terminal is almost empty. Where are the 160 GIs who will be packed like sardines into the 1500 hrs plane?”
I approached a bored-looking GI clerk with that very question. “Sir, your plane took off at 0900 hrs. There’s a typhoon approaching and it was re-scheduled six hours early. Didn’t anyone inform you?”
“If they had, I would have been here then.”
“Not to worry. With valid orders, you will be at the top of the list for Space Available on tomorrow’s plane. The thing is you have to be here 30 minutes before it takes off.”
I spent August 3, not homeward bound across the Pacific, but sitting (and later sleeping) on benches in a Quonset Hut praying that the August 4 plane would not be full.
And, of course, it was. I would miss my mother’s birthday and the family wedding.
There were three spaces available on the August 5 plane. In the Army, rank has its privileges. A Lieutenant Colonel and a Captain also wanted on the plane. The last seat was between me and a Red Cross “donut dolly” whose “rank” was identical to mine. “Please, Miss, I’ve been here two days.” She took pity on me.
My sleep-deprived brain did not register much over the 36 hours it took until I finally returned to 634 Maple Street. Two items stood out. For the fourteen hour flight across the Pacific, the Military Air Transport Service fed us one of those little cereal boxes that you tear open and pour milk in. Compounding the pain, the cereal was Grape Nuts which as Seinfeld famously said is neither grapes nor nuts. Basic Economy air travel began with the MATS.
The second memory was when the bus from Philly to Scranton emerged from the Lehigh Tunnel and I saw the mountain of smoldering zinc tailings that was alongside the Turnpike at the time. Meanwhile John Denver’s “Country Roads” played on a fellow passenger’s radio. “That’s just like the culm dumps of home. I’m really here.”
By Ed Dufton
