Colder Than A...G.I. Should Be. Punto.

How Cold Was It?

Michael Sedano

A Fall heat wave sweeps into Southern California. When that happens, an old man's fancy turns to thoughts of when he felt more cold than anyone deserves to feel. In 1969, the US Army stationed me at Bravo Battery, seventh of the fifth air defense artillery, B 7/5, where I lived a summer and a winter rotating between a comfortable base camp called the Admin Area, and the tac site atop mighty Mae Bong.  

Fire Control Operator and Wayne Concha behind the Commo hootch

Winter, 1969. 

Outside temperature readings on the digital display go black like the weather doesn’t want us to know. On the roof of our Quonset hut, the anemometer either has frozen and stuck, or it met its match in the elements. 25 knots, the device last reported. 

 

High above Korea on mighty mile-high Mae Bong, Site 7/5, we soldiers feel the thermometer dropping all day, we don’t need technology to spell it out. 

 

It is cold. Colder than inside the freezer at DeYoung’s poultry in warm Redlands, Califas, where gramma works. Too cold to be funny, witches and well-diggers go to hell.

 

-12º, the digital display’s last words. The Lieutenant works some math aloud, reporting to no one in particular a wind chill factor equivalent to some outrageous below zero temperature if you were outside in that storm. Only the commo guys go out into the storm. I work commo.

 

Inside the command hootch the sound of storm slamming against steel sides of the structure reminds us how lucky we are to be inside the hootch. A diesel-burning space heater glows without warming, the cold air sucks the hot right out of the heat. We wear our cold-weather gear inside and talk in gasps of perpetual shivering.

 

There’s a sign down in the Admin Area base camp bragging how this is the world’s highest, ruggedest, toughest missile site, admonishing our blithe spirits to be Proud to be here. Up here, on top, where it’s cold, those words would fall out of my mouth, shatter on the cement pad, leaving Red White and Blue puddles.

 

Normally, we’re on the mountain three days and two nights, but this latest storm has kept us five days already. Maybe tomorrow a deuce and a half will make it to the top bringing a ride down to hot chow, hot showers, a warm bunk, and restful sleep.

 

Snow plasters against the windward side of the whip antenna mounted to the roof above my radio. Each hourly commo check reads fainter and fainter. “How do you hear me? Over.” “I read you five by five.” “I read you four by three.” “I read you two by two.” Faint, scratchy, and weak, 2x2. It’s time to climb onto the roof sheltering the Quonset hut to de-ice the whip antenna.

Top of Mae Bong Commo Hootch Weather and Radio Equipment

It's one small leap for a soldier, one giant leap into the face of the storm when I jump onto the shed. I balance along the roofbeam buffeted by adrenalin-raising random gusts. I keep my feet under me and in a few moments I’ve attained the far end of the hootch, directly above my duty station. The antenna wears a hoary beard that’s crept around to envelop the entire rod.

 

I’ve brought the de-icing instrument—a length of wooden broom handle. Like a magician I straighten my left arm and the broom handle slides into my grasp. With practiced ease, I straddle some cables, set my boots on the eaves, and lift both arms with the broom stick tilted over my head in readiness to strike a mighty blow. We do this with ugly regularity. In this storm, I'm hoping for a few hours to pass before I have to do this again. 

 

The wind reaches a momentary peak, an enormous gust grabs my parka fills my frame like a sail. The storm lifts me off the roof of the commo hootch and I fly above the ground, the shattered boulders, the concertina wire, the precipice.

 

I am flying! In momentary exultation I look into the whiteness of the blowing storm imagining the view from up here. Down there, Chuncheon and Camp Page lie in the crook of the curving river. Lights will twinkle and pa’lla far away pa’lla the shining ribbon of river winds its way South to Seoul. I am Mary Poppins floating above the city. I am feathered-Icarus dressed in Army green, headed for a fall.

 

When I revive I’m relieved to be tangled in barbed wire, holding my broomstick. Blood has oozed through my long underwear and wool OG trousers making a reddish icicle. Nothing hurts despite I’m bent over backwards on a shattered boulder. I extricate from the concertina spiral, roll onto my feet, slap snow off my parka. Back to the jumping-off spot, leap onto the command hootch, negotiate my way to above my duty station. Ever-so-carefully, both arms lift the broomstick into the air and mission accomplished.

 

“How do you hear me? Over.” 

“I hear you five by five. Over.” 

“Roger. Out.”

 

The storm abates to a weak sleet and constant Siberian gusts of punishing wind. The Llieutenant comes into the commo room with bad news. His phone line to Maintenance is out. Fire control and commo section sit at the highest level of the hill. Below us, the LT keeps a chow hall and maintenance hootch in constant communication by a telephone line laid along the edge of the mountain.

Launchers at the ready, B 7/5. North Korea pa'lla 15 miles away.

We advise the Admin Area switchboard we’ll be out of commo for a while so they don't freak out not hearing from us on schedule. The cold and wind have snapped the line somewhere out there. Outside. Where it's pitch black night. Where it's windy and penetratingly freezing.

 

Finding and fixing a snapped twisted pair copper wire happens regularly. It’s no challenge when it's daylight and nice weather, even when we have no field wireman tools. We have X-acto knives from a hobby kit. We’d need a third hand to manipulate a flashlight so we go gently into the night working by feel.

 

The phone line runs strung through eyelet bolts hammered into the rock every twenty feet or so, as terrain allows on the edge of the cliff. It’s cautious going, toes feeling for rocks and craters, keeping the phone line in gloved hands. The wind plays havoc with gait and balance. Wind accelerates as it whips up cliffs before cutting over the edge like an air knife. 

 

We lean hard into invisible forces that make us wobble from whirling gusts. We've bent the soft zinc wire sewn into our fur-lined hoods so just our noses protrude into the air. Moisture freezes nostril hairs into hypodermic needles that make breathing a painful hazard when you reflexively wrinkle your nose against the cold and recoil from sleet, grit, and needlelike nose hairs.

 

Only the blowing animal hair of the fur-lined hood protects my glasses from the stinging flint bits the wind slams into exposed skin. My lenses clack with each impact and my cheeks recoil at each pinpoint of pain as grit infiltrates past the fur hood. I tell myself not to wrinkle my nose but I can't resist the urge to feel that unique kind of pain. 

 

We wear Army-green knee-length nylon hooded overcoats. A heavy quilted liner buttoned into the coat manages to fight off the worst of the cold and wind. We walk arms out like cartoon caricatures. Green wool glove liners inside supple leather gloves keep our fingers nimble enough that the snapping wire signals its location through our palms several feet from the whipping slack wire.

Dawn from atop Mighty Mae Bong

We back into the wind feeling ten to fifteen feet of whipping wire strapping against our shoulders and legs. Wrapping itself around the knees puts the thing in our grasp and the job ahead is simple. We pin down the free-flying telephone line, lodging the wires under rocks.

The line snapped just behind the Maintenance hootch. There's dim light from around the front of the Quonset hut. Here is good fortune.

 

I pull off my gloves to grip the free end of wire to strip off insulation exposing a couple inches of copper. I feel sensation leak out of my hands. Now my fingers can’t feel a thing. I observe my hand clasp around the loose wire. I witness the blade draw along the first of the paired wire. I give up making sense of this. I put on the gloves and run back to the hootch and the light. Concha, my homeboy this turn on the mountain, has mirrored my actions. In the lee of the Maintenance hootch we don't have to shout to make ourselves heard.

 

When I can flex hands again, a breath into the gloves returns sensation to my grasp. Concha and I run back to the splice. As before, we pull off the gloves and instant numbness. I strip the second wire, pull on the glove and run back trembling and shaking, to the light.

 

Four wires stripped, the task remains to twist the broken ends together, wrap the joint in rubber tape, go inside and test the line. "Are you ready?" Concha and I shout in agreement. 

We make a break for the break where there's just enough light to match the two stripped wires to each other, twist once, twice, three times. Not enough but Concha can’t work beyond. I take the line and twist once, twist twice, and I assume twist a third time before I have to get those gloves back on my frozen hands. We don’t use the tape. The ten-minute repair takes a miserable hour out of our lives.

 

The maintenance hootch offers cozy respite. With twenty bodies and three space heaters to warm two grateful commo guys, we're still too cold to relax. But we feel warmth and gratitude. Here, in the light, we get a look at our defrosting fingers.  The copper wire ripped into the flesh of our insensate frozen fingers leaving ragged gouges filled with frozen blood. Our blood icicles begin melting, covering the fingers with slushy blood that drips onto our knees. We laugh as pain wells up from our ragged torn flesh.

 

I crank the field telephone and the Lieutenant hears me Lima Charlie. Loud and Clear, five by five.

Specialist 4 Michael Sedano on tac site duty