For
an injured soldier at a distant accident site, KC-39 can mean the
difference between living and dying.
rized Zone.
If the fighting
began again, the speakers in the message center would
groan under the volume of traffic. At times, they do anyway.
''Every
time they spot a North Korean in the DMZ, it comes through our radios," said PFC Danny Davis. "If
you're ever up here on alert, those radios are talkin'. There's so
much traffic back there, it's
hard to believe."
The
15-man crew numbers three NCOs, 10 radio operators and "cable dogs," a cook, and a Korean security guard who lives on site and pulls nightly 12-hour shifts. No officers. They operate and maintain a remote signal station equipped with the Army's latest signal
equipment: the Single Channel
Ground and Airborne Radio System.
SINCGARS is a digital-burst,
jam-resistant system that its operators term "highly
secure."
Soldiers
stay on the hill for a minimum of six months, working six days at a
stretch: two 8 a.m.-4 p.m. shifts, two 4 p.m.-midnight shifts, and two
midnight-8 a.m. shifts. Then it's three days off the radios, with one of
them "a detail day," as Cheeley called it. The NCOs, he said, "don't have
a set schedule up here. We're just always around."
On Hill
754, that statement also applies to life in general. During good weather,
soldiers can get away—on their days off. "The down side," said Davis, "is
we don't get to go out with each other." Once, sometimes twice daily, a
pair of soldiers in a Humvee make the slow 10-mile trek down to Camp Casey
for supplies and mail.
But when it
gets cold, the sharply angled access
road, barely two lanes wide, turns into a ribbon of ice. Supplies,
including drinking water to supplement
the hill's
solitary well, arrive via Black Hawk helicopters that land on a helipad
just below the hilltop. For most of the winter, "The Boyz" remain in their
mountaintop home, working in the underground bunkers, living
in their above-ground barracks, and avoiding the elements whenever
possible.
"That's
cold with a capital C," said Cheeley. After the first snowfall, he
said,
"we
have 12, 13 inches of snow on
the ground at all times. And the antennas will ice up and snap. You've got to stand out there and hold them to do the repairs."
Besides
being self-sufficient,
soldiers also
develop conservative
habits like eating candy bars
a bite at a time, saving the rest in the refrigerator for later. During
really cold stretches, the
pickings can get slim. That
applies mostly to junk food. Thanks to Spec. Donald Walker, the
residents of Hill 754 actually
eat quite well all year
round.
"I would
rather be up here than anywhere else in the world," said the hilltop cook.
"Working in a big mess hall ... now there's a lot of pressure. But up
here, I can do what I want. I can make special cookies, and other meals.
If I have the rations, I can do it."
He serves
three meals a day in what must rank as the smallest dining facility in the
Army, in an above-ground building across from the living quarters.
The one-table dining room, next to his
kitchen, measures all of 10
feet by 12 feet. At least no
one has to eat cold food. When Walker is off, Cheeley steps into
the kitchen. "They're used to my cooking," he said with a
grin.
As at any
lonely outpost, food and mail are major morale boosters. On the hill, a
fresh box of library paperbacks ar-
24 hours a
day. And they're hearing real-world stuff every day."
It's that
sense of life or death, despite the military truce that governs
relations on the Korean peninsula, that helps give these soldiers their professional
edge. Hill 754 is in
the northern reaches of the
ROK, not far from the Demilita-
MARCH
1992
reprinted with permission from SOLDIERS magazine