Guardpost Olluette, UN sector of DeMiliterized Zone (DMZ) that separates South from North Korea. Note the small GP Olluette tower positioned to observe all approaches. That's North Korea in the background and a rice paddy in the foreground. The heavily vegetated ridges characterize the region between Seoul, South Korea, and the DMZ approx 25miles north. Summer, 1990.
Terror in the dark.
("Jesus Christ, he's taking a bead on us.
REQUEST PERMISSION TO FIRE!!")
The Korean DMZ is a 4km wide swath that separates North and South Korea. The actual line that runs down the center of that swath is called the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) and is marked by an occasional rusty yellow sign covered in bushes. If you’re wandering around your side of the DMZ and you’re not careful, you can end up in a country where people don’t like you. The UN sector of the DMZ is just a small portion that includes the Panmunjom peace village, which is two lies in one. Neither a village nor peaceful. The rest of the friendly side of the DMZ is patrolled by South Korea.
Graphic of Korean DMZ showing the swath across the peninsula and the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) that separates the two kilometer deep strips of land on either side. Each country has heavily mined their zone and patrols aggressively.
The UN sector of the DMZ has two guardposts, Olluette and Collier. Each week
a different Infantry platoon rotated through one of the guardposts. They'd
man the fighting positions, observation tower, and Tactical Operations Center
(TOC) until relieved a week later. The observation tower was a shack elevated
just enough to observe all approaches. Every position was wired together for
communications with equipment little different than that used in World War I.
The TOC was an underground bunker with no observation ports. It's outside
entrance was serpentine and heavily sandbagged to protect the heavy door from direct-fire weapons.
The bunker had an door that led to rooms dug deeper into the hill.
The TOC. One overcast inky-dark night the TOC at Guardpost Olluette received a
frightened call from Fighting Position 4, one of the dug-in buddy-team
positions on the perimeter, about 75 meters away.
<urgent whisper, full of stress> "TOC, TOC, we have movement right in front
of us. Jesus Christ, it's right in front of us."
An alarmed TOC duty sergeant responded "Position 4, this is TOC. What do you
see and where?"
The young soldier in Fighting Position 4 responded--too stressed to whisper, it
was almost a yell. "It's right in front of us. IT'S SOMEONE CRAWLING TOWARDS
US. FUCK, GET US SOME HELP!!!"
The TOC duty sergeant was now stressed too. He hollered behind him for no one in
particular "Someone to get the
Lieutenant!" It was the middle of the night so the LT, and it wasn't me this
time, was asleep. The duty sergeant next called the Observation Tower because
they were positioned to overwatch the fighting positions and only they could see
at night--they had a thermal sight. Only the Observation tower would be able to
see this possible NKPA (North Korean People's Army) Special
Forces type crawling towards Fighting Position 4 with a satchel charge.
The phones were all on the same wire pair so everyone could hear everything.
Calling the young soldiers in the Tower, his voice full of urgency, the TOC duty
sergeant said, "Tower, swing the Thermals over in front of Position 4. They report
someone crawling towards their position. Need confirmation."
The Tower. The youngsters in the Tower on the midnight to 0400 shift had been
struggling to stay awake. The thermal sight was supposed to be in operation all
night watching for NKPA types trying to earn their border penetration merit
badge. However, the thermal sight was often glitchy. Earlier that night they'd
fooled with the uncooperative thermal sight to the extent that their brief
familiarization training had supported, then they had given up. For the last
several hours they'd sat in absolute darkness in a little wooden shack
over-looking one of the more anxious hot spots of the world. Their sleepy
boredom was interrupted only by a few whispered conversations and hourly commo
checks. Time goes by very slowly when it's the middle of the night and you're
unhappy, bored, and tired.
A thermal sight was a heavy, clumsy affair that sat on a big tripod. It had a
little refrigerant system that could cool the viewing element down to a zillion
degrees below zero, which allowed it to sense warm things a mile or two away.
Imagine putting a dinner plate into your freezer for a couple minutes, then
pulling out the plate and using it's cold surface to sense the heat coming from
a person a mile away. When it worked, it was pretty cool, pun intended. When it didn't work
you got to carry around, often on your back, 150lbs of unreliable 1960s
technology junk.
At hearing the call from the TOC duty sergeant, the Tower youngsters jumped up
and, in the total darkness, got their hands on the thermal sight and the phone.
Knowing full well that the damned "Thermals" didn't work, they quietly said into the
phone, "Roger TOC. Stand by. We're working on it." The soldier with the
thermal sight struggled with the water and Infantry-proof "On" switch and
clicked it. To their surprise, they heard the refrigerant compressor turn on.
While they waited for the little compressor to sufficiently cool the thermal
imager, they rotated the thermal sight towards Position 4.
A thermal sight, and it's big tripod, strapped to the bed of a
HMMWV. Note that it's not some little handheld device that you can just pass to
your buddy so he can also take a look at the sapper crawling towards you. That's me
on the far left trying really hard to look bad-ass. MACE (Mobile Acquisition
Counter Penetration Element) patrol, UN Sector, Korean DMZ, Summer 1990.
Fighting Position 4. The two soldiers were straining to make out a
barely visible shape in the darkness. It made them crazy that it was so damned hard to see anything. The
heavy overcast, no moon, and blacked out guardpost made the night absolutely
black. There was no sense of distance, nor depth-of-field--it was just
blackness. They couldn't even see each other's hands to point and say "look
right there." However, the soldiers were convinced that if they strained their
eyes hard enough, they could just barely make out a shape, maybe more than one. It was so
just damned hard to tell. Their eyes struggled to make out lighter and darker zones,
and then their brain's pattern-recognition skills tried to make recognizable shapes out of what their eyes seemed to
see.
The soldiers exchanged barely audible whispers, turning each time to put their
lips close to the other's ears. Just a rapid series of sibilants, yet somehow
screaming with tension.
"There's someone laying on the ground at 11 o'clock, maybe 10 meters out. I swear,
he's looking right at us. I think I see another guy, I think he's on a knee, at
1 o'clock, same distance. OH! That guy just got down on the ground."
"I don't see anything at 11 o'clock, but I see the guy at 1 o'clock. I
think I see him moving."
"Fuck! They're inching closer. We've gotta do something."
"SHIT! The guy at 11 o'clock is pointing something at us." The soldier
ducked down a little so that the top of his helmet was exposed. Then he slowly
raised his head back up so that his eyes, once again, peeked over the parapet.
"He's fucking aiming right at us. FUCK THIS! We've got to fucking
shoot!" He pulled back his M16's charging handle and allowed it to move
forward. The bolt carrier group stripped the top round from the magazine and
pushed it towards the rifle's chamber. Just as the bolt carrier group moved all
the way forward, the bolt rotated, it's lugs locking the round into the firing
chamber. The mechanical sounds seemed very loud.
The other soldier picked up the phone and whispered. It was a shriek, yet it was
a whisper. "TOC, TOC, HE'S TAKING A BEAD ON US. WE'RE LOCKING AND LOADING.
REQUEST PERMISSION TO FIRE!!"
The TOC. The duty sergeant's stress level was now quite high. The
illuminated underground bunker was entirely dependent on reports from outside to
understand what was going on. All the duty sergeant could do was stare at walls and worry.
He was overwhelmed with the horror of watching a rat-fuck unfold for which he
was responsible, but over which he had no control and little information. In the
next couple seconds he was going to have either dead family, an
international incident, or maybe World War 3. He felt helpless and doomed by
external circumstances. The only thing that could save his ass was the LT walking through the TOC door. He set the phone down, moved to the ajar door, opened it
wide and yelled "GODDAMNIT,
GET THE LIEUTENANT." Returning to the desk he picked the phone back up.
"Position 4, Jesus Christ don't fire. Do...not....fire. Give us a moment to
confirm what you see."
"Tower, this is TOC. I fucking need to know what is in front of Position 4
right fucking now. They are about to engage something and no one can see shit."
"TOC, we're almost there. The Thermals were fucked up, but they're working now
and cooling down. A couple more seconds."
Pregnant seconds ticked by. The TOC duty sergeant heard garbled sounds on
the phone and thought "Holy shit. Could that be a struggle in the fighting
position??? He reached towards the switch that would trigger the alert
sirens for the entire DMZ security force. He was wracked with indecision. He was
paralyzed by the lack of solid information and the fear of guessing wrong."
Suddenly the Tower called. "TOC, we're on it. We're looking forward of
Position 4. We don't see anything, we don't see anything, oh wait. What's that?
It's <garbled> What the fuck is that? Hey it moved. I think <garbled>"
Stressed half out of his mind, the duty sergeant yelled into the phone "GODDAMNIT
TOWER, WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU SEE?"
"It's, ah, ah, I think it's a rabbit. It's a rabbit. <Garbled sound. Giggling maybe?> There's a little rabbit, like ah six feet in front of their fighting position. I'm not kidding. Little bunny rabbit. Just sitting there. Nothing else. Just the rabbit."