SCARWAF/Foreman SCARWAF In Every War, There Seems To Be At Least One Really Oddball, Bastard, Off-the-wall Unit. During The Korean Conflict, It Was An Outfit Called SCARWAF. Jim Foreman Copyright © 1988 SCARWAF/Foreman SCARWAF is a bizarre, tongue-in-cheek history of the 1903rd Engineer Aviation Battalion, SCARWAF; as being told some thirty-five years after the fact to a grandson, who had asked, "What did you do in the war, Grandpa?" SCARWAF is an acronym which means "Special Category Army Reassigned With the Air Force", or in plain language, a bastard, oddball unit made up of misfits. It is a story about Billy Bob Boomer, a professional rodeo cowboy; Jack "Red" Ryder, a rattlesnake hunter; Lester Price, who repaired traffic signals; Bobby Ward, a dogwood salesman; artist, Arthur Arthur Arthur and Obert Filpot, the most repulsive person in Texas. After being drafted, they were thrown together because the army, having no standard classification for their unusual civilian occupations, dumped them into a catch-all heading of Special Category. Knowing of no other use for such people, they were shipped off to an unknown unit which happened to also be designated as Special Category. Under the leadership of a National Guard unit from Chicago, which was made up for the most part by members of a street gang known as the Roaches, they finally realized that if they expected to survive should they find themselves in combat, they had better take charge of their own training. This story takes its protagonists from one fiasco to another as they stumble from the insanity of induction, through basic training and finally to Korea where they had to beg, borrow or steal nearly everything that they needed in order to accomplish their mission of building airstrips. Underlying the ribald, profane, vulgar and sometimes irreverent humor is a tale about men who were civilians trapped in army uniforms. This is the story of a few men who survived in the Army by dodging the bullet, rather than catching it. There are no heroes in SCARWAF--only survivors. Their only aim was to get the job done, get out of the army and resume their private lives. 1 SCARWAF/Foreman Chapter 1 CHAPTER ONE Gory, gory what a helluva way to die Gory, gory what a helluva way to die, and he ain't gonna jump no more. Gory, Gory, what a helluva way to die, I'd heard that song before. A few years ago, I had the misfortune of trying to get a night's sleep in the same hotel where the 82nd Airborne was having one of their annual reunions. They staggered up and down the halls most of the night, bellowing that song to the tops of their voices before throwing up on the floor and passing out in a drunken stupor. This time, it was coming from a much different source than those inebriated revelers; it was my ten year old grandson who was singing it. Jason had come to stay with us for a couple weeks, but since our neighborhood was made up of mostly retired people like myself and no young families with kids, he was having to more or less entertain himself. I walked around the house to where he was running a toy truck over little piles of sand. "Where in the world did you ever hear a song like that?" I asked. "Grandpa Jack went away to a reunion with the guys that he was in the army with and came back home singing it," he replied. "He was a paratrooper and jumped out of airplanes with a parachute and killed lots of Germans. Grandpa Chuck goes to reunions too. He was on a battleship and shot down lots of Jap airplanes with an Ack-Ack gun." I had long realized that when it came to my daughter's kids, I was outnumbered by a ratio of two to one in the grandfather department. She married a man whose parents had divorced and remarried, giving her children two grandfathers on their dad's side but only one on hers. "What's a reunion?" "What's an Ack-Ack gun?" "What did you do in the war, Grandpa Jim?" came his questions in rapid-fire order. This kid had the unique ability of being able to ask questions three at a time. "Well, I wasn't in the same war that your other two grandpas served in," I replied. "How come you weren't in that war?" "Do you get to go to reunions, sing songs, get drunk and throw water balloons at people?" "What's a whoopee cushion?" 2 SCARWAF/Foreman Chapter 1 His other grandfathers must come home with some mighty tall tales about their exploits at reunions with their old buddies. To my knowledge, my old unit has never had a reunion, and probably never will have one if our luck holds out. "During World War Two, the one in which your other grandfathers served, they drafted men according to when they were born. The last month and year that they drafted was October, 1928, the month before I was born. Had the war gone on any longer, I would probably have been drafted to serve in it. I was in the Korean War, or Police Action as they liked to call it, and served in an organization known as SCARWAF." I answered. "What's a Scarwaf?" "What was the Korean war?" "Grandpa Jack killed all the Germans and Grandpa Chuck shot down all the Japs, so why did you join up to fight in another war?" "Actually, I didn't join up, I was drafted. Being in the army was the last place that I expected or wanted to be. The best that I can figure is that they decided to have the Korean war to get even with those of us who were born a year or so too late to get drafted into what they call the big war. SCARWAF is an acronym which means Special Category Army Reassigned With Air Force." "Special category sounds real important. What did you do in it, were you a spy or something?" "What's an acronym?" "Were you a General?" Now I was getting somewhere with my grandson. Neither of his other grandfathers were in any kind of an organization which had special in its name and he thought that I might have been a General or something. I sat down beside him, "Special Category means that the Air Force had a special need for airstrips to be built in Korea so that they could fly their airplanes there. They didn't have anyone who could build airstrips, so after the Army drafted us, they sort of loaned us to the Air Force to build runways." "Was I born when you went off to the war?" "How old was Mama?" "Was that in the olden days?" "I suppose that you could call them the olden days because your mother wasn't born then either. In fact, I hadn't even met your grandmother when I was in the war. The Korean war happened many years ago, in 1950." "1950 had been a good year for me, even a great one by some standards, at least up to that point. I now owned my own crop spraying business and during the summer just ended; I had worked my way as an migrant crop sprayer all the way from the Mission Valley of Texas northward to the Canadian border. The spraying season had finally ended and I was back at home with both the airplane and truck paid for and money in my pocket. One of the first things that I did after returning was to buy myself something which I had always wanted: a brand new convertible. It was a 1950 Dodge Wayfarer sport roadster fitted with the optional, 145 horsepower Chrysler engine. Although that combination made the little roadster one of the hottest stock cars around, I souped it up even more by installing a high compression head, dual racing carburetors and glasspack mufflers. Not only could such a car pick up speed at an alarming rate, it could also pick up far more girls than I could possibly keep entertained. I 3 SCARWAF/Foreman Chapter 1 spent next few weeks riding around in my new car with the top down and my right arm encircling some cute little thing who snuggled close against me with her hair flowing in the breeze. Football season was in full swing and the Stinnett team was doing something which it had been unable to accomplish during any of the twelve years that I had spent in those hallowed halls; it was actually winning games. A winning team does certain things for a small town; the most notable is to bring out the townspeople to watch. I even began to attend the games, partly to watch the home team trounce their opponents but mostly because it was a great place to show off my new car and pick up girls. Her name was Janet Winchester. She was now a senior, homecoming queen and the head cheerleader. She had long blonde hair, long blonde legs and a long blonde ass. It had been at least four years since I had seen Janet and My Oh My what those four years had done for her. The last time that I saw her, she was a shy little thing with knobby knees, buck teeth and a face full of freckles but she was now the most popular and prettiest girl in school.