On Being Deployed as a UN Peacekeeper and South Korean Military Service
Sixteen years in the U.S. Sixteen. Those years playing in the sun of Texas. Hating the humidity of Florida. Being lost in America as every immigrant is lost, just that my story started in Denton — that town that claims to be part of a triangle that includes Dallas. Those years in Texas were a blur for other reasons than a clash of culture. Because other things in life were more complicated than the kids making squinty eyes at me in the hallways.
But life started in the wet marshes of pubescence of Tallahassee. The years too close to describe and too easy to get others blushing. While we all come from different places what else can that time be than an august institution more so than childhood.
Princeton, as advertised. Intellectual and academic. Gothic. Northeastern Ivy League get-your-fix of whatever you need whether it be parties or books or things too often spoken about to still have any mystique.
Yet I find myself in the Republic of Korean Battalion, in the Lebanon heat wearing a blue helmet. I am here to keep the peace but the journey here has been anything but peaceful.
Sixteen years in the U.S. and at my homecoming in South Korea there is a man yelling in my face. What did he say? I don’t know, I can’t understand half of it as I can’t understand half of what is happening during basic training. All I know is that I’ve got too much pride to punch him in the face. Too easy a way out. Be labeled the deviant from abroad and that’s all I’ll be for the next two years.
Three minutes to take a shit. Five for a shower. I couldn’t care less about the 25 km marches or crawling in the mud. Three minutes to take a shit. Five for a shower.
I get placed to my base in Seoul. During the day I’m smiling, laughing, trying to not get others worried. But every single morning, at 6:30AM, I wake up, panicking. Every single morning it takes me around 30 seconds to figure out what’s going on. I am still here. I will be here for weeks and weeks and weeks. One deep breath and time to smile again.
I want some deeper meaning to all of this. So I apply to be deployed to the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. But it isn’t like some rational decision making process, weighing pros and cons as if the higher chance of death can be offset by the preponderance of shawarma. For the first time I understand what US army people mean by answering the call of duty. You just feel like you want to do it. I’m not naive or idealistic, I studied international relations and I hate everything. UN peacekeeping soldiers are not necessarily heroes. I just want to do it.
And I sit here, looking at the sliver of the Mediterranean Sea I can see from my base in Lebanon, wondering what I have lost before wondering what I have gained. It’s been eleven months since the last time I’ve seen my girlfriend and my heart aches more and more every day. Whatever story the army is, it is definitely not a love story. My sister is alone in the states, succeeding, keeping me going. I think about what I could have been doing if I wasn’t here but it doesn’t matter to me that much anymore.
Cormac McCarthy states “whether a man’s life was writ in a book someplace or whether it took its form day by day was one and the same for it had but one reality and that was the living of it.” It’s a bold statement on determinism and free will. It has a nice application — whether your life is dictated by fate or your strength of will is not important. You don’t know. You just live.
And that’s what I’ve seen from the enlisted men in the Korean army. There’s all this stuff going on: nationalism, politics, duty, discipline, pain, loss, camaraderie. They might be in the army because it’s mandatory, because of patriotism, because of something. They are under tremendous stress and away from their families. Often they lose the only love they have known so far. Usually I don’t know what’s going on with them. All I can see is that they carry on.
One deep breath and time to smile again. Except I am no longer panicking.