They didn't have these "special comfort women units" then, but the Army almost encouraged you to partake in the services of prostitutes.
On my very first day in Korea, I had flown into Kimpo Airport, which is now called "Gimpo." We got picked up on a bus driven by a Korean man who...well, drove like a Korean. (How do Koreans drive? You know those lines they paint on streets? Koreans view them as a mild suggestion.) After a thoroughly harrowing drive we arrived at the Turtle Farm on Camp Coiner and were first given a Threat Briefing. This had three parts.
The first part was to tell us about the North Koreans.
The second part was a VD briefing.
And then they sent all the women in the room to the snack bar and told us the prices for the various sexual services you could purchase outside of every US compound in the country. They even gave us directions to the red light district in Seoul. And of course, just as soon as the briefing ended four or five of our number went right there. Don't look at me, man; in the entire time I was there I didn't buy sex even once.
I could tell you some harrowing stories about my time as a company VD NCO, but perhaps this isn't the right time for that.
(What is a turtle farm? I CAN tell you about that. The Replacement Detachment in Seoul is, or at least WAS - the current turtle farm is in Pyongtaek - one office building and a barracks that we lived in while waiting to go to our units. The office building has two doors. One is marked "inprocessing" and the other "outprocessing." Each of the outlying units had its own building that you would go to if you were not going to be serving in Seoul, and some of them were...interesting; the one that belonged to 2nd Infantry Division had a sign next to the door that read "it is not our job to get you out of your assignment to the 2nd D; it is our job to process you into the 2nd D." Okay. So the main building, the one everyone had to go to and where we all learned how much it was going to cost you to buy sex, had two doors. One is marked Inprocessing and it's where you go when you first arrive. The other is marked Outprocessing and it's where you go on your way to Fort Hood. The two doors are less than 100 feet apart and it takes you a full year to go from one door to the other. The only thing on earth that moves that slowly is a turtle.)
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