Today's game is "Worst Job You've Ever Had."

[jmowreader]

18. VD NCO in Korea

This job had two parts.

The first was the easy one: go to the medical clinic every week on Thursday, pick up a report on all the soldiers in the unit who'd been treated for VD over the past week, and draw an issue of condoms to put on the barracks sergeant's desk in case anyone wanted any. Then you'd take the VD report to the company commander.

The bad part is if anyone actually caught VD. The primary source of VD among US Forces Korea soldiers in 1984-85 was, as you'd expect, prostitutes. If a guy came down with the shit, he would have to report to the unit VD NCO. You would then go to the motor pool and get a Korean soldier (they were called KATUSAs - Korean Augmentation to the United States Army), then go to the part of town where the brothels were. You then conducted a search for the woman who infected your troop. When you found her, you got the KATUSA to confiscate her health card and get her personal information. Before the Olympics destroyed the Real Korea, prostitution was a licensed trade, and part of the license was to go to the doctor once a week for a physical. IIRC they were tested for gonorrhea weekly, syphilis and herpes monthly. If she didn't have her card, she couldn't work. So you'd wander all over whatever district this asshole claims to have caught VD in, wait till he points out a woman (who, in all likelihood, wasn't the right one) and deprive her of her ability to earn a living for at least a week. Then you'd turn the information in to the neighborhood police box. And I think you know the downside of this: because there were no repercussions for blaming the wrong woman for your present condition, some guys who had received less-than-stellar service would go get the clap on purpose so they could go downtown and claim the women they didn't like had done it.

Here's the worst one: I had a boneheaded moran decide to go to the Turkey Farm in Dongduchon. This place was off limits because it had the highest VD rate in the entire world, but this guy went anyway - and had sex without a rubber. Let's just say he got his money's worth. He also got a field grade Article 15 for violating a direct order. He got busted from PFC to no-stripe private, lost two weeks' pay, got a month's restriction to quarters, and the colonel read a sheet of paper he wanted me to have put in the guy's medical records ordering the Medical Corps to cut his dick off if he ever comes down with VD again. After the guy left the colonel's office I told the colonel (who eventually retired as a three-star - great guy, really weird sense of humor) we couldn't order the medics to cut off someone's dick. "I know that, but he doesn't."