Buck Matthews

Dogpatch Days

Recollections of a Non-Combatant in the Combat Zone

Down Home

I arrived at K-10 airbase in Korea early in December of 1951, trained as a 29351 Ground Radio Operator, assigned to the 18th Communications Squadron, which was attached to the 18th Fighter Bomber Wing, 5th Air Force.

The war was on and I was in the combat zone, but except for the sight and sound of heavily armed F-51 Mustangs taking off for points north, it didn’t seem much like it.

K-10 was a small city of prefab buildings and gravel roads and a decidedly non-military atmosphere.

Montage of “Dogpatch art” used by 18th Wing components to identify their buildings and services. The originator, famed cartoonist Al Capp, fully approved the unusual compliment.

On Sunday, 2 December 1951, I wrote home: “This base is called ‘Dogpatch’ and the various buildings have fancy signs painted on them with pictures of characters from ‘L’il Abner. The PX is called the Dogpatch General Store and has a picture of Pappy Yokum on it. The base is situated on the floor of an amphitheater of high, rugged mountains and the fourth side is right on the shore of a large bay off of the Sea of Japan. The scenery is rough but beautiful and it’ll sure make fine picture-taking this year.”

Everything I’d been taught about discipline and respect for the upper ranks seemed to be missing at K-10.

Lower-grade officers and enlisted personnel, both casually dressed, passed each other with little more than a nod of recognition. Salutes seemed appropriate only when encountering senior command officers, usually above bird colonel, and then only if they were in full uniform. The only people with creased pants and shirt fronts were APs.

“Sir” was just verbal punctuation. That casual atmosphere, which also prevailed at K-46 for as long as I was there, was probably a remnant of K-10’s frontline status only a year earlier, when American and ROK forces had been chased inside the Pusan Perimeter by the people we came to call “Gooks.”

Veteran airmen were still psychologically prepared to grab their mess gear and get the hell out of Dogpatch.

“I’m living in a nice, cozy, warm Quonset Hut as snug as a bug in a rug. I’m right by a stove and I have three blankets and a sleeping bag, so I won’t freeze to death. I only have to walk one block to work and the latrine (a five-holer) is right across the road from where I live. The mess hall is only a half-block away and the food is excellent. I never ate this good in the States……I am happy and very much satisfied with everything. There’s nothing for you to worry about. I’m two hundred fifty miles south of the battleground.”

In addition to Morse code, my training had taught me the three basic Air Force tenets:

1 – The Air Force takes care of its own.

2 - If it moves, salute it. If it doesn’t move, pick it up. If you can’t pick it up, paint it.

3 – Illegitimus non carborundum (Don’t let the bastards grind you down.)

By the time I staged through K-10 on my way home ten months later, the list began with Number 2. The base had gone Stateside. Flowers were everywhere and chickenshit was ankle deep. Whatever the outcome at Panmunjom, we knew then we were winning the “Police Action.”

© Copyright 2008 Buck Matthews. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes without permission in writing from the author. Used with permission by BelleAire Press as a tribute to those American servicemen and women who served during the Korean War.