Kimchee Days, Or, Stoned-Cold Warriors

Millions of men served in the Army during the Cold War-many inside major American cities-in ARADCOM (Army Air Defense Command). Until recently, one of the Army's best kept secrets was that the men in the Nike-Hercules system were in charge of nuclear missiles ready to knock down fleets of Soviet planes or ICBMs should they attempt to attack the U.S. To those inside ARADCOM, though, the even better-kept secret was the one about duty in Korea-a country where anything went and where the officers and senior NCOs shut themselves away to wait for their 13 months to be over, leaving the business of running nuclear facilities to the lower enlisted men. You could almost say that duty in Korea was duty in a place where the inmates were running the asylum. Kimchee Days is about life in a Nike-Hercules battery near Inchon in the early 1970s, a part of the Korean Air Defense Artillery-or the ADA, which the men usually called "A Different Army." In its way, the book embraces the spirit of the 1970s, along with the lives, loves-and many other things-that came with that time. Welcome to the asylum.