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Public Affairs denies me access to Casey, saying that the General in charge is one of those old military men who still view the press as the enemy (when Clinton spoke at Casey, reporters were not allowed to interview any soldiers except those hand-picked by the military public affairs office). The mime signed me on post with his temporary military ID.

On the base I meet up with Brandon Sexton, a 20-year-old from East Tennessee who just arrived in Korea. We walk across the post, to get to his room in the 2nd Battalion 72nd Armor barracks. I sat down with him and PFC James Lewis, a frail, slightly shy 20-year-old from Rhode Island. Sexton joined the Army three months after high school. "I never did think about anything else I could do," he says.

He tells the familiar story of his recruiting process: "He [his recruiter] asked me [if I smoked marijuana] and I said 'Yeah.' He looked at me and he asked me again and I said 'Yeah.' Then he looked at me and asked me again and I said `No,' and he wrote down 'No.' I thought that was kind of weird."

Lewis has been in country 10 and a half months and says he used to go to church all the time before he got to Korea. He's on a two year tour and is not going to reenlist "After basic I was like fuck this shit, I want to go to college," he says. He also says when he gets out he wants to do something in law enforcement. "Maybe FBI or something...I'm an adventurous person, I want to do something that's a little bit crazy like a cop in D.C. or drug trafficking patrol, SWAT team, something like that."

Lewis has 75 cents to his name because he spent about two hundred dollars the last two nights on long-times (as in "GI want long-time?") with a Korean prostitute in the Sunshine Club. He says sometimes he'll go there and sit up the whole night talking.

I ask if he's picked up any Korean language since he's been overseas. "Yeah, 'Suck harder,'" he answers.

About the rape case in Okinawa they both feel strongly that the military shouldn't turn the defendants over to the Japanese government. Lewis didn't know the victim was 12 years old. When he finds out he's disgusted. "That's pretty bad, just go get a friggin' whore," he says, unknowingly echoing the comments of Adm. Richard Macke commander of all U.S. military operations in the Pacific who was forced to take early retirement for making a strikingly similar remark.

Their daily routine consists of waking at 5:30, doing physical training, cleaning their rooms and the common areas and after breakfast going to nine o'clock formation. Afterward, they go to the motor pool where they sit inside their tanks every day, all day, doing nothing or sleeping, occasionally acting busy if someone comes by. Or they go up to their rooms and play Nintendo.

Word spread in the barracks that there was a reporter present and soon there was a steady stream of soldiers coming into the room, all extremely eager to make it known that life in the military is not what people think it is, not what they thought it was . After hearing war story after war story, it became apparent that this was less bravado than matter-of-fact resignation: Look at us. Look at how we're living. Sick, isn't it?

23-year-old Specialist Sean Pruitt is this unit's white O-Dog; before he came in the room other soldiers repeatedly said, "You gotta' meet Pruitt." Pruitt said his friend told him to join infantry because it was hard-core and you get the most respect . He says when he joined, "I had a GI Joe dream; ground poundin', runnin' around, fucken blowin' shit up - - but we stay in that fucken motor pool, we just sweep and do details."

Pruitt joined the Army at 20, after he spent two years after high school "Drinking, smoking and getting in trouble." He said he was on the streets, staying with friends and had to do something with his life. He was in the Marines delayed entry program where he got waivers for LSD use, but while he was waiting to ship out, he told the recruiter he experimented with crack cocaine and they rejected him. He then joined the Army. He said he told the recruiter about the Marines incident, but the recruiter told him not to mention it.

"This place is a shithole," Pruitt says. "You get that many people over here angry, fucked up, feed them some alcohol, people are bound to fight. Plus you got to live with these people, smell their shit. I mean you see the same people every day."

Pruitt's received one summarized Article 15. "14 bottles of liquor and two cases of beer between about four people in a day," is how he explains it. "We hit blackout, we were just fucking going crazy in here, trying to kill Lewis, punching windows out. This guy grabbed a knife and said he was going to cut this dude's tonsils out," he says.

Lewis says Pruitt and another soldier came into his barracks room. Pruitt hit him in the head a few times and the other soldier slammed his head into a wall locker. The room laughs and Lewis manages an embarrassed little laugh along with them.

Pruitt continues, "I roped this guy the other night...this punk who lives across the hall. I tried to pull his fucken head off." "He almost killed him," Private Michael Waldron says, "I thought he was gonna' break his fucken neck" and adds that a number of people had to come in and pull Pruitt off, to stop him from choking the other soldier. "I was like, 'Y'all didn't see shit, nothing happened,'" Pruitt says and neither of the incidents were reported.

 

The violence isn't limited to Korea.

Sexton describes a recruit in basic training who was suspected of being gay and was given what's called a blanket party. "He was kind of tubby and always lagging behind on runs, couldn't do his work right...Drill Sergeants would call him fat ass and all kinds of shit," he says. "He got pretty messed up. They shoved a pillow on his head and they just went to punchin' on him," Sexton says.

The next morning the soldier went on sick call and two weeks later he packed his belongings and left the Army. Waldron, 23 years old, joined the Army because "When I got out of high school jobs sucked." He served for two years and extended for six months because of the Gulf War. He got out, joined the National Guard, got married and lived in a trailer in Georgia where he was working in construction, roofing, aluminum siding. He got divorced from his wife, his car died, he failed the police officer test, had to move back with his parents and after being out of active duty for two years, reenlisted.

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