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Let’s Face It, Sometimes There Is One Man Who Should Be Left Behind
Like many other Americans, I’ve been following the strange (with a factor of 10) odyssey of Army Private Travis King. In case you’re not familiar with that name, this is the young man who voluntarily left his unit and ran to the benevolent arms of the North Koreans.
It seemed to me that there were many pieces to this puzzle (as there usually are) but, typically, the problem is putting those pieces together. So far, this is what I know.
On Tuesday, July 18, Pvt. King left his tour group at Panmunjom (the Korean DMZ) and ran laughing (“manically” as some of the startled tourists called it) directly toward a startled North Korean guard. Understandably, he was swiftly taken into custody and, as of today, the North Koreans will only say he is a prisoner.
Working my way backward, I saw that Pvt. King had been in the Army for about 2-1/2 years and was still an E-2. That fact set off red flags galore; right away, I could see this young man was a “dud,” “bolo,” or any one of the terms we used in the Army for those who simply couldn’t “get with the program.”
As it turned out, King had just been released from a South Korean prison after serving 47 days for a drunken altercation with locals. This was on the heels of an incident occurring last year when King was AWOL from his daily formation and, when reached away from the base, told his CO that “he refused to return to his post or America.” Sounds like a real Super Trooper to me.
To me, this is where it gets really puzzling. I looked up his MOS and saw that he was a Cavalry Scout, a job that didn’t really fit with his attitude. Based on my own Army experience (admittedly, over 50 years ago), the Scouts were sent out in front of the main formation to perform reconnaissance on such things as passable roads and bridges, possible enemy formations, and a number of other things. It was definitely not for the faint of heart. To top it off, these recon folks were required to be experts in land navigation and map reading. Did King really have all those job skills? For that matter, how did he ever complete Basic Combat Training?
But my questions were far from finished. According to what I have learned, Pvt. King had been informed that he was going to face a “pending administrative separation action for foreign conviction” upon his return to the United States. After a one-week “observation” (following his release from the South Korean jail), he processed out from his previous unit and was escorted (by two “officials”) to a civilian airport and was allowed to proceed unaccompanied to the terminal. According to the same “officials,” there was no reason to suspect he would fail to board his flight. Huh?
This is what should have happened: He should have been placed in irons and taken to a military base (probably Osan AB) by two MPs. He then should have been returned to his home base, Ft. Bliss, TX, to face court martial for his actions and shipped to Ft. Leavenworth, KS, for a few years to ponder his actions.
To me, it seems as if the ball was dropped by several sets of hands. Assuming that he really did graduate from BCT and AIT with no problems, did he believe that everything was going to be roses from there? Did he not understand that at each juncture of his Army career, he would be required to prove his fitness all over again? Where were his Training NCOs, First Shirts, and other assorted personnel who were supposed to be overseeing his development as a Soldier? When Pvt. King again and again proved his unfitness as a Soldier, why wasn’t he cashiered earlier? And, finally, why was this dud trusted to simply fly back to CONUS on his own?
So far, the Army isn’t releasing much information. I suspect that I am not the first to be asking all these questions. Perhaps the Army is attempting to cover their butts as they usually do. Maybe we will get the entire picture in a few days, months, or years.
As of today, it seems all that is left is his anguished family, wondering what happened and if they will ever see him again. His uncle was quoted today as saying, “When he went to the Army to fight for America, America should fight for him, fight for him to come home.” Considerable naivete perhaps, but I don’t doubt it’s genuine.
As for me, I could not possibly care less. The Army accepted him. They refused to see that they had a problem on their hands. They continually passed the problem on to others.
Someone needs to be brought to account for this situation. I don’t know who it will be. I don’t care.
Published in General
Yeah, I commented the day it happened, if that’s where he wanted to go, leave him there.
How old is he? Schizophrenia often appears in late adolescence and early 20s.
Avoiding a possible short jail sentence by opting for a lifetime of imprisonment in North Korea is dumb. He chose poorly.
Its the soft tyranny of low expectations.
Cheaper.
I’m just gonna dig down real hard and avoid substantial comment until he’s on US soil. Or maybe 8th Army soil. And then I expect I’ll have more to say.
Nah. There are military transports crossing the Pacific at least several times per week. Commercial is a heck of a lot more expensive.
Not once the USAF finishes billing you for it.
I am very confident that this Oblama, Xiden administration will trade this deserter for a number of high value terrorists in our possession.
Are people without tickets allowed to go to the terminal? Or are the rules in S Korea different?
SOFA provisions change things.
Couldn’t we trade Kamala for him? Or just give them Kamala as a bad will offering?
Flick, he’s 23 years old; which, to me, is plenty of time to push through any personal problems.
I suppose one of my reasons for this OP is that this kid was/is completely unfit for life in the military and that the new DEI policies made it extremely hard for the Army to give him his walking papers. I purposely left out his picture (he’s black) because I wanted people to look at the Army instead of this kid.
There are plenty (and I mean plenty) of highly qualified black folks serving in today’s Army. I would have thought that at least one in this kid’s unit would have taken him aside and explained the facts of life.
The fact that it didn’t happen tells me that his own unit gave up on him and left him to his own devices which proved to be extremely destructive.
Bottom line: Heads should roll (or at least lose stripes) over this situation.
Which was one of my points. If he had been on a military flight, he would be in CONUS today.
Was it reasonable to expect he might defect to the Norks? Maybe go AWOL to try to evade military justice at some point–he was not facing a long sentence. But even if a capital crime charge were pending, would North Korea be high on the list of paths of escape? Should they really have seen that coming?
They should have maintained control of him while he was in a foreign country — which had just convicted him of a crime, and with which we would like to maintain friendly relations. This is a big foul-up, letting him go anywhere without credible shenanigan deterrent. I don’t know if the Army can cuff a guy for “accountability” purposes, but if not, then you send two fast guys and two thick guys with him. He had already committed crimes against the host nation, so his behavior was a known problem.
They didn’t have to guess what the problem was going to be — they needed to prevent problems.
Good questions OB. In my experience, good cohesive units (especially good combat units; these folks were right up close and personal with the DMZ) are very wired in to one of their own. He had plenty of folks who should have been looking out for him. That remark he made to his C.O., that he did not ever wish to return to America, should have made it clear to his entire chain of command that he should have been in custody until he was in his stateside unit (Ft Bliss, TX).
In general I’m of the opinion that there is no bad labor, just bad management. There are spectacular exceptions, ut as a rule, hold management to account for the behavior of labor, and things get better.
I do not doubt that several people tried to drum some sense into this crackhead’s skull (seriously, look at the picture of this guy). Some people, you just can not reach. By then management should be able to show (for dear life) an unambiguous record of trying to help the guy to see the light. This way, the astute manager may avoid having to feel the heat.
NOTE on terms: I actually speak in terms of “khakis and blueshirts”, where khakis in the Navy refers to E-7 and up. For translation to air force and civilian folks (but I repeat myself), I substitute “management and labor”
Good comments BDB; all true. However, my main questions remain; why (since he was AWOL once) was he turned loose on the South Korean populace to promptly run amok again? This kid was becoming an increasingly bad apple. Did the new DEI regs prevent the Army from returning him to civilian life?
Because they are missing recruiting targets thanks to DIE, you really have to screw up to get separated from the service. Not only can we look forward to an army too small to do all its responsibilities, it will increasingly be filled with nitwits.
It might be that he was, at one time, hoping to get transitioned. Kid gloves from that point on.
But of course North Korea will help him with that, no problem.
I’d say that Pvt King cleared that “screw up” threshold in street shoes.
I think we largely agree. I’m looking at the specific failure to contain in transit.
Let’s hope he wasn’t granted anything above the usual top-secret clearance that the junior enlisted receive.
I’d be VERY surprised to learn that Pvt King had any access to classified information (such as Jack Teixeira).
That being said, maybe I shouldn’t speculate too much on the subject of classified material. In today’s modern Army, who knows?
It seems this is common in our armed services today.
He had to have had some type of background check. I would be really interested in seeing what it said. While I was still doing that kind of work (background investigations), some agencies began not paying much attention to what we found.
Probably some legalese in the regs said you had to do the background investigations, but not that anyone else had to follow them.
The final decision lies with the agency, not the investigators.
How many North Korean enlisted would escape to the south if they didn’t risk a high percentage of getting shot in the process? My assumption is that it is a high number.
Contrast that with this knucklehead, who I’m hoping represents a small percentage of the military, one who would willingly run to North Korea, and I’m still OK with living in the West.
You can’t always weed out the knuckleheads. Sometimes you get what you get, and you have to manage with the people you’ve got. Once in a while, this kind of thing will happen – but as others have said, he was a known issue, and needed more oversight, all the way back to the States. That should have been an easy decision to make, and get done.