About once a year, I make a trip out to Camp Edwards. It’s not far. I figured with Andrew here, it was as good a time as any to go look at it.
I was stationed at Camp Edwards, 296th Forward Support Battalion, Bravo Company, 2nd Infantry Division, in 1991. Camp Edwards no longer exists – the US Army closed it in the late 90’s. A few years back, when I went there, the buildings were still there but abandoned, but the last few times I’ve gone, it’s just a vacant lot with a fence around it.
From a block from my house, we got on the #600 bus and that dropped us right at the “front gate” of Camp Edwards, after a wending half-hour bus ride through Gyoha and Geumchon (neither of which really existed in 1991). This is the front gate, below. The bridge structure is the railroad track, now elevated. In 1991 it was at grade level.
We walked along the fence and I pointed out where the various features of Camp Edwards were located: the dining hall, the barracks, HQ, the warehouse, and the motor pool. Here is a picture of where the motor pool building was – I remember that spindly tall white-barked tree (birch?) that’s kind of in the right of center of the photo, as being in the motor pool’s “front yard.”
I spontaneously decided that I was feeling healthy enough to try to walk around Camp Edwards. I haven’t ever tried this. I’m sure we circumnavigated the camp at various times on PT exercises and activities back when I was stationed there, including things like our periodic off-post runs. But certainly I’d never tried it since.
So we set off northward down a country lane.
The country lane led to a farm.
And it led through some woods.
And we came to another farm.
And we saw a Korean farmer in his field.
Then we got a little bit lost in the woods. Although we ran out of road, we didn’t run out of abandoned chairs.
After tromping through the brush a bit, I decided I wasn’t up to cross-country hiking, so we went back along the road, and around a small hill and came to a gravesite (which abound in rural Korea).
We came to an area that I recognized, through 22 years of mental haze, as being the “back” of Camp Edwards. There was a small concrete wall with old machine-gun emplacements, and this gateway, where Andrew posed with his umbrella (it was raining at this point, though not hard).
We walked along the road, back south, now, having gotten at least halfway around Camp Edwards moving counterclockwise.
We came to giant “tank trap” of impressive engineering and dimensions.
I saluted Andrew from inside the tank trap.
Then we walked up the road and came to a new development called PalmSprings (팜스프링).
We passed a Korean mini-mall with the parking in front, American-style. This is sufficiently rare in my experience, in Korea, to be notable, so I took a picture. I believe this is all on land that was formerly part of Camp Edwards.
Then we walked to Geumchon station and took the train back to Ilsan. In Ilsan, I wanted to wait for a package that was being delivered at KarmaPlus – even though KarmaPlus was closed due to the summer break.
So we stopped and had a very, very decadant lunch at “Burger Sharp,” a restaurant right next door the KarmaPlus building, that’s very popular with the students.
I swear, in 5 years of living in Ilsan and working in this Hugok neighborhood, I have only eaten at this place once or twice. But I figured, what the hey? I’m living somewhat free-and-loose with respect to my normal strictures, lately.
Then, due to a communication error, we waited for more than an hour for a package that was already there waiting for me. Ah well. I need to improve my Korean so I understand when they tell me these things.
Then we came home.
