1/72 Armor, Cp Rose to Cp Casey

I am looking for anyone that knows what month/year the 1st/72nd Armor moved from Camp Rose to Camp Casey.

cannot remember the date, but did drive my tank that night to camp casey sgt newton was tank commander 1/72 armor

Kool.... Do you happen to have any pictures of the 1/72 area at Casey, either the area where the Quonset huts were, or the Motor Pool are? Would like to add them to the web page.

Hello WD4NGB and Mr. Twitty!

The lead tank of A Co/1st Bn/ 72nd Armor moved out of the back gate at Rose at midnight 15 February 1971 with CO Cpt Dale W. Stewart in the TC position. He put me in the loaders' hatch to help with commo and navigation. I don't remember our driver. We traveled during the midnight to 4:00 a.m. curfew to avoid taffic, and most of the way stayed in creek beds to avoid damaging roads and bridges. It was bitter (Korea) cold and after the first mile or our M-60 broke though ice and water splashed on the 'scope, freezing it shut instantly and blinding the driver completely. Stewart had to steer the tank with voice commands to the blind driver all the way to Casey.

Sgt. Newton mentioned by then PFC Twitty was Staff Sergeant Charles Newton, an experienced NCO and a good man who kept an eye on me (an ignorant shake 'n bake). Cpt. Stewart is now retired bird Col. Stewart who lives in E-town , Ky. I tracked him down on the internet last year, and we have gone out to eat and talk a couple of times.

Twitty I also remember well, another good soldier. I still have a set of hostile fire orders with Twitty's name on them.

Our 1st was Francis Scott who wore a 2ID patch on each shoulder.

This stuff is now 40 years ago, but much of it seems like yesterday.

On another note, the agent orange info on the home page here is very important. Twitty and I are now included. And, if you are an AO soldier, new onset diabetes and ischemic heart disease are service connected - regardless of when the condition first appeared. VA approved my claim just a few months back. And the real benefit is not the little bit of money you get, but the access to VA health care.

73's
Walter Olin
K4NVQ
once Staff Sergeant Olin

Walter,
Very nice to read your post with the details of the move from Cp Rose to Cp Casey.
I was a Truck Driver in the 17th Transportation Bn in 1960-61, and was located on Cp Casey where you guys moved into in 71. Dragon Valley was called Happy Valley when I was there. It was almost like a separate camp back then. We didn't have the short cut to the Motor Pool, or the other one called Stairway to Heave now. We had to go to the EM Club in the Med Bn area, and to go to the Theater we had to go out the of the valley, over the bridge, and way past the motor pool. They have all that stuff, plus a small PX and Snack Bar in Dragon Valley now. Did you check out the barracks they have now? Running water and real heat and AC .

Happy Valley/Dragon Valley, old days
http://www.qsl.net/wd4ngb/17thpics.htm

The area now.
http://www.qsl.net/wd4ngb/17thhappyvalley.htm

The Motor Pool area now.
http://www.qsl.net/wd4ngb/17thpics4.htm

Hello Bruce,

Thanks for the come back. (My brother is also Bruce, W4FBB). Lot of things to talk about but I have a question or two for the readers about Camp Rose.

First, who was it named after - I've not been able to find a candidate in the KIA/MIA
lists from the war.

And when was it established and who (what units) occupied that site over time? I know that the Cav was there till 1965 (with the same ratty M-48s which were there when I got there), and that the little village across the road, Chun Chil Mal, was also called "Six Tank" because the Sixth Tank Battalion was there during the war. (The village is no more from Google's aerials).

I have read accounts from marines who described a Camp Rose as a staging area generally in the Munsan area in the early '50's during the war. On another web site run by a bunch of Cav guys there was a discussion about a possible second Camp Rose north of the Imjin between Libby and Freedom bridges. I went back and forth on those roads several times in 1970-71 and never saw anything that looked like an old compound, but I wasn't looking for one either.

You can still see the fence line for Rose on Google, I think the ROKs took it over. The water tank, bn hq building, the concrete tank pads, the NCO club building and the main gate house are still visible. The mud road has been paved!

I was only at Casey a short time, and spent most of my free time in Seoul. My wife came over and I went "home" on the weekends. Apparently you and I crossed paths at least for a while. After Freedom Bridge, the Imjin, and running armor along the south boundary, Casey was kind of dull.

The Casey pictures were nice.

If you ever come to Louisville, give me a yell and we can go get Col. Stewart and have some cold ones (not OB). He was in RVN in '68 prior to his tour in Korea in 70-71, and you all would have some common ground.

73s
Olin

I was stationed at Camp Rose Jan 1968 to Jan 1969. Just recently learned that the 1/72 Armor was move to Camp Casey in 1971. When did they trade in our old M48 Tanks for M60's?

Hello JAM,

We got new M-60's in the fall of 1970, about October. The M-48's were getting pretty ratty, we did well to get 60% out the back gate on a red alert. Shortly before the change over, one of the 48's caught fire when a gas line broke, and burned with a full load. Heckuva a fire, no one was hurt. Every round blew.

The old tanks were loaded onto flat cars at Munsan and hauled to ASCOM behind an old oil burning steam engine. Took two days. I got to pull security on the train trip.

I think the '48's were refurbished and turned over to the ROKs, I saw some ROK '48's on TV several years after I got home.

The brand new M60's were nice.

Walter Olin

I was in Camp Casey in the middle of the 80's. Right after I left they put concrete in the motor pool and built new tank bays. I think they were bringing in the M1's as well.

I liked the M-60A3's and they were still pretty nice even after 15 years of use. We didn't have many break-downs and I can't remember any tank missing a tank table because it was broken. But the ROK armor still had some M-48's.

Our tank bays were literally falling down. We once started to lift a jeep engine with a hoist hanging from the bay main beam and the building started to creek horribly enough that we stopped. Our SFC Williams (a great man. I wonder what he's doing these days) called someone and they didn't fix the building, but braced it with poles because they could see it was leaning. I'm sure they new the knew tank bays were being built within the year or so.

I was at Camp Rose 69' 70' but left before the new M60's came. Company A 1st Platoon under Capt. Cass. Didn't know that they moved to Casey.