M*L*B*U: Full Monty in Korea

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

Bob Ringma’s title is a spoof on M*A*S*H (Mobile Army Surgical
Hospital), a term popularized by a movie and television sitcom. The
M*L*B*U (Mobile Laundry and Bath Unit) was responsible for allowing the
soldiers to take showers and wash their clothes. Ringma decided that
this vital necessity to Canadian combat forces during the Korean War
merited a book. The cover shows a number of men wearing nothing but bath
towels.

Ringma’s merits lie in his ability to provide an interesting account
of life at the battlefront, not in his understanding of diplomatic
history. Unaware of Soviet documents on the origins of the Korean War,
which Russian President Boris Yeltsin carried to Seoul more than a
decade ago, Ringma reports that Joseph Stalin pressured North Korea’s
Kim Il Sung into invading South Korea in 1950. The reverse was true. Kim
nagged Stalin and Terenti Shtykov, Soviet ambassador in Pyongyang, for
more than a year before Stalin acquiesced.

Ringma criticizes the Canadian Army for training Korea-bound soldiers
at Fort Lewis, Washington, with its mild climate, instead of at Fort
Wainright, Alberta, where winter conditions resembled those in Korea.
Americans too, he suggests, would have benefited from a Fort Wainright
experience. He also deals with such aspects of military life as dating,
shaving, crossing the Pacific, dealing with life insurance vendors
before leaving North America, and with Korean smells on arrival.

Regarding soap and cleanliness, Ringma reports the case of a friend,
Fred Reid. Reid thought soap useful for trading as well as cleaning, and
offered some to a South Korean woman. Ringma reports, “She tasted it,
spat it out, and glared at him.”

One of Ringma’s counterparts in the U.S. Army had the initials
C.O.S.C. after his name (which stands for “Custodial Officer of Soiled
Commodities”). Given the mores of the Canadian Army, Ringma resisted
the temptation to post a sign “Lt. R. Ringma, C.O.S.S.”—for
“Custodial Officer of Soiled Socks.” Coping with long lines of naked
men in record time was an effort to preserve some sense of dignity.

This book deals with a legitimate aspect of Canadian military history.