[Interview Begins]

JONES: Today is September 8th, 2023. This is an interview conducted in person, uh, with Army veteran John Button Sock. The interviewer is Riley Jones, and this interview is being recorded for the Wisconsin Veterans Museum Oral History Program. John, let's start with your early years, okay? Tell us about it.

BOTTENSEK: Like, how early would you like to go?

JONES: Um, well, um, I happened to know that, uh, you were born outside this country.

BOTTENSEK: I am an army brat.

JONES: So let's.

BOTTENSEK: Let's start. We'll start there. Um, my father spent 23 years in the army. Um, he grew up in Wisconsin Rapids, and, um, he joined, I believe it's 1949. And, uh, he was actually in supply and logistics and, uh, spent time in Japan during the occupation. And when he came back, um, he grabbed my mother, and they eloped to, uh, Fort Campbell, Kentucky. And my brother was born there in 1954. And, uh. Travel around quite a bit. And then, uh, he met up with a guy by the name of Tom dark who, um, loved to read Army regulations and figure out shortcuts and things. And Tom had discovered that when you if you retire, you retired at whatever the highest rank was that you attained. So he got a commission, um, in the Army Reserve up in North Dakota and actually retired, as I believe was either a major or lieutenant colonel. So anyhow, um, I, I'm the youngest of four. Um, I was born in Stuttgart, Germany. Uh, my father transferred to the infantry because there was better, better chances of promotion, I guess, in combat arms. And we came back to the U.S. when I was about three and a half years old, and I was told at one time that I spoke more German than I did English as a, as an, you know, as a, as a really young one.

JONES: Let me interrupt you. Yeah. Were you the only child who was born overseas?

BOTTENSEK: Yes. Yep. Yep. My my brother was born in Kentucky. My sister was born in, um, South Dakota. And we lost a baby brother who was who was born in, in Wisconsin, and, um. Yeah. So take it from there. Yep. Um, so my dad, when we came back from Germany, was assigned to. Rose Pauley Institute in Terre Haute, Indiana, which is a private, I believe it may have been a Catholic engineering school, and he taught ROTC there for a couple of years. I went to kindergarten there, and it was interesting because that was during the time of segregation. Yet in the South. And, um, you know, we're talking like 1965 and my kindergarten class was divided between, um, blacks and whites. Basically, I went to the morning class and the African-American children went to the, um, afternoon class, and, uh, never the twain shall meet, I guess. But, um, I remember one day I forgot my gloves or hat or something, and my mother took me back to school to pick them up, and she opened the door and I saw these little African-American faces. And it was like, I mean, I was five years old. I still remember that. Um, and then, of course, as you get older, you start realizing what all that meant and, and that it was somewhat of a stain on our history. And I think there's been plenty of debate about that. So anyhow, um, after, uh, let's see, 1966. So we were only there for about a year and a half, and my father was stationed in Korea. Now, of course, that was, uh, and still is, I believe, a restricted combat zone. So unless you're, um, part of the, um, you know, ambassador class or something, most people don't get to take dependent travel. So he was there for a year by himself. That was kind of interesting. That's where I learned, uh, all all about watching the news at night, because my mother was always glued to Walter Cronkite concrete every evening, uh, reporting on world events. And my father was there during two rather seminal events. One was the, um, the capturing of the USS Pueblo, which was a um, purportedly, according to North Korea, was a spy vessel. And um, from all accounts, um, the crew was able to throw all the all the spy gear overboard before they actually captured the ship. And he was also there during the incident at Panmunjom, because he was he was stationed not too far from there was a place called Blue Lancer Valley, uh, right up on the DMZ. And of course, he was. He was part of the, uh, observation forces, you know, to to watch the demilitarized zone. Um, and it when when he went to Korea, we moved back to Wisconsin Rapids and, uh, I was in, um, first grade there. And then, uh, when he returned, um, I remember the local newspaper came and there's a picture somewhere. I know I have a copy of it, of him with the three of us kids, um, standing outside the front porch with a banner my mother had made that said, welcome home, daddy. I've been trying not to get choked up. So. I'm sorry. What? Um. No. I'm good. I'm good. And it was kind of a surprise because we didn't know that he was coming home.

JONES: And then from there.

BOTTENSEK: Uh, he got stationed in, um, uh, Council Bluffs, Iowa. Kind of interesting little town. It's on the on the Missouri River, on the on the east side, across from the Omaha, Nebraska. And I remember we lived on is is 111 111 plant or street? Why why do you remember those things? I'm 63 years old. Um. We lived on the bluff. And he, um, was with the uh, Army Reserve unit there. And he primarily during that time worked with the ROTC. And so in the summer he would go down to Fort Riley, Kansas, and do training. He basically taught. Young army officers. How to be Army officers in ROTC, work with college students and staff and dead drill teams and and all kinds of, um, other activities like that. So he was he was generally gone during the summer. And, um, I remember they called him home because, um, I was trying to impress some little girls on my bike, and I ended up wiping out and end up in the hospital, and, um, they they called him home because I was in pretty bad shape, I guess. But, um, after not even a hardly a year there, um, he got orders for Vietnam. No sidebar or an asterix there. This would have been his second tour. His first tour in Vietnam was when is purported that we weren't there, and he was stationed in.

JONES: Uh, we went there officially in 64.

BOTTENSEK: Yeah, this was in like 50s. Now this is in the 50s. Yeah. This is after the fall of 19. Phew.

JONES: And that was the year you, your brother was born. Yeah.

BOTTENSEK: Yep, yep. And, um. Yeah. He was, um, up in Hanoi, actually, because what they were doing, I believe. Know, like, May 1st, they close the border. They sealed the border between North and South Vietnam. And he was up there working, getting refugees out of North Vietnam before they sealed the border. Um, so in 1968, uh, he went back for a second tour. Obviously, things were a little bit different than than they were in the years previous. Um, it was after the Tet Offensive, which was in January or February, the, um, the Chinese New Year. And it was kind of interesting because my, my mother was a very prolific letter writer. And she would sit down and write him a letter. Every morning. And it wasn't just, hey, you know, the weather's great and hope you're fine. It was a detailed account of what my brother Tom did, what my sister did, what trouble John got into, all that kind of stuff. And then on occasion, we get a letter from him or. Or he would send it. He sent a tape recorder, and we have these little reel to reel. So they they're like little, I don't know, 3.5in little tapes. And that was a big thing. You know, we'd get a little box in the mail with this tape and we'd all gather around and listen to him. And the correspondence was was fairly regular. Then one day it just kind of ended. We weren't we weren't hearing from him. So being the prolific Army wife that my letter writing wife that my mom was, she reached out to some, um, politicians, some senators and, um, secretary of defense and stuff saying, hey, what's going on with my husband? We haven't heard from for a long time. They said, oh, he's fine. He's at a desk job in Saigon. He's just really busy. And then, uh, lo and behold, in July of 1969, I remember just after the moon landing, shortly thereafter, uh, maybe early August, the phone rang in the middle of the night, and I heard my mother. Lee. That's my dad's. That's my dad's name. Lee. Lee. Lee. What? Where are you? Is that you? Oh my God. Well, he was in Chicago, and he was coming home. So my mom woke us all up like we were all up by that time anyhow, because she was quite excited. And we drove up to Stevens Point. He flew in on Eastern Airlines and we got home back to Wisconsin Rapids. And I ran a couple doors over to a friend of mine because, uh, he'd never met my dad. Well, little boys get distracted easily sometimes. And next thing you know, we were playing. I don't know if it was soccer, rock em sock and robots or whatever, and quite the amount of time went by. And in the meantime, everybody's going, well, where's John? And they heard some, uh, some yelling. There's a creek behind our house. They heard some, some yelling coming from the direction of the creek. And when I came home a little while later, my father had just gotten out of the shower. He is soaking wet from jumping in the creek thinking that I was drowning or something. So in the meantime, my brother's kind of knows he was 16 at the time. He's going through my dad's effects in his briefcase and comes across several citations, bronze stars and whatnot. And he was actually, he wasn't a he wasn't at a desk job in Saigon. He was actually, um, in Cambodia and Laos and some other places. Um, and then from there we moved it once again to Minnesota. This time it was, uh, about 90 miles north of Minneapolis. Little town. We lived in a little town called Richmond, which is outside of Saint Cloud, and he taught ROTC at Saint John's University. And he was, uh, um, the first sergeant. And, um, they offered him a promotion to sergeant major. And I'll never forget the he described. His reply is, no, thank you. I've had enough of this new man's army. And he got out. And that was in 1971.

JONES: Let me stop you. Yeah, I'm gonna backtrack. Yep. To when the letters stopped. Mhm. Implicit is that. He was over in Cambodia during that time. Mhm. Obviously uh, could not communicate, you know, with the family.

BOTTENSEK: Right. Because if you listen to the administration at that time we weren't doing anything in Cambodia, you know.

JONES: Okay. So, uh, dad retired from the army. Must have been.

BOTTENSEK: 71.

JONES: Okay. And, um, how long was the family in Minnesota?

BOTTENSEK: Uh, well, after he retired, we stayed for about a year, and, um, then we moved back to Wisconsin to be close to family, which I don't think any of us kids really care to come back. In fact, while my my brother, my brother graduated from high school in 71 and, um. And we lived on a little private lake and had a nice little house there. And for a kid that's 11, 12 years old, you know, fishing every day and running around with no shirt and shoes is kind of fun in the summertime. Yeah. So we moved back to Wisconsin Rapids and, uh, started, uh, I think we would have been sixth grade there that I graduated in 78 from Lincoln High School and, um. I guess all that moving around kind of made me a bit of a wayward child. And I.

JONES: Was in.

BOTTENSEK: Wisconsin Rapids. Uh huh. Yep. And then, um, I graduated from from Lincoln High School in 78, and I. And I'd had enough of school. Um, I worked in a foundry for a while. Worked for Del Monte for a while. I and I, you know, and I've thought about this as an adult. Years later, I think I always it was always in the back of my mind that I had to. Go into the service. Um, for no other reason than to prove something to my old man. So. So I went down to, uh, the AFI Center in Milwaukee, and, um, you know, they take your test, and I was going to go. I wanted to go to the. I want to be an MP. I want to be. I want to join the military police. For whatever reason, I have no idea. And they came to me and they after I took my test, they they call them the Asvab test. And I guess that I scored pretty well. And they said, you know, we think that you should try some other things. And they offered me, um, an opportunity to go to drafting school. And I'm not talking about drafting people in the military, talking about, you know. Triangles and straight edges and rulers and drawing blueprints and stuff, because that was back before, you know, they didn't have CAD cam drafting and stuff like that, you know, or or five axis, um, you know, printing and all that kind of stuff. So anyhow, um, I thought about it for, oh, probably a good 20s I said, okay, sure, I'll do that.

JONES: Let me stop you out there. In high school, did you do a lot of that type of work in shop classes?

BOTTENSEK: I took shop, yeah. Yep. And I took a drafting class. I took electronics and, um, metals and woodworking and all that, all that jazz. Um, and, you know, that's, you know, girls went up mill back then. Girls went to Home EC and the guys went to shop and learned how to change the oil on a car and change flat tires and all that kind of stuff. So I was, um, I was always fairly mechanically inclined. I like to take things apart and see if I can put them back together and have parts left over. Um, so from there, they put me on a train. To go to Fort Dix, new Jersey. Now, this is October.

JONES: Let me stop you right there. Was it preordained that you were going to go into the Army as opposed to one of the other branches?

BOTTENSEK: I believe so, yeah, yeah.

JONES: And, uh, what about Mom and Dad? Were they on board with this?

BOTTENSEK: They thought it was a good idea they.

JONES: Had any of your siblings? Uh.

BOTTENSEK: My brother had gone in. Yep. Uh, Tom joined, I think, in 73. And, uh.

JONES: That must have been the, uh, the oldest brother.

BOTTENSEK: Yep, yep. Yeah. And then my my other sibling is Liam. She's. She's in between Tom and I.

JONES: Okay, so the oldest brother joined in, uh, 73. Mhm. And, um, that was right at the end.

BOTTENSEK: It started to wind down. Yeah. It wasn't quite I was I was considered post-Vietnam in 78. Um, he was still classified as a Vietnam era, um, because they were, you know, that's before the whole fall of Saigon and all that stuff. But he didn't go. He ended up, uh, doing a couple years in Germany. He was in the artillery and, uh, spent a lot of time, like in graff and beer and all these wonderful, you know, remote places of the world where you live.

JONES: So because your your dad had been in the army, your brother had been in the army at that point. You decide. Okay.

BOTTENSEK: It was the thing to do. Yeah.

JONES: Okay. Um. So enlisted in the Army. My. I'm going from memory here, but I think that must have been, uh, 78.

BOTTENSEK: October 24th. A day that will go down in infamy. October 24th. And then it was it was interesting because. You when your time in service. Your, um. What it ended. You get out the day before the day that you listed. So I went in on October 24th, and then I got out on October 23rd. Five years later.

JONES: Okay. So, um, he joined, um, the Army over in, um, in Milwaukee, I take it.

BOTTENSEK: Yeah. Um, I actually joined in Wisconsin Rapids. They put me on a bus. Um, took me down to the AFI Center in Milwaukee. I think it's over. Used to be like, I think over on planking ten or or prospect. One of those, um, where they, they put us up in, uh, a relatively janky hotel for the night. And then the next morning we got up early and we went, you know, a couple blocks away. Uh, it's a hotel Lincolnton. That's what it was, because it wasn't planned. And then, um, you go through, you get your physical and you take your, your aptitude tests and all that type of thing. And that's when, after all that stuff was done, they came to me and said, you know, we think you might do better somewhere else rather than going into the military police. Um, I took them up on their offer. I started to mention before. So then, um, they put me on a train and off I went to Fort Dix, new Jersey, pulled into Trenton, and I remember it was October. I used to have pretty long hair. I was wearing a kind of light ski type coat.

JONES: Um, and this is for basic training.

BOTTENSEK: This is for basic training, you know. And, um. It was called. Another another milestone history of that. So our barracks now purportedly and I have no proof of this Raleigh. But purportedly I was in the last all male training company for basic training in the United States Army. And the drill sergeants, we had, um, made it known that there's no way that the guys hanging out with the girls are going to outdo any of us when it comes to physical fitness or anything else. So we got we got pushed pretty hard. And they put me into a group called, um, what do they call it, like super jocks or something like that? Um, we just got to run more than everybody else. So, um, yeah. So it was interesting, but I, you know, I had a couple of, of, uh, rather memorable events there, so. You get off the the train. You walk in the station. You have really no idea what you're doing. You're 18 years old and. There's some people in uniform standing there waiting for you. And they introduce themselves, and they put you on a little bus and off you go. And that was, you know, like late afternoon, early evening. And they took us to the mess hall. Is there a few other people on the train? We pick some people up on the way along, and we got to the mess hall and we had dinner. And then we get back to our barracks. And again, you take virtually nothing with you and what little you have. The next day they take all that away from you. Hope they like your civilian clothes and everything. So they called a formation. Now, this is my I. I've been in the army like 24 hours now, right? Maybe 24, 30, maybe 30 hours. I know nothing, and they call formations. Everybody runs out of the barracks and everybody stands in line. And there are some people who kind of knew what they were doing, and they got us to stand at attention. All this stuff and this, um, this sergeant came walking out. He had really shiny boots. And, um, drill Sergeant Rodriguez. And he got up. There's a podium outside, and he got up on the podium, and he introduced himself and told us that he was the charge of quarters, which means that he's the guy in charge of the barracks that night. So if there's any issues, he handles those. And he said, um, parade rest. And that's when you learn what parade rest is. You can put your feet apart, but you put your hands behind your back and in the small of your back you stand there. And he got off the podium and you walked inside and you left us standing there for.

JONES: You know.

BOTTENSEK: 45 minutes, maybe an hour. It was quite some time. And your legs tend to get a little bit tired after standing in that position all that time. And he finally comes back out and he says, attention. Everybody goes back to attention, he says. Dismissed, which means we can not go back in the barracks. So as I'm walking, as I'm walking into the barracks, I stopped at the first sergeant. I said, you know, that really wasn't necessary. He didn't really have to really show the couple standing out there for no reason at all. And he said, well, son, why don't you tell him yourself? I said, no, that's okay. He's like, no, come on. So he takes me in. And so we walk into this office and Drill Sergeant Rodriguez has a shiny boots up on the desk. He's smoking a cigar. And, um, the first sergeant said, uh, Sergeant Rodriguez says this young man has something he'd like to tell you. So, with a crackle in my voice, I told him it was kind of unnecessary, that he had a standing out there. This. I've never seen anybody get out of a chair faster. And this guy was in my face like lightning. Scared the hell out of me. I thought I thought I was going to be, like, go to jail or something. So with with with tears about ready to trickle out of my eyes, he told me to get out of his face and never talk to him again. So I went to my room and we went to sleep. And about 430 in the morning they come through and they wake everybody up. And, um. You go. You know you have Chao. You are on the mess hall. You learn some basic how to march and things like that. And, um, then they start taking you around to the quartermaster. You start getting fitted for your uniforms and shoes and all that kind of stuff. And, um, the first sergeant came and got me and he said, um, you know, come with me, Baton sack. You're going to see the battalion commander. Well, okay, I guess this this must be a treat, huh? So, uh, I wish I could remember the guy's name, but he he, the first sergeant stopped me and said, no, this is how you present yourself. And he showed me how to salute and how to walk in and present myself and all that stuff. So I walk in, I salute, I said, you know, private baton sack reporting, sir. And the guy salutes back and says, at ease, have a seat. So I sat down. He said, so I understand you met Drill Sergeant Rodriguez last night. I said, yes, sir, I did. And he says, well, yeah, you know, we're not here to hurt anybody. Um, but discipline is very important and you need to learn how to follow orders and just, you know, we're here to help you and and mold you and and and make you a soldier. Okay. So there's going to be a lot of things that maybe you don't agree with, but everything's being done in your best interest as a soldier. I said great. He said, so, by the way, do you know a Leroy baton sack? He said. As a matter of fact, sir, I do. It's my father. It's okay, he said. He says if you're anything like your old man, he says, you're going to do just fine. I served with him in Vietnam. So cool. Um, and from there, I, you know. Um, so that was October. Ended up, um. I'm just keeping my my mouth shut the rest of the time. And, um, I was selected as what they called the super Omni one time, which is like the number one. And they did like an inspection, you know, in ranks, you know, and they gave me an offer that I could either go to the Army, no Navy game with the post commander and his entourage, or I could have a three day pass and go anywhere I wanted to while I opted for the three day pass. And, um. Ended up coming back with a tattoo, which a few weeks later, to my mother's chagrin, she was mortified that I defiled my body like that. But, um. Yeah, ended up, uh, basic training, um, went pretty well.

JONES: How many weeks?

BOTTENSEK: Uh, you know, I think is eight, because I got home just a couple of days before Christmas.

JONES: Okay.

BOTTENSEK: Flew into, uh. Actually, they let me go a day early. I got to Philadelphia and back. That was back in the days when you could go standby. Mhm. And I thought, wow, great. I'm going I'm going to surprise everybody and get home early. Well Chicago got fogged then. And so they were diverting traffic to Milwaukee and we sat there. I don't know how many times we circled Billy Mitchell field finally landed, but then we weren't allowed to take off. So I miss my flight going to Wisconsin Rapids and ended up spending the night. And, um, actually, what happened was my, um, my dad's aunt. Lived in, uh, Menomonee Falls in and heard her husband, uh, came and picked me up and I spent the night there. And then my mom. Dad came down the next day and picked me up. And then we went home, spent Christmas, and then, um, after that. Then I was off to, um, Fort Belvoir, Virginia. For I t. Where I learned all kinds of skills that I would never apply. For the most part. Kind of. So, yeah, I'll tell you what. Fort Belvoir was was amazing duty because it's it's a Northern Virginia just a few miles outside of Washington, D.C.. And it was interesting because we weren't allowed to like we didn't we didn't have to pull any kind of duty, you know, like KP or I mean, we didn't really do anything except for go to school. I went to was called DMs to Defense Mapping School, and I can't read. It was founded in the early 1800s. I want to say it was Thomas Jefferson, but I'm probably wrong. But it was somebody of prominence back then. Um, and that's where they taught cartography.

JONES: Um.

BOTTENSEK: And, um, in drafting. And it was an all service school, which is interesting. Um, we had. We had people from Army, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, um, we went to school five days a week. We had the weekends off that we could go out and and go to Arlington or go to the white House or go to the National Archives or whatever it was. It was it was amazing duty. Um. And then, um, nothing really exciting or or, you know, um, memorable about. Drafting school. Um, as you'd asked earlier. You know, I'd taken drafting in high school, and it was interesting. I always loved, you know, designing things and what have you. And so it was kind of neat. Um, so just before I graduated from I.T., they came to me and asked me. If I would be interested in spending because I came down, what happened was I came down on orders for Germany. And that's my first duty station out of it was going to be in Germany. And then not too long afterwards they came and said, oh no, that we can't do that. There's another guy in my class who had a brother who had died in Vietnam, and he was scheduled to go to Korea. But when they put two and two together, they said, we can't send us a sole surviving son into a combat zone. So they switched orders and I got orders for Korea, and he went to, um, to Germany. Well. They came to me and said, you know, how would you like to spend a month at home and get paid extra for it before you go to Germany and before you go to Korea? And it was a recruiter aid program. So basically, I went home for a month and I worked with the local recruiters, and I went to the high schools and, um, did like the, you know, career day kind of things and stuff like that. I'm sure there's a few people still trying to find me, but I convinced that it was a great thing to go into the military, but it was nice just to be at home for for a month and hang out with friends and family and whatever. Then, uh, then I took off and flew to Korea and, um, I spent a year there. The the trip there was rather interesting. Um. I won't get into any details, but I had a layover in Seattle, which for a not quite 19 year old young man was rather interesting in that I. It was cool because I flew on a 747 and it was a civilian flight and like the plane was half empty and the seat in between me and the next guy was vacant. And the guy that was sitting on the other side was a Japanese fellow who owned fishing boats, and he was showing me all kinds of pictures of his fishing fleet and stuff like that. We we landed in Tokyo and we had a layover in Tokyo, and the flight crew asked me to join them for dinner at the Narita International Hotel at the at the restaurant, which is which was neat. Pilots are crazy people. I can't believe they actually let people like that actually get behind the wheel of an airplane. They they're they're they're they're a different breed of of of adventurism. Yeah. Um, so we spent the night in Narita. And then, uh, the next morning, I got on the flight. In fact, I got pictures somewhere of. I remember taking pictures of the, uh, the nose of the 747. You know, because the, um. What do you call it? The the, um, where you get on the plane. I'm having a brain cramp here. Um. Was was elevated about three storeys over the ground, and you're looking straight out at the nose of this massive airplane. You know, in fact, it's the it was a, um, Clipper, Clipper, Ocean Spray or Clipper Seven Seas. I can't remember which one. That was a Pan Am flight back in the day. And then we flew into, um, Campo Campo Campo International Airport in Seoul, which was not much to speak of at that time. Um, South Korea was an emerging third world nation and, um, a lot of poverty that's, you know, people, you know, I've had opportunities, opportunities to go to places like Jamaicans. I was like, you know, I've, I've, I've lived in abject poverty. You know, I'll need to go again, you know, but, um, we we flew into Campo and I remember they didn't have, you know, like, like nowadays you have the skywalks, the skyways. Well, we had to actually walk down the the stairs onto the tarmac and then walk into the building. And I remember when I got to the door, I the, my, my first breath, I knew I was somewhere else. The air was different. I can't tell you what it was, but I took that first breath of fresh air and it was like, yeah, we're not in Kansas anymore. And um, went in again. The military personnel were waiting for my arrival, and we went down to Central Processing in Yongsan, which is a district of Seoul, because Kempo was just, you know, maybe ten klicks or so outside of the capital city. And Seoul is a beautiful city. It's built like inside of that. Was it a couple of valleys in the, um, in the mountains. And it almost looks like a big dish. And at the time, I mean, man, I mean, this is like 1979 and I, I think the population of Seoul at that time was like eight or possibly 12 million people. It's a big city. It was a very big city. And it was interesting because it was surrounded by agriculture. And uh, so we went out in the Yongsan. And that's where we got processed. And I got my orders there for the 44th Engineer Battalion. That was a combat heavy unit. And that was stationed right outside. Right outside of Campo. It's kind of interesting because when I got taken out there, we took the same road that we took going in, and we passed the airport. And the compound that I was stationed at, um, was in a little village called ocean E, and I don't know how you'd spell that, but, um, I mean, so we were kind of up on a hill and combat heavy meant that we had all the big stuff, like, you know, I mean, so engineers do two things. They either build you something or they blow something up for you. That's pretty much it. You get to choose from one of the two. And our mission was to keep that airport open in the event of hostilities, because we were only, you know, by air, not even 15, 20 minutes from North Korea, from the DMZ, by air. And there were a couple times and we had flyovers from MiGs. They would test things, you know. So we're up in this. That we have. I was in Headquarters Company and then we had Alpha. Bravo and Charlie Company. And then we Delta Company was forward. They were actually up on the DMZ. And what we did was we built infrastructure. Helipads, airfields, roads, bridges, minefields, um, wired bridges for demolition. And, um, you know, it's the only place I've been in the world where you drive across a bridge and you see that there's there's wires hanging out, you know, because they're. Slated for destruction. Um, so Korea was a real eye opener. As I mentioned earlier on that my mother had this this obsession with watching the nightly news. So I grew up, you know, watching world events and things like that. And having grown up in central Wisconsin, which at the time, you know, is a mill town, not very sophisticated really at all. And, and, um, also to find yourself in this part of the world where most people never heard of it, couldn't even find it on a map. And, um. As a young man. You know, it was a real eye opener about how the rest of the world lived or how a big chunk of the world lived and how fortunate we were to be Americans. Because the things that we consider to be essential in a lot of parts of the world were were luxuries. And, um, the, you know, the basic living, basic subsistence for so many people was a stroke, was a daily struggle. And it was a real, real eye opener about, you know, and and the thing is, and I try not to get political here, but, you know, as a nation, we made a lot of mistakes in foreign policy. I think a lot of times the intentions are good. But in the final analysis, in so many parts of the world, we've come in there and just tried showing people that, hey, if you just follow our recipe, you can do this too. And Korea, um, I was there when Pak Chung, he was the, um, was the president. And I was there when Jimmy Carter came to visit. And if you want to see industrious people, the route from people to the presidential palace in Seoul got transformed in like 30 days. It looked like the Garden of Eden by the time they were done. They were out there literally 24 hours a day, building things, planting things, beautifying it so that when he when that motorcade went from Keepo into Seoul, that Jimmy Carter saw this beautiful burgeoning. Uh, democracy in front of them. Um, and then they hid the reality on the other side of the walls. And, um, so, yeah, I got there and, um, let's see, it would have been like around April 27th. April 29th, I think, um, of 79. And, uh. The compound. It was kind of interesting when when the military builds buildings, they build them for certain longevity. And I lived in an open barracks, and if you looked at it from the air, it was H shaped. And the legs of the H were big open bays. I think there are probably about. 60 or 70 soldiers on each side. And then your NCOs had little private rooms at the ends. And then in the middle where you put, you know, like if you draw an H in the middle between those two legs, um, that's where the latrines were and everything was open. And um, the building I lived in was a what I want to say is building number 54, which meant temporary, which meant that it was designed to be used for around like 5 to 7 years. And it was built in the 1950s. And we had, um, giant spiders for pets and an air conditioner. I mean, uh, there's no such thing as air conditioning, but a furnace that worked on occasion. But typically, uh, in the wintertime, um, you slept in your sleeping bag with a couple of blankets on top of it and hope that the water was hot in the morning so you could take a shower. Um, and every, every day, we used to watch what we called the red tails, and they were, um, Korean airline flights that were taking off from Campo. And we used to call them the Freedom Flights, because a lot cause a lot of. A lot of your flying back, back to the States was done. Um. Um, civilian aircraft. So I was assigned to headquarters. Headquarters company, 44th Engineer Battalion. 44th Engineer Battalion was called the Broken Heart Battalion. And you'll let. Right I apologize, I wish I would have thought ahead of time to bring some of these things out, but, you know, you have a unit cross that you wear on your uniform.

JONES: It's familiar with the Brooks. Yeah. Yeah. That through the heart.

BOTTENSEK: Yep, yep. And that came from, um, the Inchon invasion during the Korean conflict. Um, the 44th engineers beat the the Chinese basically to to the Yalu River, Han River or whatever it was. And, um, were able to fortify some positions and at least hold back what could have been a, uh, a tremendous, um, defeat for U.N. forces at the time. And, um, yeah. So our our mission was to. Build roads and infrastructure that were used for civilian purposes with the military intent in the event of hostilities. And um. I worked in S3, which is plans and operations, and honestly, it was pretty kush. I had a uh, uh, a drafting table and I worked on I, I wrote, I mean, I drew things from roads to buildings to we, we took a part of a mountain and filled in the valley and made a heliport, um, all kinds of interesting things built, um, um, some incredible structures that at the time were classified that I won't talk about because they may still be, but I saw some pretty interesting stuff. And, um, the nice thing was, um, we had our weekends free, and Korea has an amazing history. In fact, that that painting right there, I had a Korean friend who took me to an art gallery. I'd given that to my parents as a gift. That's a Yi dynasty. Um, that's an original there. Um, so, um, we had a one of the guys in my unit. Um, we we. Scott Bunk is from Ohio, a big, burly guy. He's a truck driver, and he had a girlfriend in Seoul. And we'd go hang out on Friday and Saturday nights at her place. Sometimes, you know, just, you know, drinking and whatever. You know what? What young guys do. And one morning in October, she woke everybody up screaming.

JONES: Pope Chong yi, Julie Pak chong. He.

BOTTENSEK: Truly what that means is Pak Chung, he is dead. And he had been assassinated. Uh, some people claimed by the CIA. Other people claim that it was a, uh, North Korean job, but whatever. He was dead. And she turns on the radio. And wherever you go overseas, you always have. Like in the case of Korea's, um, um, AFK radio, Armed Forces Korea Network, and she turns on Afcon and all you hear is attention. All military personnel, U.S. personnel return to your duty stations immediately. Did it? And, uh, so we were like, oh, I guess we're going back. So we jump on a bus. And luckily it was just after curfew. Sidebar in Korea at the time, you had curfew from like midnight till like 4 a.m.. And if they caught you on the street. They were, they were going to give you an ass weapon. So luckily it was just after curfew. We were able to go on a bus. And again, we were only like, you know, maybe ten, 12 klicks from from from Seoul. And as we got off the bus, we got directions to go to the arms room where we collected our weapons and a basic load of ammunition and all this other happy stuff, went back to our barracks, grabbed our to 50 uniforms, combat gear, got on trucks and rolled out. And that's when I learned Raleigh. What my real name was, was my most military occupational specialty was 81 Bravo, which is a technical drafting specialist. No, I was an infantry man, and we stood up on the in foxholes for a good month on the, uh, on the DMZ. Had had some altercations up there. It was interesting. Because obviously the North Koreans, um, saw it as a great opportunity to come down and disrupt some operations. So things got it was a little crazy for a while there. And then, uh.

JONES: In layman's parlance, it was hot.

BOTTENSEK: It was hot. It was hot. Yep.

JONES: And so at that point. You didn't have your draftsmen.

BOTTENSEK: No no no no no. I was I was a grunt. I was a grunt just like everybody else was a grunt, you know? Um, you know, but people don't realize is that, um, in most. Land operations. Um, the engineers are the first ones in. They even get in before the Marines. Usually because the Marines have to have a beachhead established. They have to have. I mean, the Marines have their own engineers, too, but, I mean, the Army provides, um, support to all the branches when it comes to, uh, combat engineer operations. Um, you know, we have all the bridges and. Uh, MT six bridges. And it's kind of interesting what the stuff that they've invented for for warfare. Um, they have. Airfields that come in crates and it's just palletizing metal panels, and they lock together, and you take them down and you go out to a cornfield, knocked on the corner and put these panels. The other next thing you know, six hours later, you got yourself an airfield.

JONES: Let me interrupt you. Um, we'll we'll come back to that. Okay. During when things were hot, after the president of South Korea was killed and you were an infantry man. Uh, what did you do during that time? And how long were you in that war?

BOTTENSEK: It was about 30 days, and we pretty much, um. Stayed in foxholes and make sure to make sure that nobody got past us.

JONES: Yeah, okay. So then after 30 days, approximately, things calm down, return to normal, and you return to being.

BOTTENSEK: A draftsmen again. Yep.

JONES: And, uh, again, I when I interrupted you. Oh, that's what I'm talking about. Uh, some of the things you did, um, as a draftsmen.

BOTTENSEK: Yeah. We, um, I mean, it was we built stuff. And, um, we would you know, the thing was, you know, if you wanted to build a road, for example, I went up to, um, up just like east of Panmunjom. We were building an evacuation road. Out of the demilitarized zone. That's kind of interesting. I and I apologize if I don't get this exactly right. But when they signed the armistice, while not the armistice, but the ceasefire, and they developed and they put the was it the 30th parallel or whatever, where they put the demilitarized zone, basically, it's three kilometers wide and nobody's supposed to go in. All right. It's they refer to it as the no man's land. Well, there's a village on the south side inside the DMZ that they call Freedom Village. And it was a little village that somehow got caught up between these two rival political gangs, and they ended up in the DMZ. And my understanding is, if you were a guy living in Freedom Village, you could go to North Korea and get a wife, bring her back. But she could never go back to North Korea. You come back, you go to South Korea and choose a wife. Take her back. But she could come back into South Korea. So the deal was, if you left North Korea, you couldn't go back. Well, it was determined at some point in time that they should have a new evacuation road to get out of the DMZ in the event of hostilities. And there was this rivalry taking place to understand if you want to build in the army or in the military, whatever, in the government, if I want to build a road. That requires funding. That funding has to be applied for in a in a budget. So you're looking 2 to 3, five years out, you know, to get get the actual money. So this this road had been in. Process for, for, for years. So as a draftsman, I was selected to go on a reconnaissance mission to Freedom Village. And there were, uh, let's see who was who. Julio Castro, myself. We had a couple know that there was a contingency of rock soldiers that lived and worked with us, and they were called courtesies. And that's that was an acronym for Korean Argumentation to the United States Army. And basically, if you were a young Korean gentleman and your parents had influence, rather than go to the Rock Army, you could become a k-2so and you had a life would be a little bit easier for you. We used to have a rock Army unit.

JONES: Somewhat similar, say, to the National Guard.

BOTTENSEK: No. Okay. No. Because the the Rock Army at the time was purported to be about the most. The harshest duty you could ever get.

JONES: Okay.

BOTTENSEK: Yeah. Um. So if you could become a gateway, uh, you didn't have to put up with the more primitive living and and incredible discipline. So, um, there is a group of four of us, and we took a couple of surveyors, and the idea was we were going to spend three days in the DMZ staking out the route for this road. So we got up there. We had to go to this. I can't remember the name of the post up there. You have all these dinky little outposts, you know, with just maybe a couple of platoons of, of infantry or, or a mortar unit or something like that. These guys were the were the front line. You know, their missions were throw up as much ammo as you can in 15 minutes to get the hell out. And then that's where all those wires on the bridges came. They you dropped the bridges, and then you you created barriers. So. We had to go in and our our instructions where we had to go to the supply office and get flags. Like white flags to put on our vehicles, because the US military is not allowed in the demilitarized zone. Nobody's military, only the UN. So we walked in and this E-6 came up to the guy, hey, what are you doing, guys? What can I do for you? Um, we need flags. What kind of flags? Well, for our vehicles. Oh. You going in? Yeah, we're going in. Okay. Um, how many you need? I said, uh, two, because we had. We had two jeeps and one of them in the trailer. He says, how many are there? I said, there's six of us. And he says, I gotta be right back. And he comes out and he has this pile in his hands, right? And he throws these things up on the counter, and we kind of look down and say, no, we need flags. They were flak jackets. He said, no, you need these too. Okay, so give the little dinky white flags that we put on our vehicles. And we drove in and they'd start.

JONES: Seeing pictures of.

BOTTENSEK: Those. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so they, they'd start this competition where Freedom Village flew a South Korean flag. And on the other side of the DMZ was a little village that was referred to as Propaganda Village, and that was in North Korea. And they were primarily false front buildings. And in early, early, early in the morning, the town would come alive with all kinds of workers. And they were all soldiers, okay, in civilian garb. They didn't like the South Korean flag. So they put a North Korean flag up, but made it taller, while South Korea didn't like that. So they made theirs taller. It became. By the time I left, I think that they're on like, you know, aerial, you know, like antenna towers. It was pretty crazy. But we spent we spent three days in there hacking through the brush. And, um, they would send up, um, North Korea would some of these balloons. Full of propaganda leaflets and unfortunately we weren't allowed to keep them. We had to turn them in, but they were basically they would say, oh, hey. You know, if you live in the South, you know you're really being exploited. Um, come to North Korea and everything's free, right? There's there's there's no there's no poverty. There's nothing, you know? Just, you know, abandoned all your dreams is come, come work in the North for, um, let's see who was in power up there at the time. It was, um.

JONES: The dad.

BOTTENSEK: Kim. Kim Jong IL, I think. Yeah, yeah.

JONES: Dad of the Kirk.

BOTTENSEK: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, um. Yes, we spent three days up there. That was kind of eye opening and it was interesting. It was kind of weird. It was kind of weird.

JONES: Um.

BOTTENSEK: In fact, um. They gave us. Uh uh. I want to call a bodyguard. But when we left the post and went in, they had assigned a Katyusha soldier to us, and he had a 45 and a Billy club, and he was there to protect us. Yeah. Didn't necessarily feel the most secure, but I guess it's the thought that counts. And then, um, where.

JONES: Any of you are armed.

BOTTENSEK: No, no, no, no, in fact, we had to we had to turn in our military ID cards.

JONES: Oh really? Mhm.

BOTTENSEK: And we're basically told that if anything happened to us. That we would be, that our families would be informed that we were deserters. Wow. Yeah.

JONES: Somewhat analogous to the situation that just happened relatively recently where the.

BOTTENSEK: Other kid.

JONES: The kid from.

BOTTENSEK: What? What was he thinking?

JONES: Area.

BOTTENSEK: Yeah.

JONES: Decided to go to it.

BOTTENSEK: Yeah. Not. Yeah. That was that was bad judgment. That was very poor judgment on his part. I don't I can't imagine well, you know what? They they may treat him like a king and use him for propaganda purposes. Who knows? So, yeah.

JONES: The three days in, uh, at the DMZ.

BOTTENSEK: And, and we, um, we staked out the road and, um, had, you know, we use things that are like, uh, called Seattle lights and dumpy levels, um, to put, like, where the road was going to go. So when the construction people actually got there, they knew where to where to put it and then headed back and, um. I'm trying to think that was probably. I think that was. After the. After. Um. Park Chung. He had gotten assassinated.

JONES: And then, um, then, uh, after the DMZ experience, she returned back to.

BOTTENSEK: Back to Virginia again. Yet back to 44th trail headquarters. And, uh, share a quick story with you. So they had this little. This little camp, we had probably. 500 people that lived there. Okay. And we had an officer's club where the officers would go hang out. We had the NCO club where the rest of us would hang out, and they had chicken gizzard. They had fried deep fried chicken gizzards on the menu. And I love those things. And they thought I was not. So why would you eat these things? But we go in there and, you know, have some beers and I eat my, uh, chicken gizzard and stuff. Well, at Christmas time, Santa came to visit and some of the Catoosa soldiers that we knew brought their girlfriends in. And I remember one of them introduced me to his girlfriend. And I said, you know, like onion mushroom. Because, you know, nice to meet you. How are you today? And she responded like, well, how are you? Nice to meet you. She was from the US and she'd gone to SMU and she graduated and she was over in Korea working and, um, fascinating. The, um, the melding of the cultures like that. And then the, uh, the winter was kind of cold.

JONES: And, um.

BOTTENSEK: I came back in April and, um. When? When late winter early spring hits. Then things start getting active up on the deer again. You know, when the. When the Han River starts to thaw and, you know, there's, you know, they would send frogmen across and stuff like that. And they never they never got too far because there's always somebody waiting for them. Um, and I remember things, things start getting pretty crazy. And I thought to myself, I, I wonder if I'll ever go home because I was expecting that, you know, it's like every day, you know, it's fine because when I was there, I mean, there were incidents on a daily basis. And you. But you never heard anything back stateside. You know, Korea, Korea and the people who served there were pretty much just kind of a forgotten lot. You know, nobody paid much attention to I mean, people people don't realize that that war never technically it never ended, right? You know, they have a cease fire. Well, what do they do? A ceasefires, they break them continually. And, uh, again, as a young man, I was 19 years old at the time. And all of a sudden, this young thing start heating up and you get reports of this and the other thing going on, I thinking, man, I'll never get out of here, you know, because that full scale is going to break out.

JONES: And there have been many, many times, uh, in the last decades when it looked like things were going to fire up again.

BOTTENSEK: Yep yep yep. Nobody wants that. Even even the North, you know, the North is is very provocative because they know that we don't want that and they know that they can't beat us militarily. So if they just throw a couple shots across once in a while and raise a little hell, just, you know, shake, shake a saber from, from time to time, you know, it makes them feel like they can pop out their chest. But I nobody in that region I don't think China would allow it, you know, because it was just a puppet puppet of China. And China has become too dependent on us, um, from a, uh, monetary, you know, from, from a fiscal standpoint that they can't afford anything like that. So anyhow. Yeah. So I came back and, uh. Yeah, go ahead and do that.

JONES: Uh, question about your your daily routine. I know you had your weekends off. Um, but in this, I'm not talking about the time you're at the DMZ. Right.

BOTTENSEK: Just back at the.

JONES: You you were doing your basic draftsmen job. Um, was that a 12 hour gig? Yeah. Uh, basically.

BOTTENSEK: I want to say it was probably like 830 till five. I mean, we got up in the morning. We had a little mess hall. You know, you'd get up and shower and get dressed, and things were pretty casual. You know, again, you know, you you're you're you're what? 7000. 8000 miles from home. Whatever. Tens, I don't know. Quite a ways. You you couldn't walk. And you're everybody, you know, you you everybody is sharing the common experience.

JONES: There's loneliness.

BOTTENSEK: Um, a lot of uncertainty about what's going to happen the next day or tonight or whatever. Um. So it didn't, you know what was one thing I, I. Notice immediately is that the color barriers were gone over there and for a lot for, for for the most part, unless you were of the officer class, the rank was gone. Um, when you serve overseas. I think Korea is, is is is unique especially. Um, but all the formalities and, uh. Yes, sir. I mean, I'm not saying that you become very disrespectful. Hardly. But you you become much more. It's a much more congenial atmosphere between ranks. You know, you can sit down, have a beer with the first sergeant, and nobody's going to say anything about it because you're all kind of in the same boat, you know. Um, you you you make friends real quick, and everybody kind of looks out for everybody else.

JONES: I assume that, uh, many of the people who were there were the same age as you. Uh, no. Um.

BOTTENSEK: Like like my first sergeant, Sergeant Kraut and crew sergeant Kraut was, um.

JONES: God. He was.

BOTTENSEK: He had to be. Yeah, because he's getting close to retirement.

JONES: So he was was a lifer.

BOTTENSEK: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Was over there. Yeah.

JONES: Okay. So you had a whole say you had a wide range of.

BOTTENSEK: Oh, yeah. In fact, we have this this kid I won't mention. I'll just mention his first name. Tom. Um, Tom came and joined our unit as a truck driver, and Tom was 17 years old, and Tom had gotten in trouble. He's from California, and he was given the choice between either going in the military or going to jail. And he took the military when he got to basic training and said, what do you want to do? He says, I want to be a truck driver. I said, okay, this I'm gonna try going to school. Then this. I'm to Korea, where you couldn't drive if you weren't at least 18, even though you had the military. So he sat there for six months and couldn't do anything. And we found things for him to do, like. Yeah, I mean, he was probably the youngest guy I ever ran into. And, um, Colonel Marcus, um, our battalion commander is probably in his late 40s. Early 50s. Um, yeah, a lot of lifers. A lot of lifers. And they're the ones who keep everything going.

JONES: Uh, any conflicts with any of the lifers? No. What about the young guys?

BOTTENSEK: No. No, I don't I don't think I ever saw any altercations or anything.

JONES: Um.

BOTTENSEK: Everybody everybody got along pretty well, I think.

JONES: What did you do in your free time?

BOTTENSEK: Korean dance company. Museums. Um. I met a young lady. Your name was Tae Su and her father was. I want to say he was like the CEO or the CEO or something of at the time was called Gold Star Industries. It was like a Samsung kind of the early days of of electronics and stuff. And it was never it was it was there was never any romantic thing involved. In fact, she was somewhat older. But I met her at a gallery and we just became friends, and she would take me to to cultural events and things like that. And then, um, I got involved in, I don't know how, um, they asked me to go into this competition for artists like us, you know, like soldier of the month, right? Then you become soldier of the quarter. And I did that. I became soldier of the month several times and soldier of the quarter and whatever. And, um, so I was I was given a lot of, I don't know, was it preferential treatment? I guess I was a good troop and they kind of just left me alone. I got to do, you know, I did my job, and then when I was done, I'd go hang out wherever, um. Didn't travel much because traveling there was a hassle. You know, before the days of the internet, you know, you can't just jump on a bus and go to Pusan and hang out at the beach, because where are you going to stay, right? Um, so there was there's a lot of just a lot of alone time, really. Um. And everybody had a short timers calendar. Most of them were like a map of South Korea, divided into 365 days. And every day you. You'd fill one in until you get down to the bottom one. That was when you were a short time. Or you got your orders and it's time to go home.

JONES: Okay. Now, when you went over there, did you know you're going to be there for a certain.

BOTTENSEK: For a year? Yep.

JONES: Okay. So that was. What about the lifers, even though they were just serving.

BOTTENSEK: Most of them? Yeah. Yeah. Now you could get extensions. And some of them had, um, a lot, a lot of Latino. A lot of lifers were married to to Korean women, and they lived off post. And they would they could get extensions, you know. Um, but the rest of us, you know, you came in, you did your year, and then you went home and and a year was probably enough for most of us because, again, it was it was very there's a lot of camaraderie, um, a lot of fellowship. But it was it was still lonely. And you can't wait to get back home.

JONES: Um, your dad had been in some hot spots when he was in the military. Huh? Um, how did he feel about where you were? Was he concerned or.

BOTTENSEK: We never discussed it wrong. Okay. I don't think you know. I don't think we ever had. You know, he is never dead. Still alive. He's 92. And. He rarely talks or ever has talked about his overseas service. We, in fact, um, my brother found all of his citations and medals and everything kind of in a box and like, put away, like, he doesn't really care to remember it, I guess, you know, um, and I get it, you know, I mean. You know, you see things that. Or sometimes unspeakable. So, um. Yeah, you know, my my, my my dad and I, I've always had kind of a somewhat contentious relationship and that that's neither here nor there, but there have been times when, when we have conversations and we start talking about the military, and he he makes a conscious effort to steer, steer, steer clear of that stuff. Yeah. And if you read the citations, you know, you know why, you know. Yeah. So.

JONES: Okay. So, uh, your year comes to an end. Yeah. About, uh, April of, uh, 69. Is this April.

BOTTENSEK: 80th? 80?

JONES: 80? Yeah.

BOTTENSEK: I'm not that old, right?

JONES: Am I dead?

BOTTENSEK: Okay.

JONES: So April of 80, return to the U.S..

BOTTENSEK: Yes. Longest, longest flight of my life. I left, uh. Case 16 base. Now this time, this was a mach flight as I what was called a stretch eight. They take a DC eight, they cut it in half and they add about 20 rows of seats to it, and they welded back together and every seat was full. And because it was a mac flight, we all had to wear our uniforms. And I had eaten something the night before that did not agree with me. And it was a really horrible flight. And we flew from K 16 south of Seoul to um. Japan to Okinawa, picked up some jarheads and then we flew to, um, Alaska on their. Forget this. So so we land in Alaska and we actually had to switch planes. And a lot of people got on different flights to go elsewhere. And I remember flying in the sun was just coming up and flying over like the Aleutian Islands is. It was really it was gorgeous. And if the little airport in Anchorage, nothing was open, but they had like a little restaurant and thing in there. I'll never forget this because this is during the oil boom, right? Hot dog, seven bucks 1980 A Hot Dogs, seven bucks. Luckily they weren't open then we didn't have to buy one. And then we flew from there to. I think it's McChord Air Force Base. And, um. I'll try to Seattle and then finally to the Presidio of San Francisco, to the Oakland Army Air Base, which is no longer there. And then, um, uh, a quick, um, sidebar. So I've been on this plane. I got to San Francisco half an hour before I left Korea. Right. Because of.

JONES: Course.

BOTTENSEK: International Dayton, Dateline, all that stuff. And, um, I got cleaned up and I put on civilian clothes, and I walked into the bar, and I said, I'll have a seven and seven guy says, okay, mixes up a seven and seven. He puts it down in front of me and says, he's got an idea. I'm like, yeah, right. So I pull it out and she says, I can't serve you. Why not? He says, well, you gotta be 21 here. Like what? Yeah, California. You gotta be 21. Well, I grew up in Wisconsin, right? Right. So I mean, he sets it down in front of me. So I get on the airplane, I'm flying to, um, from from San Francisco.

JONES: So you're still at age 20 at this point?

BOTTENSEK: I was only 19 years before my 20th birthday. Yeah. And, um, I was flying to Minneapolis. My my brother's wife lived up there. My folks are going to come up and pick me up, and I get on the airplane. I'm on the first ones on, and people start coming on. And that was back in the days where you just sat wherever you want to sit. Right? So I'm sitting there, this, this, this woman comes up, says, excuse me, is that seat taken? I was kind of looking like, okay, look, 90% of the plane, why do you want to sit here? I'm like, yeah, yeah. So she sits down. Well, turns out now this is a, um, the old, um. But not Midwest. Sorry, but the Orient. Um, northwest Orient was the airline, and she was a stewardess for northwest. And she had been on vacation and she was flying back to Minneapolis and had to go back to work. Well, she turned me on to something I've never had since some liqueur called Drambuie. And we were drinking it with coffee. And I remember I got up and went back to the galley to get another one, and they said, I'm sorry, but it's not our policy to carry our passengers off the airplane. They won't. They won't serve me. So she went back and got another one, uh, for us. And, you know, back.

JONES: Then, you know, airplane.

BOTTENSEK: Food wasn't all that.

JONES: Oh, I a.

BOTTENSEK: It's kind of a misnomer, right?

JONES: You know, it's like back then I can you.

BOTTENSEK: Yeah, I had some pretty good meals on some of these flights, you know. But we got to Minneapolis and then I stayed home for I went back to Wisconsin Rapids, and I hung out there for a couple of weeks, and then I, uh, got stationed at, um, I spent three and a half really long, miserable years at Fort Riley, Kansas, with the big red one.

JONES: Okay. Before we.

BOTTENSEK: Yep.

JONES: Okay, so after leave, then, um, you went there. You went to, um, Fort Riley.

BOTTENSEK: Fort Riley, Kansas.

JONES: And, um. You were signed to the big red one?

BOTTENSEK: Yes, I was first. Um, well, it was kind of true. What happened? I was assigned to. The first Engineer Battalion. Which you can trace its lineage back to the First Expeditionary Force at the very beginning of the revolution, stuff like that. The you know, I don't know if you're familiar. You probably are. That the flags and the streamers, you know, probably one of the heaviest ones to to hold up because the combat streamers from the Spanish-American War in the Philippines and I mean Nicaraguan everywhere at that, that they had they served just about every conflict in American history. And um, so Fort Riley main post is down. You know, this is called the Flint Hills in northeast Kansas and Main Post, like where you're commissary and headquarters, all that kind of stuff. Our main post is down below. And then these up on the hill, Custer Hill is where all your troop barracks and units were, and there's a huge quadrangle. And we have the holy. They're like apartment buildings. You know, three storey brick buildings. Again, enclose on the end. And by this point, I was still a PFC. Because the one thing about being a technical drafting specialist, you can't get promoted because nobody ever left. Because it was pretty good duty, right? Um, back then, you used to have your, um, your cut off scores for promotion and the cut off score, and they took your time in service or all kinds of things that they would add up to get your points right. And that's one of the reasons that I did the, um, soldier of the month stuff was I got points for that. And the cutoff score for promotion for an 81 Bravo was always 999 out of 1000 points. I had over 1000 points, but nobody ever got out. And that that's. You would never go anywhere. Um, but you had pretty good duty. So anyhow, I got to to Fort Riley.

JONES: Let me ask you how. How was the decision made internally to transfer you from the 44th Battalion to.

BOTTENSEK: No idea. Okay. You did just that. Yeah. You get orders one day that, hey, this is where you're going to go into the next place. Yep, yep.

JONES: And the bottom line was you go to Fort Riley, Kansas, and, uh, you've already said this, but apparently you're going to be there for, what, two years to.

BOTTENSEK: Three, three and a half, almost. Yeah.

JONES: And time wise, that would have been from about 1980.

BOTTENSEK: From May of 80 until October of 83.

JONES: Okay. Wow.

BOTTENSEK: It was a long time.

JONES: It was a long time ago. But Kansas, for purposes. Just an aside, I was born and raised in Kansas City.

BOTTENSEK: Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah.

JONES: Um, Fort Riley, several times.

BOTTENSEK: Junction city. What an armpit, man. Now, my oldest daughter was born in Manhattan. We used to go to the KSU games and stuff. Like, Manhattan's a nice little city. At least at the time of the fort. Riley. Yeah. Little Ogden out there.

JONES: So did you live in Fort Riley.

BOTTENSEK: For a while, and then, um, I ended up meeting, um, so one of my section sergeants came in one day and asked me if I was interested in taking his sister in law out for a birthday. I said, I don't know, bring me a picture. So the next day he brought me a beer. So, yeah, I'm in. And, um, uh, I'll just suffice it to say that after our divorce, my my mother said you can take the girl out of the gang, but you can't take the gang out of the girl she grew up in. Uh, Compton. South central is quite, quite a quite a story there by itself. But anyhow. Yeah. So we lived in Manhattan. Uh, we got married in 82, I think it was. And, um, but what happened though, after about. Oh, I don't know. Wasn't that long. 4 or 5 months up at Maine Post. Now, this is different because I was a combat engineer. Wasn't combat heavy, it was combat. So this was more about blowing stuff up and, um, actual, you know, we all face to face combat operations. But anyhow, after after about 4 or 5 months there. I got transferred. So I was assigned to the first Engineer Battalion, but I was attached to. Headquarters and Headquarters Company of the first Infantry Division, and I work directly for the Chief of Staff for the commanding general. And I filled a role that, um, was akin to being what they at the time, they would have called the assistant division engineer the. Battalion commander for the first Engineer Battalion was the division engineer. And what I did was I performed liaison between. The plans and operations at the division level, and plans and operations at the battalion level. So that meant that I. I got to travel a lot on temporary duty. They wake you up at 2:00 in the morning and say special spot. And like there's been a torture alert. My wife would say, where are you going? I don't know when are coming back. I don't know, and you grab your shit and you torch alert. Is that was well, to put it in perspective. We were still in a Cold war, and all the planning for decades had been an armored invasion through Eastern Europe, right from from the Soviet Union, the satellite states. So my job primarily was to. Find targets. In Western Europe that could create obstacles. So we had a, uh, an atomic demolitions munitions team and all that happy kind of stuff. Um, so, yeah, I'd find myself in Germany or Belgium or something for weeks or sometimes months on it. But what's interesting is that I always find my boss at home a day or two before you hit that. I think it's 90 days where they had to back pay a temporary duty pay. They'd always make sure I was home before that. Before that, what.

JONES: Was happening is, although you were based at Fort Riley, Kansas, we.

BOTTENSEK: Had units forward.

JONES: To Germany and Belgium.

BOTTENSEK: We we provided support for, uh, what was cheap headquarters at the time.

JONES: Any any other countries in Europe?

BOTTENSEK: Uh, no.

JONES: Okay. So how long were you in Germany? Total. Yeah.

BOTTENSEK: Months. Yeah, but usually like four, six weeks at a time. I'd be gone for like they had what was called reforge you. We would go in support of reforge, and we would go in the middle of the summer before re Fajr IV. One time I was, uh, required to take civilian clothes. And, um, I stated it's kind of funny because we stayed at the 12th Panzer headquarters outside of, uh, Wurzburg in a little town called by Chuck V, Chuck a shrine, and. We did. We played war games on giant maps and gymnasiums. Right? And then at night, we would go out into Vishakha Shrine in our civilian clothes and meet our German. Counterparts at the guest house for dinner. But the reason I stew is the reason that we are supposed to wear civilian clothes is that nobody is supposed to know that we're there, but they let us go out in the free world and mingle with the with the locals. So everybody knew we were there anyhow. But, um, yeah, I actually met, um, Rommel's, um, operations officer at a guesthouse, and he he made it real clear that he like Americans at.

JONES: It sounds like very interesting work.

BOTTENSEK: It was fascinating.

JONES: So in a sense, do you look back on that experience with more fondness than the Korean experience?

BOTTENSEK: In terms of, like, career development? Absolutely. Absolutely.

JONES: Um.

BOTTENSEK: Going back up. Back in basic training, I was introduced to the commanding general of the U.S. Army Training Center, and I went to shake his hand, and I was it was November is cold out. I went to shake his hand and he informed me, you always take your glove off, soldier. Right? Formalities. Right. And to this day, when I go to shake somebody's hand. If they take off their glove, I know that I got a real the he's the real deal. He gets it right. Um, Fort Riley, I was, I was much, much younger than everybody. And I was taken under the wing of some people that, you know, had been there a long time, and they helped me develop like public speech because I'd have to do briefings and stuff. Um, and, um, I remember the first time I did a briefing, um, the chief of staff came to me afterwards and said, you know, by and check. That was pretty good. But let me teach you a few things about doing presentations and things like that. And now I found myself more in a administrative role rather than a hands on kind of role. And, um, yeah, yeah, I if is, if you can imagine, I've never had a problem really talking to people because having moved around as much as I did with a child, you had to learn to make friends real fast. I went to I went to third grade in three different schools and three different communities in two different states, you know, um, so you had to I had to learn to make friends real quick. So the, the experience at Fort Riley, even though the duty sucked, you know, you know, you're out in the middle of the prairie, you go into, um, Junction City. Nobody, you know, they bark at you. These call your dogs, um, they bark at you as you're walking down the street and stuff. And, um, that aspect of it, it was. It sucked. Um, but. Inside working in plans and operations. I mean, I got to work with the logistics people and, you know, the the personnel people. And, I mean, I got a really, really good, rounded education about how functional organizations function from the inside. So. Does that make sense? Yeah.

JONES: Okay. There's a lot.

BOTTENSEK: Okay. So.

JONES: So I'm going to pivot back to we've talked about how long you were in Germany. Approximately how long were you in Belgium?

BOTTENSEK: A couple of days.

JONES: Okay.

BOTTENSEK: That's.

JONES: Uh, and this was over the course of that three and a half years. Yep. That, uh.

BOTTENSEK: I've gone there several times.

JONES: Okay. And that, uh, Belgium, I think that's. Isn't that where NATO headquarters is? Yep. Okay. Yep. So you were. What did you do in Belgium? Was that more wargame stuff?

BOTTENSEK: Um. Discussed operations? Yeah. Um, see, at the time, and, um, I have no idea what's going on. This 140 years ago. But at the time, we had pre-positioned warehouses full of everything from ammunition to tanks to, you name it, all over Western Europe. And the idea was, is, is that a conflict was imminent, that you would you wouldn't have to ship all this equipment. You just ship the people. Right, right. And part of my job was to make sure that from an engineering standpoint, that the things that we needed were in place and that they're operational and functional and ready to go.

JONES: I'm smiling because I can remember. Being in grade school and being taught about the Cold War.

BOTTENSEK: Yeah.

JONES: And? The teacher assured us, in essence, that we had our people working on.

BOTTENSEK: 24 hours of.

JONES: Slowing down all of the Soviet tanks. Well, we're saying.

BOTTENSEK: That the Soviets were only good for about 50 clicks a day, about 35 miles, because they had massive units of armor.

JONES: But they were junk.

BOTTENSEK: They didn't run very well. You know, I remember I was I was in Europe when they brought in the first. Um company of Abrams tanks.

JONES: Mhm.

BOTTENSEK: And, um, you know, these things are turbine engine diesels. I put up with about 7000 some crazy ones. And the so, so a lot of times your tanks are going down the autobahn or the going down a highway. And the Germans of course, you only like to drive by kind of fast. And so they'd cut in and get stuck behind a tank and it would blow their windshields out because of the heat from the exhaust and stuff like that, you know? Um, yeah. Being over there was a was a that's a wow of an eye opener too. And did you.

JONES: Travel on the other one?

BOTTENSEK: Oh yeah. Yeah. There were times when I got a vehicle.

JONES: Were you in?

BOTTENSEK: Um, usually it was in either a Jeep or a couple times. I drove a, um, like a, um, a small vum. Yeah. And there were a couple times when cars pass me so fast, you couldn't even tell what color they were. Just. I just crazy. Crazy? Yeah. But, uh. Yeah, most of my time there was spent down in Bavaria and, um. Nice part of the country, but I discovered that, um, 90% of their best wines never leave Germany. They make, you know, they're really well known for their for their whites. They make some really amazing reds, too. With you. You'll never find one here. Yeah, at least it'd be hard to find. So, um. Yeah. So so so Fort Riley was, um. It was a great experience in terms of developing me for what I ultimately ended up kind of doing here. I mean, I've had a couple of different careers since I got out. My intention was go back, go, go back to school and become an engineer. And I was very interested in civil engineering. In fact, I worked. I did some plans and stuff for the locks over in, um, lacrosse. Years ago, for the for the gates and the mechanisms that I was asked to draw some stuff that went into that. Um, but when I got out. Um, I. I'd been offered a civilian position at Fort Riley, but my wife at the time didn't want to be at Fort Riley. So we're moving back to Wisconsin. So I came back to Wisconsin with absolutely no plan and ended up, um, selling cars. Okay, okay.

JONES: Oh, sorry. Um. So it's we're we're at the end of your. Service. Mhm. Uh, your military service. Anything else before we leave that topic? That, uh, is something that, uh, you want? Well tell me.

BOTTENSEK: My plan was to make it a career.

JONES: Mhm.

BOTTENSEK: And what I did was I applied for flight school. My idea was I. I hadn't gone back to. So I, I tested out my first year of college through Central Texas College. I clipped out and, um, I applied for flight school. I wanted, and I figured, okay, what I can do is get my degree after, become a pilot, become a warrant officer, then become a full fledged officer, I would be able to retire is probably at least a major, a lieutenant colonel or colonel. I was pretty sharp at the time, and, um, I went through my field gate interviews, had my flight physical where they blind you and all this other kind of happy stuff. And I was waiting on orders to go to Fort Rucker, Alabama, for walk school, one officer school, and then the flight school. I passed everything green flagged, came down and orders for Germany. I said no no no no no. Oh, I'm. I'm on the flight school. Sorry. Because like you asked earlier, how how did they make this decision to send you to Fort Riley? Well, somebody made the decision that I was going to Germany, and I didn't want to go. And it was a two year stint. I said, okay, well, look, they said, look, just just go there. And when you get there, just reapply and we're sure that you'll pass everything again. Then we'll just bring it back at a later time to start school. I said, well, that's that's kind of inefficient, isn't it? You know. And besides, I don't want to be over there without my family. Well, we can we can send your family along. Okay. But it's going to take another year. Commitment. Okay, so now I'm not. I'm conflicted, but I decided let's let's give it a shot. So I said, okay, I'll go. But I got to be able to take my family along. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm going to come home. What, in six months or a year anyhow? Doesn't really matter. So they issued me new orders, but it was delayed dependent travel for up to a year. Which means, okay, I'm committing to go there for an extra year, not knowing if I'm really coming back or not to go to flight school or not. And now you're telling me that to to take my family along. I have to be there an extra year, but it can take up to a year for them to join me. I'm like, you know what? I think I'm done. Give me, give me my. Because I had re-upped yet and my, my, it's my end. Time and service was like weeks away. And I said, you know, I think we're done or you can't do that. Yes, I can. And the thing is, I extended for a year for them already once. Yeah, to finish some projects I was working on. Um, so I just kind of said, now we're done. And, uh, a couple weeks later, I was out of the army. So that's how that ended.

JONES: So I got the day in here. And going from memory, you're out. Uh.

BOTTENSEK: October 23rd.

JONES: 1983 83. Okay. So you leave military in 83. And other than that, any other experience or story you want to talk about? Uh, no. In terms of your military, it's no. Okay. So 1983 happens to be, um, 40 years ago. Okay. What you've been doing in the last 40 years.

BOTTENSEK: Well. Like I said, I plan on going back to school, but I had a wife and a young child to feed, so I got a job. Selling Toyotas and Chrysler Plymouth. I figured I would do that just long enough for, um, semester to roll around and apply up in Stevens Point. At least get get get a bachelor's in something. But I actually enjoyed it. It was fun and the money was good back then. I mean, Toyotas are selling it over list price and you got a percentage of the gross profit and geez, you know, for a guy with with no college education, um, you know, back in the early 80s, you know, make 45, 50 grand a year, that was that was pretty good money. And then I got recruited by John Lancaster Toyota, um, like I had.

JONES: So where what city were you?

BOTTENSEK: I was in Wisconsin Rapids. Okay. Move back home. Yep. Moved down here in 1985. In April. Seems to be a trend with this April thing, huh. Um, moved down here in April of 85. Went to work for John Lancaster. Um, worked with them until, what, 19? 87. 88. And I wanted to get into finance. I wanted to be a finance manager, but they wouldn't let me because they said I didn't have any experience.

JONES: Right.

BOTTENSEK: So I got my insurance licenses and I went to work for Century Insurance, selling insurance just long enough to get enough experience where I could go back into the car business. And what I ended up doing for the next. Let's see that 88. For the next five years, I primarily did consulting work. With car dealers on just how to grow their back end. I understood the I understood the business pretty well. I. I ran a minority investment dealership for them for a while here in in Madison back in 91, 92. Um, and then, uh, then I got in the mortgage business in 1993.

JONES: Okay.

BOTTENSEK: And we opened, um, Beacon Financial Services in 2002. Um. I always get to a point where, um. I think I can do it better than the people I'm working for.

JONES: Okay, okay. So when you opened the beacon, I think it was at a mortgage. Mhm. Well.

BOTTENSEK: You know we did mortgages and financial services.

JONES: Okay. And uh how long were you with beacon?

BOTTENSEK: We owned beacon until 2009. And the, um, what they call it. What, the Great Recession.

JONES: Mhm.

BOTTENSEK: And um.

JONES: So at that point, uh, the mortgage business collapsed.

BOTTENSEK: What would happen was they destroyed the secondary market. And we were we were servicing our own debt. And, um, it got to the point where people that we'd lent money to pay their. Mortgages, and then we couldn't pay the lines that we finance those on. And it just it was is a bloodbath. We lost, um, substantial money during that period. And then one day, um, there's a knock on our door here, and I open the door and there's this skinny little guy, middle aged guy standing there, says, hey, buddy, can I.

JONES: Get on your roof?

BOTTENSEK: Like, why do you want to get on my roof? We had hail, man.

JONES: So I'll get you a free roof, man. Really?

BOTTENSEK: Knock yourself out. So the guy goes up on the roof. Now, if you have a nose. I've been in sales related something or another for 40 years. Almost. Right. And the guy who's up on the right here, I'm up on the roof, and he comes down a little while later and he has this just a little handwritten, you know, like the the carbon less paper thing. Pair off old rough, replace with blah blah blah blah blah. I'm like, you wrote like five lines and put a price like, I don't know, like $9,300 or something like that, right? It says, here you go, buddy, if I can help you. Here's my card. And he walks away and I'm thinking, okay, wait a minute. You just came to my door and told me that you can get me a free rough. You just hear me? A piece of paper. Will you ask me to sign something? Come on, come on. So I know nothing about roofing. I know nothing about Hale. So I get online. But by that point, luckily, we had the internet and I found I won't mention a name, but I found a local roofing company. We had a lot of really good credentials, so I called them up and I said, are you, um, are you hiring any salespeople? And they said, well, as a matter of fact, yeah, we had hail, she says. So the next day I met with the owner. He offered me a job. And that was just before, um, Memorial weekend. So I went to work actually the following Tuesday. That was on that Friday. And I remember I came home on Wednesday night and Ross said to me, well, how'd it go? So I've been out of work for quite some time. And, um, I said, you know, honey, if I'd known about this 20 years ago, I never would've bought a suit. I've been doing it since, and, um, I just came back from five and a half years, and in Florida I did, um, I was asked to come down after Hurricane Irma in 2017, and I helped, uh, company down there. You know, develop processes and stuff. I mean, I won't get into the whole minutia about what, what catastrophe restorations like after a major hurricane, but it's a mess. And I helped a company, um, restructure themselves. They could deal with it. And, um, what started out as a 90 day independent contractor contract turned into five and a half years. And then in, uh, 2022, um, Hurricane Ian came along and it flooded our condo. We're on the water down there. And, uh, we spent two years remodeling beautiful townhome down there on a private island, and we got four feet of water. And I said that I've had enough time to come home. So I came back, and now I do, uh, primarily commercial work. Um, I told you about the church and the magic I find down to Florida in two weeks, because I've got a project. I got a condo project down there that I'm taking over. So, um, but, you know, um, uh, a lot of people have a very clear path that they take, um, in their, in their lives, in their careers. I've always kind of shot from the hip. And I guess, you know, in retrospect, maybe I should have the One Direction, but my, my, I like put it this way, Raleigh, I don't think I regret a moment that I spent in the military. For one thing, I think I made a difference. And, um. It prepared me for. A really good career, really in a couple of different industries, and it was the things that I learned at Fort Riley that really prepared me for where I am now. I can walk into a boardroom with With utmost Without. You know, there's a difference between being, you know, unconfident and being cocky. And I can walk into a boardroom, um, with a good, um, executive presence and, and get people to turn millions of dollars over to me to spend for them on a new role for whatever they need. And, um, it's been a it's been a pretty good ride. But yeah, the, you know, looking back, I've never know. Honestly, I've never put things into perspective like I have in the last two hours. Um, it's been a great ride. And, um, you know, I. I know the military has changed a lot. You know, I was post-Vietnam and people really frowned on the military. And during the Carter years, I mean, my first election, I voted for Jimmy Carter, you know. And, um, you know, in, in retrospect, like, what was I thinking? I mean, they were gutting the military, you know? Um, and then, um, you know, when Reagan came into office, started to, um, you know, re bolster up the military and things like that. And, um, I take my I tell you what, I, a fellow board member of mine in Florida, is a, um, Gulf veteran from Marines, and he's a fairly young man. He was he was wounded in action. And, um. Um, there's still thankfully, a contingency of of young people, both men and women, who are devoted to protecting this nation. And for all of the stories that we tell and all the parties that we had and all the browsing that we've done and all the running around and travel and everything else, it's still comes down to the bottom line is we're here to defend a nation, and I hope that we never run out of people who are willing to sacrifice and do that. So it was an honor. It was an honor. My. Here's my little. I gotta find a place to hang that up. But my my little plaque from the 44th Engineer Battalion and, um, got my. Whatever you call that. Some metal that you and I can't remember. What, uh. Uh. Okay. That that that. And two bucks will get you a cup of coffee. So. Been a good ride.

JONES: Well, on that note, um. John. Uh. I want to say thank you for your service, uh, to our country militarily. And I also want to thank you for saying yes and allowing yourself to be interviewed for this.

BOTTENSEK: Well, I hope I didn't. Well, I guess I'd probably talk to my ex-wife once said that, you know, you're really verbose, and I took that as a compliment. And then I realized what it meant was like, oh, yeah, shut up. Now, I appreciate the opportunity. Raleigh. Thank you.

JONES: This interview has concluded.

[Interview Ends]