Over at Frizzen Sparks, the Graumagus relates a wintery tale involving a call of nature. Let me warn you up front. Do NOT have food or beverage in your mouth when you read this.

Of course, I have my own tale of woe, posted a few months back.

And cold?!?!? I once took a leak while walking patrol on Freedom Bridge in Korea in the winter of 1970. It was so cold that we’d leave our barracks at the foot of the bridge with hot water in our cnateens, and by the time we made the first lap to the far end of the bridge, the water was frozen.

Here’s picture of Freedom Bridge. It connects the normal part of South Korea with the military zone north of the Imjin River and south of the actual DMZ. The Imjin River cuts a little triangle of land from South Korea, and when I was there that little chunk of land was peopled only by the American military, units of the Second Infantry Division.

There were only three bridges from that chunk of land, Freedom, Liberty, and “Spoonbill”, a temporary bridge consisting of some pontoon sections and the bridges of two AVLB’s (Armored Vehicle Launched Bridge). It was commonly calculated that the units north the Imjin River had a life expectancy of half an hour if North Korea ever crossed the line. One of our jobs was to insure the security of the bridge until the engineers could drop it in the river. So every now and then it was our turn to guard the bridge, which involved foot patrols down the length of a structure laced with live explosive sufficient to blow it (and us) to useless bits.

So we walked the bridge. Imagine this in January with the Siberian Express blasting frigid air from the Artic. And you’re a young soldier walking your post from one end of the bridge to the other. You’re wearing every bit of cold-weather gear you own: civilian cotton long johns under your scratchy GI woolen long johns. Then your woolen winter uniform pants and shirt. Over that, you’ve got on GI field pants with liners. Your top half has a field jacket with liner, and on top of that, a parka with liner and wolf-fur-lined arctic hood. And trigger finger mittens with woolen liners. And on your feet you have civilian thermal socks and GI “Mickey Mouse” boots.

You’re going to be walking back and forth the length of that bridge for four hours. In single-digit temperatures and thirty mile an hour winds. Every other of our posts on the Imjin River were on twelve-hour shifts, but the bridge is so brutally cold and exposed that they only put you up there for four hours. You pass the time by listening to the river ice grind against the bridge’s piers, and you look at the holes left in the bridge’s structure by the war. And in the middle of your tour of duty, you get the undeniable urge to relieve yourself.

Well, that was me in January 1970. And I pissed into the Imjin River from Freedom Bridge. And it was so cold that there was no splash as my contribution to the river hit the ice below. Nope. It was already frozen when it got there. It wasn’t an easy thing, either. Read over the clothing list again. There’s a lot of distance there from the inside to the outside…

What else could I do? You look at that picture. That’s a railroad bridge converted to carry a single lane of military traffic. There’s no room for an outhouse. And you DIDN”T leave your post unless you were carried off. Needless to say, my little contribution was not the only one made to the Imjin over the years from the heights of that bridge.