‘The original Homeland Security’
n BY LYNN ADAMO
He’s decidedly humble about his service during the Korean War,
but as part of the Signal Corps, Local 600 Trustee Bob DeMarco was
on the leading edge of homeland security 50 years before the term
entered the national lexicon.
“I have no hair-raising tales, nothing to crow about,” the retired
member of NJ State Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) Local 104
demurred. “I got drafted and served two years. It’s the most unglamorous story you’ve ever heard.”
Truth is DeMarco and his Signal Corps colleagues played vital roles
in safeguarding the nation’s capital during the conflict that occupied
the Korean Peninsula, and American minds, from 1950-1953.
After receiving his draft papers, Corporal DeMarco boarded a train
for the long, slow slog to what was then Camp Gordon, Georgia, arriving in the midst of a typically sweltering southern summer.
“It was my only trying time in the Army,” he confessed. “We timed
it just right; we were there in July, August and September.”
Camp Gordon was home to the Army’s Signal Corps Replacement
Training Center, as well as its Signal Unit Training Group. The camp,
now Fort Gordon, was also home base to Military Police (MP) training
for combat assignments.
“It was a major Army post with 50,000 guys – half Signal Corps, half
MPs,” DeMarco recalled. “So when I heard I was going to Camp Gor-
don, I thought, ‘Finally. I’m going to get to be
what I want to be – a law enforcement officer.’”
But when he arrived, DeMarco found out
that in fact he would not receive his ideal
assignment.
“They said ‘No, you’re not an MP. You’re in
the Signal Corps.’ That caused a little delay
in my entry into law enforcement,” he
joked. “Everything was going according to plan until I got off that train.”
Bob De
Once through basic training,
ABC Lo Marco
DeMarco reported to Fort George
Meade, 25 miles northeast of WashArmy: cal 104
Korea
ington, D.C., and spent the remainder
of his two years in service building,
repairing and maintaining RADAR
systems that protected the capital from a possible
Communist attack.
“I think North Korea had one (bomber),” DeMarco offered about
the threat his unit addressed, and why he retroactively proclaims his
Cold War service was far from dangerous or exciting. But as today’s
Department of Homeland Security would surely attest, better to have
a plan and never use it than to not have one at all.
www.njcopsmagazine.com
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NOVEMBER 2015
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