Tour

Of the trip to Greece I only remember a large ship, old; and a storm again. I ate dinner, first evening-out, and went to the toilet, which was a long trough of running water, and was standing there, when suddenly the landing I was standing, dropped ten - fifteen feet sheer-gone, like an elevator. "Down-please", and the deck rose up and dropped again; and I started to feel sick, and beat my-way to my cabin. It was six double bunks, on three walls, with a sink on the other. I was the only one there. I climbed onto my top bunk, and laid there unmoving. After a couple of hours, I spent a long tedious time of-it, trying to get undressed and under the covers without moving, a Houdini trick, otherwise I would throw-up. It was a slow process, undressing, moving just a few muscles at a time; and took a long time to unclothe, and slide under the covers. I woke at some middle-night annoyances as someone and another, and I had not seen any of my cabin mates, would be vomiting in the sink. Heavy seas.

Greece was in lock-down. There had been a coup, just the week that I left, actually nearly a year before. And so I heard on seeing my old lifer Sergeant, that the army shot missiles at the air-force, and vice-versa; and they went straight-up and came straight-down not exploding. My old bomb disposal unit, had to clean up the mess. I had gotten out of there just in time. I found a bed and breakfast in down-town Athens, and stayed some little time. I had to get my airline ticket. No recollection. Stopped at a coffee house, and on a pole out front, there were bulletins posted; No Political Conversations Allowed! And that was anywhere people would congregate. Military officers had taken over.

I called my first sergeant. He came in after Sargent Shurely had left, and I only worked for him a few months or less than six weeks. He was a lifer, drove a Cadillac, smoked big cigars, was fat, jolly, with spectacles, effusive, and had a beautiful wife. He impressed upon me, that this was not the army that-it had-been when he had enlisted early in his career. There was always some discussion between short-timers and lifers, of where the real army was. Lifers always said, this was not it. So then where is it, was the re-joiner. The mysterious real army like an elephant's ivory graveyard; he had stayed in for and took me to where he said the real army was. But that too was not the same, and had to be modified a good deal.

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