Tour

I called my first sergeant. He came in after Sargent Shurely had left, and I only worked for him a month or two. 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 in 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 grave yard; he 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 adjectived a good deal.

So now I was suppose to sneak on base in the night-time dark. Someone was going to pick me up at the Souvlaki-stand cafe, near the commuter train into down-town Athens, and I hunched down on the floor behind the front seats would be smuggled past the Greek guards at the Greek air force base where this American outpost was situated.

I waited at the Souvlaki-stand and nobody came, or rather think they did, because sitting just inside the glass door closed, and back to a side-wall, I just caught a glimpse of a black car taking off. They didn't come in. They looked saw what they thought was a hippy maybe, and took off. Not much of a pick-up. I called Sergeant Lifer from the phone there, and we settled a dinner date with him and his beautiful wife, she well-mannered, educated, of seeming good-class, that one would wonder, what she was doing with him, seeming so opposite.

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