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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill/WA who wrote (111901)	3/4/2008 7:41:26 AM
From: Knighty Tin	Respond to of 132070

I understand the "lighting a fire" comment. As my enlistment wound down to my last year, I applied for an early out to return to college. It was only 3 months less than my full sentence and a mountain of paperwork, but I would have hand copied "War and Peace" for one day less in the Army. And, of course, I never heard from anyone for nearly 9 months after submitting my application. One day my commander came in and told me that I had 4 months left on my enlistment, 2 weeks of leave I would lose if I didn't use it, and that we were about to run an exercise starting the next week. Once the exercise started, no leave would be granted until the end of the war games. The exercises were 12 to 16 hour days with little free time. I wanted to avoid the start, because, once they start, you are trapped. So, I took two weeks off, grabbed a train to Hamburg, then caught a plane to London. I had a ball in London. Near the end of the two weeks, I saw a friend's wife in Piccadilly Square. As it turned out, she was in the process of becoming his ex-wife. But she was still friendly with me. She ran across the square, grabbed my arm and said, "your early out just came in before I left Germany. If you are not back on base in two days, they're going to cancel it." I was the one on the plane pounding on the door to the cockpit telling the pilot to "pick up the speed, you little old lady." It sounds funny today, with cell phones, the internet and pagers everywhere, but communications between England and Germany were mostly by mail in 1970. If I hadn't run into that very nice woman, I would have had to spend 3 more months in the Army. If I hadn't hung myself. <G>