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Well I was in civilian clothes. Where is your uniform he demanded ? I sent it home I said. He hit the ceiling and reamed me up and down for about ten minutes and threatened to keep me in the army. I went into finance to get my last check and they would not pay me unless I was in uniform. I said fine, send it home to my mother.
It was Sgt Lifer who rescued me, he said - by pulling strings. Some hint of court martial. But rather they made a new law and could have named it after me, that henceforth people could not exit the army in civilian clothes. I got my money. I had gotten a passport earlier from the embassy in Athens. I was ready to go. But still I hung around for an extra couple of days for sentimentality sake, before I made my way to Athens from which I would go to Rome and London.
But of course I must have learned many things in Greece. Foremost was a foreign culture quite distinct from where I had been brought up. Most of the service men I knew rejected it as primitive because America was more modern an industrial giant at the time, but which I thought was too sterile. I liked the nitty gritty, the life outdoors and the crowded atmospher in the streets. I learned I was narrow unknowing of other cultures and eventually that I was provincial.
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