When I was stationed at Ft. Hood, Texas, it was a dark depressing time for me. If I were a painter it would have been my “black period,” for I would have painted the red door black time and again. On the advice of one of the sergeants, one of the Vietnam vets, I volunteered for service in Turkey. This sergeant constantly sang the praises of being stationed in Turkey and was on orders to return himself.
I arrived in Turkey in late February 1981. I was stationed on the Black Sea. Even though it is on the north coast of Turkey, the climate is much like the coastal Carolinas with hot summers and very mild winters.
In spite of the mildness, there was a lot of rain in the winter and a lot of fog. The short winter still got everyone down, mostly because of the constant rain and fog. It was like working in the commcenter of the living dead.
Things started to change in late March: we actually began seeing the sun from time to time. All of the little finches and bright green birds, whatever they were, started coming back from the south.
One Sunday morning (it just happened to be my day off that week) I was awakened by a loud banging on my room door. My roommate had PCS’ed, so I had to get up and open it. As I was rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, one of the guys was all excited and blurted out, “Kelly’s hiding the beers!”
He then ran off to the next door and started banging furiously on it too.
What? Kelly’s hiding the what? What beer?
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