When very young (20) & in the Airforce, I knew another member of the services who was leftist leaning. I knew him because we both attended night school classes in modern history at a nearby civilian high school. His name was Pat.

It seems Pat did have a desire to leave the service (there are few other rational explanations) however knowing him as I did, I believed that he believed what he said. The most famous incident involving Pat was that he had a picture he had drawn, depicting the then Australian prime minister, as a puppet & the strings being controlled by the then President of the US (LBJ).

We were both part of a base known as HQ Operational Command (the HQ of Operations for the service). I was at the time, a communications engineer working on high-power transmitters & micro-wave links.

Anyway, things came to a head for Pat when the base commanding officer was due to do his tour of inspection & having arrived at Pat's room, asked him why he had the drawing pinned to his wall. Pat politely told the CO that it was what he believed. The CO asked him politely if he would take it down Pat politely declined. I think it took another 3 months before Pat was given an honorable discharge (not suited to Airforce service).

I am sure that if Pat had taken the drawing down, not much more would have been said. What really got Pat out though was that he had a couple of pen friends in Russia & it was quite amusing to be on a base the like that ours was & for Pat to be recieving mail from Russia, the stamps were quite impressive.

Like I said, another world, another time, how things have changed :-)

Doug Marker