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"No, sir. Nothing at all," he stammered. "I'm saying something different. We, the guys, were wondering if you've bowled before - do you think maybe you'd like to become part of the team?" He had gotten more confidence the more he framed his request. "You want me for your team?" | asked. | was pretty surprised because officers weren't supposed to fraternize with enlisted men at that time. Things are very different now, but then, fifty years ago, it was a different world, even for much of the officer corps that started out as draftees and went through officer training. "We know it's out of the ordinary, sir, but there are no rules against it." | gave him a very surprised look. "We checked, " he said. This was obviously not a spur of the moment question. "Sir, we've been watching. We think you'll really help us out. Besides, "he continued, "we do need an officer on the team." Whether out of modesty or because he didn't want to put me off, he had completely understated the nature of the bowling team. These guys had been champions in their own hometowns and, years later, you could have found them on Bowling for Dollars. There was no reason in the world | should have been on that team except that they wanted an officer because it would give them prestige. | told him I'd get back to him on it because | wanted to check on the rules, if there were any, for myself. In fact officers and enlisted personnel were allowed to compete on the same athletic teams, and, in very short order, | joined the team, along with Dave Bender, John Miller, Brownie, and Sal Federico. We became quite a remarkable team, winning most of our matches, more than a few trophies, and had lots of exciting moments when we made the impossible splits and bowled our way all the way to the state finals. We ultimately won the Army Bowling Championships, and the trophy sits on my desk to this very day. Magically, the barrier between officer and enlisted man seemed to drop. And that's the real point of this story. Through the months | spent on the team, | became friends with Bender, Miller, Federico, and Brown. We didn't socialize much, except for the bowling, but we also didn't stand on ceremony with each other, and | liked it that way. | found that a lot of the career intelligence officers also liked to see some of the barriers drop because sometimes men will speak with more honesty to you if you don't throw what's on your shoulders into their faces every time you talk to them. So | became friends with these guys, and that's what got me into the veterinary building on Sunday night, July 6, 1947. | remember how hot it had been that whole weekend of July 4th celebrations and fireworks. These were the days before everybody had to have air-conditioning, so we just sweltered inside the offices at the base and swatted away the fat lazy flies that buzzed around looking for hot dog crumbs or landing on chunks of pickle relish. By Sunday, the celebrations were over, guys who'd had too much beer had been dragged off to their barracks by members of their company before the MPs got hold of them, and the base was settling down to the business of the week. Nobody seemed to take much notice of the five deuce-and-a-halfs and side-by-side low- boy trailers that had pulled into the base that afternoon full of cargo from Fort Bliss in Texas on their way to Air Materiel Command at Wright Field in Ohio. If you had looked at the cargo manifests the drivers were carrying, you'd have seen lists itemizing landing gear assembly struts for B29s, wing tank pods for vintage P51s, piston rings for radial aircraft engines, ten crates of Motorola walkie-talkies, and you wouldn't think anything of the shipment except for the fact that it was going the wrong way. These spare parts were usually shipped from Wright Field to bases like Fort Bliss rather than the other way around, but, of course, | wouldn't know that until years later when the real cargo on those trucks fell straight onto my desk as if it had dropped out of the sky. It got quiet that evening right after dark, and | remember that it was very humid. Off in the distance you could see lightning, and | wondered if the storms were going to reach the base before morning. | was the post duty officer on that night - similar to the chief duty officer of the watch on a naval vessel - and hoped, even more fervently, that if a storm were on its way, it would wait until morning to break so that | might be spared walking through the mud from sentry post to sentry post in the midst of a summer downpour. | looked over the sentry duty roster for that night and saw that Brownie was standing a post over at one of the old veterinarian buildings near the center of the compound. The post duty officer spends his night at the main base headquarters, where he watches the phones and is the human firewall between an emergency and a disaster. Not much to do unless there's a war on or a company of roustabouts decides to tear up a local bar. And by late night, the base settles into a pattern. The sentries walk their posts, the various administrative offices close down, and whoever is on night watch takes over the communications system - which in1947 consisted primarily of telephone and telex cable. | had to walk a beat as well, checking the different buildings and sentry posts to make sure everyone was on duty. | also had to close down the social clubs. After | made my obligatory stops at the enlisted men's and officers’ clubs, shutting down the bars and tossing, with all due respect to the senior officers, the drunks back to their quarters, | footed it over to 13 "You think | can hold up my end of things?" | asked. "It's been along time since I've bowled against anybody. "