It is the 14th of July.
It is the day in 1789 that the French Revolutionaries stormed the prison and let the prisoners out...they call it Bastille Day. Typical of the French, there were only seven prisoners in the prison at the time, but the event served to spur the revolution and is looked upon as a great step in creating modern France. So Happy Bastille Day. I always remember the date because it was on Bastille Day, 1967, when I got out of the Army the first time.
I was at Fort Huachuca and was ready to get out. As it turned out, I should have just stayed in. Three months later I re-enlisted and headed back to Germany. But that's another story. On the 14th of July 1967 at about 1400 hrs, I signed my final piece of paper, drew my final pay, turned in my linen, filled up the Goat, and headed for the gate. It was a Friday. It was a hot day (duh, middle of July in southern Arizona!). It started with a bunch of headaches from the company orderly room because it was Friday and that meant it was graduation day for the trainees and everything was plugged up with their crap. Everywhere I went that day I ran into people who had just had their fill of someone elses' attitude and decided I was the proper receptacle for their bile. When I got to Greely Hall to finish processing out, I didn't have some of the papers the orderly room was supposed to have given me, so I had to go back and get them, twice. I lost patience somewhere around 1000 in the morning so I added my attitude to the overfull containers. It didn't help.
At the post gas station I used some of my final pay to buy a pair of tires, filled the tank, and stopped at the MPs to scrape off my post sticker. The MPs and I were never pals. They added their contribution to my attitude container and by the time I was rolling for the gate, I was not a happy person. But I was only a mile or so from being a PFC (Private Civilian). They scraped off my sticker and gave me a temp pass to turn in at the gate when I left the post.
I drove to the nearest gate and stretched out my paw with my temporary pass in it. The MP on the gate informed me that I was at the wrong gate. Temp passes had to be turned in at the main gate and the main gate only. I stared at the twelve year old MP with less than brotherly love in my eyes. I stared for several minutes. Long enough that he felt he needed to repeat himself...twice. I stretched my arm out as far and high as I could, ceremoniously dropped the pass, and as it fluttered to the ground, I dumped the clutch and floored the gas and left the little MP in a thick cloud of my brand new General Dual 90s rubber smoke. It was about twenty yards from the gate house to the Highway. I could see quite a way in both directions. There were no cars coming either way so I blew through the stop sign (in for penny, in for a pound), executed a perfect four-wheel drift out onto Highway 90 northbound and stormed right out of the Bastille. I fully expected local law to pull me over sometime soon; they were good at cooperating with the MPs ( local law enforcement derived most of their business from Huachuca). But it didn't happen. I sailed into Tucson and said some fairwells to friends there, pointed north to Phoenix and by early evening was in MamaCharlie's arms.
On Saturday I headed out to San Diego. I had no idea what was next, I just knew I was done with the Army and Arizona. By the end of summer I had learned a few things that would shape the rest of my life. First and foremost: MamaCharlie in Phoenix and me in San Diego was no good. I had to change that. Second, I didn't like most of the civilians I knew...including many I went to school with. I didn't know what happened to them, but it hadn't happen to me and we just weren't compatible anymore. Third, and most painful, was the fact that I actually missed the Army...but that probably had a lot to do with the second thing. And I even missed Huachuca...some. But I didn't know all this on the 14th of July 1967; on that day I was as free as the French.