I Never Saw Him Again

My dad wrote down a lot of his army stories and they are definitely worth sharing.  This one involves a friend and the road not taken:

                   I first met Leonitias in 1938 when we first arrived at Fort Williams, Maine, as raw recruits in the U.S. Army. His name was so hard to pronounce that everyone called him the “Greek.” He was like a caricature, about 5ft 5 inches and weighing about 150 lbs. His feet were so wide that the Army had to order special shoes for him. The Greek’s home was out on Cape Cod where his father owned and operated a restaurant. We became the best of friends and served our entire time together in the 5^th Infantry. He always wanted me to meet his sister, who he claimed was a Greek Goddess.

                   In late 1940, the entire 5^th Infantry was moved to do guard duty on the Panama Canal and the jungle area around the canal. After two years of this hot miserable assignment, the Greek and I were due for discharge, and we made an agreement to re-enlist for the Philippine Islands. The Greek came back to the States on a boat ahead of me and we were supposed to meet at Brooklyn Army Base, where we would re-enlist. When I arrived in Brooklyn, there was no Greek. I waited five days, called his home several times but could not contact him, so I decided to take my discharge and head for home. As it turned out, I know that I was so lucky that I lost the Greek, because had we re-enlisted for the Philippine Islands, there’s a good possibly that we would have become prisoners of Japan, and who knows what. As for the Greek, I never saw or heard from him again.