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of the bottle on his fatigue t-shirt and took a healthy swallow before he passed it
on. In very little time there were several bottles making the rounds and a couple
of little barbecues cranking out hot Italian sausage from the open air market in
Comiso. Someone moved a pair of speakers outside the barracks and snaked the
cable in through the window. We sat outside and listened to Pink Floyd tell us
how they wished we were there as we got drunk and watched the mushroom
cloud get bigger and darker and more real until it filled the whole sky like a
storm hovering on the horizon just waiting for an excuse to let loose a torrent of
destruction and mayhem on our peaceful little Ground Launched Cruise Missile
(GLCM) base.
GLCM is properly pronounced "Glick-em" and the unofficial motto at
Comiso Air Station was "Glick-em till they glow, and then shoot 'em in the
dark." We too could neither confirm nor deny that there actually were nuclear
weapons in the bunkers behind the triple layer of fences topped with concertina
wire and constantly patrolled by both U.S. and Italian security forces carrying
M-16s.
The consensus was that it had to be Etna, because if there had been any
sort of incident there would have been a recall and we all would long since have
been called to our stations. About half an hour later, as the sun was disappearing
from the sky, someone heard from someone else that one of the guys in the
Comm Center had told him that it was Mount Etna erupting, but at that point
no one cared anymore.
It was the next day that I first spoke with Jeremy.
Looking back now it seems that my entire relationship with Jeremy
was bracketed by events that could be seen either as massive forces of destruction,
or miraculous opportunities for life and renewal. Depending on your point of
view. The day I met Jeremy Mount Etna was still spewing ash and lava high
into the sky above Sicily, and the last time I ever saw him was the day the Berlin
wall came down.
*
One of the first things you figure out about Air Force Dining Facilities
(in the new Air Force we don't call them Chow Halls) is that if you order an
omelet they have to make your eggs while you wait, but if you order anything
else it comes out of huge, industrial, metal cafeteria bins where it could have
been sitting for hours. Everyone ordered omelets. The cooks carefully measured
out the ingredients using special ingredient measuring equipment designed in
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