bktheirregular

(Sergeant Jackrum, Monstrous Regiment)

Woke up before my alarm was due to go off at 0700. At 0740, about the same time as the bugle calls for garrison morning assembly, I was in the headquarters office.

Unfamiliar captain: (taking military ID) "Here are your papers and your civilian ID. Kalos politis (roughly translated, have a good civilian life)."
Me: "Thank you, Captain. The gates open at nine o'clock, I was told?"
Captain: "The gates are open now. You're free to go any time. How are you leaving? Taking a taxi?"
Me: "Bus from Messologi to Athens. Thank you, Captain!"

Around about 0800, after saying several goodbyes, I was walking out the gate for the last time (after the gate guard got confused because his metal detector was tripping on my suitcase's padlocks and metal rails for dragging). Someone asked if I wanted a taxi into Messologi, saying it was damned cold out there and I'd be crazy to be walking.

I'll be okay, I said. And I was.

At 9:20, the bus left Messologi. At about 12:30, it arrived at the central bus depot in Athens. At about ten minutes past one, the taxi dropped me off outside my apartment building.

No more bugle calls. No more marching in place at ten-thirty in the stinking PM because someone horked off one of the officers or NCO's. No more midnight or two AM barracks-guard or sentry duty. No more rifles, no more cleaning out gunpowder. No more picking up cigarette butts and discarded cans and water bottles from six hundred irresponsible punks. No more worries about whether misunderstanding the next thing to be said will get me put up on report.

I'm in my own apartment, the only person I have to clean up after is myself, and the hum of my computer and the faint buzz of the light fixture behind me are all I hear.

It's, as they say, the sound of freedom.