AA in the Military. Группа авторов

out of Claresholm until December 17. During this period there were numerous “closing out” parties going on and an awful temptation to drink. It was only through God’s help and the kind understanding and capable assistance of AA friends in Fort MacLeod, Lethbridge, and Picture Butte and having AA Grapevine handy that I was able to stay sober.

      I am now stationed in Calgary and approaching my second year of sobriety with AA. I wouldn’t trade any part of the sober time for any part of my life when I was drinking. It took three slips before I finally stuck with AA and the last time I came in without reservations and with an honest admission that I am an alcoholic.

      I am only 24 now and sure hope that other young people can find AA as soon in life as I did and save themselves a lot of misery that drinking can bring. Both my wife and I really enjoy the new way of life we have found with AA. We enjoy reading Grapevine every month and hope you keep up the good work.

      J.M.

      Calgary, Alberta

A Flier Lands

      (From: Mail Call for All AAs at Home or Abroad)

      January 1947

      It was an unexpected pleasure to receive your very nice letter. I suppose the explanation as to why I finally joined AA is now in order, so here goes. My glittering career in the Army was studded with several meteoric rises and just as rapid falls. I went from a private to technical sergeant twice before they finally made me a flight officer. I managed to hold onto that for a little longer period than the others, but even that wound up when I went on a ferry trip and landed the ship at the wrong base, so cockeyed I couldn’t walk away from it. I might have gotten away with that if I hadn’t gotten my copilot drunk too. This last little episode was really the whizzer of them all. I was transferred to a new base and became the only flying private in the Air Corps.

      Things went so well they decided to start me up the ladder again; so they gave me a little rank. (This was in January, 1945.) Naturally I had to celebrate it, so I went to town for two quarts and wound up in Kansas City, Missouri (60 miles away). It was such a fine place and the people so hospitable that I lengthened my stay to 60 days. On the 60th day they came after me! The rest is history! I drew a sentence of three years at hard labor, which I very rightly deserved.

      It was while I was at Jefferson Barracks that a group of us decided to try and start AA in the Disciplinary Barracks. It really worked out much better than we had hoped. When we moved down here we really went to work in such earnest, in fact, that a few of us are in for parole to the AA group in Louisville, and jobs are waiting there for us. I have made several speeches before the Louisville group, which is some 300 persons, and all in all have really come out of the fog for the first time. I hate to admit it, but these people did me a favor when they locked me up.

      H. R.

      Fort Knox, Kentucky