corrente

Was it just yesterday I posted "Grandpa Got Run Over By A Draft Board" thinking it would probably turn out to be a mistake of the sort bureaucracies often make? Silly me:

via AP via abcnews.com)

DECATUR, Ala. July 19, 2004 — At 68, many people are slowing down. Not John Wicks: He's going to Iraq. Wicks, a psychiatrist, has been called out of military retirement by the Army to fill a shortage of mental health experts needed to help soldiers cope with combat. He could be gone as long as a year.

The Army hasn't told Wicks what his exact assignment in Iraq is, or where in the country it will send him.

"I believe that the morale in general is not that good since the scandal at that prison," he said, referring to the allegations of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. "When morale is high, you have fewer of these kinds of problems. And when morale is low you have more."

Wicks said recruiters initially hinted he could go to Europe or a stateside base to relieve a younger psychiatrist who would go to Iraq. The Army even gave him three choices should that scenario play out, and Dr. Wicks chose Italy, Germany and England.

"Well, I now wonder if this was just to get me hooked. Because there's no way I'm going to Italy or any of these places," he said. "I'm going to Iraq."

Back in comments to "Grandpa" (which noted that another category besides "psychiatrist" that was in great demand was "truck drivers") esteemed reader WallyCoxLives had an observation:

My father is 82 years old and a veteran of World War II. He was a mechanic during the war and afterwards until he retired about twenty years ago. He also drove trucks. I wonder if they will be calling him up? He's nearly blind in one eye and losing the vision of his other eye, but that shouldn't stop them.

Wally, I hate to say it, but you and Pops might want to be checking the shortest route to the Canadian line.