The night before I was making my PCS (Permanent Change of Station) move from 1st Bn 10th SFG(A)to my new assingment as an instructor at SOMED I spent the night with a German friend of mine. Horst Myher owned a bar and we had become friends during my last year in Germany when I met him during a training exercise.

In preperation for the move I had already sent my wife and two kids home and they were living with my parents. I didn't want my son to start another year in the DoD run HS in Munich because it was terrible so my wife and I decided it would be best if they all left early together and to enroll the kids in the schools here in Anderson for the first three months of the school year before the move down to Ft. Sam Houston at San Antonio, TX.

So for the last three months of my three year tour at Flint Kasern in Bad Tolz, Germany I was alone. When I had the chance I would drive the 30 kilometers to Horst Myhers new place. Since I had met him he had moved his bar into a new building and was renovating the place. I helped him lay new carpet in the bar and helped with various renovations to the living quarters he and his son would stay in above the bar.

I was scheduled to fly out of Frankfort Rhine Mane airport on the morning of Dec. 22nd, 1988 on a Pan Am flight that would take me to JFK in NY where I would grab a connecting flight to Indianapolis and for there go to Anderson and take some leave in route before I took the family down to Ft. Sam Houston. I had cleared family quarters at Flint Kasern +a couple days before I was to depart and said good by to my friends and my SF teammates then went to spend the last couple days with Horst who would drive me to the airport in Frankfort to catch my flight.

The night of the 21st Horst and I sat and drank together well into the night. I drinking my last great German beers in Germany and Horst working on the bottle of Crown Royal that I had brought him. We got a few hours of sleep then loaded my stuff in the car and Horst and were off to the airport. Listening to the radio we heard about the Pan AM flight going down over Lockerbie Scottland for the first time.

I arrived at the terminal and it was obvious that even the normal high security had been heigtned. Lots of guys with MP-5 sub machine guns around. Many more than normal. When I went to check in there were no smiles at the counter. And then when I went through security they had me empty my carry on and went through every thing. They even had me take apart the black military bic pen I had in there. When I inquired about the high security I found that I was leaving from the very gate that the flight that went down in lockerbie departed from the day before.

Before they loaded the luggage we passengers had to go out onto the ramp and identify which bags were ours before they were sniffed by a dog and then finally loaded on the Pan Am 747.

But for the grace of God I would have been on that flight. All it would have taken is the stroke of some Army travel clerks pen to make it so because my origional travel orders actually said depart "on or about" the 22nd of December. So I am more than a little pissed about what the UK has done with the release of the Lockerbie bomber. And we all know it had NOTHING to do with misguided compassion and everything to do with oil money. Funny the liberal political machine is so silent. After all they screamed for years that the invasion of Iraq was "blood for oil".







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What's most disappointing is that the UK has otherwise been American's most reliable ally in the war on terror.  The sell out over this guy was just disgusting.

 

I agree.

I am getting conflicting information. According to what I have read during the Blair administration the release of the murderer was forbidden. However, Manifraido has e-mailed me information from sources in the UK that said that Scotland had the legal right/power to release him without UK approval.

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