I worked with a lineman over in Germany,
called West Germany back then
during the Cold War,
as part of my youthful days in the army.
We were both corporals.
One morning,
the lineman did not show up for roll call.
And then he didn’t show up
for the rest of the morning.
Being absent without authority
was a big deal in the military.
It rarely happened.
There were questions.
Was he hung over from a night of drinking?
No, that wasn’t it.
Did anyone see him leave the barracks?
No, and even though he was a popular guy,
gregarious in so many ways,
nobody knew anything.
He hadn’t said anything
out of the ordinary to anyone.
A couple of guys were dispatched
to the barracks to see if he was in his room.
When they arrived,
they found the bed sheets nicely folded
on top of the mattress,
with the lineman’s uniforms folded
and stacked on top of the sheets,
and his boots lined up nicely
at the foot of the bed.
And on the top of the pile of uniforms,
the lineman had placed
his military identification,
his military passport,
and his dog tags.
They found him ten days later
back in his hometown in Canada.
He had managed to get on a plane
without a passport,
saying that it had fallen out of his
back pocket into a toilet.
When they found him,
he wasn’t doing anything.
Just sitting on the couch
at his parent’s house,
reading a book,
like he didn’t have a care in the world.
The military police brought him
back to Germany,
and the Commanding Officer gave him a trial
and several weeks of extra duties.
When the lineman returned to work,
I asked him what happened?
Why did he do it?
He said he didn’t know why he did it.
He just decided to do it.
No specific reason.
Not sad or disgruntled.
Not homesick.
Not trying to escape a bad situation.
No reason at all.
He said he was seeing a psychiatrist
to try to figure out why he did it.