Four Day Leave to Japan

I had not yet had R and R and I had been in the theatre from mid-July, roughly now, until the first of December and I’d still not had any sort of a holiday or a break. When the second night was finished, I was called in by the CO and said, “You know it’s a good job.” And I said, “Well yeah, but the credit goes to a lot of people, particularly the crew that I had been working with.” And he said, “Well,” he said, “yes. I think it’s time you had a holiday.” And I said, “Yeah, I think it probably is.” So he said, “Yeah. See the 2IC,” and I did. And what had happened was that they had arranged for a courier trip to Japan and that is to take some documents to Japan. How necessary these documents were to anybody and why they had to be taken at that time, I sure as hell wasn’t going to question it because it meant that I was going to get a holiday in Japan. And so that within a day or two I was back at the Echelon picking up an envelope and on my way to four days in Japan. That was what was my break. I must say getting away from the cold and the desolation of Korea, because by this time it’s December, there’s snow on the ground, it’s cold. Stepping off a plane into a humid climate, like Japan appeared to be at that time, quite mild, quite pleasant, was really a very nice sensation.