Read the full 2nd indictment here.

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And Another Child Is Born

by

Sp4 Clyde Collins

Caducean Newspaper

Tripler Army Medical Center

early 1980’s

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     Old Tyrone’s wife wanted him to have the operation.  The operation might prolong his life another year or two or three ~ or it might not.

     Pvt. Donald Duty, inspiration specialist, Poetics Lab, had even stood at the foot of Tyrone’s bed at TAMC and sung him an original lyric to encourage the aged feller to have a go at it.

     And the doctors were ready.

     But the brittle bones and shrinking belly of 101 year old Tyrone were playing another kind of tune on his interior banjo.  Also in one of his recent dreams an angel had winked at Tyrone.

     So he refused the operation, checked out of the hospital.

     Without informing a soul, the antiquated patriot managed to grip his walking cane and hobble fragilely onto a jet airliner headed for the mainland.

     In Los Angeles, assisted by two younger passengers, Tyrone boarded a bus.  Helped by the driver, Tyrone disembarked the bus in the middle of the desert and in the midst of a flagrant sunrise.

     Pale as a communion host, the waning veteran plodded into the desolate scenery that reminded him of a picture post card.

     Two miles later he collapsed.  Tyrone stretched his spindly legs across the sandy earth, leaned back against a boulder, took a long look at the sky and bowed his head.  “All I ask of dying is to go naturally,” he muttered.

     A ragged vulture, perched atop a tall cactus plant nearby, turned his head.

     And at the same moment that Tyrone’s last breath of life dissipated in the desert heat, back on Oahu at Tripler’s Labor and Delievery another child was born.

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DUTY WORLD

1980-1984

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