Once - maybe 35, 40 years after the preceding events - chance took me through central Georgia once again. Nothing would do but I thought I would go look up my old camp. Or where it had been, as I knew it had been torn down long ago. And I found it! Or rather the "place" at least where it had been. Much changed, of course - barracks all long gone - but the foundation pilings still sticking up through rubble and weeds. Trees growing here and there in the "Quad!" The Pecan Grove was still there - overgrown and neglected. There were nuts for the gathering all over the place...

It was all rather forlorn and abandoned - but you could trace out some, where things had been. There was a beautiful little purple wildflower growing everywhere, and I dug up a few of these and put them in my car. When I got back to Connecticut, I planted some of them out in our fields, and out around my blacksmith cabin. They took root and prospered okay - but never spread or multiplied. Maybe it was too cold up there for them, I don't know. Over the years I had become very interested in wildflower study and collecting. But I never was able to run down exactly what the little purple Georgia flowers were. Just visual reminders of another time, another place... Times kept on changing, however - as they do - and one day we finally left Connecticut for good.

Maybe another 20 years went by, then once again - not all that long ago, really - maybe three or four years back - my path again lay up through Central Georgia. So I decided to detour off the highway once more, and see if I could find Camp once again. But now things were much different. Roads had changed, new homes and buildings stood where none had been before. Memory was dimming. I could not find it, nor even a reasonable trace of it! I remembered that an Air Force flying field had abutted our post back then - don't hold me to it, but I think it was called "Cochrane" field. As I drove around through the now unfamiliar scenery, I saw a small private flying field. I turned in, parked, and went into the office. A guy thirty or forty years my junior, in greasy flying overalls, came out from in back and wanted to know (hopefully I could tell) if I wanted to enroll for flying lessons - or just maybe zip aloft for a short spin around the area... I allowed as how, "No. But thanks. I'm looking you see, for an old Army camp that was once around here somewhere. I thought you might know which direction."

He looked at me for a short space and then he said, "Camp Wheeler." At this I brightened... "Yes! Yes," I said. "That's it."

"The Infantry Repple-Depple," and he grinned. "My dad grew up hereabouts," he said, "and he often told us about it."

"Yep," he said. "We get maybe three or four old guys a year in here - meaning no disrespect, Sir! - always looking for Camp Wheeler. Same thing. Actually you are on it! Your navigation is pretty good! ('For an old guy' I know is what he meant - but he didn't say it. LOL! But he was being very helpful and continued on). But you won't see any of the remains at all now - it's all been cleaned up lately - there was some worry locally for awhile about unexploded shells left in the ground and all, but the government got that fixed. Then the developers been at it all over- as you see - and we got warehouses and malls and everything..."

"Fact is," he continued, "do you remember the flying field next to the Main Gate?"

"Oh, you bet," I said. "My barracks was not too far from there."

"Well," he said, "our field here is incorporated over part of their old runways."

"Makes sense," I said.

Then I said, " Matter-of-fact, back then, there used to be a big, what we all called the "meatball" built into a low sort of bank alongside the road near that gate. It was the Air Force insignia. You know, the winged star-in-a-ball thing - and they had built all this into the bank with painted red, white, and blue stones - I don't know... maybe twenty feet across or so. The white stones would gleam even when it was dark, and when we used to come back from leave in Macon, and half the guys three sheets to the wind on 'Barbarossa Red'... why our outfit could orient on the dim gleam of the "meatball" - and find our way over to our barracks without much trouble..."

He looked at me a bit. "I'll be damned," he said. "It's still there you know."

"Still there?", I said. "Where? I been looking all afternoon for it up and down these roads."

"Here, he said, "come outside I will show you."

I did.

"It's almost right next to them - in the bank there.The road is gone - moved over couple hundred feet beyond it - but your "meatball" is still there. I never heard that about how you all oriented on it in the dark, though. I got to remember that! He paused a bit. Then he turned more directly to me and said, "Matt Arness was one of you guys. He went through there, did you know that? My daddy told me long time ago."

"That's right," I said. "He surely did. I knew that. He was some earlier than me, though. - maybe '42 or '43... Wounded at Anzio. Actually, my cycle was last one through here. Then they closed it. Nothing left in the barrel."

Then I got in the car and drove around the end of his flying field, and up another farm road, keeping the clump of trees always in view.

I saw it gleaming in the bank as the road curved by - just like he had told me. I stopped, got out, and walked through the weeds to its base. It was weathered and worn - but largely still intact: an incongruous 'meatball' now way out in left field as it were - nowhere (like me even) - and a nowhere guide to anyone anymore, day or night (yep! like me for sure!). I felt tears start - but brushed them away. My companion took a picture of me - standing there and foolishly saluting the camera. The pix came out okay - my new digital camera. You can't miss with those things.

Showed an old guy standing there saluting. Foolishly, is all. Like I said. Big deal. I went looking for them here on my computer today - thought I might post one here as a final illustration maybe.

See ya in the Chowline!

Scraped Clean!