THE ROAD TO DIYARBAKIR

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I was stationed at Erhac Turkey from May 1970 until May 1971. This was before the convenience of cellphones or laptops. The only way I had to communicate with my wife Debbie was by mail. She wrote me every day and I wrote her every day. The mail was sporadic. We would go days without mail and when it did come I would usually got a stack of letters. We had a radar station that was connected to Norad at Diyarbakir Turkey. it was down near the Syrian and Iraqi border. This was the only place where we could place a phone call back to the states. I was able to talk to Debbie about 4 times while I was there. We worked 9 day cycles and on our 72 hour breaks we could take a trip to Diyarbakir. It was a dangerous trip so we always traveled in groups. When we were close to Diyarbakir we would see a lot of camels. A Turkish friend of mine recently told me that it is rare now to see a camel in Turkey today.

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