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address correspondence to Waterioo office : _ . Waterioo Square, Waterioo, Ont., telephone 886â€"2830 Waterioo Chromcie office nbc;t:flen 2nd floor of Wateriao Square‘s Office Tower. Enter via the mall entrance beside the Longhorn Restaurant (directly opposite the card shop} or from the etevator foyer beside the Tâ€"O Bank Take the elevator to the 2nd floor and you are there Nice guys finish last, as Martin Merlihan of Eimira disâ€" covered last week, when caught in the overbooking game played by so many airlines. _ I too, got caught in this manoeuvre several years ago. Up until that time, I had practiced the polite, feminine role of never pushing, shoving or barging in front of others, but always waiting my turn and helping those ahead of me. As a result, even though I had arrived in plenty of time to catch my flight, I sat politely, waiting for others to barge in front of me. I have an intense hatred for crowds. Not quite. He returned to inform us the plane was indeed overbooked twenty passengers and he was sorry but there was nothing he could do. By the time I approached the gate, most of the Christmas crowd had already boarded. What a shock to see the gate close in front of a dozen poâ€" tential passengers, and, with a very red face, the clerk said. ‘‘*Sorry,. I have to check something. Would you wait here please?" > I was extremely fortunate in being with half a dozen very loudâ€"mouthed business men who, in no way, were willing to stand for this. And I went along with them, 100 per cent. Silence was never one of my virtues. 2 OA suspected someone was causing a disturbance and he had been called away to calm things down. As a result, five of us stormed over to the counter and blasted the ticket agent with every word known to mankind. At one point I did feel sorry for him, as he was not responâ€" sible for the overâ€"booking. But someone had to take the brunt Why don‘t the airline companies make some effort to trace down those responsible for improper cancellation of flights, rather than make the innocent suffer? These men were kind enough to take me under their wing and see that I too, was compensated for this inexcusable wrongdoing. Why is it the innocent end up paying for the indifference of others? We, the passengers who did arrive in time for a reservation. were being forced to suffer for those who decided to cancel their flight and not inform the airlines. . Airline companies feel all they must do to right this wrong is give the passenger a free meal and perhaps a free bed for the night. if absolutely necessary. What the public doesn‘t know, I‘m sure, is that they can force the airlines to compensate them for monetary losses if they yell loudly enough. If the airlines are planning to continue this habit of overâ€" booking, I think the public should demand a good, hefty comâ€" pensation every time it happens to them. If costs rise quickly enough, perhaps the companies will reâ€"examine their presâ€" ent methods for booking reservations. Nice guys last After half an hour of this, we were told our earliest flight was midnight that night. Then. out came the cheque book and a donation of $100 landed in my hand. To the Editor Would it not be reasonable just to eliminate the Hallmanâ€" Lancaster bus route all together? As it stands now, it does not serve the public efficiently and nor will it after October 3rd. As a resident of a subdivision. south on Hallman Road, it is necessary to walk almost a mile to reach the nearest bus stop. For an area that is expanding at such a tremendous rate. as ours is,. the bus service is a disgrace. Of course. even the thought of a bus loop encompassing Hallman Rd. and Glasgow might prove much too practical and feasible to a city somewhat more concerned with its pocketbook rather than a good bus system The changes in Kâ€"W bus service to be implemented by Ocâ€" tober 3rd are preposterous. Thirty minute intervals will force the "very few‘" who do ride the buses to find an alternâ€" ative to public transit since, the Hallman bus does not run on schedule even on twenty minute intervals. As winter approaches. thirty minutes and cold feet will explain why the only one on the bus will be the driver Reasons for the empty seats on the Hallman bus route? First of all. it arrives either fiveâ€"ten minutes ahead of. or behind. an "offâ€"beat" schedule. To people who are dependâ€" ent on public transit, such action is not only frustrating but extremely difficult to tolerate. Secondly. at Churchill St.. the bus sits for another fifteen minutes to prolong what Letter to the editor After all, why should the nice guy arrive last? â€" Waterioo Chronicle, Wednesday, August 17, 1977 By Marg Russell published every Wednesday by Fairway Press, a division of Kitchenerâ€"Waterloo Record Ltd., owner , subscriptions : $10 a year in Canada. $12 a year in United States and Foreign Countries _ Publisher: James M. Boland Editor: Mary Stupart Advertising Manager: Wolfgang Urschel 1# Fairway Rd. S.. Kitchener, Ont. l Len ..â€""â€"... wA hn d Nn U i l_ *. Why? Certainly we had no death wish. We had no deep urge to immate ourselves in the breath of the war dragon. We weren‘t even running to the battlements to protect our homes, our wives and children. Most of us were in school, or just recently out, and didn‘t have none of them there things. * Oh, we knew we had to "Stop thet bawstawd Hitlah!" as Churchilt once told us on an airfield in Normandy. We knew rather vaguely that weé were defending democracy and unâ€" employment against the monsters of totalitarianism and could be, an overall tenâ€"minute trip. Finally, wellâ€"timed conâ€" nections between Westmountâ€"Hallmanâ€"Lancaster buses are practically nonâ€"existent. a Currently, the parking situation is being studied in Waterâ€" loo. If the city is prepared to eliminate free parking and cut back on bus service. maybe we should all buy tenâ€"speed biâ€" cycles. Noâ€" even this alternative would prove worthless and harmful to one‘s health. The cracked, potâ€"holed streets of Kitchenerâ€"Waterloo are not safe to attempt such dangerous recourse in retaliation to the existing and future bus situaâ€" tion. â€" In light of this negative response to the changes in Kâ€"W bus service. may I add that. the friendly and considerate bus drivags on the Hallman route are not the brunt of this critiâ€" cism. As far as I am concerned. the drivers appear to be the only ~saving grace"" maintaining the "very few‘" who use this route . It is the inadequate bus system that deters more from utilizing public transit. Further irrational changes will foresee an onâ€"going decrease to support public transportaâ€" tion. Therefore, pull the Hallmanâ€"Lancaster bus service completely. By October 3rd. the Kitchener Transit will be able to afford to save themselves a headache $80,000 worth. o fwe onl Why were we so keen to get killed? In this age of dropâ€" outs, draft dodgers and deserters, it seems incredible that thougands of young Canadian males, back in the Forties, were almost frantic to get into the air force, into air crew, and into a squadron, where the chances were excellent they ‘d be dead within a couple of months. j l‘i'l s...ik,\v We knew joining up was the thing to do, that most of our friends were doing it, that a fellow looked pretty fine in a * uniform, that the girls were impressed and the hitchâ€"hiking Â¥X easier. â€" & . But why the air force? I‘m engaged in writing a few yarns for Airforce, the offiâ€" Did we avoid the army because we didn‘t want to be exâ€" cial magazine of the RCAF Association. Naturally, this posed to the rude and licentious soldiery and get all dirty has brought back a lot of memories, some a bit grim, some and grimy in action? Or the navy because we preferred a pretty hilarious. fiery grave to a watery one? As the old mind‘s eye wandered back, something hit me like a cold douche. Not that I‘ve ever taken a cold douche. From the point of view of common sense, reason, logic, it was not any brighter than the Children‘s Crusade of the Middte Ages. '.‘â€" # <~ a 5 t , i,’ ~SNIFF.. _ _ HiIMIL aAaAâ€"e6 NCHINC MAKES T Fa miley . > J. Simpson 68 Ridgeview Cres Waterloo. Ont. I ]’Jst don‘t know, but most of my friends, and most of their friends, chose the air force, and were dead keen on getting into air crew. o As I recall, it was a real downer for those who failed the tough medical test for air crew. Once chosen, you were filled with despair if you were going for pilot and had to settle for bombâ€"aimer, just because you were a little crossâ€" eyed. Once in training, it was a shattering experience to be "washed out" of air crew merely because you had badly bent up one of His Majesty‘s aircraft by trying to land at 40 feet up, or had wound up 300 miles off course on a crossâ€" country training flight. It was devastating if you wanted _ Within a bare few years, most of them were a lot less keen, and many were a lot more dead. s bombers. I have friends who still bear a deep scar on the psyche because they were made flying instructors and spent the rest of the war in Canada. This despite the fact they were chosen as instructors because they were far better pilots than the rest of us. Well I know what they missed. They missed the stupidity of senior officers who didn‘t know whether they were punchâ€" ed or bored. They missed long, deadly dull periods of trainâ€" ing, and short, intense moments of sheer terror. They missed being shot at, physically. by perfect strangâ€" ers, and shot down, verbally, by people on their own side. They missed the utter blind confusion of the amateurs in charge of the war. Migawd, those idiots lost an entire wing of Typhoons for a full week. " Let‘s see, have I left anything out? Well maybe I have. First I‘ll take that back about stupid senior officers. There were plenty of those in Canada, too, so you didn‘t miss that. This despite the fact that many of the pilots they trained were dead, dead, in no‘g’lme. None of this was any consolaâ€" tion. They still feel they thissed something irrecoverable. _ Nobody, least of all Intelligence, had a clue where it was. I airâ€"hitched all over southern England and northern France before I found the blasted thing, all on my own. full employment, although it was a bit puzzling that totalâ€" itarian Russia was on ourside. * Perhaps you missed the joy of climbing out of your airâ€" craft after an operation, lighting a cigarette, and talking a wild blue streak of relief and letâ€"down . I guess you missed the glory of heading off for a week‘s leave in a strange country, loaded with lust, a month‘s pay But I still say we were all crazy to volunteer. and even vie to be killed. Must write a paper on that some day in your po('ket.;and the secret sweetness in your head of knowing that nobody would be shooting at you for seven days. And you did, I must admit, miss the girls. Not all of those fumblings in the blackout were frustrating â€" a fighter ;)ilotvand were shipped off to lumbering old UP... % L