Word: schmidts
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...overwhelming odds. The nation has the most dangerous airspace in Western Europe: 11,000 private, military and commercial flights a day?one every eight seconds?crisscross an area roughly the size of Illinois. What is worse, the coordination between commercial and military flights is so poor that Chancellor Helmut Schmidt has ordered a Cabinet study of the problem. In 1976 there were 221 "near collisions"?approaches close enough to terrify those who knew what had happened. Says a senior air traffic controller at Koln-Bonn airport: "It's like playing Russian roulette in the air." The fact that there...
...paymaster's office at Mechernich Airbase near Bonn, Air Force Master Sergeant Siegfried Schmidt, 33, kept track of fiscal affairs for a Luftwaffe supply battalion. A bright, conscientious bookkeeper, he logged the pay for the unit's 125 soldiers, noting promotions, with their commensurate pay increases, Christmas bonuses and, when the recruits' 15-month tours were up, their release pay. Each week Schmidt went to the bank to draw the pay for all the soldiers on the base and duly disbursed the cash...
...Since Schmidt started the job in 1968, his superiors had nothing but praise for his work. The twelve officers and five government auditors who regularly checked his bookkeeping found it very efficient. First into the office and last to leave, Schmidt often volunteered when there was extra work to be done...
Phony Soldiers. Little by little, though, the fun seemed to pall. Sigi complained of sleeping badly and rushed back from his vacations in Austria and Italy. One day, after a routine check uncovered a $125 error in one of his books, a tense Schmidt tooled off to the nearest police station. There he told an incredible story: he had invented thousands of phony troops, put them on the battalion's books, and then drawn their very real pay-some $500,000. Since he had logged in his first "recruits," many of whose names Schmidt picked out of the phone...
...German military was still blushing last week as Schmidt, found guilty of embezzlement by a civilian state court in Bonn, began serving a 3½-year term. "You can be sure we've tightened up the system," snapped a Bundeswehr official. Still, few could help admiring the sergeant's ingenuity. Said a Defense Ministry aide: "It was a masterful trick." As for getting the money back, the government can forget it. When he was arrested, Sigi was flat broke...