LanceHeringOver the weekend, sheriff’s deputies arrested 20-year-old Private Terrance Hilton, a Fort Carson soldier, who had escaped from a federal escort last Wednesday at Denver International Airport while still bound in handcuffs. He was expected to be flown to Colorado Springs (via The Associated Press). While the details of Hilton’s story remain hazy, the tale of another serviceman who went AWOL, former Marine Lance Hering (pictured), largely does, as well—despite an interview in The Denver Post. Three years later, stories abound that he went on the run because of atrocities in Iraq, but Hering declines to go into detail. He also refuses to say much about the “acute mental disorder” that led to his evacuation to a military hospital before he vanished in 2006, went into hiding for 28 months, was arrested, and finally reached a plea agreement for staging his disappearance after his discharge. He says he was repulsed by the actions of some of his fellow Marines, but he understood why they occurred: “This stuff happens, and it doesn’t make any sense in any kind of a normal way. … It’s a really violent environment, and people go nuts, and people’s friends die, and I sort of understand that, and I can empathize with it in a way.”