READY for service with the BEF was Tribune editor Jim Tortolano (Tribune photo),

ou may gave read or heard, I’ve just come back from a strange, short journey.

It started – more or less – in the Ralphs parking lot, took me through the trenches of World War 1 France, into space, and finally dropped me back here, dining on grapes and low sodium graham crackers.

Last week, Marilyn and I were walking the pooch (Shadow) in a park when I began to feel …poorly. Enough so that right next to the Jack In The-Box, my beloved wife summoned the paramedics. They, in turn, summoned an ambulance which took me to UCI Medical Center where I was diagnosed as having a “Myocardial infarction,” also known as a “mild” heart attack.

Maybe mild but also weird. In the middle of the night, medicated, intubated and attached to a switchboard full of wires, my grasp on reality got a little dim. I had been watching WWI documentaries on YouTube and when the night nurse – speaking British English – came to check my vitals. I concluded I was a Tommy wounded in combat. I even volunteered to donate blood.

The dox had to put a “stent” into one of my under-performing arteries. The operating room was so cutting-edge that it looked like something out of “Star Trek.”

All went well. The UCI staff – all of whom were wonderful – left me with the advice of no more Smashbugers and French rries, and on to the straight and narrow (fruits and veggies and low sodium crackers) from now on.

So I’m back, thanks to modern medicine and the timeless loving care of Marilyn. Feeling pretty good. I may make it another 73 years.