International Incident Avoided

THIS from Fox News:

ZURICH, Switzerland — What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.
According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers from the neutral country wandered more than a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

This all reminded me of a time thirty some years ago when a small force of Pembina County rednecks invaded Canada by mistake. I and some friends were out driving around one warm summer eve in Pembina County, enjoying a few cans of spoiled grain juice, when it was perceived that we were being pursued by the local 5-0. I say perceived because we were in a state of mostly cognitive dissonance at that early hour, and probably confused an ambulance with a police cruiser. But being convinced we were far more important, and therefore worthy of pursuit, than we really were, we decided to evade capture by taking a quick exit from the paved road. The fact that we were kicking up a dirt cloud on those back roads escaped us at the time. At sun-down on the flat, treeless bottom land west of Pembina we were on, our trail had to be discernible from several miles, at least. Oh well.
As we made our way along, zig-zagging north and west along township roads, we found ourselves on a very high, very rough road headed west, the lights of a small town to the west beckoning us. We understood these lights to be Neche, a small town on the US-Canada border, where we could blend in and avoid the long arm of the law. We were the Dukes of Hazzard, before there were any Dukes of Hazzard. In a red Oldsmobile with two white doors....
When we finally came to this small town, we did not see any landmarks that we recognized, so we decided to simply take the paved road we came upon, and turned south. Imagine our surprise when we came across the border crossing sign at the station of Gretna, Manitoba! One small porch light was on in the now-closed-for-business tiny M.P. station there, and a series of orange traffic cones across the road, in the south-bound lane only. Sort of Homeland Security on the honor system, if you will.
We were at once struck by the absurdity of our situation. A bunch of under-age drinkers, here we were inadvertently smuggling inferior US beer into Canada, now having to figure out how to smuggle it BACK into the U.S. We could not see who or what may have been awaiting us at the U.S. station just down the hiway. After doing our best to lighten the load of smuggled goods, we finally were imbued with enough grain alcohol fortitude to go forth with the dash across the border. Two of my fellow revelers took the now lightened cooler and walked it across the border, away from any street lights glare, and I drove back across, professionally avoiding the cones in the way, thus avoiding any chance of our contraband being taken by any Federales that may have been lurking. A quarter mile later, drunks and drink were re-united, and what could have been an ugly border skirmish was avoided.
A short time later, we all decided against service in the diplomatic corps, there being no more we could do for our country than what we had just done. I whole heartedly sympathize with the Swiss, as it is embarassing to say the least that one has strayed from the arms of his Motherland, whether armed with folding pocketknives or Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.