Doug Springsteen was an Army driver in Europe during the Second World War who came home and seethed at his crabbed circumstances.

NEWYORKER: We Are Alive

When the folksy, septuagenarian former army driver began a new hunger strike at a ground in Mumbai on Tuesday demanding a strong anti-corruption law, only a few hundred people turned up.

BBC: Has Anna Hazare's campaign run its course?

Two months after a rousing crusade for tough anti-corruption laws led by former army driver turned Gandhian activist Anna Hazare caught the government on the hop, his core team - a motley group of activists, lawyers and former government officers - is mired in controversies.

BBC: Will India's anti-corruption campaign implode?

The lead army jeep forced one driver into a drainage ditch and the captain slapped another man for taking too long to move his truck off a narrow, traffic-clogged valley road.

WSJ: Role Reversal: Pakistan Fears

At the funeral for the Hot 8 drummer, the pallbearers put the casket into an ancient buggy hearse, led by a horse and driver as an army of musicians played "Lord, Lord, Lord, " a thumping gospel song with roaring trumpets that galvanized the crowd.

NPR: Two Funerals in the Crescent City

During WWII, for example, he was an ambulance driver (his poor eyesight kept him out of the infantry) attached to the old British-Indian Army in India and Burma, where, among other horrors, he witnessed a famine that took the lives of millions.

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