Alone in my tent

Alone in my tent

repost/ edit

fiction
edward w Pritchard



Life is difficult when you are alone. It's worse when you want to be somewhere else and you can't be there and the worst of all situations is when you can't be with the one you love.

This story is a metaphor using a soldier's situation in World War two to describe what it's like to be away from the one you Love.

start:

World War Two was awful and being in the army was just all around bad. Every day your friends die, not in any pattern just here and there, now and then. Some just get wounded and that's worse.

Eventually you decide not to have friends. Usually by the time you decide not to have friends anymore all of your good friends are gone anyway. Some other soldiers, as their coping mechanism to survive WW2, decide to make it their philosophy to need friends, so you still know other people, some of whom are going to die or be wounded, maybe yourself. Either way your good friends are gone.

The foods not much in the Army, even for us poor folks but you enjoy meals sometimes, and then life is not that bad for a time. For a few minutes eating decent food or drinking good beer can be enjoyable and significant. Of course you remember how much better it was when your good friend was around to share times like this with you.

Nature is good, woods and stars at night and darting winds through straining trees in Spring or dropping leaves in the Fall. You get to travel from battle to battle but there's always the war lurking in the background. The War is always just over the next hill. You are alone and your loved one is gone. Home is gone too, no longer real or possible. No place or no time feels like Home to you when your loved one is gone. Everything that happens is drenched in memories of things that are now gone.

The only good thing is when you are in your own tent. After supper. Your fellow soldiers are on guard duty and they will be in their tents after while, in a few hours, and all us lonely soldiers work and plan very hard to make it so when one of us is in their tent they are safe, as safe as one can be in the army in the War. When you are in your own tent you have sanctuary for a few moments.

When we get somewhere and I must put up my tent I always follow the same exact ritualistic procedure. I take lighter fluid and burn off the grasses and weeds, to clear the rocky ground and to kill and drive away all flying or crawling insects. I find the best spot to place my tent I can, not wet or sloping and away from trees with some kind of comforting views for coming and goings. Then I put down something for a ground cloth, if available. When you sleep alone it's intolerable to sleep on the cold hard ground. Then I have my tent face the appropriate direction depending on too many factors to list. When my sleeping place is all ready I put my personal stuff in there including my loaded rifle, I don't want to die without being ready, prepared to fight right to the end. I also feel I am duty bound to help and protect  my fellow soldiers, even ones I don't know. Sometimes it seems like I don't know anyone anymore.

Then at last I get in my tent, bravely turn my eyes from the opening and gradually drop off to sudden sleep for about 35 minutes. I always wake up worrying and anxious about the enemy or aggressive toward the world according to what's appropriate based on what I fear might happen next. However, those 35 minutes, timeless minutes when I am very tired and exhausted and instantly slip into a deep sleep are the best part about being alone in the Army.

While I sleep I always dream and dream of my lost friend. It's like I am the Poet Dante traveling through Hell without my Muse beautiful Beatrice to guide me. After I wake up, usually at 3AM I write metaphorical stories about my lost friend and how I feel to be alone. Sometimes I wonder if the Beatrice I remember ever really existed at all. In either case I lay in my tent alone and try to find significance for the next day. First light will appear in three or four hours so in the meantime I sit here and let my mind wander. As my mind wanders it creates it's world and reality based on the sounds and thumps of me being alone in the dark night.