08/03/2005 Archived Entry: "Dreams"

Had a weird dream last night, some time in the wee hours of the morning, which is when the most vivid and stragest dreams happen. I was a soldier, in Iraq, fighting with a nameless company of men. I remember being in a huge sand-colored tent, running on a treadmill in full combat loadout, when a klaxon sounded, which I knew meant that we were all to run to the transport vehicles and embark on a mission. I was new to the group, but I knew which squad was mine and I fell in with my group of guys, one of whom was SPC Jason McBride, who served with my brother. I had a large gun, something like an M249, and everyone else had smaller assault weapons that changed as I looked at them. One member of the squad complained that now that I was part of the group, he would no longer be able to have the big gun.

Upon boarding huge tracked transporters, I knew that I had no idea what I was doing, so I ran to my squad leader, who promised to watch my back and tell me where to go, and who helped me put on the body armor that everyone else was already wearing. Once I was sufficiently up-armored, I lay on the floor of the vehicle facing the open rear, and fired at machine gun emplacements as we drove past.

Once we'd reached wherever we were going, we disembarked and plunged directly into a milling crowd of thousands, all hooded or veiled, and we fired on anyone who came too close. There was a lot of screaming and I don't remember too much, except that I knew I had to stay by my buddies. I felt fear, too--real fear, a different kind of fear than I have ever before felt. It was the fear of not knowing what was going to happen, mixed with the fear of being shot and killed. I don't claim to know anything about what a soldier feels going into battle, but it was the most terrified I'd ever felt, in real life or otherwise.

The dream shifted and I was talking with someone who invited me over to dinner when I was done fighting, and I told them that I couldn't come to dinner because I had killed twenty people in the firefight, and that we all had to go to debriefing.

Creepy. Very creepy.

Replies: 1 Comment

It seems logical to me that the new guy would get stuck with the SAW, but only because it's so damned heavy. =)

Posted by Sig @ 08/04/2005 08:11 PM CST

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