Last week, about 4-5 days ago, I languished (and anguished) in bed one evening and came to the conclusion that the only thing that I regretted doing in my life was quitting the paras. I could have, should have went through the whole rehab process and continue down my path as a para trooper. Instead, I took the easy way out and demanded to be excused from my commitment to the British Army based on my injury. I had had enough with the world and wanted at that point to retract into one of my chronic depressions. I don't care much about how my life has turned out so far, but my past in the paras is still haunting me nearly two years after I initially joined up.
As a consequence of my epiphany I have had two nights of dreaming about the paras. My point is just to record them here.
The first one involved me and some other paras on leave. Possibly recreating some of the situation involved whenever we had leave while training. The soldiers would hang all together and hit town to spend the weekend outside of camp. In my dream, I led myself to believe that I was still in the paras. I clearly remember thinking in dream state that I was now on leave but would be returning soon to camp to resume training. That made me feel real good, I must say. This is why I felt thoroughly disappointed when I finally woke up and had to re-make the calculation that, in fact, I was not in the paras anymore.
The second dream involved me and my platoon on exercise in a rather large forest where a huge bunker like fortress could be found. I remember there being other units, some Americans as a matter of fact, carrying some exercise of their own in the area and coming into contact with some of their soldiers. I also remember trudging about on top of the fortress with my huge weighty bergen and being exhausted yet exited about the danger, reliving some of the emotions I had back then. In my dream, Corporal Kew also made an appearance. He was briefing our section like he always did on such exercises, keeping his voice down yet communicating that dark humor and hard-nosed, no-bullshit approach he always had. His voice was still resonating very clearly in my head the morning I woke up.
