Dream 1

I screwed up a call for fire.

(A call for fire was what the Army 50 years ago termed a radio transmission when a unit wanted mortar or artillery fire on a suspected or identified enemy location. Back then, the caller began the request with something like, “Redleg Four, this is Bravo Five One, fire mission, over.” And then the caller and recipient went through a specific series of short messages, with the caller identifying the kind of target, its grid coordinate location, azimuth from the caller’s position, and type of fire wanted. These days the call originates with “Adjust fire, over,” rather than “Fire mission, over.”)

Anyway, in the dream, the adjustment round impacted five kilometers from the intended location. I was in position to see both the target and the impact. Assuming the artillery fire direction center people knew what they were doing, that meant the map coordinates I gave were 5,000 meters off.

An officer at my location said, “Well, Sergeant, looks like you screwed up. What are you going to do now?”

At that point, I woke up, and as with every nighttime wakeup, I needed to go to the bathroom. I am an old man. At night, an old man goes to the bathroom a lot.

While walking to the bathroom, my mind recounted the dream, went through the sequence, considered how to correct a 5,000-meter mistake. I was standing before the commode, actually eliminating urine, when the answer came: You can’t make a 5,000-meter adjustment. You have to cancel the fire mission and immediately make a new call.