The Untidy Dozen

Adventure dreams are always fun...

1. Watching a sci-fi kind of story on TV. The enemy are sending a batallion of armored vehicles (some on wheels, some walking like Lucasfilm AtAts) across a vast plain toward the camera. The sun is setting. We have to get through that line and into the mountain range beyond...of course now I'm in the story.

Gordon, myself, and assorted others are on a ridge in a convoy of fast attack vehicles. Mine looks like my truck (typical). We decide that audaciousness is the better part of valor, and just plunge down and out onto the plain. It's twilight. Apparantly the enemy have no infra-red detectors. Their vehicles are high and focused ahead, towering above us. We are small and race along, passing them at the side of the "road", sometimes in a shallow ditch. They don't seem to notice us. We leave them behind and speed up into the wooded foothills they have just left. We pull up to a deserted house deep behind their lines. It's fully night and going toward morning now. There were a couple of German officers in the house, but they surrender quietly and seem like nice folks.

It's cold, but we don't dare make a fire in the fireplace because of the smoke. I start to worry about how we're going to set up our command post, but then I decide to leave it to Gordon and it feels good to trust somebody else. When I come back into the room he's done a bang-up job of setting up cots, tables, etc. I've been looking out the windows and examining the building for escape routes. I don't want us "painted into a corner". The second floor has a "fire escape" kind of back stair. Good. The house itself worries me at first: it seems stuck in the corner of a promontory with a cliff at the back, but on closer examination I see that the "cliff" should be easy to climb down if necessary.

2. Later, after 6:30 or so, I dream we're in front of our house with the same convoy, more or less. Gordon pulls in with my truck, towing an artillery piece and pushing (!) a small car. There's already another piece of ordnance on a flatbead in the driveway. A WW2 reenactor buddy walks up and looks at the tarp-covered trailer. "Like my gun?" I ask, cheerily.