{Militant}[31st May 1988]

[Redbook5:133-134][19880531:2224b]{Militant}[31st May 1988]

19880531.2224

[continued]

This* search for truth took me by a few strange ways; it was even one of the factors (although I don't think I fully realised it at the time) which led me to join the Territorial Army,** to which by character, qualities and pre-occupations I was hardly suited. I never saw any kind of action, was hardly involved in danger, and was a poor soldier; but I had a powerful imagination and a great capacity for fear, so that I may have lived some of our exercises with as great a tension as bolder men might have lived live action (I was also given to the cardinal sin of absent-mindedness; but that is another story.)

I mention this because watching a few minutes of 'Tumbledown' tonight – a story of the Falklands [recovery] operation*** which has been criticised for inaccuracy etc. – an episode when the Scots Guards were leaving for the war by coach, and one of the young Officers overslept with his girlfriend and had to be dragged out of bed by his brother Officers, produced in me such curious conditioned reactions, including a physical tension in the stomach and a weird nostalgia, that I switched the television off: and, I repeat, I saw no action; the reaction was to the Army itself.

*[See last previous entry.]

**[Military Volunteer Reserve]

***[1982. cf. [Redbook2:227][19820626:0930a]{Dream-Event Connections: Two Dreams before the Falklands[War]?}[26^th June 1982]]

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