Barracks Life

I dreamed I was in some kind of training camp, living in a barracks with a bunch of other guys, most of them quite a bit younger than I. It's a situation I'm used to, being the older rookie, so although I was in unfamiliar territory with regard to the specifics, the dynamic was nothing new.

I picked a top bunk and looked around at the crew of cadets filling up their spaces with personal items. Guys were hanging up posters, personalizing their tiny areas with photographs and mementos from home. My neighbor below and to the right was screening off his bed with blankets, making a tent out of the bedframe. 

"There will be shows down here," he said, winking up at me. "Strictly pay per view."

"Unless you've got some girls in there with you, I'm not interested," I said, lowering my tone several octaves, and in my best Beetlejuice voice added, "It's not my thing."

"No worries, mate," he grinned. "We've got football betting, too. Let me know if you want in on any of the action."

I nodded silently. I looked around at the barracks, which were now filled to capacity with inductees, all young men, struggling to maintain some individuality while going through the training mill, whose job it was to grind them into conformity. The guy in the bunk to the left of me addressed me abruptly:

"Don't you think it's time you finished what you started?" he asked.

I looked down at my 57-year-old body, gaunt and grey, frosted with white hairs like a winter lawn, and I sighed a long sigh. It had been a long time that I'd been on this journey --life -- and I hadn't gotten very far, it seemed. There had been so much that I'd pushed off to the side while busying myself with day to day distractions. Day to day had turned to week to week, month to month and so on, and my life, nearly 3/4 through, had little to show for it. 

"There is still time, brother," I said, quoting the ironic words from the banner hanging in the desolate town square at the end of "On The Beach." 

----

Soon thereafter, I woke up to the last few minutes of the film. Peter and Mary were reminiscing about how they met and giving one another whatever solace they could muster, given their dire circumstances.

"And it's all over now," Mary said, listlessly.

"It's all over," Peter repeats, in a soothing tone, as if he was telling a child that they'd just finished all their vegetables. 

They exchange their final words of comfort, gratitude and regret, and then Mary utters the movie's final line:

"God forgive us. Peter, I think I'd like that cup of tea now..." 

He kisses her, and the scene ends. The next shot is of the submarine. Captain Towers has already said his goodbyes to Moira, who looks on from the bluffs, her face filled with emotion as the men power away into the radiation cloud to die at home in America. The ship submerges, and they plunge ahead, into the depths, consciousness into blackness, life into death. 

Back in the town square, the banner flails forlornly in the breeze as papers blow through the abandoned streets.