Here's another dream, but one from a long time back. I was in high school or maybe even middle school when I had this dream, but it was striking enough for me to remember through the years.
In my dream, I was an American soldier fighting in Italy somewhere just south of Rome in World War II. In this case, we were clearing a building of German soldiers, who were mostly refusing to surrender. It was dangerous, but the Germans in this building were clerks, not fighters, and they had pistols in contrast with our rifles, so we had a distinct advantage. I remember the deeply recessed doorways of the building -- both sides used them for cover.
Suddenly, another German popped around the corner, only this time it was not a man, but a lovely blonde woman in an army auxiliary uniform. What happened in the seconds immediately after she came into view was a little blurry -- I think that I dreamed and re-dreamed that sequence until I found a successful compromise between my upbringing, which strongly emphasized that no real man hurts a woman, and my desire for self preservation. After all, she did have a pistol! The resolution was that I shot her in the shoulder, a nonlethal wound that forced her to drop the pistol.
She also had with her a sort of document box. This was a box about a foot square and about 4 inches high that would be used to secure important documents; if anyone tried opening it without knowing the trick, it would explode, destroying both the documents and the person opening it. This was something we were looking for, and in the dream I suspected it contained details of the movements of German tanks being brought up from Yugoslavia to reinforce their positions in Italy. (Yes, this was a very detailed dream.) I took the box from her, and she was led away to have her wound treated and to be processed with the other prisoners.
I took the box to headquarters, which in the dream was ridiculously close to the front -- apparently in the next building, actually. There I found the general who was (at least theoretically) in command of the operation, along with my colonel. The general was useless, though; he was preparing for some sort of confirmation hearing for his appointment to a position in the OSS, and his mind was entirely on that hearing. As a result, the man effectively in charge was my colonel, who, as further events would show, was a complete idiot.
The colonel examined the box, and he noticed that the lid was held on by something like a tie strap fastener; it was designed so that once inserted, it could not be pulled out. "You see how they don't want us to pull this out? That's just what we're gonna do," he announced.
This sounded like a terrible idea to me -- simply applying brute force to a box that we knew was booby-trapped. I suggested that maybe the woman who had been captured in possession of the box would know how to open it, but he would have nothing of it, telling me (in words I can never forget), "Do you think I got all this rank without knowing how to defuse a Nazzy bomb?"
When I heard that and knew he was just about to force it, I turned around and started running. I had just made it outside the building when the charges went off. Then I woke up.
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