Perchance to Dream
Moffitt jerked awake from a deep sleep. His heart was pounding heavily in his chest, and he was bathed in sweat. He was filled with foreboding and fear as he struggled to comprehend his exact location. Glancing to his left, he saw the recumbent form of his wife, Pippa, sleeping peacefully next to him. He fought to get his breathing under control and slow down his heartbeat.
He was nervous and fearful but couldn't recall what had frightened him to such an extent. Slowly he breathed in through his nose and slowly exhaled through his mouth. Eventually, his breathing slowed, and his heart returned closer to normal. Inch by inch he felt his muscles begin to relax.
It wasn't the first time he had awakened thus. Since returning from war, the nightmares frequently invaded his sleep, and he awakened in abject fear. They had somewhat diminished since his marriage and he found peace and comfort in his wife's arms. He stopped to think about what had triggered this attack.
As he continued to regain control, images came flooding back. He was being brutally beaten by a sadistic German officer after going undercover to retrieve an ancient map to a water source in the desert. He was bruised and bloody and even if he managed to escape from the interrogation room, he knew Troy waited outside with orders to kill him before they could get the information the British sergeant had committed to memory.
"Not that again," he quietly said to himself, shaking his head from side to side. "Will I ever be free of these dark memories?" Quietly he rose from the bed, making sure not to awaken his wife. He reached for his bathrobe and went downstairs to the study.
Embers from the evening's fire were smoldering and he used the poker to stir them into flames, adding a small log when a blaze appeared. He sat down in his "thinking chair" as Pip had dubbed the oversized, overstuffed chintz covered chair and let the fire warm his chilled body.
His mind wandered through the painful memories of his war days: the beatings, the gunshot wounds, pulled muscles, especially in his knees and ankles, the times he faced death, the times he caused the death of others. The two German soldiers he shot after hearing about his brother, Ian's death would haunt him forever. In his heart he knew they weren't casualties of war, he had murdered them in the rage he felt for Ian's loss. He pressed his fingers into his temples as if to squeeze them from his mind.
He knew he wasn't the only veteran haunted by the events of combat. He was aware his teammates suffered from combat fatigue and Tully's wife, Mary Ellen, had her share of nightmares from her service as a combat nurse. Even Hitch's wife had experienced night terrors from her time with the USO and acting as a courier for the Allied Forces. She also worked with the French Resistance, leading persecuted civilians to safety in Switzerland.
Cambridge was the home of many others who had fought in the war, and he could only assume they had similar reactions. It was hard to tell because no one spoke about their experiences. They kept what they had seen and heard and done locked away from their loved ones, repressing their thoughts into their subconsciousness. Moffitt knew that talking about it helped and he had shared some memories with Pippa. However, he kept most of those memories bottled up, occasionally only speaking of them with his fellow Rats. He feared that Pippa would be terrified or appalled by all he had done while serving his country, so he kept his thoughts to himself, not wanting to share the horror with her.
Several hours later, Pippa awoke and finding her husband missing from their bed, she went to search for him, knowing full well where he would be. How many times had she found him dozing in the chair by the cold fire? How many more times would the future bring? Would he ever know peace? Like the wives of so many other soldiers returned from the war, she knew the deepest wounds weren't physical and yet, the suffering continued to plague those veterans for the rest of their lives.