Guitars, bunkers and depressing music

Rocketman struck again the other night. I was sitting in my office typing an email when a BANG rattled the windows and sent my heart to racing. After a couple of minutes, I hadn’t heard the alarm, so assumed it was outgoing artillery. About the time my heart slowed back down, the “Alarm RED” voice blared at us to seek shelter.

My office is more or less sheltered, so I stayed and worked for a while. Before too long I heard the all clear signal, so I closed up and headed for my room. As I rounded the corner by my CHU, I heard guitar music. I listened, and determined the sound was coming from a concrete shelters.

One of our captains had brought his guitar to pass time while waiting for the all clear signal, and just stayed on a bit. He was sitting alone in the dark, on a bed someone had discarded in the bunker, holding his acoustic guitar, with his case and rifle propped against the bed next to him.

The bunkers are U-shaped concrete placed upside down, about 6 feet tall and 10 feet or so long, open on the ends. Usually several are placed together to form longer bunkers. Inside are just the concrete walls and ceiling, the dirt floor, and sometimes a few chairs or the occasional bed.

I asked the captain what he was doing, and he said “Just practicing. The acoustics in here are great.” He shut off the red-lensed flashlight he had aimed at a music book, and started to strum his guitar. A little star light reflecting into the end of the bunker took the edge off the dark, but I still couldn’t see the captain’s face.

We chatted a moment, and then he played and sang “Stairway to Heaven.” He sings better than me, which isn’t saying much, but his playing was excellent, despite his apologies that he could do better if he had some light. He played “Aubrey” and “Diary”, both by Bread. If you know the songs, you know “Aubrey” is about unrequited love, and “Diary” is about a guy who reads his sweetheart’s diary and finds that she loves another. After finishing singing the songs, the captain chuckled and said, “Boy, the guy who wrote those was depressed, wasn’t he?” After a few more songs, AC/DC, Bon Jovi, a couple of others, he packed away his guitar and we left the bunker.