It was just to be a simple exercise...forage deep into the jungle, deep enough that is to be out of sight of the Jeep I drove, and left at the side of the main road. I was to establish comms with HQ, utilizing the barest of radio equipment, subsisting for one day on just that amount of rations.
A simple enough assignment, as I wasn't a rookie at this, having spent other times on survival exercises, and also being a qualified radio operator. I had been in Panama long enough now to be familiar with the nature of the place, it's forests, jungles, wildlife, and weather. The year was 1940, the season, which doesn't matter, as it's summer all the time, and which I forget anyways, was a good time to be in the U.S. Army. Though things were heating up in the Pacific, and Europe was engulfed in war, Army life in Panama was still hydee-ho-party-time.
I chose a nice comfy spot by some ferns, and set up my "station". A small tent went up first, then the masts for my antennas. Hooking up the radio gear was just a matter of plugging things in, and that was done. The only real problem was working a morse key, and, simultaneously cranking the two-hand generator by hand for power. It was getting nigh onto noon, and since I wasn't due up on frequency before afternoon sometime, I chowed down on the K-rations. Sitting against a comfortably angled tree trunk, I "did lunch", and afterwards fell asleep.
As a Buck Private, and single, there wasn't too much in the way of goodies on base for me, but I was young, tall, dark, and handsome. With Panama City just a stone's throw from my camp, and my dismal barracks life, I found some nice friends, one in particular from the mid-western U.S. A corn-fed beauty my age, who found Central America enchanting, and took on jobs as an entertainer in the "swanky" night spots. Very strong willed, and particular in the company she chose from the audiences, she took a liking to me. We got along marvelously, and now, this day, off the beaten path, she was to rendezvous with me at my little bivouac. First, of course, it was snooze time.
"Hey! Sleepy-head...get up, or you'll miss your schedule," she said as she approached me. Startled at first, I instantly woke up. "What time is it?' I asked. "Oh, relax, you have another half-hour. Ummmm that tent looks inviting...last one in is a rotten egg," she yelled. Pushing myself up from the tree, I made a first-base slide right into the tent beside her.

"Hey...we have a long day ahead of us, you better not do us in, you have to crank you know' I said. "Don't worry, I brought a picnic basket full of our favorites to replenish us."
That was sixty-years ago. To this day, if he's still with us, my Commo Officer must live in wonderment of how I managed to crank a generator requiring two hands, and simultaneously send solid morse code using the third! Then too, he probably still wonders why I kept volunteering for that stupid, lonely exercise out in the middle of no-where.
Ho-hum - (Not wishng to incur the wrath of former associates, our talented author wishes to be ID'd as "Anon")

GALLERIES