Peace In The Night

Some years ago, when I was assigned to a scout platoon in the Army, we were assigned an area to bivouac in and run our ops from. Turned out it was an old pine plantation, the forest floor about 4 inches thick with fluffy pine needles. After running recon rehearsels and then missions all day, and sometimes at night, it was like drifting into another world when one bedded down on those soft needles and with the fresh smell of the pines you were carried away to a peaceful deep sleep. Unless you got stuck on radio watch! The only drawback was that tripwires had to be set up on the perimeter since not only was it silent for us to move around the area, the bad guys could do it too.