Stormbound Mess Hall

CW: Mental health, violence, war The soldiers file into the mess hall,

squeezing onto benches and finding open places away from the canvas walls to sit.

Outside, the wind shrieks, whipping and beating tarps throughout the whole encampment,

in some places tearing them from their posts. Calling it a mess hall is an overstatement,

since it’s all just one big tent. There are windows near the top, flexible sheets

of plastic framed in velcro and wire to hold it in place. The hall is propped up on portable wooden

beams, built to keep the waves of sand and mud out of the cook pots.

But it fails even at that. The soldiers in the mess hall are a mixture of men