I can but join in the accolades so deservedly being heaped upon you Danny, for your elegant and evocative style. I must say though that I am surprised. I offer you the most prestigious of the PRuNe Towers Ante Rooms and you spurn it in favour of a litter strewn corrugated dispersal hut. So be it, we must be at war! Steward, draw the blackout and get me another G&T please!
Wikki is still keeping track of you but I fear that eventually you will fall off its radar:-
Gunter Annex - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
How ironic that your instructors knew less about war than their pupils. How soon they would discover that the reality is always worse than the rose tinted view of it seen through their Ray-Bans!
Your mention of the PX's (BX's I believe for the USAF as Army Posts became Air Force Bases) strikes a chord. My favourite was the one at Lajes Field in the Azores. An Aladdins Cave of domestic bliss! We still have some of the Corning dish-ware that I bought there shortly after marrying, and the Samsonite "Gents 2 Suiter" Suitcase that I bought in the Hickam BX out flew my RAF career and half way into my civilian one. Bargains all!
Sobranie ciggies? I recall them, black with a gold filter, sold in white tins. As you say, very effete and somewhat suspect. Keep an eye on him, if you get my drift, old chap!
You bring a far off world, of which we know little, to life. Thank you Danny!
Well! Thank God at least for these few armchairs, now that we've had to quit our Pied-a-Terre for this "quaint" abode. Thanks for the coffee by the way, it tastes surprisingly good. Camp? Rings a bell somehow. Ah yes, an Indian Servant in attendance in a tented bivouac. That would never do these days though. Dear me, no!