In Stephen King's Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, his characters are almost daily faced with the choice between giving in to get by or holding out and paying the price. I faced a similar situation this summer at a Sea Cadet training.
After an operation that resulted in the better part of the day spent hiding in thorny bushes, the last thing we wanted to do was pull night watch. To make things even better, half of our platoon was captured or injured, and thus unable to stand watch. This meant that the remaining half-dozen plus of us had to stand watch all night, which was not improving our already stressful situation.
Although I knew we needed rest for tomorrow, we couldn't risk more of our team getting captured, so I argued that we just suck it up and stand watch. Some of my other teammates argued that the OPFOR, our cadre, would pull back to their trailers because of the rain. They said we should all sleep and get rested for whatever tomorrow might bring. Collectively we decided to pull watch in groups of two or three, so one of us could sleep for fifteen minutes while the other one was awake.
After an hour of sitting out in the rain and not seeing any movement on our perimeter, we talked about pulling back into the huts surrounding our village. I knew going inside would fatally limit our lines of sight, but I compromised with my teammates and spent the rest of the night indoors.
The night passed uneventfully. As we had thought, the OPFOR withdrew to their base as soon as the rain really started coming down. Looking back on our decision, I think it was the right one considering the circumstances. We were undermanned, tired, stressed, and facing a night of little sleep in addition to the pouring rain.
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