So no shit, there I was, about to bed down on the first night of a refresher exercise. I went outside to have one more smoke and brush my teeth, and noticed it was getting a bit cloudy, having been quite clear and warm all day. Not thinking much of it, I dipped back into the tent.

For some background, here in Finland, after completing your military training you may occasionally get called in for refresher exercises. This usually happens when something changes with the equipment or doctrine, when your reserve posting changes, or sometimes just to make sure you're still on top of things. Some people may have them once or twice a year, others once in a decade.

On this particular one drivers (like myself) and reserve officers/ncos had been called in a day before the others. Drivers because they wanted to give us time to get reacquainted with our vehicles, and the leaders 'cause they had to plan the whole thing. Normally we would probably have been staying in one of the barracks buildings on base, but this was during pandemic times, and to avoid exposure we were not to interact with the poor saps who had just started basic training shortly before. And so, to avoid any chance of cross-contamination, we were set up in some of these big half-platoon tents out in a remote corner of the base.

So at this point, me and the other drivers go off to remind ourselves how to operate our vehicles, and the officers and NCOs set up our tents while they're planning out the minutiae of the exercise. This part will come into play a bit later.

So as I was saying, as I had woken up at the ass-crack of dawn due to a long commute to the base and driven around a muddy field all day, I was feeling about ready to slip into my sleeping bag and go lights out, so that's exactly what I did.

An unspecified amount of time later I'm jolted out of my sleep by a low rumble in the distance. Artillery? No, the sound is too drawn-out and not sharp enough to be arty, plus they never do night firing on this base anyway. So, thunder. Oh well, good thing I brought earplugs. After putting my ear pro in, I rolled onto my other side and continued catching some zzz.

Then, somewhere around 0300-0400 probably, I am woken up again, this time by a flash so bright it lit up the whole tent and thunder that sounded quite literally right on top of us. I would be lying if I said it didn't startle the hell out of me. Once I started to recover from my rather abrupt awakening, I began to notice something was... off.

First off, I felt a bit chilly. Seeing how it was late summer/early autumn (still decently warm), and I was cozily snugged inside a sleeping bag rated for -25 Celsius (-13 Fahrenheit or so), this didn't make much sense to my groggy brain. The next thing my brain registered was that my feet were wet. And my legs, my back, my arms, pretty much all of me. Well, shit.

Sitting up and removing my earplugs, I reached for my glasses in order to appraise the situation, and found my hand splish-splashing in a puddle, easily at least 5cm (2in) deep. "What the hell," I heard an angry, confused mutter from my left, "all my shit is soaked." I groaned "Yeah, the tent is fucking flooded," and went to take stock of my gear.

I at least had the foresight to pack my water-sensitive items (phone, wallet, smokes, important papers, spare socks etc) inside a plastic bag, but pretty much everything else was completely soaked.

Turns out, whichever goddamn genius had set up our tent had made a bit of a blunder. First off, it had been set up in a bit of a dip, with higher terrain on every side. Secondly, the bottom sheet hadn't been secured to the sides as it should have been, leaving a gap in between. These factors, combined with a heavy downpour brought on by an unusually strong late summer storm, had turned our tent into a nice little indoor swimming pool.

Needless to say, that was just about all the sleep I got that night. Luckily the next day was quite sunny and warm, so we at least managed to dry out most of our gear in a timely manner. The exception being my sleeping bag, which remained somewhat moist for the rest of the week-long exercise, to the point that I had to negotiate a bit with the guys down at the supply depot to even get them to take it back.

And just as icing on the cake, while I was turning in my gear, I found there was a pair of socks (my own, not military issue) that I had forgotten at the bottom of my rucksack all week long. I ended up having to throw them out because there was literally mold growing on them.

TL;DR If you set up camp in a spot that's lower than its surroundings, you had better fucking hope it doesn't rain.