SNOWY CIRCLE

I knew the lad only vaguely. Whereas I had been tip-toeing through my National Service in the RAF for nearly a year and a half and had a mere six months to do, he was a newcomer, a bemused replacement straight out of Hednesford training camp who didn't know the ropes as we 'veterans' did. Wet behind the ears, a sprog, with gleaming buttons and shiny shoes and a new, carefully ironed uniform. That sort of thing. He was also still living in the camp's transit hut, patiently waiting for a bed to become available in the Signals Section hut, where the other nine of us slept.
It was our job to man the three-seat PBX telephone switchboard at our Flying Training Command station, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Sometimes, if the Meteors were flying there would be three or us on duty, kept busy by calls and queries. If there was no flying, then only one operator was needed. So it was my job, on this particular evening, to show him some of the ropes, dodges and procedures.
He had to learn how to make military calls, how to cope with sudden flurries of telephone activity, what to do in an emergency (when there was a crash, for example), which officers were rude and dangerous - and how to (accidently) back-ring into their ear - and which were OK. And most important of all, which calls to listen to, to find out what leave we were going to get at the weekend. And where we hid the rolled-up mattress bed on which the night-shift operator slept (against regulations) during the quiet hours. Standard National Service stuff, really. 
On this particular weekend there was no flying. It was bitterly cold, and two days' earlier it had begun to snow, flurries at first and then some serious storms. Then it had snowed solidly and thickly for at least 24 hours so that nearby roads were clogged, paths and lawns were a flat sheet of white, and there were drifts three feet deep around the doorways.
Thus Air Traffic Control was closed, the jets were silent and still, and the camp in shut-down. Which explains how he and I were on duty this particular evening, by ourselves, sitting beside a silent switchboard. Me yawning with boredom, reading a book. He pale and quiet, looking oddly and uncomfortably out of place.
Suddenly he said, 'I got a Dear John letter today.' His girlfriend had dumped him. Now he looked grey and hunched, and when he rose to leave at the end of his shift, leaving me there for the rest of the night, he dragged on his greatcoat, turned up the collar, thrust his hands in his pockets and shuffled out.
For some reason I watched him out of the window. It had stopped snowing, but the night was pitch black, with the lawned square and line of three trees in front of Station HQ dimly illuminated by pale lamps. Only you could not actually see the lawns or the paths, because of the snow.
Anyway, I saw him shuffle away in search of his hut, his movements slow and tentative. Then, suddenly, he veered from the line of the path and stumbled through the snow towards the centre tree, and walked in a tight circle around it. Then he retuirned to the line of the path and very soon disappeared into the darkness. The line of footprints he left behind looked decidedly odd.
I wondered: Why did he do that? Why did he walk in a circle round the tree? I always meant to ask him about it, but never did. Somehow it didn't seem the right thing to do.