So now that we are done with midterms, we are finally back in the swing of things with our readings. This weeks readings are about sleep in the military, and honestly they weren't that surprising to me. I'm not in the military but I do have some best friends who are in the Marines and Army and my brother in law is in the Army, and I watch a lot of war movies and shows. And if there's one thing I paid attention when I watched Band of Brothers is that those soldiers really never slept. They had to be alert at all hours of the day and when they were able to catch some shut eye in their fox holes, it wasn't long before they were being bombarded with mortar strikes by the enemy.
So reading Sleep Difficult in a War Zone was pretty much what I expected. Listening to my brother in law about his days in Afghanistan, I remember him talking about one time he came back to base late at night with a convoy. And he literary got 3 hours of sleep until he had to get up for some briefing thing about, I guess another mission or something I don't remember. But it is crazy how many soldiers in combat never sleep the same again after being in combat. It's pretty sad how dreams can become their biggest nightmare, just like how Lockhart explains in When Dreams are the Enemy. I can't imagine going through something very stressful and traumatic and my dreams being like a movie inside my head playing that traumatic event over and over again. Tough stuff not being able to sleep when the body clearly needs it.
- Kirk out
http://www.ralockhart.com/dailyfigures/When%20dreams%20are%20the%20enemy.pdf
http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/MilitaryMedicine/23669
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