Combat vets battle new enemy: sleep
-
- August
- 5
I’ve interviewed World War II and Korean veterans who still have combat nightmares, and I know that my dad never slept through the night again after he came home from Vietnam.
I remember being on guard duty in Germany once when we were having bridge training, and our first sergeant, who’d been in Vietnam, woke up in the middle of the night screaming from a nightmare. It scared the you-know-what out of me.
This Los Angeles Times report says that 36 percent of Army veterans back from Iraq for a year report feeling tired all the time or have difficulty sleeping. Some hate their dreams so much that they chug energy drinks to try and avoid sleep. Others crave sleep so much that they take sleeping pills or drink themselves into a stupor.
“I gave up my tranquility, as many of the other warriors did, so the rest of America can have theirs,” one veteran is quoted as saying.
The report notes that there is no easy cure for the problem, which has affected combat veterans for decades.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 3:01 pm by Rich Liebson. 
| 
