Gentle Reader,
Our fighting men are being sent on repeated tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have too small a military to do anything else, so our men come home, then go back into combat again and again, guaranteeing horrific consequences most American cannot even imagine.
When I was a young military bride, an old 2nd World War hand-to-hand combat vet told me he refused to sleep in the same room with his beloved wife for a long time after returning to the States. Naively, I asked him why. His answer has stayed with me for these many years: "I knew if she turned over in bed or mumbled in her sleep, she would be dead before I could even wake up."
He was telling me he could, and absolutely would, kill the woman for whom he gladly would give his own life, by sheer instinct. He had been in combat so long, and had been so conditioned that, even while asleep, he reacted with lightening and deadly speed in response to any movement or sound.
According to what I have been told, this very horror is occurring in some of today’s military families. The serial deployments, causing our men to go into combat repeatedly, while fighting on two fronts, is directly responsible for this.
What is happening to our men, who kill their own wives while asleep? Are they charged with murder? And even if they are not, can anyone imagine what it does to both them and their children? Neither will ever recover from such a horror.
The answer? I haven’t a clue. Unfortunately, neither has our Commander-in-Chief, who has never seen, nor will ever see, a minute of deadly combat.
Until next time,
Muriel Sluyter
