I was a Infantry soldier, made the Anzio landing. The thing I remember most about my time in combat is that we were almost always dog tired. We were usually on the move and there was little opportunity for good, uninterrupted sleep. After a while, this resulted in most of us being very irritable and short tempered. We all lost a good amount of weight and I think it was a combination of nerves, the constant emotional swings resulting from prolonged combat and the fact that we were sometimes too tired to eat more than a few hurried bites during a unit movement. I am sure that our leaders realized that we were exhausted, and they modified their way of leading us in order to get the best performance possible out of men who were physically depleted.

From the looks of it, wars tend to be a bit shorter nowadays, so perhaps this is not much of a problem anymore. I wanted to tell my thoughts so the younger guys could read them just in case they ever get invloved in a prolonged war and the issue of fatigue once again surfaces. I have no doubt that leaders will have to modify their methods to adapt to the condition of their troops.

I think this site is a great idea and if I can think of any other things that might be of interest to others I will write them here.

God Bless America!