Snoring Experience

.I was thinking about how the Army tolerates soldiers that snore. Most people comment on how they dealt with those that snore, or how it didn’t bother them when they were so sleep deprived. One sailor spoke of having to sleep with noisy jets taking off above him, so people snoring was the least of his worries. Others spoke of being in combat situations where you are too alert to even sleep, let alone snore.

While this certainly made for interesting reading, I was thinking more about the impact of snoring on covert operations that rely on stealth. During the American War of Independence, a cannonball was sewn to the inner side of the snoring soldiers' uniforms. This stopped them turning over onto their backs and disturbing fellow soldiers. More recently, the Chinese army have announced an all out ban on chronic snoring. Also among the new recruitment guidelines, introduced to "affirm the military's high standards", will be a ban on tattoos and drugs. Urine tests to detect traces of drugs will be introduced, acknowledging that the people's vanguard is no longer as immune as it was once thought to be to the hedonistic influences that afflict youth elsewhere. Weeding out the chronic snorers will surely be a laborious process, as many don’t even realise they snore.