Fatigue Management

Chapter One
Sleep: Basic Information
You can stay up all night and keep awake provided you
keep using some muscles, at least the speaking muscles.
You can march all night, fight all night, talk all night. You
will be likely to get terribly sleepy somewhere along
between 0300 and 0600 hours unless you are doing
something exciting or intensely interesting. But you can get
through provided you are active. It is very hard to fight
sleep if you are quiet and by yourself.
By breakfast time you will be getting less sleepy. You can
get through the next day pretty well. You will feel
uncomfortable. But other people will not notice anything
wrong with you unless you sit down and relax with nothing
important or interesting to do. Then, very likely, you'll doze
off.
The second night you won't want to stay up but you may
have to. Another march may be necessary or the enemy may
attack. And the second night is like the first but more
difficult. It is harder to keep active under your own power;
yet you can, if your officers or the enemy furnish the
motivation. You don't want to keep your mind on any topic
very long. By this time you are probably getting quite
irritable. Little things provoke you and you may talk some
nonsense.
The third day is better than the second sleepless night, but
you will be irritable, rambling and illogical in speech and
thought, inattentive, more than usually sensitive to pain.
Your eyes itch. You may begin to see double. You can't sit
down and read. You can still be spurred to your full mental
powers and manual dexterity if the stimulus is strong
enough - if your commander demands your attention, if a
shell comes over - but the effect of these things doesn't last
as long as it would normally.
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