Firepower

Where we live here in the panhandle of Florida, minutes from the sugar white sands of the Gulf Coast, there are 2 Air Force bases, a Navy base in Pensacola, and a few little bases that are referred to as 'fields'. I think basically they are a runway in the sand with a couple of buildings for personnel. The cities/towns in the area are all built around these bases and the range that the bases use for exercises, and practice bombing, and shooting their guns. Our neighborhood is probably about 10 miles from this range. Nightly we hear the booms and repeating fire from these exercises. Noise near an air base is not uncommon but we had usually only heard the planes themselves. Now, we rarely hear the planes, but we hear their firepower.

Several times a week as I am laying in bed listening to the booms and bangs, I can help but be thankful that for us, these are not scary. For mothers in other parts of the world like Iraq and Afghan. they must be terrifying. Oddly, it doesn't make me feel safer, I makes me sad and angry that hundreds of thousands of people in those countries do not get a restful sleep because they fear that sound of aircraft firepower.

And there isn't really anything they can do about it except worry that one night that bomb or gun may be aimed at their home.